Interlude: Progress (Gallant)

To most of his classmates, colors didn't have meaning other than what their Lit. teacher tried to shove down their throats. To Dean, colors meant everything.

That pink haze with veins of deep red surrounding Susan Hunter? She was daydreaming about her crush again. The perfectly balanced grey that floated around Dennis's head like a cloud? He was bored. That green intermixing with bits of orange? Someone actually found this class interesting and a tad of that bled into him as well.

The thing about powers like his, about being an empath? You didn't just know what others feel, you feel what they feel.

Then he heard it. The deep, wailing sirens that he'd only heard in those air raid documentaries or nuclear apocalypse films.

For a moment, the world blew up into technicolor as a cacophony of emotion assaulted his senses, only for it to be painted over by an abyssal black that engulfed anything it encountered. Fear was like that, eating away at a person until nothing but a husk remained, the emotional equivalent of plagues and pandemics.

Not that Dean blamed them. He could hardly believe what he was hearing too.

Endbringer.

Then the splotches of bright red appeared like gunshot wounds. Tiny, never enough to actually overtake the vast endless black, but noticeably there.

The screaming started.

Even Mr. Hartwell didn't bother putting on a show of courage as they joined the students in their frenzied rush for the doors.

In the Endbringer -confusion- drills that the -anger- Wards did alongside -regret- the Protectorate, they were supposed -denial- to rendezvous somewhere -panic- until the PRT arrived -fear- with their costumes.

Dean blinked, trying to clear his head of the sudden influx.

He was outside in his suit now, a dumbed down version of Armsmaster's that offered him better protection and a bit more strength. Victoria was standing in front of him, her aura at full blast, bathing her in a brilliant glow. Not that her powers had ever invoked awe in him, not directly anyway. But he did feel it from how everyone else felt. She looked perfect.

She was perfect.

"Be careful," Dean heard himself saying.

Victoria nodded. "Take care of my sister, Dean." The world melted away.

A flash of lightning. More screams. More emotions.

Victoria. He tried to reach out to her, stop her from falling, but she was too far. She was always too far. But she was gone before she even hit the ground.

The dead didn't have any emotions left to read after all.

"Vicky!" he heard Amy scream, heard her heart shatter along with his.

"Take care of my sister, Dean."

His eyes opened and he was back at HQ, staring at the white ceilings which always reminded him of the hospital.

"Hey Gallant," Clockblocker said, noticing him sitting up. "Couldn't sleep?"

"Not really," he said, glancing around.

"Wanna see something funny?" he asked. Before Dean could answer, Clockblocker walked over to where Shadow Stalker was sleeping and tapped her, keeping her still long enough that Vista could use her as a teddy bear without waking her up.

Dean forced a smile for the attempt, but he just...wasn't in the mood for this. Not after Behemoth. Not after Kid Win.

Not after Victoria.

But he didn't say anything, because he knew better than most. This was how Dennis was dealing. He glanced at the rest of the room, watching as the other Wards began to gather around the sleeping pair with curiosity. If it made things easier on them, all the better.

It wasn't for Dean though. He got up quietly and left. No point ruining the others' fun.

He walked without time or aim to guide to him. Just walked, letting his feet drag him forward, step by step under the dim lighting.

Walked until he found himself in front of the morgue.

It wasn't one originally, but the PRT needed a cold place to store the bodies of the fallen capes. With power still sparse, it had to be in one of the underground levels.

The door opened. She stood there, wearing white robes and a red cross that ran down along her spine, with frizzy brown hair to hide her neck. Arguably the most famous cape in Brockton Bay. Definitely the most important. The shade of black that clung to her wasn't fear, it was despair.

"Amy," Dean said. She didn't move, didn't make a sound, didn't show any indication she had heard him, She just kept holding Victoria's hand, standing vigil over the body.

Dean stepped inside the room and closed the door, before walking up to her side. It won't work, his mind said, but he kept quiet. That wasn't what she wanted or needed to hear, not right now.

"How long have you been here?" he asked.

She shrugged.

He frowned. What to say now? How have you been?

How do you think I've been! he could imagine her saying with a snarl.

I'm here if you want to talk?

I wish you weren't. Amy loved Victoria, and hated him for being with her.

"I let someone die today," Amy finally said. "I could have saved him, but I didn't. I just stood there, watching as the life left his eyes. Then I told his parents he was too far gone to save, that I couldn't heal death."

"Why tell me?" Dean asked.

"You'd know anyway," she said.

He paused for a moment. "Why'd you let him die?"

"Because he was Empire," she spat out. The same Empire that had killed their aunt Fleur. "Because she spent her entire life fighting scum like them and the ABB and the Merchants and now she's-" Amy choked, tears falling from her eyes.

