“Don’t touch me!”

“Idiot,” Victoria grabbed her sister by the shirt collar and pulled her into a painfully tight hug.

Aww.

“Don’t,” Amy moaned into her sister’s shoulder.

“All of this?  We’ll work it out.  As a family.  And if your idea of family means it’s just you and me, then we’ll work it out together, just the two of us.”

Yes, good. 🙂

All it took was one moment of weakness, and she was weak.  At the end of her rope, desperately lonely, haunted by her father’s shadow, her shame at being unwilling and unable to help Mark until now, the idea that one of the Slaughterhouse Nine thought she belonged with them?

As I was saying.

She’s got a lot that needs venting right now.

She was losing everything so quickly.  Victoria was all she had, and it was the choice between abandoning that for everyone’s good and keeping Victoria close.

But are you sure the first option is actually for everyone’s good?

I don’t think it’s for anyone’s good.

Well, besides the whole “Slaughterhouse Nine coming after Amy and her family getting caught in the crossfire” deal.

Amy looked down at her feet.

“And most of all, you just leave dad to suffer, when you could have healed him?  You lash out at me, here, when I’m trying to mend fences and be your sister?”

Ouch.

You’re not doing a great job, Victoria, but that’s not entirely your fault.

“You want to know who I am?” Amy asked.  Her voice sounded hollow.  “I’m Marquis’s daughter.  Daughter of a supervillain.”

And there it is. She finally let out the fact that she found out who he was.

Also, hang on, wasn’t the fact that she was the daughter of a villain, not just which villain, part of what she was trying to hide in Agitation?

“Marquis?”

Amy nodded.

Evil guy, ‘bout yeah high, makes bones sprout from his fingertips?

“How did you find out?”

“Carol left some paper out.  I think it’s under my pillow, if you want to look for it.”

“You have his genes, but you’re Carol and Mark’s daughter,” Victoria replied, her voice firm.  “And they’re going to be worried.  Come home.”

See, that’s better. Now that Victoria has some information, she can actually figure out a good thing to say.

“They don’t care.  They don’t love me, not really.  Trust me, this is better for everyone.”

I think you’re very wrong about that, Amy. Especially about Mark.

“I love you,” Victoria said, stressing the ‘I’.  She dropped to the ground and stepped closer.

“Even if you are right, there’s still someone who wants you to stay.”

Amy looked away.

“We could get you a therapist.  I mean, Mom was setting aside money for Dad’s care, we could use that to give you someone to talk to.”

“I… a therapist wouldn’t be able to help.”

A lot of people say that. A lot of those are wrong.

“Geez, what’s going on?  Amy, we’ve been together for a decade.  I’ve stood by you.  I’d like to think we were best friends, not just sisters.  And you can’t tell me?”

They have their differences, but it’s always been clear that the two of them are close.

Even in Interlude 2, I think.

“I can’t.  Just let me leave.  Trust me when I say it’s better.”

“Fuck that!  I’m not about to let you walk away!”  Victoria floated closer, reaching out.

“And you can’t fly away like I can, either!”

“Don’t touch me,” Amy warned her sister.

Is that a threat?

Looking lost, Victoria stopped and spread her arms.  “Who are you, Amy?  I don’t even recognize this person I’m looking at.  You go berserk at the bank robbery over some secret I’ve totally not gotten on your case about.  You apparently say something to Skitter that causes this huge commotion in the hospital after the Endbringer attack.

Wait, what?

Hm… I suppose she did indirectly cause that. She’s the one who alerted Skitter to the fact that the big shots wanted to talk to her, which alarmed Skitter and caused her to go on the run, causing her to accidentally discover Shadow Stalker’s civilian identity, and so on.

You… I don’t even know what to say about your reaction to Gallant’s death, the way you distanced yourself from me at a time when I was hurting the most.”

…ouch.

Amy was close to Gallant too, wasn’t she? Not in quite the same way, but maybe she distanced herself from Victoria because seeing Victoria grieve was a painful reminder for her?

Victoria stopped midflight and hovered in the air, five feet above the ground and five or six paces in front of her.

Busted.

“I was just at the house.  I don’t even know what to say,” Victoria spoke.

Makes sense. There’s a lot around there to not know what to say to right now. Such as the exploded hallways, piles of white dust, and most importantly the goodbye note with no given reason.

A reasonable assumption for Victoria to make here, if she’s been filled in on the events of Bonesaw’s visit, would be that Amy left because she was afraid she’d make the others targets for the Slaughterhouse Nine by staying. There may be some truth to that, but it was not her main reason.

