Something was wrong with me, I knew this; Dr. Rieper had talked to me about it, how it was normal to feel… disconnected, from everything. He'd given me a few pamphlets on it, what it was called, and how it affected me.

PTSD; it was hard to understand that I had it, or at least a type of it. Although, Mr. Rieper had said that understanding that I had it was a step in the right direction; the harder part was getting myself to break free from its influence.

This was the reason that I found myself staring at the phone the day after I went to the library. I could pick it up, and call Dragon, just to talk, like what my good Doctor how suggested. She had offered it after all.

School was… school. I spent most of the day like the last few, my head down and doing my best to not get in anyone's way. I knew that this was a problem, that I needed to make friends or else I might go crazy… crazier, that was.

I also knew that no one else had heard the humming coming from the tree, and seeing my Double pop up from time to time was not doing any self-confidence about my sanity any favors.

It was just… a pressure in my chest, whenever someone got close, whenever they talked to me, whenever someone laughed near me.

Intellectually, I knew that no one was out to get me anymore, that any bullying would not be tolerated by Arcadia. Plus, if it involved me, the PRT would make sure it got hit on the head by the biggest hammer they could find, if only to protect themselves from public opinion.

The last thing they needed was another Winslow.

But I just couldn't keep myself from looking over my shoulder; memories of Winslow still curled around my brain, taunting me. Was that mousy girl in my History class just waiting for me to let my guard down, so that she could steal my backpack? That talkative kid behind me in Math, was he going to slip something down the back of my shirt?

Was the only reason Dennis said hello and asked how I was doing each time I sat down because he was a Ward? And was told to keep an eye on me?

In a way, I was more messed up now then I had ever been at Winslow. And it was all made worse by the fact I knew about it.

Yes, it was possible that Dennis was keeping an eye on me, but that didn't mean that him asking how I was doing was less genuine. The kid behind me might just be one of those friendly types that I would easily get along with. And that girl could just not care about me, seeing me as a background person until I talked to her.

All of this was just as possible as the fact that one of them was waiting to stab me in the back. Actually, it was more than likely that they wouldn't want to stab me in the back, but still… the thoughts were there, and that was the problem.

I wanted to make some friends, to get past this block, but…

This is why I was considering calling Dragon, she was dealing with something similar from what I'd read on PHO.

Agoraphobia, a fear of the outdoors that stemmed from one of the Endbringer attacks, this was why she was always spotted in suits or using remote craft. So I figured that she might be a good bet to talk about what I'm going through.

But I just couldn't pick up the phone.

The idea of talking to her, to anyone, about what I was going through now made my throat close up. I couldn't just… I mean… how could I…

It was one thing to know that you're messed in the head, it was another to work your way through it.

I had to though, I needed to. Thoughts of my time at Winslow scared me, I wouldn't go through that again, I couldn't, on either side of the situation. Being bullied every day, or facing life all but alone out of fear.

But it was those same thoughts that pushed me forward. Sophia and Emma were gone, I got to start anew, I just needed to do something.

Ring once… Ring twice… Ring three …

There was the sound of the phone being picked up, being connected, then silence.

"… hello?"

"Ah, sorry, yes hello. Sorry about that, not many people have this number and even fewer use it, this is Taylor yes?"

"Ah, yeah. And you know that how?"

"Brockton Bay area code."

… of course, I was an idiot.

I glanced over at the clock in my living room. It was hard to see with only one lamp on in the dark, but I could make out that the hour hand was definitely past twelve. Sitting there, on my couch, in pajamas, I couldn't help but feel foolish.

"Sorry, did I wake you? I… I could call back later…"

"No, no! You're fine… I don't sleep much anyways…"

Well, that was… something good, maybe. I had to keep my voice low, as dad was sleeping upstairs and, if I had any say in it, would never hear about this.

Calling Dragon was something that had loomed over me for most of the day. Dad… I could talk to dad, but opening up to him, after everything that had happened?

'Deep breaths Taylor, don't lock up.' I didn't have panic attacks, but that didn't mean that the tightness in my chest was any less real.

I wasn't able to get any sleep and had laid in bed for quite a while, awake, thinking. Even after I had gotten up and managed to get myself to the phone, I must have stared at it for what felt like hours until I picked it up.

Now though? …now what? Did I just… speak, to Dragon about my problems?

"So… you were looking for a job?" Dragon asks.