"That doesn't make you a bad person. You've done more than enough-"

"I did too much," Amy said. "All those years...I should never have started healing villains to begin with."

Dean didn't know what to say to that, so he just nodded.

"I've thought about it, you know, engineering a plague to wipe them all out," Amy continued.

"They'd send you to the Birdcage," he said. "Victoria wouldn't have wanted that for you."

"How would you know?"

"Because I knew her too," Dean said. "Maybe not as well as you did, but I knew her."

Her shoulders dipped, some of the tenseness leaving. She was calmer now, distinctly less hostile. That was one potential crisis to the world averted.

"Your family has been asking about you," he said. "They're worried. You haven't gone home since..."

"Even my mother?"

Dean didn't answer.

"Typical," she said.

There was no point defending how Brandish was acting, not to Amy. He didn't want to be seen as the enemy, not to her.

"Have you been sleeping enough?"

"Enough to keep healing," she answered. "And before you ask, I eat whenever the nurses force me to take a break."

"No one wants you to get hurt," he said.

She snorted. "Because of my great personality, I'm sure. Is that why the Director is giving me a bodyguard? To keep an eye on me?"

Ah, so she knew about that. "Maybe. Probably," Dean said. "I can't really say. The Director didn't share her reasons."

"So how'd you get the job?"

"I volunteered for it."

"That wasn't her call to make," Amy said. "I'm New Wave. I don't report to her."

"Lady Photon agreed."

She looked at him, surprised. "She did?"

"Like I said, they're worried about you. And to be honest, if you aren't healing villains anymore, you'll need the protection."

"Are you saying I shouldn't stop healing them?" She huffed. "It's my powers! I-"

"I'm saying you have to be careful, Amy. Now more than ever. If not for your own sake, then for hers," Dean said. "Which hospital's on your rotation tomorrow?"

"Why do you want to know?" she asked.

"Because I need to tell the higher ups or they'll put a tracker on you and I don't want that. You shouldn't be treated like a prisoner because of what you're doing."

"Maybe they should," she said bitterly. "I am my father's daughter."

What was that about? Something about her biological father maybe? Dean frowned. She got on well enough with Flashbang, unless something happened recently. Whatever it was clearly upset her, but there wasn't enough information to work with.

"You're you," he said, settling for safety in vagueness. "That's all you are."

She stared at him. He stared back. She looked away and mumbled, "PRT Camp Central. I'm working my way north."

Away from New Wave territory, he thought. Away from her family.

Dean nodded. One step a day. He couldn't afford mistakes, not when it felt like defusing a landmine with dynamite.

It would be slow, but it was progress.

-Resonance-

He would have liked it if they had talked more, but with how busy she was being rushed from patient to patient, the opportunity never really came up in the day. During meals, well, she was usually shovelling food down her throat so fast he would have thought she was trying to choke herself.

Dean still thought that was her goal some days.

And after the meals it was back to work for her. At the end of each day, she was too tired to do anything but sleep. Never more than five hours though, she'd force herself awake with coffee.

The best part? Dean had to match her pace. He ate when she ate, went where she went and slept where she slept. He'd be the first to admit he was born into money and maybe more than a little pampered, but Amy's schedule wasn't just unhealthy, it was suicidal.

Which, he supposed, was kind of her point. Amy might be able to return him into a perfectly healthy state, but who could do the same for her?

Four days into the assignment, he was beginning to regret volunteering at all. "We're almost at Brockton Bay General," he grunted, his visor's sights zooming in and calculating the distance left. "Half a mile."

Though with all the wreckage and detouring they had to do, it would be safer to say double that distance. He would never take cars or flying for granted ever again.

"Is this our only stop for today?" Dean asked.

"Yes," Amy said, "unless something unplanned comes up."

As they neared the hospital, he spotted a pair of kids, just a bit younger than himself, staring and whispering. They were excited...for some reason.

That was new as far as reactions went. Relief, sure they got plenty of that. Anger for not coming sooner? An almost daily occurrence. But excited?

The kids continued to watch them, following from a distance until they were inside the hospital.

"Panacea! Thank goodness you've arrived," the nurse at the reception said, rushing over.

"Where am I needed?" she asked.

"With Dr. Crosby first, room 302," he said. "I can show you the way-"

"It's fine," Amy said. "I know where it is."

Dean turned around to see if the kids were still watching them. One of them still was. The other had run off somewhere, maybe to tell their friends? Maybe one of the gangs.

Best to be on guard, just in case. If needed, he could always call in backup from New Wave's fliers or from the Rig - the Protectorate's base offshore, near the Boat Graveyard.

Hopefully, it wouldn't come to that.

Hopefully.