Author's Note: You guys are the best. Thank you for the reviews, especially the person who pointed out some of the errors I made; wondering whether or not I have things like that to fix always niggles at my mind. To anybody who found any part of Lily and Mary's conversation confusing, don't worry, I meant for that to happen. There's a lot of back story concerning Lily that I won't go into for a while. In any case, I hope you keep on enjoying this story. A bit of a warning, though, this chapter contains violence, and I decided to change the rating to reflect that. This story is getting darker the more I get into plotting it. Remember what I said about how it took a while to get serious? Yeah, forget that.
Also, to hushpuppy22, there's absolutely no need to worry; I hate the whole cliché of Lily's friends getting with the other Marauders. I wouldn't do it even if I was paid to.
CHAPTER TWO
Lily had not been doing this for a very long time.
She didn't enjoy living a double life as a masked vigilante by any means; she already had a job that was chock full of responsibilities, night classes and errands and family, not to mention a social life to keep up with, and an ordinary life was hard enough to manage without fighting criminals on the side. If she didn't want to be bothered by cries for help ringing in her ears at all hours of the day and night, she could have stopped listening out for them - her powers were good to her like that, but instead she chose to keep on doing it.
Her abilities had been forced upon her without her consent, and she resented them at the best of times, but she felt honour bound to use them for the good of other people. It was all very well for the Marauders to swan around as they pleased, going to rallies and taking vacations and making a spectacle of themselves, but Lily didn't work like that. She felt obligated to help people in spite of her best efforts to quash that feeling, so help people she did. The fame and fortune that could have come to her were she to seek it did not hold her interest.
Superhuman powers such as her own weren't exactly ten a penny, in fact, they were virtually non-existent, and Lily had not been born with them. She wasn't sure how the Marauders had come by their abilities, save for the fact that it had been a 'funny little mishap when they were children', and she knew that they would have told MçKenzie - the only person whom they ever agreed to interviews with - the full story were they to release that information to the public. Either way, she would have bet her life that they hadn't gained their powers in the same way as she had. Far from being a funny little mishap, the very thought of her own experience made her skin crawl.
No matter how much time had passed since.
Lily covered about a mile in thirty seconds or so, purely by jumping from building to building. She was strangely unable to fly in spite of the wide range of powers she had so far discovered herself to possess, but it hadn't particularly hampered her yet. She could easily cover a hundred feet in one leap without breaking a sweat, and she was naturally agile and balanced to begin with - so it suited her. Jumping was something she was particularly good at, and probably the most enjoyable. Sometimes she even thought she might have enjoyed her powers, if she didn't resent them so much.
The girl's terrified cries were muffled by the time she reached her properly - her attacker had successfully forced his hand over her mouth - but Lily could still hear them as clearly as if his victim was screaming directly in her ear. It only took another fraction of a second before he was within her line of vision; she could see them both in an alleyway that was far darker than anyone would have expected it to be at this hour of the day, due to its convenient location amongst impossibly tall, imposing buildings. Cars were rushing past them both not ten feet away, but he had her very well hidden behind a dumpster. Nobody would have seen her trapped between him and the dirty wall, and her screams would have been muted by the noise of the city, even if it was less busy than usual because of that stupid Marauder love-fest that was going on in the park.
Lily did not like to waste time, and she wasn't going to do so on this occasion. With unfathomable speed and without making a sound, she launched herself from her spot on top of the roof and landed catlike on the ground not inches away from the struggling duo who were pressed against the wall. The man was a great deal bigger than both Lily and his victim, who was still struggling valiantly to escape his clutches. He was clearly enjoying her fight, judging by the way he was grunting with pleasure as his hands began to move towards her shirt, with evident design to tear it open.
Lily tapped him on the shoulder. He turned in shock, and even if she had been lacking the phenomenally heightened senses that came with being superhuman, she would still have been overwhelmed by the stale, filthy stench of alcohol that emanated from his person. It made her want to vomit, and she very nearly retched.
His eyes were unfocused as he tried to search her face, but her balaclava was thick enough to hide her features from view; he found nothing. "What the fu-"
She punched him in the mouth, because the direct approach had always been a favourite of hers.
The force at which she hit him was so great that Lily had to grab him by the front of his collar to make sure that he didn't go flying back and send the poor girl behind him hurtling straight through a brick wall. She flung him, instead, over her shoulder and across the alleyway where he landed with a sickening thud in a pile of bulging garbage bags, bursting several, and splattering the walls and ground with putrid, decomposed food.
She walked over to the garbage bags, where he was desperately flailing in an attempt to get up.