Her voice was enough to pull me back out of the black. "Um, yes. And-and I was thinking about… because of what had happened…" Take a breath girl. "… Do you think that you could help me get an internship at the PRT?"

The silence that followed was not comforting.

"I wouldn't do that if I was you Taylor. While the idea looks fine at the surface, the PRT doesn't really do normal internships, largely because they're a paramilitary government organization. Even if you did get an internship there, to say that the work would be dreadful would be an understatement."

"Oh." And wasn't that crushing.

"You'd be stuck with basically being a go-fer, carrying things around, getting people coffee, cleaning small messes so that the janitors don't have to…"

I could deal with that.

"… Plus, there's the fact they, unless you have an actual job there, can't really pay you anything. Nor would they have to provide any other benefits, as they are a paramilitary organization, so internships don't really happen. And, given your status of being a Parahuman, you can't get a job in the PRT, because then it would undermine the whole purpose of the PRT and the Protectorate being separate."

… oh. That changed things.

"What brought this up anyway?"

What indeed. "… I just… need something to do… How do you deal with it?"

"With my Agoraphobia?" Dragon asked after a few moments.

"Yes."

"… it's… hard, like I'm being restricted, like there are things that I just can'tdo."

I could understand that, a tightness of the chest, wavering will, a feeling of why bother?

"But I get around it, my work helps, but I still take time off to do things I enjoy."

"Such as?"

"I follow pretty much any Tinker discussions on PHO, I talk shop with others about their work, helping them out with ideas if needed…. Really, there is no difference between my work life and my home life at this point. But I enjoy what I do."

I had leaned back into the couch as Dragon talked, relaxing. It was nice to talk to someone that wasn't my dad or a psychologist, someone different.

"Speaking of which…" and I tensed right back up. "I… should be thanking you, really."

… What? "I don't understand. Why would you be thanking me?"

"For Armsmaster. While what happened at your school was a tragedy, let alone what happened to you, it served to… galvanize, Armsmaster. He had dedicated everything to the PRT and the Protectorate, to the point that his civilian identity might as well have not existed. Now however… he's taking a more active role in some things, things that he would have normally tossed to the wayside in the pursuit of his own goals. He does more than just work and Tinker now; he helps out with the PRT troops, trains with the Wards more often, hell, he even helped them in doing their homework!"

Dragon paused as if hearing what she was saying.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have brought that all up. What happened to you never should have happened, but with both my line of work and my own… condition, I always try to look for a silver lining. They may be hard to find, but I have to have hope that there is one."

"It's alright," I mutter. And it was, I needed this, no matter how painful it was. I needed to move on from all that has happened, to trust people again. "Sounds like you're really close to Armsmaster. Do you work with him a lot?"

"… more than most really. He and I… we get along fairly well."

"Must be nice, to have someone like that," I say aloud.

"What about your dad? You still have him."

"Dad is… dad," I say, thinking. "Things have gotten better, but neither of us really know where to go from here. We were… broken, from losing mom. We're getting better, gotten better, but the road is looking like it is going to be a long one."

"Well, at least he's there helping you, that's better than what most can say."

"Yeah, that's true… did your parents have any worries about you being a parahuman?"

There was silence on the other line, and I felt like kicking myself. What if her parents were dead, or don't know what she does for a living?

"All I had was my father," Dragon began. "He was in Newfoundland."

Now I really felt like an ass.

"What we had was… he was a complicated man. He wanted to help the world so much, but he… Strict. That's the word, he was strict. But it wasn't that he didn't care, just… I would like to think he would be proud of me, of who I was now, of the work I was doing."

"Look for the silver lining, huh?"

"Yeah. I miss him, but… at the same time, don't. Strange, I know. I still wish I had more time with him though, but I can't change what happened."

"No mother?"

"Not really, my father never really mentioned anyone, and I never asked."

"Sorry." I couldn't imagine that, mom and dad were both massive parts of my life, to the point that losing mom had all but crippled me for a time. If I lost dad…

No, don't think about that Taylor.

"It's alright, I have no point of reference for a mother, so it's not like I feel like I'm missing something."

That was… what do I say to that?

"I… I guess that you're lucky then, I wouldn't know what to do if I lost dad as well."

… damn it. Open mouth, insert foot.

"I'm sorry, really," I say in a hurry. "I just…"

"It's alright," Dragon cuts me off with, her voice soft. "I get it, really. It's ok, most people might take that a little weird."

Once more, we lapsed into silence. It seemed to be a common theme of the night. To be fair, it had been quite a while since I'd had any type of extended conversation that wasn't with dad or a therapist.

