Somewhere I have never travelled 1.3

It was astounding how much difference Amy's touch made. That euphoria had taken time to clear and now I was feeling much more centered again, more like myself. As I walked down the slope with Amy beside me, I began to examine my recent actions.

So many mistakes.

In my fatigue, my thoughts had latched onto simple and singular directives, without really considering their consequences. Initially, I'd purged the grounds of bugs, without thinking whether their absence would be noticed. When Glory Girl had ambushed us, my power had clamped onto the aggressive response despite its futility. And as soon as the crippling effect of her aura had faded, I'd consciously directed my bugs towards the electric utilities. I could still feel them skittering along wires they had begun to fray.

If I had succeeded….

I wrenched my mind from the thought, taking in the world again, my gaze moving down to the clasped arms, to the side-profile of Amy's face staring stiffly ahead, and then to what she was gazing at: Glory Girl's angry stride, and the way she kicked off the grass and over the short divider that separated it from the road. In front of us, the grey white facade of the hospital was coming into focus.

I began to move the bugs again.

They had stopped, earlier, in the middle of their task. I hadn't made them stop, not consciously at least. But they had.

Why?

The bugs were all around us now, marching into spaces they'd vacated. I could sense them move, hear the vibrations that rocked their tiny bodies like gale-force winds, and see a painful, fragmented picture of the world; but it wasn't overwhelming. It wasn't disorienting, or tiring, as it had been the last couple of days.

Had Amy's touch somehow… healed that, too?

It was a cloudy night and the cone of light emanating from the streetlamps should have been dotted with insects, but wasn't. Had they noticed it? Would they notice it if I reintroduced the bugs now? Amy's touch had made my murky thoughts seem almost limpid, and I could again make their endless noise recede from the forefront of my mind. And in its ebb focus on the fingers that clutched mine, and the strange predicament that I had stumbled into.

I felt Amy's hand tighten. Glory Girl was crossing the road, and despite her earlier, almost apologetic exchange with Amy, she was still keeping her distance. "I hate it when she does this," Amy groaned. I could feel the pull of her arm slacking, as the hill leveled off. "Crossing the road without looking. Did you see how close the ambulance was?"

I hadn't noticed: I didn't really pay attention to that sort of thing anymore. "She can't get hurt, right?"

Amy glanced at me, before looking at the road. "No. But those who crash against her might."

Oh.

Glory Girl was standing on the other side, under a streetlight that highlighted another detail I hadn't picked up on earlier.

She wasn't wearing her costume.

How had I not picked up on this before? The couple of times I'd seen her she'd been immaculately dressed, with a bright smile and a costume that accentuated every unfairly-endowed curve she had. If you tried not to focus too much on the little details of how she could bench press a truck, she seemed like the perfect embodiment of a thousand puerile fantasies.

Not so much now. Her hair was almost ratty in the mess it made as it tumbled down her head. I remembered seeing faint dark smudges around her right eye—makeup hastily removed, perhaps? She wore a rumpled, billowing shirt tucked tightly into a pair of jeans that reached above the ankle. It all seemed much too dowdy for somebody like Glory Girl.

Maybe she gets tired of playing up the image all the time?

In my peripheral, I could see Amy frowning, her gaze still fixed on her sister. The three words echoed. Perhaps Glory Girl knew something horrible that Amy had done? That could explain her aggression, and the meekness that Amy displayed in front of it. She was ashamed. In the aftermath of Lisa, the secret had come out and had wrecked their relationship. So now, in an effort to avoid talking with her family, Amy stayed out in the night and struck-up conversations with strangers.

That… that struck a chord.

Or perhaps, this was just two sisters fighting. It wasn't like, before she did what she had, Emma and I had never been angry at the other. "I think," I said, trying to choose my words carefully, "your sister is still angry at you."

"Hmm? Oh… No." She shook her head. "She's not really angry, you know. There's some other stuff, not about tonight, that's leaving her a bit conflicted. Not knowing what side to choose." Amy shrugged. "She'll work it out."

