Chapter 2

Brockton Bay was a city in decline, and the Docks had seen the worst of it. Once, decades before, in the days before Parahumans and before Endbringers, it had been the central hub of industry and of manufacturing, but the jobs had since dried up and the glory days were long passed. Now it was a ramshackle urban jungle of run down warehouses and unerring slums, home to drug addicts and to vagrants, and ruled by the gangs. It was a place police rarely visited and, when they did, they remained cautious, and kept in groups. It was a dangerous place, and a place Taylor had long been warned off of.

Truth be told, her destination was only on the edge of it, and although she could snatch the occasional glimpses of gang colors (often ABB red and green) or tattoos on several of the teenagers she passed on her way, they were a rarity compared to the sort of numbers the gangs carried in the urban hellhole beyond. This was certainly a lower class neighborhood, but she could see that it was far from a desolate one, for as she walked Taylor passed several small ethnic restaurants, then a Laundromat and a movie theater (which only had a single screen) and a grocer, all scattered amongst countless identical rows of apartment complexes, blocky multi-storied constructs whose walls had long turned yellow with age.

The soup kitchen itself was housed in a small, out of the way old building, with red brick walls and boxed windows, whose front step creaked and whose door knob had rusted over with time. It was only one story, all sharp angles and harsh lines, and the only modern appliance she could see was the telecom system mounted by the front door.

She rang and, on the other end, she heard a woman's voice. It was wheezy and it sounded as old and worn down as the building itself. "You are aware the front door is always open."

"No," she sputtered. "I'm here about the ad. I'd like to work."

The response was clipped and businesslike. "We don't pay. Times are scarce and we can barely hold up as it is."

"It's not that," Taylor said. "I'm looking to volunteer."

A brief silence, and then the voice came back on the line. "Oh, well that's a different matter then. Come inside, let's get you started."

Taylor hesitated for a moment, beginning to second guess the entire thing. She had dealt with enough issues at school and in her own personal life, and her first impression hadn't been the most welcoming one. Still, she had come this far, and she was never one to back down, and so she entered the building, and met with the woman who ran the place, a stern middle aged woman who was taller even than Taylor and broad of shoulders, and just as direct in person as she had been over the telecom. They passed through the main kitchen, where several dozen men and women were already beginning to gather by the serving area and the tables, and headed towards the offices out back, and as they talked, they discussed Taylor's skills and what tasks she believed she was capable of offering and what work she was willing to perform.

It was more a bit absurd, Taylor was tempted to point out, considering that they were the ones who were requesting assistance, but she kept her thoughts to herself and she listened, and she signed the forms and the paperwork and got a schedule put together. She would assist on the weekends, helping to prepare meals starting at one in the afternoon and serving them from three to six.

"I assume your parents know that you came here?" the woman asked with a searching gaze.

"Yes," Taylor lied. "My father."

The woman nodded, handing her the paperwork. "As you're a minor, I'll need his signature before I can get you started on anything. In person, you understand."

Taylor gulped, as she thought about just how poorly that conversation might go, but she nodded all the same, and the older woman allowed her to leave. She lingered a while, knowing the bus wouldn't come by for another thirty minutes, and she talked to two of the volunteers already on duty. They were both women and they were both older than she was.

One of them was a slim red head was currently going to college, and actually hoped to someday become a Social Worker herself, while the other was nearly as old as her dad, but they were far more welcoming than the kitchen's administrator was, and they chatted about everyday trivialities as they served meals, and about assorted rumors concerning celebrities and capes, and the younger of the two briefly teased her, asking whether she crushed over any of the Wards. It was disarming and felt almost pleasant and, for a brief moment, Taylor wondered wistfully whether this was what it meant to feel human.

And then she got on the bus and returned home, a slight but unforced smile on her face, as she replayed the memories of that small conversation in her head, and held close the first real sense of normality she had experienced in weeks.

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Taylor Hebert stood before the glass and looked through the window, watching another version of herself walk up to her father. She held the brochure beside her,and she wore a small smile on her face, something hesitant but hopeful, while she spoke to him about her day at the Soup Kitchen, about her conversation with the older volunteers, about how much it meant to her. To be free of the bullying and of her own insecurities: to feel like a normal kid again. And her father cut her off.