And really, this was going better than I thought it would have… other than just now.

"Tell me about her."

"… pardon?"

"Your mother. From what little I've heard so far, it sounds like she was a big part of your life, and while I can pull up things like school records for her, that doesn't give me a grasp of who she was. So, tell me about her, what was she like?"

… tell her about mom? Talk of her had been practically taboo since she died. Virtually everything tied to her had even been moved to the basement.

My tongue was thick as I tried to speak, and not just because of the question.

It was back, watching me from the doorway, leaning against the frame, waiting.

"… Mom was… she was smart," I began. "She worked as College Professor, English. Which is probably why she got me so many books when I was younger."

My Double cocked its head, the smile never leaving its face.

"She was smart, dad always had her help him do the taxes or helping me with homework. She was a good cook, as long as it didn't involve baking; she never could get the taste of cake right."

Dragon laughed. "I know the feeling, no matter how well I follow the recipe, something is always missing."

I had to chuckle with her, and a knot of tension released from my gut.

"Mom always blamed the oven, said that it was conspiring against her. Dad just thought she that she liked adding a little something to the mixes, rather than just blindly following instructions."

"I still remember when she baked a cake for Emma's birthd…" I trailed off.

"Ah… I'm sorry Taylor, I shouldn…"

"Her birthday," I said as I plowed onward, swallowing. "She had put some cinnamon into the batter as an experiment for a hint of flavor to the vanilla cake. Problem was that she had used sticks, so every now and again, someone would bite into the leftover bits that failed to get broken down during the mixing. We went out for ice cream after that."

"She put cinnamon sticks into a vanilla cake batter?"

I had to laugh at the tone of Dragons voice. "She liked to look at things from different angles, seeing things from a different way. She did that a lot, like…" I had to think, old members, buried, rose to the surface, and I latched onto one.

"Dragons," I stated.

"Dragons," Dragon stated back.

"Yes, Dragons," I repeated, words tumbling from my mouth as I remembered. A set of old books, a soft and warm smile, Emma beside me as she spoke.

"They've been portrayed as many things over the years, from hoarders of gold and destroyers of villages, all the way to protectors and scientific researchers. She liked to point out how many of them shared the same name of dragon, even had the same characteristics, breathing fire, wings, scales, yet what they did swung wildly over the place. Kinda like you and Lung. She would point this out as them being portrayed just like humans, where one was an evil monster just because it existed and needed to be hunted down and killed, another was the best friend of a lost and lonely child, and gave it the companionship that it needed."

… It took me a few moments to work out what I had just said, and then I panicked.

"That… I'm just… she always liked to…"

"Did you know that Lung fought Leviathan?" Dragon asked.

I did.

"He is the only know parahuman aside from the Triumvirate, Alexandria in particular, that have ever lasted long in direct combat with an Endbringer, some even like to say that he was the one that pushed the Endbringer back into the sea."

"But it's funny, we're reversed, him and I. Eastern dragons are often portrayed as guardians, gods, and protectors. They are viewed as a spiritual and cultural symbol that represents prosperity and good luck, as well as even a rain deity that fosters harmony. European dragons however, are envisioned as greedy and gluttonous, with voracious appetites. Them showing up in Christian literature didn't help their cases, they tend to be portrayed as evil because of a reference in the Book of Revelation to Satan."

"Lung is following the Western folklore, using the image to make people fear him, despite being Eastern… I tend to think of myself as following more of the old Welsh folklore, but I can see the parallels between myself and the Eastern lore. A protector of great treasure, a guardian of power."

"… mom would have loved to talk to you," I said still eyeing my Double. "This was the very thing she would talk about all the time."

"I'm sorry I never got to meet her; she sounds wonderful."

"She loved spirituality," I reflected, wanting needing to continue speaking. It was like a dam had been breached, and all the words that I had to hold back for years started spilling out.

"But she didn't follow anything, not really. She was more about the idea of it, less about the concepts of gods, heaven or hell, more like… how it affected the world, how it showed in our actions and our lives. She was almost philosophical at times…"

The words poured out now, a feeling in my chest telling me not to stop talking. Like if I stopped… then the memories of mom would be gone forever.

"She knew first aid; she was the one that made sure dad was always up to date on that. She never really cared for fashion, but she would help me and Emma match up our clothes or help us pick out ones when we needed it."

This didn't stop, I talked about my first time riding a bike, Emma's, before it was stolen at least, moms' hand steady on my back.