"W-w-ho the hell are.. are you?" he wheezed, clutching his chest as he gasped for breath. Lily could see clearly that she had broken several of his teeth. She didn't care, because she was already half-blind with rage. It was all she could do not to pull the guy apart with her bare hands, but she knew she couldn't cause him further injury, so she grabbed him again by the front of his collar and pulled him to his feet.
She had been listening out for a certain something and could now hear a very, very distant rumbling, which meant that she had maybe only a few seconds of time left to handle all of this.
"That's really none of your business now, is it?" she hissed, not even flinching as he kicked out at her in his haste to struggle free. The girl he had been pressed up against merely moments ago was still standing in the same spot, frozen solid with shock, and she was more worth Lily's attention right now. It was nothing for her to push the revolting cretin to the ground and sit on his back, pinning his arms behind him, and despite his struggling she held him down as easily as if she weighed a tonne. "You just stay there and shut up for a second, you filthy little shit."
She looked up at the girl, who was still pretty shaken, and felt, as she always did when she had to go out and do something like this, like she was going to cry. "Are you okay?"
The girl was crying, and the sheer shock of the whole situation must have kicked in at that moment because her legs gave way and she slid down against the wall. The rumbling in Lily's ears grew louder.
"I'm going to be able to help you in just a minute," she assured her kindly, making sure to keep her voice as steady and calm as possible no matter how she may have been feeling to the contrary. "Once I can be sure that this prick's not going to run off, but could you do me a favour and give me your phone so I can call the police?"
"Uh, sure," said the girl shakily, and began to rummage through her purse, which had obviously fallen to the ground before Lily had even got there. "Sorry, I can't quite, my hands are shaking."
"It's okay, take your time," said Lily placidly, and reached around the man's head to press a hand against his mouth, just as the rumbling she had been hearing so loudly manifested itself in the form of that rotten motorbike, and those three equally rotten streaks of light that zipped alongside it. The Marauders, arriving to do the job she had just beaten them to a couple of minutes too late, just as she had expected.
Lily's hands did their job beautifully; the blood that had been seeping from the man's mouth had cleared by the time the bike pulled up, and his teeth returned to their previous state. She couldn't allow the guy to show any signs of being roughed up, not if they were going to make it look like the police found him and he was going to go to court over what she had caught him doing.
"You again?"
Lily rolled her eyes at the Marauders as they instantly formed a line between herself and the girl she had just protected. "Me again, go figure."
She stood up, pulling the creep to his feet with her, and shoved him at the four young men who were staring at the scene as though utterly baffled, even though this was the fifth time in recent memory that they had happened to stumble across her when they both went after the same person. Her hostage landed directly in the clutches of the one who had just yelled at her, the hapless ringleader, although he proved that he had at least one functioning brain cell by immediately holding the guy upright with his arms behind his back.
What a surprise. He had miraculously grasped the fact that Lily had not just pushed a random, innocent civilian in his direction.
"I was banking on you showing up right about now," she said bitingly, pushing her way through the four of them with ease. "It'll make this so much easier. Hold him there while I call the police, won't you?"
She sat down next to the shaking girl, who had just located her phone, and laid a hand on her arm. "How are you feeling? Are you hurt?"
"My head hurts, and my elbow, but nothing else," she said quietly, her gaze shifting erratically from Lily to the assembled men every couple of moments, her face still wet with tears. "Are you all Marauders?"
"They are," said Lily promptly, pressing her hand gently against the back of the girl's head, and immediately the large bump that had been there began to subside. "You've got a few scratches and cuts and I can't get rid of those because we need proof that this guy hurt you, but in case you have a head injury, I don't want to chance it."
"Oh," said the girl, still clearly dazed and shaken. She looked as if she was in a dream world; she probably thought she was. "Thank you so much."
"Don't mention it," said Lily, and held her palm out to her. "I'm going to need your phone now, um..."
"Oh, it's Jennifer," said the girl, pressing her phone into Lily's hand with a shaky little smile. "Jennifer Jones. Who're, um... what's your name?"
Lily shrugged, already typing out a familiar number into the girl's mobile phone. "Just call me Jane or something, whatever you like. I don't really mind."
"You don't have a name?" came the incredulous tones of that jumped up little moron from behind her. "What?"
Lily did seem to roll her eyes a lot more often when the Marauders were around, or when somebody was talking about the Marauders. Particularly when the subject was Captain Spectacular, but most often when the subject himself was talking to her, no matter what about. Every time they had run into each other he had made moronic enquiries as to her identity and every time she had resisted the urge to kick him squarely between the legs. An urge that she would hopefully give in to one day soon.
