“He’ll lose his remaining fingers, keep the thumb,” the Doctor spoke.

Huh. Sounds like a pretty… strange and inconvenient state to have a hand in, but at least he’s keeping something.

“So he’ll have the rest of his life with that as a reminder of his bad call,” I told her.  “The real question is what we do with him.”

Ah, yes. And with Sierra, too. They are both aware of Skitter’s face now. Or, well, Bryce will be when he’s back to being conscious and presumably learns what happened from Sierra. Unless Sierra is sworn to not tell him who the girls who saved him were.

Sierra was so focused on the responsibility, the blame and the betrayal that I think it took her a few seconds to process the problems that came with getting her brother back.  I could see it hit her, the idea that she might have to repeat the experience of losing her brother, with all of the same pain and worry, the moment he got a chance to slip away.

…oh, right, that too.

Dr. Q apparently didn’t care about the drama.

Of course. He’s more the type to silently be like “Blasted capes and all their drama. Maybe I should quit and move to the Bahamas someday soon, just so I don’t have to listen to more whining about secret identities and allegiances and all that shit, or have my office regularly filled with bugs or lasers.”

Once he was more or less confident that Sierra wouldn’t be disturbing his patient, he got up and walked over to Charlotte to start patching up the girl.  I walked over to Sierra and led her away from her brother’s bedside to the far corner of the room, next to Charlotte and the doctor, where she wasn’t getting in anyone’s way.

Ooh, time for Sierra and Charlotte to meet? That ought to help reinforce Skitter’s good intentions to… well, both of them.

“Fuck!”  Sierra turned to kick the side of Bryce’s bed. “Is that supposed to be an excuse?  No way he gets off that easy!  He joined them, you said!  He wasn’t brainwashed when he fucking decided to go with him!”

And there we go. We’ve got her convinced, and the anger is turned in the proper direction. Now it’s a matter of toning it down.

She kicked the bed again, hard enough that it shifted an inch or two away from her.

Is John Cleese still in the room? I can’t imagine he’d approve of this.

I could see the Doctor start forward in response to the assault on his furniture and patient, but Minor, Jaw and Fish moved first.

Yeah, he didn’t like that one bit.

“Guys, stop,” I ordered.

They did.  It was kind of strange, to have people listening to me.

Nice.

Sierra turned and saw the soldiers, and I could see emotions flicker across her face.

Which ones? Fear, realization that she just became a threat, that kind of thing?

“He’s not getting off easy,” I said, “He lost most of his hand.  I’m not a doctor, but he might lose the rest, depending on how the circulation is.”

Oof, yeah. I think that’s enough punishment for his bad choices.

Lisa spoke from behind her, “His parents were in the hospital, his home and school was gone, and he was a scared, confused kid that was offered a community and the power to change things.  It’s like what cults do.  They prey on people who are at their most vulnerable, people who are lost, with no attachments, who are hungry and weak.  It’s easy to underestimate how readily they can get to someone.”

True.

I mean, I know I call him a douche and all, but that doesn’t make him not a victim of manipulation here. I absolutely do think he’s not that great, especially for doing this and not telling Sierra (this is why I have described Sierra as a victim of Bryce – he hurt her by letting her think he’d been captured), and doing it for shitty reasons, but he is a kid who was roped into this by manipulative adults. He’s naïve enough that he wasn’t aware that the Merchants hurt Sierra, even.

He’s a kid who used to be privileged and reacted to that being taken away in a bad way. That’s pretty much what it amounts to. I don’t think he’s blameless, but it’s understandable.

“Sierra,” I called out.

She wheeled on me.  I watched her expression change as she stared at me and realized who I was.

“Told ya there was a human under the costume.”

“You got hurt,” she said, looking almost stunned by that realization.

Ohh, nice. That’s what pulls her out of this, seeing with her own eyes the fact that Skitter genuinely put herself, not just her lackeys (as she believes Lisa to be), in harm’s way to retrieve Bryce.

