The scent of copper in the debris-filled mall is overwhelming, the screams high and sharp. I shut them out, trying to get through the people running away from the living Nazi chainsaw. Vicky hasn't come out of the boutique yet. I shove aside a distracted-looking woman with cuts along the side of her face and run in, barely hearing the receding sounds of chainsaw limbs. It takes too long to find her among the reds and pinks of the Valentine's Day specials. Too long to realize that somehow Hookwolf got a tangle of blades through her force field, that she's missing important pieces. Too long to get a hand over her mess of a stomach and realize that she's not bleeding as much because there's not much blood left.
No no no no no no nononono
She smiles up at me, shaky and sad. "Hey Ames," she says, too softly. I feel something flutter under my hands. Maybe her lungs. "How's it look?" she asks, dragging in a raspy breath. More blood flows over my hands.
"F-fine," I lie, looking around for options. A first aid kit, a coat, something to apply pressure to the wound. "You're going to turn out alright. It's just a-"
"Ames, tell Mom and Dad I love them, alright?" she interrupts, smiling gently. "I love you too." She leans her head back, blond hair mixing with sticky red, and closes her eyes.
No.
/-/
Something flashes, two beings, incomprehensibly large, mixing and not mixing in equal measures. A shard flies down, growing larger and larger in perspective, until it consumes the horizon.
/-/
I blink, something receding into the back of my mind. When I look at Victoria, I see light fading from her. It's not light, but it's something like that, my brain trying to make sense of new input. I know I can bring Vicky's light back.
There. Things, red and wet and filled with their own dimming light. I grab them, scooping up the slippery bits and pressing them into Victoria's stomach. I tell them to glow again, to work. They do. The light looks different from Vicky's light, so I tell them to match. They do. They try to slide out when I move my hand so I tell them to bind. They do. Vicky's light stops fading, but doesn't get brighter. I need more. I look around, straining my eyes to find some more material.
That's how they find me, pressing the slippery insides of Hookwolf's collaterals into Victoria, trying to help her shine again.
I look down at the man. "He's not glowing anymore. I can't help him."
"Bullshit!" the cape yells, glowing menacingly as he leans over his friend's dead body. "You've brought back people who were missing everything south of their heads before! He bled out, you can just-"
"Flare," a quiet voice says, and he spins around to see Legend, standing just be him with a mournful look on his face. "Isidis will not work on corpses with brain damage. The times she has tried, it went poorly. You know this," he finishes, leaning and hugging the cape. "You both knew that Isidis can't save everyone."
I wish I could stay and console him. I wish I could talk to my patients, use my breath for something besides running between hospital beds while hauling buckets of gore. Instead I turn away from the crying man and grab a handful of fresh, shining flesh and slap the mess onto a gaping chest wound. A bit drips off the side of the stretcher, dripping to the floor in a now-familiar rhythm.
The aftermath of Endbringer fights always has more raw material than I need for the survivors.
"Amy, wake up!"
"Ugh, five more minutes," I grumble, dragging the blanket back over my head. Half-remembered, half-coherent dreams float around my skull, involving odd shines and shards.
"Someone's hurt," the voice says, and I wake up properly. Victoria is holding my late-night costume, a quick, warm pullover robe with an ankh on the front and isoprene gloves with elbow-length sleeves. Not particularly attractive, but enough for a night-call.
"Details," I demand, dragging the robe over my pj's and trying to rub the sleep out of my eyes. God, I hate late nights.
"Lung fought some new parahuman and got killed, but not before crippling her," Vicky says, walking over to the window and opening it up.
"Lung's dead?" I ask incredulously, voice muffled by the robe.
"That's all Aunt Sarah would tell me," Victoria says, an apologetic note in her voice. Once I'm fully clothed, she carefully picks me up in a bridal carry and floats us out. "I'm going to speed up now, 'kay?" I give her a nod and try to keep my heart rate down.
Flying never ceases to be terrifying. Even with Victoria carting me around, even knowing she's strong enough to pound cars into scrap, having only a pair of arms separating myself from a drop at near-highway speeds is unpleasant.
Soon enough we get Brockton General, where about half the Protectorate is present. Miss Militia nods as we pass by her, while Dauntless gives a little wave, which Victoria returns with a smile. Meanwhile, Armsmaster guides me to the ICU.
"Severed spine, with ruptured kidneys and bowels," he says, looking straight ahead. "A cadaver has been supplied and is resting next to the body. Can you give me any estimates as to time to recover?"
I think back to Abidjan, where I put a man back together from the waist down. "Not more than a few minutes," I answer. "Is she on antibiotics?" It took a while to understand disease well enough to make working with old corpses viable. Longer to make it a good idea.
"My own," he responds, opening a door to reveal a face-up pasty 20-something corpse, already cut open and waiting for me to transform it into someone else's living flesh. Next to her is a woman hooked up to half a dozen medical machines, lying on her stomach with plates of bone covering everything save for her lower back. That's been torn open and bandaged roughly, with a little red seeping through.
Not even the worst thing I've seen this week.
I stride forward, grab a pair of scissors, and snip away the bandages. Once that's done I scoop some flesh from from the corpse and press it into the new parahuman. Match glow. Bind. Help. Another scoop. Match glow. Bind. Help.
