She didn’t move as Amy’s spoke from behind her.  “Please, let me explain.”

I don’t have high hopes for Carol accepting the explanation, but hopefully Amy gives it anyway while Carol’s stunned.

Brandish couldn’t bring herself to move or speak.  Amy seemed to take that silence as assent.

“I wanted to see her smile again.  To have someone hug me before I left forever.  So you wouldn’t have to worry about me anymore.  I- I told myself I’d leave after.  Victoria wouldn’t remember.  It would be a way for me to get closure.  Then I’d go and spend the rest of my life healing people.  Sacrifice my life.  I don’t know.  As payment.”

Is Victoria permanently, unnaturally smiling now?

Lady Photon had made her way upstairs.  She entered the room and stopped just in front of Brandish.  Her hands went to her mouth.  Her words were a whispered, “Oh God.”

Except everything suggests something much worse. Much more… Bonesaw-y.

Amy kept talking, her voice strangely monotone after her earlier emotion, as if she were a recording.  Maybe she was, after a fashion, all of the excuses and arguments she’d planned spilling from her mouth.  “I wanted her to be happy.  I could adjust.  Tweak, expand, change things to serve more than one purpose.  I had the extra material from the cocoon.

The cocoon that was made of stray animals. How is that different from using bugs as extra materials?

When I was done, I started undoing everything, all the mental and physical changes.  I got so tired, and so scared, so lonely, so I thought we’d take another break, before I was completely finished.  I changed more things.  More stuff I had to fix.  And days passed.  I-“

Oh jeez. How much did she change, ultimately?

Is Victoria even the same person anymore, with the mind changes?

A cornered rat will bite.  Amy realized what Brandish intended and reached out, a reflex.

Uh oh.

A weapon sprung into Brandish’s hand.  Not so dissimilar from the first weapon she’d made, an unrefined bludgeon of raw lightstuff.

Well, this is going all kinds of wrong.

She moved as if to parry the reaching hand and Amy scrambled back out of the way, eyes wide.

You do realize you’d fry her hand that way?

Where to go?  Brandish glanced to the rooms to the left, then down the hall in front of her.  She looked back and saw Amy with her back to the wall.  She moved toward the staircase, glanced back at Amy, and saw a reaction.  Fear.  Trepidation.

Well, that’s an answer, it seems.

Before Amy could protest, Brandish was heading up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

“Carol!”  Amy shouted, scrambling up the stairs.  There was the sound of her falling on the stairs in her haste to follow,  “Stop!  Carol!  Mom!“

And Amy finally calls Carol Mom right at this moment my heart

And Carol’s reaction isn’t gonna be any less painful, is it?

Only one door was still open.  Brandish entered the room and stopped.

She doesn’t. She doesn’t react.

I’m not sure if that’s less painful or more.

“I didn’t want her to fight.  And I didn’t want her to follow, or to hate me because I used my power on her again.”

“again”. The cat’s coming out of the basket and Carol isn’t going to be happy.

So… did you do something meant to temporarily restrain Victoria?

Again?

“So I thought I’d put her in a trance, and make it so she’d forget everything that happened.

Oh. Ohhh.

That’s.

Hrm.

Everything that I did, and the things that the Slaughterhouse Nine said, and everything that I said to try to make them go away.  Empty promises and-“

Her voice hitched.

“What happened?” Brandish asked, for the Nth time.

Unless she asked it off-screen, I’m pretty sure this is actually the first time she asked this exact question. She did ask similar ones, though.

“She was lying there, and I wanted to say goodbye.  I- I-“

…did you try to kiss her?

Something in Amy’s voice, her tone, her posture, it provided the final piece, clicking into place, making so many things suddenly come together.

Brandish marched forward, fully intending to walk right past Amy.  Amelia.  His daughter.  She could never be my daughter because she’d never stopped being his.

ow ow ow ow this hurts.

Lady Photon did as she’d so often done, ignoring reason in favor of the emotional appeal.  “You grew to love and trust Mark.  You could grow to love and trust that little girl, too.”

■

Perhaps she could do that.

Perhaps she could.

Liar.

Who, Photon Mom?

Brandish stared at the teenaged girl.  Amy couldn’t even look her in the eye.  Tears were streaming down the girl’s face.

Ahh.

Hi.

How are you?

“Where’s Victoria?”  Brandish made the question a demand.

“I’m so sorry,” Amy responded, her voice hoarse.  She’d been crying long before anyone had showed up.

Oh fuck. She already freed Victoria of the calm spell and had a confrontation with her, didn’t she?

Brandish felt choked up as well, but she suppressed the emotion.  “Is my daughter dead?”

The way she says “my daughter” in a way that almost says “my only daughter”… Owww.

“No.“

“Explain.”