How bad did I look, that my injuries distracted her from her brother?  Or was it the realization that a supervillain could get hurt?

In this particular case I think it’s more the realization that a supervillain would get hurt.

“Things got ugly,” I said.  Then I added, with emphasis, “Lisa wasn’t lying.”

She wasn’t lying about either thing.

She shook her head, “It doesn’t make any sense.  He wouldn’t do that.  It doesn’t fit with the guy I grew up with, ate dinner with.”

I’m sorry, Sierra. Turns out the guy you grew up with is a privileged douche.

Lisa shrugged, unable to find the words to convince her.

This means a lot coming from Lisa.

Sierra sounded angry now.  She stood, confronting Lisa, “No!  Where’s Skitter?  Where’s your boss?”

Aand there goes the next stage.

What do you do, Taylor? Step in as a target of wrath while also giving up your civilian face to another person? Or let Lisa take it?

I hesitated.  My secret identity, such as it was, was already falling apart.  It wasn’t that I was that committed to it, since I wasn’t ‘Taylor’ that much of the time these days, but there was always that worry in the back of my mind that I was burning my bridges as far as being able to go back home, or that I was possibly giving out clues that someone could use to trace back to my dad and hurt him.

Honestly? I’m surprised she didn’t mention the possibility of the information making its way to Danny. But the points she does bring up are honestly better.

On the other hand, I could see how Sierra was on the verge of losing it.  I couldn’t tell if she was going to cry, hit Lisa or say something she shouldn’t, but I couldn’t let her do anything that would get her in trouble with the soldiers.

Oh yeah, let’s try to avoid that.

I stood from the bed.

Good woman.

“Things got violent,” Lisa said, stepping towards her.  “We didn’t start it, but they got ugly.”

Yeah, and it’s Bryce’s own fault he got injured, really. That’s how much he didn’t want to go back home, Sierra.

Sierra nodded mutely, then turned to Bryce.  She knelt at the side of the bed and held his intact hand.

“I’m sorry,” Lisa said.

It’s interesting that it’s Lisa talking to Sierra rather than Taylor, for the time being.

I wonder if Sierra has recognized Taylor, actually.

Sierra shook her head, her dreadlocks swinging, “No.  I understand.  The hand isn’t your fault.  He’s here and he’s alive because of you.”

That he is. 🙂

“No.  I’m sorry because I have something to tell you that’s going to be hard to hear.  But you need to know this.”

Ah, yes. Thank you, Lisa, for not making Taylor have to tell her.

When Dr. Q had done everything he could for Bryce, he turned his attentions to me.  I got more stitches, in my arm this time, which was fun.

Heh.

I also got to see every single one of my cuts and scrapes fizz with foam as he disinfected my injuries, which stung like hell.

I love the sort of semi-sarcastic enjoyment this paragraph is written in.

He was nearly done when a knock came at the door.  Jaw was on the other side, and he was escorting Sierra, as I’d requested.

Oh hey, that’s convenient. Now we don’t need to have a change of locations before Taylor can talk to Sierra. This way we can also have Taylor’s conversation with Sierra between her conversations with Charlotte.

She went immediately to Bryce’s bedside.

“His hand,” she said.

She knows her priorities.

I almost regretted leaving for this, for Bryce, even though I knew I’d do it again.

#responsibility

If anything calmed me down, it was seeing Lisa with the two squad leaders.  She laughed a little, and put her hand on the arm of the other squad captain, Fish.

😀

Hey, nice nickname. Maybe he’s good at swimming?

When she caught me looking her way, she smiled and gave me a wink.

Not going to lie, this sounds awfully suggestive, but I don’t really want to think about that given the sort of ages these people would be.

So I’m going to focus on Lisa smiling at Taylor instead.

Man, I bet the Skittletale shippers loved this moment, though. “Aww, looking at Lisa calms Taylor down from her anxieties…” Not gonna lie, it’s dangerously close to putting me on board the ship myself.