“You can’t.  I- Oh fuck.  You’re underestimating what I did.  Please.  If you never ever give me anything else, if you never talk to me or look at me again, just let me fix this.”

At least it doesn’t seem to have really kicked in yet. That might be because of the anger suppressing it.

Victoria shook her head slowly, then scoffed.  “Good job, Amy.  You just did an excellent job of taking every instance of me defending you, every instance of my giving you the benefit of a doubt, and proving me fucking wrong.  You were worried about being as fucked up as your dad?  Congratulations, I’m pretty goddamn sure you just surpassed the man.”

Ouch as fuck.

The sad thing is I can’t even really say she’s wrong. Marquis… we haven’t seen much from him, but from what we’ve seen, I don’t think he’d do this if he could.

With that said, Victoria was gone, flying into the distance.

Bye, sis.

Amy sank to her knees on the flooded street.

And by flying off? Victoria is implying that she no longer cares to continue talking Amy into going back.

She chanced a look at Victoria’s face, and she knew that the horror she saw in her sister’s expression didn’t even compare to what she felt.

Makes sense.

It’s not a fun thing to hear that you were just manipulated like that.

“Please.  Let me fix it.  Then I’ll leave.  You’ll never have to see me again.”

“What in the world makes you think I’d let you use your power on me again!?”  Victoria shouted, taking to the air, out of reach.  “Who knows what you’re going to do to me!?”

That is a fair question, honestly.

“Please?” Amy begged.

“I can find someone else to fix it.  Or maybe, at the very least, I can show some fucking self-control and realize it’s my sister I’m having those feelings about.”

To be fair, Amy has been practicing such self-control, up until this moment. It doesn’t prevent the feelings from being there, though.

Also… it’s not quite the same thing, but of all the people this could happen to, Victoria is probably the second most ironic one after Cherish. Victoria’s power is all about making people think more highly of her, be it as someone to respect or as someone to fear. But that’s temporary, and not quite as “real” as what Amy just did, and it doesn’t make them want to fuck their sisters.

Amy happens to be just about immune to that power by now. Maybe that’s not entirely because of overexposure, like she claimed in Interlude 2? And I can’t imagine being exposed to it made Amy any less confused about her feelings.

“Oh my god,” Victoria whispered, the revulsion giving way to something worse.  Realization.

Did she realize what Amy did?

“I- I tried to keep things normal between us.  To act like your sister, keep it all bottled in.  It’s just tonight was such a nightmare, and I’m so scared, and so tired, and so desperate.

See “compromised state”.

Bonesaw forced me to ignore all the rules I was imposing on myself.  All the rules I was using and following so I wouldn’t do anything stupid or impulsive.”

And there’s another one of the keywords from the analogy I used.

“Anything stupid.  Like what?  What did you do?”

Amy’s voice was a croak as she replied, “…make it so you would reciprocate my feelings.”

Suddenly a white van with the letters “C&D” on the side drives up to the two of them, opens a door and pulls Amy in before continuing down the road. The driver is Cherish.

“When I was at the lowest point in my life, when the boy I thought I might marry someday was dead, were you secretly elated?  Were you happy Gallant died?”

Hm. This could go either way, depending on the balance between “no more competition” and “this is making the one I like miserable”.

I feel like Amy is the type to lean more towards the latter.

“No!  Vic- Victoria, I love you.  I wanted you to be happy with him.  I just… it hurt at the same time.”

Yeah. A classic tale of bittersweet acceptance of the target of affection being with another person.

Just, y’know, with a bit more adoption than usual.

Amy couldn’t meet Victoria’s eyes.  She looked at her hands, appalled at what she had just done.

I really don’t know how to feel about that reveal.

So what did you do? Mess with her brain to change her familial love into something else?

“And Gallant?  I was thinking you secretly liked him, but-”

Amy shook her head.  “I hated him.  I felt jealous because he had you and I never could… but I never acted on those feelings.

I see. And the distancing would be because seeing Victoria grieve over a lost love would be a painful reminder not of her own relationship to the deceased but of Victoria’s.

I never acted on any of my feelings, until just now, and all I want to do is to take that back.”

It really does sound like what she did had to do with making Victoria love her back.

It’s like the superpowered equivalent of an impulsive, non-consensual kiss while in a compromised state of mind.

“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.”