“Pretty self-explanatory.  One of the Nine came, house got trashed, I healed Mark.”

Heh.

That’s not what she was talking about, and you know it, Amy.

“Why?  Why heal dad now, when you couldn’t before?”

“I only did it because I had to.”

Not entirely true, but not entirely false either.

“That’s what I don’t get.  Why couldn’t you?  You’ve never explained.”

That doesn’t sound right. According to Interlude 2, they’d argued over brain healing repeatedly, and Amy gave a pretty solid reason – though one that was apparently not quite true – back then: That she was afraid of messing up.

“I can’t tell you.”

“So that’s it?  No explanations?  You just up and leave?” Victoria asked.

It’s that she’s afraid of mind controlling people, right? Something which would be seen as evil, put her closer to her biological father.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“You’re just gonna leave without giving me any explanation?” “Yes.” “Give me an explanation.”

■

What’s this? I was thinking “She just had to get away.” would be the final line. Are we getting a few paragraphs from Bonesaw’s perspective, perhaps?

Amy cursed the curfew as she saw the figure in the air above her.

Oh, I see, just skipping ahead a little.

Would this flying figure be Flashbang, having just noticed the note, or maybe Brandish or Glory Girl either in that position or returning from the Bitch encounter.

Either way, the curfew makes Amy easier to spot, since there aren’t a lot of other people running around.

When people weren’t allowed out on the streets after dark, it made those few who did venture out that much more visible.  Not what she’d wanted, not when she was trying to avoid this exact conversation.

Yeeah.

It was even more problematic when she walked at maybe three or four miles an hour, limited to following the paths the roads and alleys allowed her, when her sister could fly at fifty miles an hour.

The troubles of the landbound.

So it’s Glory Girl up in the sky, then. Excellent. I like their dynamic and Victoria is the one Amy felt closest to and whose rejection she took the hardest.

She should have hid, instead of trying to make some distance.

Okay, yeah, that seems like a pretty silly decision. 😛

Amy opened her bedroom window and climbed out, pulling the bag out behind her.

It would be better this way.  Maybe, after weeks or months, she could stop worrying, stop waiting for the other shoe to drop, for everything to fall apart in the worst way.  She’d already had to face finding out about Marquis.  She’d taken a life.  She’d broken one of her cardinal rules.

Um… didn’t the other shoe just drop, really?

Or do you mean more specifically about the family?

She wasn’t sure she could take any more.

She just had to get away.

😦

“Carol?  It’s me.”

Oh wait, we’re actually getting to hear this? I would’ve liked to hear Carol’s reaction too, but still, hell yes.

Her face burned with shame.  She made her way to her room and began packing her things into a gym bag.

Oh, never mind, guess it was just that line.

Clothes, toiletries, and other things, mementos.  A small scrapbook, a memory card filled with pictures of her, her cousins and her sister.  She found a pad of post-it notes and scribbled out a few words.

Are you still thinking about leaving the Dallons?

I’m sorry it took me so long to help Mark.

Good bye.  I love you all,

Amy.

She wouldn’t be coming back.

Aww.

“Listen.  Sit yourself down.  I’m going to call your mother and sister, make sure they’re all right after dealing with Hellhound, let them know what happened.  Then I’ll call the Protectorate.  Maybe they can help guard us, in case Bonesaw comes after you again.”

You’re going to need that. Bonesaw might not come after Amy again, but everyone else will, to test her.

“She will.  But I- I can’t sit.  I’m going to my room.  I’ll pack so we leave sooner.”

Seems reasonable enough. This doesn’t seem like a good place for the family to stay right now.

“You sure?”

She nodded.

“Shout if anything happens.”

“DAD! A pair of socks just fell on the floor!”

She nodded and turned to go, picking her way through the destroyed hallway.  The floorboards that looked like a giant-sized version of pick-up-sticks.  She was only halfway when she heard Mark on the phone.

“Hey, honey, are you okay? I heard your message on the answering machine.”

“Yes, we’re okay, but we ran into– wait, Mark?! You’re… you’re talking? In full sentences?”

“I am! Amy just healed me.”

“Finally! …I mean, that’s wonderful!”

“So who were you saying you ran into?”

“Oh yeah. We were fighting Hellhound and all of a sudden Siberian arrived! We fled the scene. I don’t know what happened to Hellhound after that.”

“You saw Siberian? Really? That’s quite a coincidence.”

“How so?”

“I guess you could say we had a visitor over here. Bonesaw.”

“WHAT?!”

“We kinda thrashed the place. Hopefully the Protectorate will have room for us somewhere.”

“That’s not what’s important right now, Mark!”

…and so on.