She looked over her shoulder at the stupid prat. "Excuse me?"
"You said you don't have a name," he repeated, frowning at her as though something confused him greatly. Maybe he was easily confused.
"So?" She stood up and turned to face the four of them. "What's it to you?"
"You have to have a name," piped up Black Bachelor, from beneath his hopelessly floppy fringe and within his hopelessly pretentious leather jacket. "How come you don't?"
"Well, obviously I have a name," she sighed in frustration, with the phone already pressed to her ear, and pressed down on the dial button. "It's on my birth cert, it's female, it's not something I want to share with you. Just hold the guy and keep your mouths shut." The person she had been calling picked up the phone and the Marauders were no longer important. "Hey Brian, it's me."
"Hey," came a voice on the other end of the phone, while Captain Spectacular looked at each of his friends in confusion and mouthed 'her name is Brian?' to The Professor, who merely shrugged and looked amused. "Where are you this time?"
"In an alleyway just off Hawthorne street between Bradley's pharmacy and the Dandelion restaurant," she said, making motions with her hands for the Marauders to shut up. "I cleaned him up already, you can just fly over and get him if you like. How long will you be?"
"About ten minutes, if you can wait until then."
"Yeah, sure." It meant ten more minutes with the Marauders, but it was as short an amount of time as she could have realistically hoped for. "I'll wait here with the four stooges, they turned up after I did. One of them can, oh," she covered the phone mouthpiece with her hand and looked at the four men. "One of you can bring her to the station for her statement, right?"
"Don't we always?" muttered Barbarian Boy, with his arms folded across his chest. Lily uncovered the mouthpiece and spoke into it again.
"One of them will bring her down, okay? They'll get there faster if they fly."
"And it means you don't have to turn up and nobody else has to know you exist, I know, I know," said Brian, to which Lily clucked with impatience. "I'm on my way now."
That done, she hung up the phone, and handed it back to Jennifer, who was still sitting on the ground and still completely confused.
"That was my friend I was talking to," Lily explained to her, and held out her hand so that she could tug the frightened girl to her feet. "He's a police officer. He'll be here any minute to arrest this creep and then one of the Marauders will take you to the police station, so they can get a statement from you, okay?"
Jennifer nodded, taking Lily's hand and allowing her to pull her up. She immediately stood behind her, as if protecting herself from the creep who was still struggling in Captain Spectacular's PVC-clad arms. "Um, yeah, sure. Will somebody take me home after?"
"Yeah, of course," said Lily. "Just, um, if anybody asks, Brian just happened upon you when you were being attacked and arrested the guy, then these guys turned up and found you, and I wasn't ever here, okay? I'm kind of not supposed to exist," she added, in a conspiratorial tone.
"I don't... really understand why, but okay." She looked around at all five of the assembled vigilantes who were surrounding her. "I'm sorry, I'm really confused."
"Don't worry about it," said Black Bachelor all of a sudden, and came forward to take the girl's hand, smiling at her in that charming way he had about him. Lily did not see the appeal in any way and never had, but whatever powers that smile might have contained, they worked, for Jennifer calmed down a tiny fraction and her hands stopped shaking quite so much. "The three of us can take you to the station now, you'll be completely safe, and our fearless leader can keep this wanker captive until the police gets here."
"You shouldn't have to stay around him for even a second longer," said The Professor, coming slowly forward and standing on her other side, gently taking her elbow. "We can walk you, if you don't feel up to flying."
"Maybe a nice little stroll is exactly what you need," agreed Barbarian Boy, lumbering over amiably with a bar of chocolate in hand. Now surrounded by the, even Lily had to admit, oddly comforting aura of the three young men who were pleasantly urging her onwards, Jennifer allowed herself to be slowly led away, but kept on looking over her shoulder at Lily the entire time.
"Thank you," she mouthed again, as they reached the end of the alleyway and became bathed in sunlight. Lily supposed she'd have to do something to accept her thanks, and so she waved somewhat awkwardly. A second later, she was left alone in the alleyway with a revolting, would-be rapist and Captain Spectacular, who was still frowning at her. Perhaps he hadn't ever stopped.
"What are you looking at?" she practically spat, glaring at him, not that he would have been able to see. His hair was jet black and so messy that Lily was sure he had somehow styled it that way on purpose; it looked too effortless to be effortless. Pretty, but still infuriating in its own way.
"Not much," he retorted childishly. "Unless you can find muchness in a superhero who doesn't even have a proper name."
"You're so wonderfully able to focus on bullshit when you're having a conversation and ignore what's important," said Lily pleasantly. "I'm not a superhero, I'm a pissed off woman. Learn to differentiate."
