Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, locations, themes, ideas, ingrained social taboos and assumptions, vocabulary, voice, or original content contained herein. My body, mind and soul belong to Wildbow. Someday, we will be together. I love you.

This is my 'take,' of sorts, on Worm Loops. A lot of people on here like to write about Taylor getting a second chance, and I find it more masturbatory and Mary Sue-ish than is to my liking. I'm not a comedy writer, really, so I'm going to try to take it a bit more seriously. Here we go.


The bullets were painful, I knew. Objectively, I deduced they must be, but the pain was not mine. I couldn't see, probably because the front of my skull was blown open on the inside of my mask. Regardless, I shut my eyes as I keeled over onto the soft grass. The few bugs in my range slipped from my awareness just as the pain did, and I felt surprisingly light as the tension and pains I'd forgotten were there left my attention. And then, there was the silence.

It was the exact inverse of my experience with the Clairvoyant. My sphere of awareness was zero: there was nothing in 'front' of me or 'around' me, because 'front' and 'around' and 'me', even, didn't exist. The only thing I was aware of was my own mind, in a sense, and it was because of that that I noticed.

I-I'm healing. She healed me.

If anyone could lobotomize a person with bullets, Contessa could. The haze over my memories was gone. Grue was the boy in the cabin, Tattletale my very good friend who watched me as I… well. I could recover my anchors. Danny and Annette Hebert. The graveyard, my old house, I could remember the addresses.

M-Mom. Dad. I'm sorry.

I hadn't stuttered: the mental stutter had lifted with the haze, but I could hardly bear to even think about my parents. Come to think of it, my emotions were a total mess: the paranoia and panic that Khepri felt had been replaced by elation at remembering my friend's faces, and then was tempered by remorse in remembering my parents. Now, it occurred to me, I'd made a choice before I'd been shot.

Life or Death.

I'd chosen death. Had Contessa given me life?

I don't feel alive.

It was true. Time had passed, and I had nothing to track its progress. Still I had no senses, no beating heart or pumping blood. Only a consciousness in an endless void. Maybe this is death, I thought. A purgatory, to sort through my choices before I went on to… wherever. Not heaven. Not any kind of heaven I'd recognize. But in a sense, I'd already made my choice, received my judgement. How much more at peace did I need to be, exactly?

I was mulling over my circumstances when I noticed a point in my awareness. No, I couldn't see it, not when I couldn't see, but I was aware that it was some distance away. Curious, I tried to move closer, only to discover I was fixed in place. Instead, I pushed my very focus into the point, and I realized it was moving. Writhing.

Crawling.

In an instant, my perception bloomed, a thousand, a million points lighting up all around me. My eyes snapped open, and the smell hit me like a flesh, blood, shit and vomit. I moved my arms, and found them pinned, uselessly, to my side. I tried to breathe, and the rancid air nearly made me puke. The conclusion was obvious, but I fought to think of any other explanation. I'm not back there. That's impossible.

How the fuck did Contessa send me back in time?

I was back in the locker. Considering it, I knew I wasn't in hell: barring some kind of elaborate setup (which was, admittedly, very possible), this was the least of my traumatic moments. Small potatoes, really: no one's life at stake, no impossible calls to make, with long-standing repercussions. I forced myself to relax and slow my breathing. I'd get nowhere by flipping out like last time around.

Which left the question, of course, of what to do now? I wanted to get out immediately, but should I be worried about changing things? If this is all real, what are the consequences for changing the past? Acting on the assumption that someone behind the curtain had used a trick or illusion on me would not help, nor would assuming I was in an afterlife: without any ability to distinguish the truth from fiction, my guess would be only as good as a guess. All I could hope to do was the best I could for the present, ignoring ramifications for the moment.

What I wanted for the present? Get me out of this fucking locker.

