Disclaimers:

1) This story is set in the Wormverse, which is owned by Wildbow. Thanks for letting me use it.

2) I will follow canon as closely as I can. However it's been a long time since I've read Worm, don't hesitate to correct me.

3) This disclaimer is shamelessly plagiarized from ack1308. Literally nothing here is original. Really.

Edit : Sorry for the initial formatting, I apparently uploaded it wrong.

I-I-I

A nine year old Amy Dallon was sniffling on her bed. She had let her older sister Victoria cheat and copy her own answers on a math exam. She had not been discreet and had been caught. She snorted at the thought.

Ha! Vicky. Discreet!

She had given their parents the letter from their teacher during the dinner. Their mother had yelled at her and sent her to her room without dessert! She had not protested at the unfairness of it all, she had just silently gone up the stairs. Yet it didn't prevent the thoughts twirling in her head.

Why was she being punished? How had she done anything wrong? Well, yeah, the teacher told her that she was guilty as much as her sister, and she still wasn't convinced, but that was different! Why was she the only one punished?

Of course, sniffling on the other bed in the room, sat Vicky. Try as she might, she couldn't find it in her to blame her sister for that mess.

It would have been easy to convince herself that it was entirely her fault. It would have been even easier to resent her for the blatant favoritism their mother showed toward her sister.

Yet she couldn't. Her mother might not have punished Vicky, but the oblivious girl had instantly assumed that the words had been for the both of them. How she could have understood that, Amy didn't know.

I will not have you lead my daughter into a life of crime!, their mother had said.

Without a broader context, it might have been directed to any of them, but not both! With the knowledge of the suspicious looks she had received from her all her childhood, it was obviously aimed at her personally.

Plus, Carol had been staring directly at her.

But no, the lovable idiot couldn't conceive such unfairness, let alone take advantage of it.

Perhaps she could still manage to muster some resentment for her sister? Give her the silent treatment for a little while?

She took a shaky breath, and sighed as she lowered her head. A noise made her look up suddenly, and all she saw was a flurry of blond hair before she was tackled into a hug, falling back on her pillow.

"I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry!" Vicky chanted, sobbing into her shoulder.

Well, so much for that idea… She felt her heart melt, and she returned the hug.

Her life wasn't entirely terrible, she supposed.

I-I-I

Later that night, staring at the ceiling, she had a thought. Her mother believed she was going to lead her sister into a life of crime? Ha! Joke's on her.

She huffed in indignation.

That did it! She was going to be a doctor! The best frigging doctor in the United States. She would cure cancer and everyone would admire her ! And then she would get a medal for all the awesome things she had done, and her family would show up at the ceremony with the president, and then, her mother would admit that she had been wrong all those years, and Amy would tell her it had all begun tonight, and she would answer that she didn't mean it, and that she was proud of her.

She smirked, eyes closed, eyelids fluttering in her pleasant half dream.

That sounded like a plan…

I-I-I

Four year later.

"Ames, come on, we're going to be late for the shopping trip to Boardwalk with aunt Sarah!"

"Give me a second, Vicky, I just need to finish this chapter… If I stop here I'll waste a lot more time coming back to it later."

"What are you even reading? Maxwell's equations and the principles of electromagnetism?! Is that doctor stuff? It doesn't sound like doctor stuff! Why are you reading it if it's not doctor stuff?"

"Well, sis, I've read a lot of doctor stuff," Amy answered, indignantly stressing the word stuff, "and while it's not necessary to understand the underlying physics principles, it's very interesting. I mean, electromagnetism is used everywhere, from electric systems to MRI to-"

"Okay STOP, forget I asked, just GET DRESSED ALREADY!"

Amy sighed, looked mournfully at her unfinished chapter, sighed again, and marked her progress with an old postcard before putting her book down on her desk, next to a copy of "An introduction to differential equations for college students".

She then looked up at her sister who was currently attempting to merge her face into the window as she expectantly watched the street for aunt Sarah's arrival.

"Alright, let me grab a pair of jeans and we'll go and wait for her on the sidewalk."

"Yay!" Vicky answered before rushing down the stairs.

Amy smiled in amusement as she opened the closet and got dressed. The few teachers that had caught her reading college level material thought her a genius already. How much more impressed would they be if they realized she got that kind of work down despite sharing a room with Vicky?

She chuckled as she started do go down the stairs, hearing a car park in the street followed by an immediate squeal of excitement.

I-I-I

Later that night she contemplated her achievements. She was deeply proud of what she had accomplished over the last four years.

Yes, it had started as a childish dream, she had quickly realized that. She had just picked the medical field because doctors helped, therefore if she became a doctor, people would be forced to acknowledge that she was a good girl.

But that dream, and the lack of approval from Carol had sustained her intensive personal studies for long enough. By the time that this drive had waned, as Amy finally accepted she might never earn the woman's love, she had started to like learning for its own sake!

So she kept going.

Perhaps it would have been different if she had not picked medicine. After all, biology was a breeze for her, but math and physics were hard. Just try teaching yourself integration at the age of 10!

Thankfully, she had a strangely intuitive grasp of biology. It just clicked, and it gave her real-life problems to apply the other subjects to. She had to stay vigilant however, as her insight pushed her to skip elementary yet vital material. Without a fundamental grasp of the basics, she could have been severely limited, and she couldn't help but notice the paradox of her intuition of biology potentially crippling her mastery of it.

In less two years she had completed the science section high school syllabus. She had trained her own mind well enough that she could have easily breezed through the remaining subjects, but she decide instead to get started on college level science. Biology had been her catalyst, and she didn't want to risk losing her motivation!

Her parents had not been particularly supportive of her, Carol being Carol, and dad being depressed. They had heard enough about her ambition to become a doctor to not be particularly alarmed either by her studious attitude.

Of course, they didn't realize that her interest had broadened to biology in general, and even other scientific fields. It was, after all, very convenient to distract and bore Carol with a long overly enthusiastic account of all the "doctor stuff" she had learned recently when the woman got into one of her moods.

Vicky knew, of course. She wasn't jealous (although that might have been because she was currently shining in sports and had just been accepted into the school's basketball team). On the contrary, she had been the one to convince her to ask Aunt Sarah's help in getting second hand college books.

So here she was, 13 year old, with piles of knowledge that reassured her that she could do anything, and no longer craving for Carol's approval (and no longer calling her Mom either). She was going to make something of herself, she could feel it.

That was, if she could survive the boredom of Vicky's basketball match tomorrow...