"What's important is the fact that you just saved a girl from being raped by a creep that I am now holding captive until some bloke named Brian turns up, whenever that will be," he replied smoothly. "But pardon me if I don't like chatting about unpleasant things while we kill time."
"I guess making chit-chat about your costume is out of the question, then," she shot back, eyeing his red and gold ensemble, which wasn't exactly unpleasant to behold, considering the way it fit his frame, but was most certainly the gayest thing she'd ever seen.
"Pot. Kettle. Black." He eyed her ratty black getup with blatant distaste. "And you are a superhero, you've got superhuman powers and you do heroic things. By definition, that is what you are. Although I'm not denying that you're a pissed off woman, either."
"I am most definitely not a superhero," she insisted stonily.
"Then who the fuck are you," hissed the enraged creep who was still rendered immobile in Captain Spectacular's vice-like grip, to which the aforementioned captor shook him violently.
"SHUT UP!" both he and Lily bellowed at the same time, and then turned their attention on one another again, that taken care of. The creep cowered in Captain Spectacular's grip.
"You were about to make an impassioned speech about how much of an ass I am, or something predictable like that," he said, inclining his head towards her. He was so very smug, it made her blood boil.
"You must be psychic," she chirped sweetly.
"Although, I'm sure we already established last time we met that anything you have to say to me is irrelevant until you let me see your face," he continued, pushing his glasses up his nose and narrowing his eyes at her as if he were expecting to see through her balaclava. "Not that the whole woman of mystery thing isn't interesting, but it's getting a little old, love."
"Coming from the king of all that is contrite," Lily snapped. Here he went again with wanting to see her face. Captain Spectacular had decided on their first meeting that the five of them should join forces to become some sort of super-group and had been most offended when Lily had turned his offer down flat. Since then, he seemed to have become preoccupied with finding out more about her. He was clearly one of those guys who couldn't resist a challenge, no matter what it was. "Go cry me a river and drown in it."
He was the one to roll his eyes this time, just as a police car turned into the alleyway and Lily's eyes were assaulted by glaring lights. She wasted not a moment as soon as the car had stopped, marching over and opening the driver's door, while Captain Spectacular continued to stand in the same spot with the man Lily had beaten the living daylights out of only moments before - who now bore not a sign of it - muttering asides about how he could breathe underwater anyway, which may or may not have been true, who really cared?
"Hey," she said to the driver of the car, a brown haired, pleasant looking young man named Brian Costelloe, a friend of hers whom she had known for several years. "The girl's already on her way to the station with three of the Marauders. Ask Captain Speedo over there if he'll come with you if he wants, I need to go get changed. And buy some milk for Mary, actually," she added, suddenly remembering Mary's request in a flash that she liked to call her return to normalcy. Thinking of Mary was warm and comforting, like thinking of home.
"Go to the metro stop beside the station after you get changed, okay?" said Brian, dragging a backpack containing a change of clothes for her off the passenger seat of the car and handing it to her. This was a routine they had worked out months ago. "I want to drive you home."
"I can go home by myself, Brian," she said, and laughed softly, but without any humour. "I'll take me under a minute."
"Look," he said quietly, but with a certain steely determination in his voice that she had long since learned hinted at a refusal to give in no matter how long the debate may rage. "You're exhausted and I haven't seen you in goodness knows how long; I'm driving you home."
"Fine, whatever," she said, knowing that there was no point in arguing without incurring the guy's endless whining for the next few weeks, and shouldered the backpack as Brian got out of the car and moved swiftly over to the man who was even now still struggling to break free. "Knock yourself out."
"You got your milk, then?"
Sliding into the car and wishing she could have just walked home, Lily waved her carton of milk at Brian, with a rather uncomfortable smile that more resembled a grimace. "Thank you for sticking some money in the backpack, I'll pay you back. I always forget to bring it."
It was hours after Lily had apprehended that man, whom she had later discovered was a married barman named Jason Stenson, darkness had fallen, and she was cranky because she had stupidly waited around for Brian after getting changed instead of just going home to her cosy apartment and her best friend, who was very sick and who Lily was worried about. The arrest process had taken as long as it always did; but things had been hampered by the roaring crowd who had gathered outside the police station upon hearing that the Marauders were somewhere around. Apparently they had left in the middle of their own award ceremony upon hearing Jennifer's cries for help and left everybody baffled. Lily would have found it endearing, had it not all been such a blatant publicity stunt.
She was tired and hungry and grumpy, and just wanted to go home and lay her head in Mary's lap.
