The thing they never tell you about dying is how much it hurts.
I don't hit the button for morphine. No matter how much it might help, the pain comes back. It always does. Why bother fighting it?
Alice and Brandon both want to. They want to wage a war. Like they know what that means. They'll battle tooth and nail against something that they can't touch, reading to me while working three jobs between the two of them to cover the hospital bills, trying to provide stimulus that distracts me from the pain. They tell me that the morphine is covered in the bills, that I can use as much as I need.
They're both terrible liars. I'm much better. More practice, telling fresh recruits that stomach wounds aren't that bad, that they'll pull through, that they can rest if they just get over one more hill.
I don't regret feeding those rookies bullshit, and I sure as fuck don't regret giving it to my children.
I tell them that it doesn't hurt that much. That the molten glass that flows sluggishly through my bones is just a little stinging, that the surgerys don't leave the very incarnation of ache behind for weeks. Months. I tell them that I appreciate their efforts when all I want to do is lay down in a ditch and finally fucking die.
It'd break their hearts. So I hang on.
Another wave of pain goes through me and I smile at Alice. She's on Mom duty today, reading some book that her econ professor assigned her to me. It's a popular press book, so us non-college students can still make sense of it, and it's interesting. Interesting enough that forcing the smile doesn't make me want to vomit and I can have an actual conversation with her.
She departs as visiting hours close, leaving me alone with my pain. I grit my teeth, close my eyes, and brace against the coming of the night.
I still remember the time that I wanted death more than I wanted my kids to be happy.
It's just...
Fuck.
Let me explain.
Only one third of the military is ever deployed at a time. One third is in the field, one third is training, and one third is recuperating. The people at the top know that you can only be at the top of your game for so long, so they make sure you get out before you slip up and get someone killed.
Cancer doesn't work like that. At least, mine didn't.
The doctors were astounded. A miracle of modern science, more than six standard deviations from the norm. I've been without remission for longer than anyone else. Lucky, in a certain sense of the word. Some girl in residency smiled when she said that. She smiled.
She stopped smiling when I threw that bitch onto a table so hard it shattered. The official story is that she tripped. No one's said I'm lucky since.
I've been fighting for a long time. Longer than I've trained for. Longer than anyone's trained for. By all rights I should've gotten used to the pain by now. I should have strategies, plans, methods for dealing with it.
But I don't. The pain doesn't change, and neither can I.
So one night I stop. I break down and cry quietly in the ward. I let the frustration and despair and sheer fucking loss win for a minute.
And I forget about Alice and Brandon.
When I wake up, the pain is still there, but different. Like the fire's behind a pane of glass rather than eating away at my skin. I laugh, long and hard, partially at the shame of forgetting my children and partially from relief because it hurts less.
When Brandon comes by, he's stunned. I do the talking for the both of us, and I even eat part of his lunch.
This.
This is a fucking miracle.
Alice is halfway through explaining some new development in microeconomics that was reversed engineered from a Thinker's stock market fuckery when the front of the hospital explodes.
Training takes over. I push on my withered limbs, praying to whoever will listen for strength. I get it. Alice is on the ground, under me, shielded from harm.
A second bomb. This time I see the source. Someone in black and white rags with a physique that practically screams "heroin chic." His head is flickering in and out of focus, and his babbling can be heard clear across the room.
"It's a hospital, right?" he says, fingers twitching to and fro as his head goes sort of staticky. A druggie, hardcore and without a fix for at least a few days. "They've gotta have some good shit here. Mick got some nice stiff when he broke his leg so hurt people get drugs from them that should work right? Right? Right! RIGHT!?" He's walking towards us, voice rising and rising and he lifts his hand and-
"NO!" I roar.
Before I got diagnosed, MCMAP was in the process of being adapted to fight capes. The core change in philosophy was that you treated capes like they could kill you with a gesture until proven otherwise. The corollary was that the least amount of force you could use against an unknown parahuman was lethal.
Get in, kill, then run away before some aspect of their powers you didn't know about kills you back.
I zero in on the cape and try to move. My limbs don't like that. Fuck 'em. I push harder and I'm running, running like I haven't since boot camp.
The cape seems almost surprised for a few second. Enough for me to close most of the distance and get the fight away from my daughter. Then the static around his face sharpens into a shape painful to look at and something flickery jumps from his hand to my stomach.
Fucking agony. Barbed wire and a heavy period and a torn muscle all at once. I turn it into hate and move through it, ignoring the sound of tearing meat and the *splat* of blood on linoleum. Worry later. The static around the junkie's eyes goes stable for a second.
"What the-" he starts, but the rest of it is cut off as I punch him where I think his throat should be.