"And if she doesn't?"

Amy looked at me strangely at that and then, glibly, added, "Then she doesn't." Dropping my fingers, she began walking faster. "You know, I'm actually pretty hungry."

I trailed behind her.

Again, I wasn't thinking. It wasn't like people would love to be interrogated by a stranger about family. But what else could I have said? Glory Girl hadn't exactly been shy about declaring how protective she felt about her sister. And yet, tonight her aura had affected Amy too.

Was that because Amy thought of Glory Girl as her enemy, or the other way around?

Not questions I could ask. For a moment I wondered whether this was how Rachel felt, lost in a mess of rules and signals that always seemed to disallow the direct, obvious course of action.

Still, at least Amy's sudden disinterest afforded me the opportunity to run.

"Hey. You coming?" I looked up. She had stopped a couple of paces in front of me, right beside the grey barrier between grass and road. Her tone was, as before, more than a bit uncertain. "You want to go somewhere else?" There was a vulnerability in her gaze that I knew would not be mirrored in mine: my long face didn't really pull that off quite well. Taking my pause as hesitation, she continued, "A hospital isn't really the best place for this sort of thing, but I don't know what else would be open right now, you know?" She was tumbling over her words, and they were washing over me like the spray of breakers against the shore.

It was a sudden and heady feeling. Bitter too, in its way. Nobody had ever talked to me like this.

Brian may have, but that did not matter anymore.

I could remember my mother's words, as we stood by that small green lagoon, feeling the froth of the waves between our toes. I had been clutching at her legs, even as Emma shrieked at me to come join her. Oh darling, my mother had said, bending and kissing me on the forehead, you'll regret it so much more if you don't. Another time, another world. Still, it all applied in its own way, didn't it? I'd taken a jump —with Lisa, with Brian— and I didn't regret that. Maybe the circumstances that drew us together and the choices that I'd had to make. But not the people.

Besides, if Amy could identify me with a touch I was already screwed. Better to get out of these open grounds and into the hospital, where there were people and structures to further limit Glory Girl's options.

And increase my own.

"No, it's good." I smiled. "Didn't really expect to end tonight with a cape like her angry at me. Got a bit freaked out."

Her lips quirked at that, as she hopped over the barrier. "It's okay. She can be scary."

"Yeah."

"And besides," she added, with a lilting tone as we began to cross the road. "You'll definitely be ending tonight with me."

"Err…." My mouth opened. I tried and mostly failed at not blushing.

"What, No!" She stood stock-still and absolutely mortified in the middle of the road. "I meant you'll be having dinner with me. Not, you know…."

I grasped her forearm and pulled. She stumbled a bit, but at least she began walking. "I get it," I muttered as we reached the other side. The truck passing behind us blared loudly and gave me opportunity to bring bugs closer to us, tagging them both. She looked back at the road with frightened eyes, before turning back towards me.

"I wasn't insinuating anything; just trying to be witty since you said—"

"It's okay, I get it." I cut her off, smiling at her. She was still blushing and that just made the light dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks stand out more.

Glory Girl interrupted us, striding back and demanding, "What happened? What did you—"

"It's nothing," said Amy. If the deepening glow on her face was any indication, she felt even more self-conscious about her gaffe in front of her sister. "Just… it's nothing."

Glory Girl turned her suspicious gaze my way and I just shrugged back. She let out a huff. "Let's just get there before all the food's gone, okay?"

I felt her glance on me again and again as we trailed behind Glory Girl, passing the gates of the hospital and striding up its lawns, towards the foyer. The wail of ambulances passing by us drowned out any possibility of conversation. Ahead of us, the foyer teemed with bodies, with people in coats like Amy's intercepting and directing the flow of patients. As we neared, I could see Amy straighten, the slight slouch in her shoulders and hips giving way to a more confident gait. And yet, her gaze flitted over me, unable to stay away.

