Only the Blind Can See
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By DireSquirrel
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I was blind.
There had been something more in the locker than just bugs and the horrific collection Sophia, Emma and Madison put together. The hours I was in there had messed with my eyes and the last few days everything had gone from murky to just a mess of grays where any sort of light was painful. My glasses weren't enough anymore and the doctors thought it wasn't going to get better unless I got some intervention from Panacea or some other healer cape.
That wasn't the worst part. With the loss of my eyes it was like everything else had been cranked up. While I was in the locker, I learned I could smell everything in there with me. I could hear the bugs crawling over me. I could feel the texture of anything touching me with any part of my body. I could taste the air and detect things more than I ever could. A cup of herbal tea let me identify each bit of the blend. Everything was enchanced to obscene levels.
For a time I think I was a little insane. It was all too much at once and I didn't react well to anything after the Janitor let me out. I spent almost two weeks in the hospital and only recalled part of it. The first part was too much.
Dad was on the warpath. I didn't know what he was going to do, but at least he hadn't punched the principal.
It was a week after I was released from the hospital that I realized that my vision was useless beyond a little bit of detecting light and dark areas. I couldn't read. Colors were just a messy blend of grays that made no sense, like it was when I used to not wear my glasses, but all the time now and much, much worse. But it was when dad dropped a bowl on the floor that I realized I wasn't completely useless.
"Dad?" I said.
"Sorry, Taylor," he said. "I just dropped a bowl. Dinner will be ready in a minute."
"No," I said. "I think I can tell where it was."
I tapped my toe on the floor twice. I walked over and without attempting to look, I reached down with both hands and picked up the bowl.
"Taylor? You can see?" he asked.
I shook my head.
"I heard it," I said. I reached out a hand and searched across the counter to where we kept the long metal spoons, ladles and such. When I felt the ceramic jar, I reached with both hands and grabbed a ladle.
"What are you doing?" Dad asked.
"Wait," I said. I hit the metal stove with the metal ladle and listened to the echo of the sound. I didn't think anyone could have heard it like I could, but I got a mental image of where everything was, the sound bouncing off like ripples in a puddle. I listened. As it continued I started to be able to differentiate between all the other sounds the average person in the city ignores.
Cities are noisy, with something going on all the time. I could feel it interact from the engines of cars going by, to the ticking of the clock, to my father's breath. My attention was spread out beyond myself, not divided, but focusing on all the sounds around me all at once. The smells of fresh cut tomatoes and carrots, with the ripped up leaves of lettuce in the salad bowl on the counter. I could feel every tiny imperfection on the ladle's handle.
"Dad?"
"Yeah, Taylor?"
"I think I got powers in the locker," I said.
"Losing your vision isn't a super-power," he said as kind as he could. His heartbeat, which I hadn't realized could hear before then, surged as he raged about what I went through.
I shook my head.
"No," I said. "I can hear, Dad; I can smell; I can taste; I can feel. Everything."
Over the next few weeks we realized it wasn't just my senses that were heightened. It was pretty much everything a human body could normally do, just cranked up. I was faster, not superspeed, but my reactions were quicker than they ever were before. I could run without getting tired. I was stronger, once again, not super strong, just tough enough to pick up the couch by myself if I needed to. My senses more than made up for my loss of vision and allowed me to almost function like a regular person.
I still couldn't read, since while I could feel the heat differences between the ink and page, font was harder to distinguish and I was working on Braille little by little. The settlement between Dad and the school had included an at-home tutor for the blind at their expense while I learned to get by without my sight. She was a little odd, but we got along fairly well as she taught me how to read again. She found some of the textbooks on tape, so I could listen to them. Well, they were MP3s on the computer, but Dad still called them Books-On-Tape, so it stuck with me.
I was getting by little by little. Eventually, as I was going out for a walk with my tutor, I was able to tell where the sidewalk ends and felt something heading towards me. Almost instinctively, I reached up and grabbed the baseball with my bare hand.
"Holy shit!" my tutor said before apologizing for her language. I held the baseball in my hand, feeling the stitching with every bit of skin touching it. I didn't look at it. I didn't need to. I passed her the baseball, pretending as if I didn't just catch it and didn't know where to send it.
"Here," I said. She paused, gaped at me, then took it from my hand. I paused and listened, hearing exactly where the kids who threw the ball were running away.
"Did you see that?" one of them said.
"She wasn't even looking!" another one hissed.
"Where are we?" I asked my guide.
"We're on the boardwalk, not far from the docks. Maybe a bit too close to the docks," she said. "Sorry, I'm surprised that they'd do that out in the open."
"They?" I asked.
"The skinheads from Empire 88," she replied. "I'm guiding a white girl. They don't like that."
"Huh?" I said.
"I'm black," she replied.