Elsewhere in the building, Emma and Sophia had returned to their classes. Those bitches. Was it just that easy to them, to torture someone like this? All the other students, who'd just watched. They weren't bullies: they were worse, because any one of them could have told a fucking teacher what they'd seen, and maybe I wouldn't have needed to go to the hospital. Like sheep, they huddled in groups in class or on their way, whispering. I could've listened in, but I knew there was nothing any of them could say that I would ever want to hear. Oh, I'm sure many of them would feel horrible about what happened to poor Taylor. Yeah, go ahead, feel bad, while you do nothing, say nothing and keep your heads down. This will just work itself out that way, I'm sure.

When I'd first gotten my powers, the new stimulus was overwhelming, debilitating, maddening. Now? I used my power like I used my own limbs. I noticed, as I called every bug in the school to action, that my range remained what it was just before Panacea broke my power: about 10 city blocks. When I'd gotten out of the hospital, I'd tried to suppress my power, for fear of being found out; here, now, I knew exactly where I could move my bugs out of sight, because I had tagged every single person in the building, no-see-ums and mosquitos nestled in hair and folds of clothing. The certainty I felt, the battlefield awareness, comforted me, made it almost easy to forget I was trapped in a festering heap of blood and cotton.

My bugs were acting before I had even time to consider my next move, spiders spooling thread, a team of flies using compound vision and touch to interpret where the numbers were on the combination lock on my locker door. I hoped they had used my lock, which I had the combination for. It was on the door when I opened my locker; Sophia would have had to take it off and put a different one on in its place, and I hoped she hadn't seen the need to go that far. After all, she wouldn't expect me to open the lock from the inside.

Fuck. A teacher from a higher grade was coming down the stairwell to my right. Quickly, I stowed away my swarm, into nearby lockers and through cracks in the walls. I considered simply calling out to them, and potentially expediting my escape. Would it be best to just put aside my powers and trust the system? I didn't want to relive the humiliation at the hospital, with my dad, with my teachers. But was it worth my pride, when I could do this the right way, get help through legitimate channels?

I almost laughed at the thought. The system hadn't been my ally before. I had no reason to trust it now.

He turned a corner, and my bugs flowed out of vents, joining threads into a strand 10 feet long, looping the center around the dial on the combination lock. I had the larger, stronger bugs positioned at the ends, like tug-of-war in miniature. At my command, they marched simultaneously right, then left, slowly rotating the lock. 0. 23. 8. The massed bugs then pulled in opposite directions, pulling the lock down towards the floor.

Click.

I stepped out of the locker, bugs and bloody tampons spilling out around me like a wave, and stumbled. My younger body's default slouch contrasted sharply with my own default, upright posture, and I didn't know how to hold myself as a result. There was nothing I wanted or needed from my locker, but I grabbed my backpack anyway, just in case. Bugs flowed over it, over me, cleaning as best as they could: pulling away larger bits and devouring the rest. It wouldn't get the smell out, but I'd look more presentable to anyone with seriously poor vision or a good distance away. It was the best I could do.

I made my way out of the building, swaying on my feet a little as my stride fell just short of where it expected to, my lower back complaining in response to being uncharacteristically straight. Bugs ferried the scraps of cotton to various bins all across the school, spreading out the waste so there wouldn't be too much nasty concentrated in any one place. I couldn't do too much about the walls of my locker or the floor in front of it, couldn't clean them, but a battalion of maggots working in concert worked tirelessly to tidy up the mess in neat rows. By the time the students returned to fill the halls, the swarm had retreated back into the earth and surrounding nature, my locker was back to normal but for a faint, rancid smell, and I was four blocks away, further than I really needed to be to catch a bus home. The bus arrived, I sank into my seat. I ignored the stares.

I shook. What the hell is happening to me.

If only I knew then.


Please, PLEASE tear this fic apart. I want all your best criticisms. In fact, I would be satisfied if all of them were belong to us. Don't hesitate to PM me with questions, it's the best way to show me you DO care. That you love me, even. I need love.