It was strange, to be wanted like this. If it were true. I wasn't particularly self-deprecating, but I knew I shouldn't be striking for somebody whose sister set her up with teenage millionaires. Especially not the way I was looking these days. And Lisa had tried so hard in weaning me off these kinds of clothes.

Still, I guess none of us were looking our best at the moment.

If Glory Girl seemed unkempt, Amy was plain dirty, her coat splotched on both sides with that peculiar rust-brown color that dried blood took, and streaked in the back with dew. Yet, Glory Girl's contours announced themselves loudly, despite their shabby wrapping. As we entered the foyer, I could feel a dozen heads turn our way, mostly towards her.

Conversations flowed around us, between the EMTs carting the injured from hospitals downtown, and the nurses and doctors admitting them. I had a bug on each of them, marking their positions and movements to build a map of this place—something that I had neglected to do when I'd initially expunged them. The details collated in the back of my mind, being weaved into a coherent picture.

Amy's touch had done much more than just make me feel good: it had healed my fraying control. I had known that powers could become stronger, given certain conditions. Had I been feeling so wretched and tired that the inverse had happened? If so, was my finer control because I was now feeling less mentally exhausted that I had been before?

Or had she affected my mind?

Her voice interrupted my thoughts. "What?" she asked, leaning into me. At my blank look, she added, "You were staring." She had a grin on her face, and her shoulder brushed against mine as we meandered our way through the crowd. Everything she'd been doing pointed towards some sort of attraction she held towards me. Had she made me reciprocate?

No, I decided, considering the contours of her body under the brighter lights of the hospital. Here, there was a confidence to her that made her straighten, seem larger and more sure of her strides. And yet, the swell of her breasts, the curve of her neck and the fullness of her lips – none of them aroused in me anything but a faint irritation as I noted how favorably they compared with my own.

Still, I had moved closer to her, had wanted to hold her hands. I didn't think I was attracted to her, but I had been responding to her obvious flirtations. Appreciating them, even.

What was I doing here?

As we neared the doors, a nurse called out, rushing towards us with a large chart held in one hand, and her phone in another. Amy's eyes narrowed in irritation, as she stepped away from me to greet her. "Mary," she said. Glory Girl, I noticed, was watching her sister intently again.

Mary for her own part looked rather apologetic as she began, "Mark—you met him, right?—did something a bit stupid earlier to a post-op. The meds he accidently gave are messing up the old man's system. I was hoping—"

Panacea's voice was sharp. "He gave the meds? Doesn't he need approval for that?"

The nurse nodded, her flaxen hair bobbing as she did. "It was so stupid, but you know… We've given the patient some drugs, but it's not flushing the meds out, and there's a bit of a waiting list right now for the more extensive treatments, not to mention approvals and an investigation into what happened. I was hoping, Amy, that you could help." She was speaking so fast, it almost seemed like she was babbling. I could see the nurse's dilated pupils and the sweat beading on her neck.

Echoing my thoughts, Amy asked, "Mary, didn't your shift end hours ago?"

"I was trying to reach you, but your phone was switched off and Victoria—Hey, Victoria!—said that you weren't home yet and I…," she paused, taking a deep, slow breath. "I'm making a fool of myself for this guy, aren't I?"

"Haven't we all." Amy grinned at her. "Come here." Clasping Mary's extended fingers between her own, Amy tilted forward and began to speak quietly into her ear. I resisted the urge to move closer to them.

The foyer around us was mostly a stark and plain shade of grey, with ambulances on the asphalt at one end, and a long string of wide doorways leading into the lobby at the other. People were streaming between both ends, far fewer than there had been earlier in the night. Amy and the nurse looked exceedingly intimate beside me, leaning into each other.

People were glancing at us as they passed. I could feel them turn, and their curiosity made me uncomfortable, even if it were directed at me only in passing. Even Glory Girl, standing with a smirk and folded arms a few feet away from us, was intently observing. Still keeping her distance.