The cape staggers back, hands going up to the source of pain. I keep hitting. Stomp his foot (I feel something give), gut punch (he doubles over, the static around his face flickering to reveal pocket marks and scars), sidestep and kidney punch (he falls face-first to the ground) and another stomp in his skull.
It's agony where my foot comes passes through the static field, but my foot still hits. I grit my teeth and do it again. The pain isn't as bad this time, not as bad as being bedridden, waiting to die, and I feel it hit again. He stops moving. I stomp one more time and something goes *crack* and the static field fades entirely.
His corpse looks a lot less dangerous than when he was alive. Corpses are like that.
I inhale, the act oddly difficult, and look around for more threats, scanning the patients and visitors for anyone who looks out of place.
Alice. She's staring at me, eyes wide, flecks of red covering her. I jog over towards her, mind whirling with worst-case scenarios. Is she injured? Did the blast overpenetrate? Shrapnel? The walk feels odd, like I'm wearing only one shoe, but I leave it for later. I crouch in front of Alice and hold her head between my hands.
"Allie, are you okay?" I ask, voice far quieter than I'm used to. She jerks a little nod. Good, she's paying attention. That'll help ward off shock. "Do you hurt anywhere? Feel cold?" I keep one hand on her face and start feeling her body. Legs and arms are fine, abdomen feels unpunctured, steady heart rate, if a little high-
"Mom you're hurt," she says, pointing at my stomach. Of course I am, but it doesn't feel that bad. Nonetheless, I give my body a cursory glance-
Oh god.
My stomach is gone. The flesh is shredded into nothingness. Literally. I'm missing a cubic foot of meat where my intestines were. Somehow, my spine still has some flesh on it, but there's no way it could realistically support my weight.
My foot isn't much better. There's no flesh on it. None. The bones are black, slightly glossy, covered in blood, and moving in tandem, despite the total lack of flesh between them. I try flex my toes. They wiggle. I stare at the... digits in morbid fascination. Farther up my leg the flesh is shredded and bleeding profusely. It's a lethal amount of blood to be losing, and I should not be able to move.
What?
I look up at my daughter. She's still staring at me, a mixture of fear and horror on her face. It breaks my heart.
"Allie..." I whisper. No wonder I'm having a hard time speaking. I don't have any muscles around my lungs.
She edges away a little. I don't blame her.
I stay there, by my daughter but not touching her, until the PRT troops arrive.
I am indestructible. It's a bold claim, but one that fits. Alexandria tried pinching my pinky bone into dust. Tried being the operative word. I've caught friendly fire from Legend and walked out unharmed. Some Mexican cape nuked a coastal city when Leviathan came in and sent my flying over the ocean. Two weeks later I walked out of the surf and got mistaken for a deity by the same guy.
It took some very impressive charades to explain that I was not, in fact, a vengeful god, and all I wanted to do was get home.
I am indestructible but I am not strong. Stronger than your average Marine, but not by much, and compared to some of the other Brutes in San Diego I'm a lightweight. Jawbone can toss me around like so many broomsticks and Flyfitcher really doesn't give a fuck about what she touches, so long as she can get a finger on you. Hell, Pigeon's beaten me in an armwrestling contest.
On my own against capes, I'm a persistent threat that will not stop until they are either gone, in the foam, or in the ground. Sometimes that's enough. Sometimes it's not and I play offensive line while Desperado is the QB and Schrödinger does her best impression of a safety.
Pit me up against a few regular humans with small arms though...
I side step the charging member of Coldzero's cult and clothesline her. I'm heavier, sitting at over three hundred pounds without a sleeve, have momentum on my side, and more than peak human strength. Ms. Poor Life Choices practically flips over, and the two teens fumbling with a pair of jumper cables suddenly look less sure of themselves.
I point to them, then at the ground. They get the message and drop down, hands spread. I sigh internally. First arrests, then. I pull some zip-ties off of my utility belt and start securing their hands at the small of their back, wrenching their arms into the proper position. I hold my phone next to their ears and thumb a now painfully-familiar recording.
"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney-" and after that I stop listening. I'm not sure which PRT agent they press-ganged into reading this off, but I'd like to think that she's tried to use the prestige of being Odokuro's voice to pick up guys at the bar at least once. I'd like to think that, but Janice is a lovely woman who's happily married, and no matter how cheery she is when she reads the Miranda rights you can only listen to anything so many times before it drives you mad.
I finishing securing them, call the PRT and look at the three criminals that'll be out tomorrow. They'll be out because Coldzero has the money to pay bail, because master victims get as much leniency as they want, because in the grand scheme of things how much do three gangbangers matter?
Sometimes I'm glad that I don't have vocal chords when I'm on patrol. That way I can scream in rage at the sheer idiocy of it all.