"You're lying. All this time, and you haven't been honest with me once Kiddo," he said.

"I'm… I'm not," she stammered but he held his hand up to cut her off.

"Please Taylor, don't take me for an idiot. All this time, I've waited for you, for just one moment where you'd just tell me the truth, but you never do. Do you mistrust me so much?"

She looked at him, with her eyes wide as an owl's, and her words came out as a whisper. "That's not it at all."

He sighed, "But it is. Taylor, have I been such a bad father to you? Is this my fault, or is it yours?"

"Look, I'm sorry but I can explain."

"Don't," he interrupted her. "You think I can't tell. That I'm somehow blind, or perhaps you just take me for stupid. But you've changed, and you've been that way for weeks now: so distant and cold, you never smile and you never talk, and sometimes, seeing you as you are now, I wonder whether there's anything at all left of the daughter I raised."

Taylor watched that vision unfold. She saw her father's despair grew hot, and his anger transform to rage. He yelled at her, and in that moment he resembled something violent and beastly. He accused her of being reckless and cruel, of caring so little for his own worries and suffering, and he wished desperately that she could just go back to the way she once was, become more human again. Become his daughter again.

And she watched herself storm out, run out the front door and into the streets, and she watched as her father stayed behind, his anger spent, gazing longingly at towards the open door. She watched him turn aside, begin lurching forwards towards the kitchen cabinet, where he proceeded to pull out a shot glass and a bottle of liquor. The brochure lay forgotten on the floor.

And the other Taylor watched as her father drank himself into a stupor, and she said, "It didn't play out like this."

"No?" a second voice oozed from behind her, a voice which sounded just like her own, though the cadence was ever so slightly off. She turned around to find her Other Self standing there, arms crossed, eyes gleaming, a small, yet not unkind, smile on her face.

"I don't understand why you'd show me this. You can't think to fool me with such an obvious lie," Taylor answered as she replayed a different encounter in her mind, one which, while strained, had remained cordial, where her father kept his emotions rigidly contained, agreed to take her down to the Soup Kitchen that first day and sign the forms, and where he implored her to take care, and she agreed. Where he supported her, even when it pained him to.

"Is this a lie though?" the other Taylor asked. "You disappoint me. It is fundamental to that which we are a part of, that which we are, that we can see to the Truth of all things, and even as you are now you can't be so naïve to all which lies hidden around you."

"It didn't happen that way," Taylor insisted.

"It happened exactly that way," her shadow said. "In gestures left unsaid, and frustrations left unvoiced. You are in turmoil, and you think to hide it from yourself, but your pain echoes forth in waves and those around you suffer for it."

Taylor crossed her arms and tapped her foot. "I'm not giving into you, if that's what you're after."

"No, I suppose you're not." The creature replied. "But still, I fail to understand why you must struggle so against your own nature. Why you must clutch so closely to something you must realize lacks substance. You can't win. Each day, we rip something more from you, bring you closer to that which you truly are, and that which you become."

"If that is so, why come here now? What are you after?"

"You suffer," the creature answered, combing its hand through her hair. "And as your shadow, the link between that which you are and that which you will be, I feel an echo of your pain and your confusion. But that matters not, for, in any case, I will not beg you or implore you. Such things are not within my nature, and even if they were, you would not listen anyway. Still, I offer you this warning. Desist this struggle, for it can only garner further pain."

Taylor frowned, "I have trouble believing you would care about my sentiments."

"You are distrusting, even of yourself," the creature replied.

"You're not me," Taylor answered. "You're nothing like me."

The creature's smile transformed into a scowl and, for a brief moment, Taylor could have sworn that she saw rage in its gaze, as it seemed to transform before her, suddenly resembling a vast blackness, larger than any Endbringer, which took on the vague outline of a human shape. In that moment, Taylor found herself faced with something that was both Taylor Hebert and so much more than Taylor Hebert, and also so much less. But it was only for a moment, and then its mask was back in place, the shadow banished, and a facsimile of Taylor Hebert stood before her once more. And when it spoke, its words were calm and gentle.

"It is my intent to help you, Taylor. To facilitate that which you must become. That which we both must become."