A moment later, Mary moved, thanking Amy with a wide hug. She was, I realized, actually quite beautiful now that her eyes weren't darting all around the place and her skin didn't look nearly as wan as it had before. Her severe nose blended well with her sharp features and gave her, if not a sense of approachability, an aloofness that I knew people found profoundly attractive. As she left, Glory Girl ambled towards us, still smirking.

"You know, sis," she began, in a dawdling tone, "I always thought you had so few guy friends 'cause you were shy. Turns out I was looking in the wrong place."

Amy shot back, "You always are." Ignoring Glory Girl's offended "Hey!" she turned towards me, "I just realized I don't know your name."

Glory Girl interjected, "Seriously? After all that?"

Frowning, Amy turned towards her chuckling sister. "Vicky… could you go wait in cafeteria, please?"

"Yeah, yeah," Glory Girl replied, waving it off. "At least I know their name before I… hold their hands!"

I stared at her as she left. Even she, so much more beautiful than Amy was, left me with nothing but faint admiration in her wake. I felt her walk deeper into the place, going through the doors and then turning left, her pace steady.

It was only then did I realize what her departure meant.

I could leave. If Glory Girl was not worried about leaving her sister alone with me, then she either she trusted Amy to handle herself or she didn't see any reason to be alert. Through my bugs, I was tracking every person in the compound and none seemed to be moving or glancing towards us with an unusual regularity.

I could leave, if I wanted. An excuse, maybe? Or by using the many webs I'd gotten my bugs to make. But then, that would probably compromise my identity, which by now I was pretty sure they didn't know of.

And there were other reasons to stay.

With Glory Girl no longer in my sight, I turned back towards her. She was frowning, for some reason. I took a deep breath.

"Hey, I'm Anne."

-0-

Glory Girl's eyes flicked towards me as I sat, a half-eaten sandwich on her plate. "I'm guessing," she said, "that Amy will take a while."

"She said she'd be here in a couple of minutes. Just slip in and out." I could feel her moving two floors above us.

"Yeah, I somehow doubt that." She slid the plate towards me. "She comes here a lot. Somebody's bound to recognize her."

The tables in the cafeteria were irregularly arrayed, providing people plenty of space to navigate in between them. There was a sense of quiet here, and despite the low murmur of conversation and the occasional scrape of plates against the tabletops, the very air was still, hushed. A few old men navigated gingerly between tables, but mostly, the people reclining against chairs or bowing forward into the tables they were sitting at were young, people with movements hesitant and painful, as if old age had secretly descended.

I turned back towards Glory Girl. "That won't be the worst thing. Not here."

She surveyed me for a moment, before waving at the food. "Have some. You said you were hungry."

I eyed the thin plastic wrapped sandwiches. "Thanks," I eventually replied, unwrapping one and gingerly taking a bite.

"Didn't mean to scare you earlier, you know." She was gazing at me, her voice measured, almost nonchalant. "Amy wasn't answering and her phone and…. You know how this city is these days, with the Merchants and all."

Oh. Was that where her aggression had come from—fear for her sister's safety? "It's okay."

"She got hurt a couple of days back. Did she tell you that?" I shook my head. "Yeah. Some guy stabbed her because she couldn't save his wife."

"What?"

"It was stupid. She wasn't even there. We got her this military guy to shadow her after that, because for some reason she doesn't want family to do it. And then tonight, when I call, the guy's sleeping… And not because he fell asleep on the job."

The sequence of events were cohering now, making more and more sense as Glory Girl spoke. Upstairs, Amy had stopped at the side of the corridor with Mary.

"Then I see you guys, just standing there, you know. Thought she snuck out to meet you or something, absolutely ignoring all those safety protocols we'd made, like picking up the fucking phone." She signed, and the exhaustion was mirrored in her half-lidded, slightly bloodshot eyes. "As if the rest of it wasn't complicated enough. So, yeah, didn't mean for that."

"It's okay." I waved her apology aside. "She'd said you were conflicted about things."

"What," Glory Girl said, intently now. "She told you?"

For a moment, I considered stringing that along to try and get her to reveal what had happened. But that idea sort of fizzled out as I thought it through. "Nothing," I relented. "Just that there was something. Nothing specific."