I fucking get why Mouse and Pigeon don't join up sometimes. I understand why Spindle tries to stay neutral where he can, and why Charity can't afford to let people know jack shit about what his power does. And when I have to capture the same fucking criminal over and over and over again, it makes me want to join them.
I let out my rage an sigh silently. Then I go back and remember all the reasons why I stay with the Protectorate.
The first is scale. The system fails sometimes. All systems do. But at the end of the day, it's a net benefit for everyone. "Capital-J Justice" doesn't get served all the time because the human standard for that changes with the wind, and while some people know what it is the illusion of fairness prevents more wars than actual fairness. Good people who happen to be dangerous get ostracised because there are more dangerous people who aren't good. Bad people go free because people need to have a way out of bad situations, no matter how shitty they are. Otherwise, what's the point of prison?
I sigh and think of the Birdcage. Of the "unwritten rules." Of the systematic isolation or deification of powerful and otherwise basically decent people.
The parts of the system that I can't defend.
What a cluster fuck.
Uppercut. Dodge. Knee. Block. Grapple. Escape.
Jen's worked hard to pick up a basic competency in violence. It doesn't come easily to her, and when we work on the more lethal stuff she gets a little green around the gills. She keeps at it, though. More than what can be said for Jared, who quit after I flipped his ass to the ground four times in a row, or how Sally refuses to practice fighting without her power.
Uppercut. Dodge. Knee. Block. Grapple. Escape.
Repetition is key to learning. That, and pain. Jen knew the first part, but fought against the second part for a long time. Then she managed to twist me into a lock when I went to slap her for the hundredth time.
I got out but the point was made.
Uppercut. Dodge. Knee. Block. Grapple. Escape.
Slow, methodical, accurate, careful and precise. Otherwise a choke hold turns into a broken neck, or a joint lock into a broken arm. Capes have to put on the kid gloves, lest they pick up a body count. One of the hardest things to teach the Wards, and the reason I'm the only one allowed to spar with Aaron. He's a good kid, but he doesn't spend enough time in his Changer form. I understand why, but he's handicapping himself by trying to learn how to fight outside of it.
Uppercut. Dodge. Knee. Block. Grapple. Escape.
Jen throws out an extra punch at the end. I catch it before it can impact.
"My head's in the game," I affirm. Then we go back to training.
After a few more minutes of slow motion practice, Jen steps back and lifts her hands, sweat running freely over flushed cheeks.
"I'm out," she says, panting freely. We quit the mats and she starts guzzling water. After half the bottle is gone, she tosses it to me and I drink gratefully. I don't have to keep my sleeve healthy, but acting like a regular human makes them last longer. That, and dry throats are a pain.
We sit on the bench for a while, mopping up sweat, adjusting our domino masks, and letting the wonderfully air conditioned breeze in the gym cool us down.
After a few minutes, Jen breaks the silence.
"Are you okay Aki?" she asks. I raise an eyebrow at her. "You, uh, seemed distracted," she continues, avoiding my eyes. "Like, when you got out of the pit last night," the mere thought of that pool of blood and flesh is making her look queasy, but she soldiers on, "You looked disappointed. Like you messed up or something." Ah, Jen. The only one on the entire team who notices what's going on. And it's not even a part of her power. Get on her level, Evan.
I shrug and take another drink of water. "The criminals got away. Disappointment is natural," I say dispassionately. Honestly, the tip-off from Mouse and Pigeon should've resulted in even less. I was lucky to be in the same area, lucky that I showed up before either of them died, lucky that all of the victims were willing to cooperate. It was a good day.
That didn't stop me from going a few rounds with Grendel before I rebuilt my meat parts. That, and finding a different sort of partner for a few rounds of angry sex once I did have my squishy bits back.
I realize I'm cruising the plastic bottle. I take an unnecessary breath and release it.
Calm.
"Okay..." Jen says, taking my response as a cue to stop asking. Good girl. She switches subjects. "What about Alice and Brandon? How are they doing?"
I smile as I think about my kids. About how far they've gone.
"Brandon's working at some software company in LA right now and he's stopped asking for help with the rent money. Not sure if that's because of a pay raise or the property values plummeting," I joke. Jen laughs politely and I move on. "Alice is loving grad school and already has some profs asking for her as a TA." I chuckle, the nose echoing in the nearly-empty room. "No idea where she picked up the taste for academia, but she swears up and down that it's the most fun she's ever had."
"And you're doing alright?" she presses. I sigh.
"I'm in chronic pain from my unremitant cancer, both of my kids have flown the coop, and I've had to completely rethink my sex life because I put on a few hundred pounds and got strong enough to lift cars," I say, looking Jen dead in the eye. I manage to keep a straight face for all of thirty seconds, and then I burst out laughing.
"Life has never been better," I say.