"You should stick some into your jeans pocket when you get home," Brian suggested, as he started up the car. Lily's apartment was not far from the metro station, luckily she'd be home in a matter of minutes. "To make sure you don't forget next time."
"Uh huh," she said, not really able to think of anything else to say that wasn't something bitingly sarcastic. "Yeah."
They drove in silence for a minute or two, Brian keeping his eyes on the road and Lily idly examining her nails, both of them trying to ignore the thick, awkward atmosphere that hung in the air between them and had done so for nearly a year and a half now. Lily had expected it to get better once upon a time. It hadn't.
Brian evidently tried of the quiet, because after another awkward stretch of road, he tried again.
"So, um, how are you lately?" he said, and gave her a sidelong glance. "Feeling okay?"
Lily felt her insides squirm, and not in a pleasant way. She didn't like discussing her personal life with him, no matter how lightly. "I'm feeling good, thanks."
"Not tired or anything?"
"Not at all."
"Is work okay?"
"Yes, Brian," she sighed wearily, leaning her head back against the seat. She knew what he was trying to get at, and she wished for the millionth time that she had stuck to her original decision to go home by herself. "Work is great, work is fine. I'm fine," she added. "You don't have to worry about me."
Brian sighed, and gave the steering wheel of the car an unnecessarily hard turn as they rounded a corner.
"It's just," he began tentatively, and Lily could tell that he was really struggling with what he wanted to say. It didn't matter, she knew what he was trying to get at anyway. "Those calls have been coming more and more frequently."
"Well, I've been working more and more frequently. Rapists and murderers don't give up raping and murdering just so I can get some shut-eye."
"Well, that's the problem, Lily," he continued, and Lily, who was used to having this conversation every time Brian so much as laid eyes on her, was beginning to feel like she was being harassed. "You're doing too much, and you're only one person, and I don't want you to burn yourself out or anything because you-"
"I won't burn myself out, okay?" she said, turning her head to look at him, and trying to be pleasant even though she felt like slapping his face. "I don't need to rest, or take a break from work, or go to a spa and have my sodding nails done. And I don't need you to drive me home, either, I can do it myself."
"This is so like you, Lily," he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the road. "You never let me take care of you," he continued. "Not even while we were dating."
"Then this shouldn't exactly be a shock to the system," she replied, somewhat coldly. He was always doing this, bringing up their past relationship, making things between them more strained than they already were. It wouldn't have been so bad, were his real motives not so selfish. "Should it?"
"I don't know, okay?" They had turned up the road that Lily's apartment was located on, and he pulled up outside her building, but made no motion to open the car door from the inside, like he normally did. "I thought that after what happened last year, you might..."
"What?" asked Lily dully. "Embrace codependency? Suddenly developing the power to make entire buildings go up in flames sort of makes it easier to take care of yourself, Brian, or didn't you get that memo?"
"You told me," he said levelly. "When you broke up with me, that you knew you had some problems and you were going to work on them and that it wasn't all my fault, and that-"
"I've never said it was all your fault before or since, have I?"
"You said that maybe one day we'd talk about getting back together," he carried on determinedly. "That was a year and a half ago, Lily, and I understand that what happened to you six months after that was really-"
"We don't talk about that," she interrupted him quickly. "I told you we don't talk about that."
"Sometimes," he said, and faltered for a moment before going gamely on. "Sometimes I think you're using that whole experience as an excuse to keep us from getting back toge-"
"Sometimes I think you're using it as an excuse because you don't want to face the fact that we're not right for each other," she said quickly. "We ended before that shit happened; I've not stopped saying sorry since, and I am sorry, but I'm tired, and I'm emotionally drained after every time I see you and I'm absolutely sick of it, and I can't keep having this conversation with you."
"You never can, though, can you?" he said, and the bitterness became clear in his voice for the first time only when Lily got out of the car. "You won't even consider the fact that you might just be scared to be with me."
Lily gritted her teeth, squeezed her eyes shut, and clenched her hands into fists.
"I'm going inside, Brian," she said shortly, looking back into the window at his now frowning face. "Mary's waiting, and she's worried sick about me even though she pretends not to when I'm around because she knows how much I hate making people worry. She's good like that," she added, and even though she closed the car door with not much force, it still managed to slam shut. "I'll call you later. Or something."
A/N: It makes me laugh when I have to write something serious and stick the superhero names of one of the Marauders into it, seriously. What right does someone named Captain Spectacular have to catch rapists, seriously? I can't wait until they're on first name terms. Coming up next is a chapter that I think you Lily/James fans out there might be happy about. Yay?