"Sorry, I wouldn't know," I replied honestly. And it was true, skin color meant nothing to the blind, really.
"How did you catch that?" she asked.
"Oh, I heard it," I said. "It's become a bit of a reflex, since I'm dropping things all the time, always knocking into them."
I could tell by her heartbeat that she didn't completely believe me. I made a point of "tripping" over the next curb. I could hear her relax when I did.
I have to admit that the bit of fear she had irritated me a bit. I mean, I was blind, not useless, and she was supposed to be a tutor for the blind.
"Where are we going anyway?" I asked.
"A friend of mine does guide dog training," she explained. "You need to learn to respond to the dog's signals."
The trip to the dog trainer went well. He was a tall man with a deep voice, but was very calm about the situation. You could tell by his temperament that he enjoyed his time with dogs. We made it back without incident, but I still had that baseball stuck in my head. And the dog, I liked the dog.
I took to walking and running, sneaking out when Dad was asleep or at work. I didn't have to look blind if I didn't want to and the exercise looked good. The more I went out, the more I was able to keep a mental map of the city and know exactly where I was at all times. I was able to plan routes well, but it wasn't all running. Sometimes I just felt the need to get out, to not be stuck in the house.
One night, I went out and sat on a bench and relaxed in the cool breeze of springtime. It wasn't long before I caught the smell of some people with some dogs. There were four of them, and three dogs. The four were whispering to each other and didn't seem to notice me.
"Hi," I said. "Nice night for a walk, isn't it?"
I heard their heart rates jump as they realized I was there.
"Uh, yeah," one said. Male, sounded young, teens probably. The voice was muffled a bit, like he was wearing something over his face. He hissed out something to the tallest one of the group. "No response at all?"
"Shut up, Regent," the tall one hissed, obviously not intending for me to hear him.
One of the dogs moved over to smell me. "Hi there," I said, holding my hand out for it to sniff. I smiled and looked up at the girl I thought was their owner. "I've been looking to get a dog to help me." I turned to the dogs and smiled. "You're a big one ain'tcha?"
"Angelica, back," she said and the dog dutifully returned to her side. "Help you? How would a dog help you?"
"Probably by reminding her not to wear sunglasses at night," the teen said snarkily.
"She's blind," said the other girl. "I'm guessing light hurts her eyes. Like Helen Keller's teacher, you know?"
"Guilty as charged," I said. "I've been working with companion dogs, but I don't have one yet. Yours sound really well trained."
"Uh, yeah," the girl said awkwardly.
"What's the secret to training them?" I asked. She shrugged, her weight shifting and making enough noise for me to hear she'd repositioned herself, but I pretended not to notice.
"Rachel," the tall one said. "She's blind. You have to speak."
"I know that!" she spat. "I'm not fucking stupid!"
"Right," the other girl said. "As much as we'd like to chat, we'd all best be getting along. I heard someone riled up ABB and Lung's on the rampage. You'd best be getting along."
I'd heard enough wiffle-waffling about my new blindness to know how people's heart rates changed when they lied, and that wasn't technically a lie, but it was sort of one. I had the suspicion that this group was the reason Lung was less than happy.
"Right," I said, standing up and pulling out my cane. The noise helped me "see" better, as well as feel things out. "Nice meeting you!"
"Yeah, you too," the first boy said with a tinge to his voice like he was in on some joke.
I was almost home when I was surrounded. I'd heard them coming, but didn't think I was their target, but I was clearly wrong. By their footsteps, there were five of them and they seemed excited about something.
"We saw you," one said, his voice pitched slightly high. "You were with those assholes! Where the fuck did they go?"
"Look, I can't tell you what I don't know," I replied.
"We saw you with those fucking bitches! Don't fucking lie to me, bitch!" he said as he pulled out a gun.
"I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about," I said. "I'm blind."
"I said don't fucking lie to me!" he said as he pulled back the hammer on the revolver and spun the chamber. I was starting to think he'd seen too many movies. I moved to take off my glasses, but he raised the gun at me. "Look at my face, bitch! Is this a face that likes your fucking joke?"
His pulse was racing and the others were getting nervous.
"Look, Ryou, maybe she's telling the truth," one of the others said. "She was tapping that stick on the street."
"I am telling the truth," I said. "I am blind."
"Ryou, I ain't hittin' no blind cripple," another said. I bristled at the term. I was NOT cripple and it infuriated me to no end when people used the term.
"Fine, you pussies run off," Ryou said, waving his gun around. I could smell the rust and gun oil on it. I kept my attention on him.
"Yeah, whatever," one of the others said, moving off. Ryou reached out with his other hand and shoved me.
"Into the alley, bitch," he said.
"I told you," I said. "I'm blind. I can't see the alley."