By the time I'm done, the corpse's abdominal cavity is gutted (ah, gallows humor) and the new parahuman is patched up. I detach the sleeves of my uniform and toss them into a biohazard bin, then walk out of the room.
Armsmaster follows close behind. "Status?"
"She'll be fine," I answer, suppressing a yawn. "Get the doctors to flip her on her back and listen to whatever treatment they prescribe. Now if you don't mind, I have to get up to go to school in," I check the clock in the wall, "less than five hours and I'd like to get some sleep in that time."
Armsmaster nods and gives me an awkward pat on the shoulder. "Thank you for your time, Isidis. Your payment will be deposited as an addendum to our monthly bill."
"Keep shelling out and I'll give you all the time you want," I mutter back, walking back to where Vicky and MM are talking. "Patient's patched up, can we go back home now?" I ask Vicky, interrupting their conversation.
"Sure," she says too quickly, walking over towards the door. "Nice talking, see you later!" she blurts out to Miss Militia just before the door closes. She scoops me up into a bridal carry and kicks off, not bothering to warn me this time. I hate it when she does that. She knows that I hate it, and usually is mindful enough to at least give me some warning when no one's in danger. What did MM say to set her off?
Once we're home and I've stopped shivering, I pull out a pair of mugs from the cabinet and sit down at the table. One with a little tiara, one with a caduceus. "Vicky, we should talk."
"About what?" she asks, grabbing the cocoa powder and milk, recognizing the signs.
"Why'd you run from Miss Militia?" I ask. Vicky's aura flares and I wince at the rush of adoration. Must've been something bad, then. "Vicky, aura."
"Right, right," she says, pouring the milk into a saucepan and flicking on the stove. "It's, uh..."
"Did you hurt someone?" I ask quietly. Her aura flares and I twist my leg, using the pain to cut through the fuck off/fuck me feelings. "Miss Militia wanted you to join the Wards to work on not causing as much collateral damage?" It wouldn't be too surprising, given that only Carol's legal expertise has kept Vicky from being forced into the Wards. That, and some free medical care for the victims from me. Vicky's aura flares again, and I feel blood rush to my face.
As disturbing as it is to suddenly want to have sex with your sister, it's nice that she can't lie about anything of substance.
I sigh and stand up. Vicky's still staring at the saucepan, occasionally tilting it to mix the milk, hiding behind her tangled blonde locks. No matter what bullshit powers Vicky has looking after her body, even she can't fix bed-head automatically. I give her a gentle hug from behind.
"Messing up doesn't make you a bad person, Vicky," I say softly in her ear, resting my chin on her shoulder. "It means you need practice."
I hear creaking as she squeezes the handle of the saucepan. "But when I go out to practice, I put a pickpocket in the hospital!" she says, her voice tinged with hysteria and depression. Her aura is at full blast, sending waves of desire and fear through me, both contributing to my shaky knees and flushing face. I flex my shoulders forward, against the muscle, embracing the pain and focus on that. "How am I supposed to get better at not hurting people when every time I try someone gets hurt!? How is that learning?" She's not quite screaming, but it's close.
"Do you think the milk is done?" I ask, turning her attention back to the pan. Vicky takes a deep breath and I feel her stomach expand against my hands. When she exhales, her aura dies down to almost nothing and she turns off the stove.
We both stand there, lapsing into silence.
"Thanks," she says eventually, "For listening to me bitch and moan."
"Thanks for heating the milk," I respond evenly. "Let's drink it before it gets cold."
We sit down and mix our drinks, me with my paltry one scoop of cocoa powder and a pinch of powdered pepper and Victoria with her two scoops and chocolate sauce. Such a sweet tooth.
Carol comes down the stairs with a bleary look in her eyes, unfocused until she sees us sitting there, drinking cocoa. "Who got hurt?" she asks, sitting down at the table next to Vicky, "And did they pay you?"
Vicky looks at her with a surprised expression, as if deducing that me in costume late at night could come from any other situation. I resist the urge to roll my eyes. Vicky, I love you to death, but goddamn you're dense sometimes.
"New parahuman got into a fight with Lung," I say, taking a sip of my drink. "And yes, Armsmaster added it to their monthly fee."
Carol winces. "How bad was it?"
"Severed spin and some internal organs," I answer. "But Lung's worse off."
Carol blinks, then turns to Vicky for confirmation. Vicky nods. Carol looks back to me, then leans back in her chair, gazing at the ceiling.
"Well, that will change things," she says quietly. I nod. When Carol learned that my power involved dead people, it took her about five seconds to contact a parahuman law specialist and figure out the legal hoops I'd have to jump through to get consistent access to corpses, as well as the names of three or four excellent therapists. Analyzing situations comes naturally to her, and I can only imagine what's going through her mind.
I finish off my drink and yawn. "Well, I'm going back to bed. 'Night," I manage to get out behind another yawn.
"'Night," Vicky and Carol call behind me, leaning towards one another and beginning to talk shop in hushed voices. They don't bother to try and convince me to join. For the best, honestly, I'd bite the next person who gets between me and a bed.
I stagger up the steps, through the door, and over to my bed. I barely manage to strip out of my costume before collapsing onto the sheets and letting the black fall over my consciousness.