"Oh. Yeah, stuff happened, you know, with the Endbringer and she's just refusing…" Victoria stopped, and leaned back on her seat, brushing the hair from her face. "All that's family. This… this is something else." She shook her head. "It doesn't make sense." She gestured towards me, adding, "I should have known something this big about my sister, shouldn't I?"

"This big?"

"About you, and, well, the whole 'liking the girls' thing. She's never even hinted at it, you know? But she's my sister…. I should have known, right?" She waited there, gazing expectantly at me.

Was she waiting for me to reassure her in some way? That felt strange. But then, as far as she knew I was just a girl her sister was trying to… flirt with. "Not if she didn't want you to," I offered.

"Why wouldn't she? How does it even matter anymore? Haven't you told your family?"

I almost laughed at that. I'd told my dad nothing, aside from telling him I was alive.

Still, she was right in her way. It wasn't something I'd really considered, but sexuality wasn't a big deal anymore, and hadn't been for a while. Not with Legend. And especially, not in a family of capes. Those three words made less sense than before.

"Maybe it's recent?"

She contemplated that for a moment. "Makes sense," she finally said, her words ponderous as if she were thinking out aloud. "She has been distant for a while now. Ever since that stupid little bank thing."

There. That was confirmation. This was about some secret that Lisa had uncovered, something humiliating and huge, and not something as trivial such as a newfound sexual orientation.

Absently, I tracked Amy's movements, as she finally came into the lobby. Exhaustion seemed to tickle my senses again, and the bugs moved sluggishly around her.

The clues were more coherent now. By bringing it up, Lisa had somehow made Amy wary about her secret, and that had caused friction between the sisters, and maybe even the family. But where did the fear that Amy had displayed fit in? Had she mucked things up with her family so badly in trying to hide that secret that her own sister would leverage her aura against her? Or was this concern, this confusion some sort of ruse on Glory Girl's part?

After all, and I didn't even have to remind myself of this, Emma could do this too, asking me if I needed to freshen up after dumping some filthy concoction over my head.

Glory Girl was sitting slightly tilted on her seat, gazing into the distance. Frowning, she clutched at the remains of a sandwich. Was she as in the dark as she seemed to be? I couldn't really think of any reason she might have to try to deceive me.

But then, I couldn't think of reasons for Emma either. And with that blonde hair and perfect smile, and that aggression she had displayed when Amy had been isolated, she seemed so much like Emma that I was unable to discount it, not even after the almost teasing way in which the sisters had interacted.

But it still didn't fit, not with the kind of concern Glory Girl was displaying in front of me.

Was I imagining this? Trying to create some sort of mission out of thin air, something to distract myself, to focus on matters other than what I'd lost? All I had to go on were Lisa's words, but Lisa could lie, and Amy… she could fool herself into thinking that her changing sexuality could horribly alter other things, too.

Insecurity was something I was familiar with.

I wasn't suited for this. This sort of thing was Lisa's domain, for people who could intuit truths from within the shifting myriad of possible interpretations with as little to go on as a couple of words and a tremble in the shoulders.

Mom had been good at this. She had just known.

I… didn't.

I stood up, fully resolved to pay whatever I had to and leave. Amy was standing outside the cafeteria doors, as if steeling herself to enter. Her face, tremulous and hopeful, resurfaced in my mind. Her attraction towards me had left me feeling better about myself than I had in weeks, and for a moment I hated myself for wanting to leave her like this, in the middle of it all.

That's when I felt it: a bug around her blinked out of my sense, as if it had died. It happened all the time, but this death was sharp, sudden and almost felt like a physical shock.

Did she just use her power to kill it?

I tried to focus on the bugs I had around her, but it was like trying to see something with the sharp afterimage of the sun in your eyes.

Only then did she enter the cafeteria. She was frowning, and I knew the jig was up.

"Victoria," Amy said, "we have a problem."


All comments and critiques are welcome.