The main thing keeping me from more wholeheartedly shipping Taylor and Sierra was that I wasn’t sure how much older Sierra was. Upon some archive diving, I’ve just found that she’s twenty or so.
That makes this a ship I’m only really okay with as long as it’s aged up. Still, under those circumstances, I think it could be good.
Once I finished the bathroom, I tidied my room and opened the shutters on the windows. Glass that had fallen against the shutter sloughed off to the second floor balcony, with stray shards falling onto the hardwood. My bugs obligingly fetched them up for me.
AU where the Slaughterhouse Nine have a member whose power is to control window shutters. Her name would be Shutterbird.
Reams of glass shards fell as I opened the heavy shutters that stood just behind the pedestals with the mannequins I was using to design the costumes. I stepped out onto the balcony and set about sweeping up the glass and dumping it into the trash can, using my bugs to collect what the dustpan wasn’t catching. I wasn’t in costume, and I was in plain sight on the balcony, but I doubted the concentration of bugs was enough to draw attention.
O Taylor, Taylor! Wherefore art thou Taylor? Deny thy father and refuse thy name. Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I’ll no longer be a Wilbourn, Kiley, Laborn, Dallon or… whatever my surname may be depending on the reader’s preference!
Ten minutes passed before I heard from Sierra. I assumed it would be about the food, but it wasn’t.
…oh?
The uncertainties of the day, the worries about Lisa and Dad, having my routine disrupted and the spoiling of my breakfast and morning shower had put me in a bad mood.
Yeah, bit of a shitty morning after, this.
It would have been nice to say that it made me feel better, getting things in order again, and it did, but it wasn’t a cure-all nor was it a perfect distraction. There was no way I could relax with the things I had hanging over my head.
At least it’s a little help?
But yeah… guilt time?
Doing this felt like I wasn’t doing something to help Dinah.
Boom, there we go.
It’s tomorrow, let’s go!
Random 4 AM prediction: At some point there will be a character (if there isn’t one already) whose civilian name is Rose. It seems like most works I’m actively in the fandom of has one at this point.
I’m heading out to do some more practice driving with my dad. If it’s not super late and I’m not too tired when I get back, I might do a couple more hours of liveblogging tonight. Otherwise, we’ll pick this back up tomorrow. See you then, whenever “then” ends up being!
“I’m going to be upstairs, cleaning up the balcony and the other rooms. Give me a shout when the rice is done, or if you find anything breakfast-ish that’s edible.”
“Okay.”
I guess that’s all she’s getting for now.
I headed up to my bathroom and began to sweep up. I deployed bugs to help me find the shards that the broom wasn’t catching.
Handy!
I occupied myself with my other bugs as well. I went out of my way to avoid using the spiders I’d employed to fight Mannequin, drawing from bugs in the streets and surrounding area instead. I sent the weakest, smallest and most useless of the bugs to my spiders for a morning meal, then fed the non-spiders who were a little less reliant on protein.
Breakfast is served!
With the other nearby bugs, I started collecting the smallest pieces of glass throughout the house.
Using bugs to help do this is a very good idea, especially since she can multitask so effectively with them. It can help her get the cleaning done like a hundred times faster.
“Really, Armsmaster? Is he that bad?”
“Bad enough that Mannequin wants him to be the ninth member of their group.”
That should be some food for thought.
‘Course, might want to avoid mentioning that you just sent Charlotte to someone with the same distinction. Though it’s a little different since Alec was nominated out of spite.
Sierra’s eyes widened.
I figured I wouldn’t mention that two of my teammates, including the one I’d sent Charlotte to meet, had also been nominated. Regent had only been nominated out of spite, and Bitch… I wasn’t sure what the story was there.
Ahaha! I just said that, Taylor!
Well, I did deliberately leave Bitch out of it, but still.
Speaking of her, it seems Taylor is giving her the benefit of the doubt. I wonder if she’d still do that if Regent hadn’t been nominated.
Given recent events, I wasn’t sure I could blame her for thinking along those lines.
“No, that’s not exactly right,” I responded. “Long story short, once upon a time, I wanted to be one of the good guys.”
“Then I didn’t. The end.”
“What happened?”
“Took me a while, but I decided I’d rather have the likes of Tattletale and Grue at my back instead of siding with the sort of people who follow Armsmaster.”
Yeah, though a lot of those people do seem to be a bit more decent than Vriskmaster turned out to be.
And, hell, even he seems to be getting a redemption of sorts, with more recent chapters showing his better side.
But none of that is stuff Taylor knows.
“Say it.”
“It wasn’t last night, but I overheard something at the hospital. Something involving you and Armsmaster?”
Oh shit.
Time for Sierra to learn some backstory, perhaps?
I sighed, suddenly reminded of how weary I felt. I saw her expression fall. She said, “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“No. It’s fine. What did you hear?”
“That you betrayed your team, and that you’d wanted to be a hero but, um,” she paused, “Couldn’t?”
That’s… not quite what happened? Although I guess it works with a certain definition of “couldn’t”.
She’d changed her mind about how she was going to finish speaking. What had she left out, and had she stopped herself from saying it for my sake or for her own self-preservation, not wanting to piss off the villain? I wanted to be a hero and I failed?
Hmm. Perhaps.
It’s still not quite accurate, unless you mean “failed to resist the temptation of actually having friends for once”.
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