Taylor crossed her arms. "I won't become like you. This synchronization you keep going on about. I won't do it. I refuse."

The creature sighed and it spoke to her like a mother to an unruly child. "Still so stubborn, but you forget, we already stand on that precipice, and some part of you desperately wants to take that final step."

"But I haven't," Taylor said. "And I won't."

The abomination nodded, and asked a single question. "Tell me. Do you yet know your name?"

Taylor caught the creature's eye and in its gaze she caught a vague glimpse of countless eyes, or countless spheres, and an existence greater than the universe itself, and in that moment she felt as if both she and her other self were but tiny fragments of infinity. And then, just as swiftly, that strange sensation faded back into oblivion and she was merely Taylor again and she faced her doppelganger once more, which now wore an approving glimmer of a smile.

"I'm pleased," it said as it began to lose substance, to slowly fade out of existence until Taylor was left standing alone in a vast blackness.

And then she awakened, with all her small hopes for the future, all her minor optimisms, crumbling once more into despair.

Taylor had trouble looking her father in the eye the following morning at breakfast, for she could feel his pain and his concern rolling off of him, and every time he looked at her, she felt herself flinch. She remembered the false vision that her other self had shown her, and suddenly she realized that it had, in fact, offered her some semblance of truth. Just as it insisted.

"Is something wrong, kiddo?" he asked, the concern obvious on his face.

She was about to make a denial, but the memory of that dream returned unbidden, and looking at her father then, seeing the regrets and the concerns and the small hints of self loathing which now loomed so clear in her mind's eye, the lie died in her throat, and instead she whispered, "I'm sorry."

He looked up from his meal, "Excuse me?"

"Look," she said. "I know I haven't been a perfect daughter, or even a good one. I know I've kept my secrets…"

"Taylor, it's all right."

"No, it's not," she insisted. "It hasn't for a long time, and I've been just too blinded by my own self centeredness to see."

"Look, you don't have to say anything."

"But I do," she said as the tears pooled in her eyes. "And I know you have your concerns, about the Soup Kitchen about its location in the Docks."

"Taylor, we've already been through this," he said.

"But I'll be careful," she insisted. "I won't go wandering off, I'll stick to the buses. You don't have to worry about me, okay? I can get past this."

He walked up to her and put her hand on her shoulder. "Taylor, I trust you. You're strong and you're sensible. So very much like your mother."

"But you don't! You can't," she recoiled, like a spooked animal, pulling away from him, and it tore at her to see how pained he looked at that rejection, and she calmed herself. "Look, I'm going through things. Things even I can't understand."

"You can tell me," he said, a quizzical tone in his voice. "I'll support you."

She looked him in the eye, and she relaxed, and she said, "I know. You always have."

And then she spoke, her words at first hesitantly, and silently he listened. She spoke about her fears, about how she felt as if something had changed within her since she had been stuck in that locker. How she had grown increasingly apathetic and distant, and how she had gained some kind of power she could not yet begin to grasp, or at least she thought she did.

"You're a cape?" he asked.

She shook her head, for she somehow knew the word was not a truly accurate designation for what she had become, and he relaxed at the dinner table and let her ramble on. "There's just been so much drama," she concluded a few minutes later. "At school and in my home life, and I just need something normal, a place where I can just be Taylor again."

"You've been through something traumatic," he pointed out. "You know, we could probably look at therapy."

"No!" she all but yelled, her eyes widening, though she steeled herself just as quickly. "Please, let's not take that step. Not yet. I need time to handle this. Come to terms with things. Anyway, I think, in my own small way, I'm improving. One step at a time."

After a long, tense moment, he nodded. "Very well, but we'll keep it on the table. When you think you're ready for that step, we'll talk about it some more."

She nodded, and a true smile broke out on her face, "Thanks dad."

"It's what I'm here for," he said, and they ate breakfast together in the most relaxed atmosphere they had shared in weeks.

And then he drove her down to the Food Kitchen, and they signed the paperwork and permission forms, and Taylor smiled throughout that day.

Finally, things seemed to be looking up.

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A/N: Thanks to all who have taken the time to like and/or review. Next chapter is the apex of this story's first half. It'll be fun. See you then.