He grabbed me by the shoulder and pushed me towards the alley. I could feel it as soon as we were cloaked in shadows, the slight difference from the light above vanishing. He pulled the gun back up and I reacted. I knew I could get hurt, but if I did nothing, I would get hurt. I brought my cane up and hit him on the wrist hard. The gun went flying from his grasp. He snarled something, but I didn't give him a chance to do anything to me. He was unarmed and wasn't with four others, so I pretty unmercifully beat him into submission with my cane.
"Crap," I said as I realized he was unconscious. I didn't have the heart to just leave him in the alley when anything could happen to him. Sure, he tried to do something nasty to me, but I wasn't a monster. I felt around on his body and found a phone in his pocket. Luckily for me, it was an older style phone with buttons. After a couple of false starts I managed to call 911 by feel.
"Hello, 911, what is the emergency?"
"Hi, I, um, kinda got attacked," I said.
"Do you need an ambulance?" the person on the other end of the line asked.
"No, I don't but my attacker does," I said. "I kind of, um, beat him up with my cane."
"Your cane?"
"My cane."
She sighed. "Where are you now?"
"I'm not really sure about that," I said. "I kind of got turned around when someone said Lung was upset."
"If you are not in any immediate danger, please look at a street sign," she said.
"There's a problem with that," I said.
"What's that?"
"I'm blind," I replied. "Oh, and this isn't my phone, I took it off my attacker after I hit him with my cane. Can you track the phone?"
"Yes, I think so," she said before asking someone if they could do that. "Yes, we can. Please keep it on."
"Sure," I said.
"So let's hear that again," the cop said.
"Well, I figured that there was a chance I could get hurt if I attacked him, but a 100% chance I'd get hurt if I did nothing, so I started hitting him with my cane," I said for the forth time after the paperwork was filled out. The gathered cops laughed outright.
"This is like one of those YouTube videos you just have to keep watching over and over," one said with a chuckle.
"Ryou, Ryou, Ryou," one of them said, shaking his head. My attacker was apparently known by name at the local police station. "He screwed up royally this time."
"I'd like to see his daddy's expensive lawyer get this thrown out," said another, prompting another round of laughter.
"He's rich?" I asked.
"And scum," the cop replied. "But don't worry. We'll be keeping you safe. Luckily we don't even have to arrest him for attacking you, since we got him on possession of a firearm. It's against his bail conditions and that's a felony."
"But he's still arrested for attacking you," said another. "Don't worry about that."
"Yeah, we'll get him this time," assured the first cop, patting me on the arm. "We'll get a patrol car to take you home in just a minute. What was the address again?"
I gave him my address and contact information.
"Don't worry about the ABB thug," he assured me. "When they find out that he was caught attacking a blind girl, even they won't have any respect for him."
Dad wasn't happy that I got attacked and he wasn't happy that I snuck out at night. We finally found some middle ground that let me have some freedom and him some piece of mind. It became a routine where he'd let me wander within some limits during the day and we'd go for walks at night before heading to bed.
I started experimenting in what I could do. I was faster than the average human, but not really too far beyond that, maybe like an Olympic track star. I was stronger than the average human, but my strength didn't really go beyond lifting the weight of the couch.
I found that certain sounds echoed better, letting me get a better "vision" of the objects around me. Rain was perfect. The splish-splish-splish of droplets on something almost gave me a perfect image. I still couldn't do things like wash the dishes, but I was better able to navigate the world around me. There were also some sounds that I could hear that other humans couldn't. Mr. Dyson was finally using a regular wistle instead of that irritating dog-whistle thing he was using before. The dog didn't obey anyway, so it wasn't doing any good.
I resolved to get some sort of device to hear the world around me better, because there's no reason I should limit myself to just what my already enhanced senses could do. And even though my ears were better at hearing things, it didn't seem like they were more sensitive to loud noises, much less so, it seemed.
Dad wasn't too happy with me when I asked him to throw things at me one weekend.
"I'm not letting you join the Wards," he told me as he threw a tennis ball at my head, which I caught perfectly. We started with NERF balls and went up from there. Dad used to pitch in high school and he was still getting his arm back. While there wasn't much room in the basement, it was still a decent enough place to practice.
"I don't know that I want to join them," I said, tossing the ball back at him. "I mean, I'm faster, a little stronger, a little tougher, but not really that much more than a normal human who works on it. And I'm blind. I don't want to get stuck behind a desk because of one measly little problem."
"Being blind isn't a 'measly little problem,' Taylor," Dad said as he chucked a foam "dagger" at my direction. I deflected it away using the heel of my hand hitting the grip and not even coming close to the blade. "You're getting better at this, but even with your hearing, there have to be limits."
"It's weird," I said as I dodged and deflected seven tennis balls thrown in quick succession. "Sounds don't confuse me."