“I- I don’t- No-” Amy stuttered.

She could have slapped the girl.

Amy, I get it, but you really need to say something to salvage this if you can.

“What happened to my daughter!?”

Amy flinched as though she’d been struck.

Again, the same implication that there’s only one. That Amy is not also “my daughter”.

That probably hurts more than the slap Carol didn’t give her.

“I didn’t know you were dwelling on it to that degree.”

Brandish shrugged and shook her head, as if she could shake off this conversation, this situation.  “That child deserves better than I can offer.  I know I don’t have it in me to form any kind of bond with another child if there’s no blood relation.”

The really sad thing here is that judging by what Amy has to narrate about Carol a decade later, she’s right.

Especially if she’s Marquis’.

“She needs you.  You’re her only option.  I can’t, and Fleur and Lightstar aren’t old enough or in the right place in their lives for kids, and if she goes anywhere else, it’ll be disastrous.”

And you don’t have any other cape friends that could help?

Brandish decided on the most direct, clear line of argument she could muster, “I don’t want her.  I can’t take her.”

Brandish glanced at the kid that they’d stowed in the team’s car.  The child was standing on the car seat, hands pressed against the window.  Her stare bored into Brandish as though little girl had laser vision.

And who’s to say she doesn’t?

The window was open a crack, Brandish noted.  The girl could probably hear everything they’d been saying.  Brandish looked away.

Ouch.

“Then you take care of her,” Brandish replied, even as she mentally prayed her sister would refuse.  There was something about the idea of being around Marquis’ child, that uncanny resemblance, having those memories stirred even once in a while, even if it was just at family reunions… it made her feel uneasy.

Careful what you wish for, Carol.

“You know Neil and I don’t have that much money.  Neil isn’t having luck finding work, and all our funding from the team is going into the New Wave plan, which won’t happen for a few months, and we have two hungry mouths to feed…”

So wait. What exactly is the history here? How did parts of the Brockton Bay Brigade end up as New Wave? What happened to the rest, if not death? Apparently something about that is being set into motion soon.

Brandish grasped her sister’s meaning.  With a sick feeling in her gut, she spoke the idea aloud.  “You want Mark and I to take her.”

Hey, those are your words.

“You should.  Amelia’s Vicky’s age, I think they would be close.”

They are, yeah. Or were, anyway.

This is a nice tie back into the same thing being stated earlier in the chapter.

“It’s not a good idea.”

“Why are you so reluctant?”

Brandish shook her head.  “I… you know I never planned to have kids?”

That’s a relatively weak excuse.

But seriously, you should probably tell the truth. If there’s anyone who might understand here, it’s Sarah.

Into the dark.  She felt as if she was separated from the child by a chasm.

Yeeah, you pretty much are. You’re in much less than her good graces right now, a stranger coming to take her and her father and separate them for a to her unknown duration.

“Let’s call the PRT,”  Manpower said.  “We should get Marquis into custody stat.”

“Wouldn’t mind some medical treatment, if you could rush that?” Marquis asked.

Let’s get that burning hole in your chest healed up a bit.

“…And medical treatment,” Manpower amended his statement.

Brandish walked away.  The others would handle this.  She would wait outside to guide the responders into the manor, past the traps Marquis had set in place.

A great excuse to go away from Amy for a little while.

She was still waiting when Lady Photon came outside, holding the little girl’s hand.  Lady Photon seated the girl in the car and shut the door.

Lady Photon joined Brandish on the stone stairs.  “We can’t let her go into foster care.  It’s not just the danger his enemies pose.  Once people found out she was Marquis’ child, they’d start fighting over who could get their hands on her.”

Oh jeez. Villainous war over Amy.

“Sarah-” Brandish started.

“Then they’ll kidnap her.  They’ll do it to exploit her powers, and she’s bound to be pretty powerful if she inherits anything like her father’s abilities”

Sounds familiar.

Little babby Taylor wouldn’t stand for it.

“You can’t take him away,” the girl told them.

Even as a six-year-old saying exactly the sorts of things you’d expect from a six-year-old in this situation, she still sounds just like older Amy.

“He’s a criminal,” Brandish responded.  “He’s done bad things, he needs to go to jail.”

“No.  He’s just my daddy.  Reads me bedtime stories, makes me dinner, and tells me jokes.  I love him more than anything else in the world.  You can’t take him away from me.  You can’t!”

Aww 😦

I kinda wish Amy could read this.

“We have to,” Brandish told the girl.  “It’s the law.”

“No!” the girl shouted.  “I hate you!  I hate you!  I’ll never forgive you!”

Does Carol still wonder sometimes whether Amy has forgiven her?

Brandish reached out, as if she could calm the girl by touching her.

The girl shrank back into the closet.

Because touching an upset Amy works out so well.