"What do you mean?" Dad asked as he bent down to pick up the balls I tossed back at him.
"I walk down the street and I hear everything separate and at the same time," I said. "I'm able to tell each sound from another. There's no more overwhelming cacophony of noise like there was at first."
"That's good, I suppose," he said. "But what are you going to do about the ABB ganger who attacked you?"
"The cops are making sure we're safe," I said. "I'm underage and blind. They couldn't bare it if they let either of us get hurt."
"He got bail, again," Dad reminded me, having got the lowdown on Ryou from the cops and the ADA covering his case. It should have been an open and shut case of breaking bond conditions, but the slimy lawyer was causing no little trouble. "While he's going to court, he's still on the streets again."
"I've been learning more about the process," I said. "Did you know the Brockton Bay library has an entire Braille section? I'm not really fluent, but I'm getting better. I think that with good light, I might be able to 'read' other books based on touch."
"How? I can't imagine that the ink changes the texture much," Dad said as he chucked a few more balls at me. I jumped up and grabbed the stringers in the exposed ceiling, allowing them to fly below me and slam into the concrete foundation wall beyond.
"It's the heat difference," I said. "I don't have it mastered yet, but I'm working on it."
"Sounds good," Dad said. "I wish I could help you with this more."
"Dad," I said, dropping back down to the floor. "You're helping more than you can believe."
"Thanks," he said. "Oh, that reminds me, the new voice activated software is here. It just finished downloading last night."
"It'll be nice to be able to use the internet again," I said. "Thanks for the Braille keyboard."
"Not a problem," he said. "Why don't we take a break and get something to eat?"
The next few months were quiet, very quiet. There were no gang wars or that sort of thing going on in Brockton Bay. The closest thing to trouble was when a bunch of capes, rogues, heroes and villains, went up to Boston to fight off Leviathan. Not as many returned as went. With the death of Kaiser, who went as some sort of show of power, the E88 fractured, splitting their territory into smaller shards of what it had been before.
I continued to practice with Dad. I was getting my homework done and Braille was coming easier than I expected, probably because of my new tactile sensitivity and ability to multi-task my senses. It was odd that I was somehow able to administer my life better than I did before, but perhaps it was the learning from home and that Dad trusted me to stay safe.
One of the most interesting parts of this was the ongoing trial of my would-be assailant. He was convicted, eventually, though his lawyer, who worked as a very junior partner in the same office as Emma's father, tried to make a fool out of me, but made a critical mistake.
"Now, if you're so sure it was him who attacked you, can you see him in this room?" the defense lawyer.
"No," I replied.
"Ha!" he'd said as if he'd won something. "No further questions."
The DA was quick to clarify.
"Why can't you see him, Miss Hebert?" the DA asked.
"Because I'm blind," I replied. I wisely kept the smile off my face as the junior lawyer's heart rate shot up. I suspected it was the kind of mistake the Senior Partners wouldn't let him make again.
But law, and the process of it started to interest me more and more. I thought that, maybe, I could do something along those lines when I grew up. After all, I was blind, not cripple, and I noticed things and probably better than most other people around.
Years passed. I graduated, left home, went to college and then onto law school.
Unplaced Scene:
"Don't try to lie to me," I said. "Sophia Hess is Shadowstalker, and that's the reason I'll never be a ward."
"What evidence do you have?" Tagg demanded.
"I can hear her heartbeat," I replied. "I can hear everyone's heart, they're all different, all unique, even identical twins."
"So, none," he replied snidely.
"The fact that you're protecting that monster is another reason I'll never be a ward," I replied as I got ready to jump out the window. "She should be in jail, not out committing assaults."
"Daredevil makes for a pretty good villain name," he said with a dark grin. "Out her and we will ruin you."
"And threatening me makes it so enticing to be a ward," I snapped. "It must being so stupid and having this much purely political power."
"What?"
"You deliberately antagonize a person with super powers who could be anyone outside of the costume," I said. "There's nothing keeping me here, I've committed no crime. But just because you don't like not getting your way, you're threatening me. That's blatant stupidity. And I can tell by your heartbeat that you seemed surprised that I pointed out it was a bad idea."
AN: Taylor goes blind and gets Daredevil's powers. Skitter doesn't come about, so she doesn't fight Lung, who doesn't get caught by Armsmaster. Because Lung is free, Bakuda doesn't go on a rampage. With the ABB still strong, Coil decides not to out the E88. Without the chaos, Leviathan picks some other city to sink. The Slaughterhouse 9 choose a place a little less organized to have their little recruiting party and so, Coil never gets the prophesy. So, then, ten years down the line, Taylor is a new Lawyer in a city without much in the way of law.
I like the idea, but I can't seem to get it to work into something larger without a lot of work. Considering the number of fics I've got in the works, I decided not to put all my energy into this one.