About when I got my first F, how I was so scared to show it to them; how she spent all day teaching me fractions, about division and integers.

And so on and so on and so on.

Dragon talked too, about how hard it was, being stuck as she was, about working on Tinker Tech and not being about to explain it to others on how it worked.

This continued back and forth, until I realized that it was nearly three o'clock in the morning.

"Oh, Dragon, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to keep you up this late."

Dragon chucked. "It's fine, I enjoyed it actually. It was… refreshing. It is nice to unwind once in a while, don't you agree?"

"Feel better Kiddo?"

There were several moments that I waited, thinking, before…

"Yeah, I do," I replied. To who I didn't know.

My Double only seemed to grin wider, and in a voice that somehow had gotten even more menacing, said,

"Good."

And if I had any idea on what that meant, maybe I could start to figure out what it was, why it was following me around.

I hadn't really told anyone about it, not even Dr. Rieper knew that I was seeing the Double. Oh, I had alluded to it, but never outright said that I was seeing myself. I had mentioned it like one might talk about looking in a mirror, mostly because when it had first turned up, I was in the hospital, with Armsmaster explaining what had happened to me because of Sophia. He had remarked that it never should have happened, that he was working on resolving it with the PRT, and that he personally was going to see to it.

The first thing my Double had ever said to me was,

"The in-kids don't care about the invisible outs, not until they need something from them, right Kiddo?"

Then I spotted it, laughing, lounging on the seat my father just vacated, its voice sounding like mine, but with a male undertone, at least at first. Nowadays it sounded just like me, if louder and echoey.

No one in the room reacted to it, and later on, Dr. Rieper had told me that sometimes seeing yourself as different was normal after what I had experienced, but I don't think this is what he meant.

"… have you talked to your dad about your mom?" Dragon asked out of the blue, forcing me out of my recollections with a whole other problem.

The fact was… I hadn't, neither of us had. When she had died all the things that had reminded us of her was slowly shuffled down into the basement over a few weeks. After that, there was a void in the house, the feeling of… something missing in our day-to-day lives, something more than the obvious.

And it was always the little things that had caught us by surprise. The dishes piling up, the mail going unsorted, suddenly finding that you're out of things like toothpaste, shampoo, or soap. It wasn't that we couldn't take care of ourselves, it was just… somethings ended up falling to the wayside, being forgotten, until it popped up in our faces.

"Taylor… I know that you don't want to use your powers, but could you at least come in for testing?"

Despite everything, I knew that Dragon would be bringing this up, who wouldn't? I didn't blame her though, but…

"They're not going to just let you go Kiddo."

My Double grinned.

"Its… there's a trend, among the cape population. One way or another, they end up using their powers, either as capes, or as a way to support themselves."

I had figured as much; I could see in-between the lines on PHO. All the stories about capes Triggering and having to do something with their powers, one way or another other. Some even posted asking for help on what to do with them, besides being a villain or a hero.

"They see you as dangerous, a risk, an unknown."

"Your power… what happened to Winslow wasn't your fault Taylor. No one blames you for Triggering and your power activating in a panic. It's happened before, not… quite like you but, there is a precedent for this type of thing, enough so that the legal system has you covered in regard to what happened during your Trigger Event. Still…"

"You can't run away from your power Kiddo."

"I'm not running," I say. To Dragon? To my Double? "I'm just…"

Just what? Afraid? Who wouldn't be?

"Just…"

It wasn't like I had destroyed my school, killed hundreds and caused several blocks to be quarantined from my power activating.

"Just…"

"I will admit, it is not going to be easy," Dragon continued in my silence. "But you can't let what happened hold you back from living."

"But I don't know how," I vocalized in a whisper. "How do I move forward from all that's happened to me?"

"One step at a time, that's how," Dragon told me in a kind voice. "Actually spend some time to talk to your dad… Your mother, she was important to both of you from the sounds of it. Use her to bridge the gap between you two, she wouldn't want her memory push you apart, least to mention everything that's happened up to now."

No, mom wouldn't. At this point, she would have grabbed us both by our ears and dragged us off somewhere to work this out, no matter our feelings on the matter.

"Why are you helping me anyway?" I ask. "I'm not that important."

"Do I have to have a reason to help someone Taylor? Sure, my interest in you might also extend to wanting to know more about your powers, and the fact that you helped Armsmaster, even if you didn't mean too. But none of that means that I'm obligated to help you, I just might want to because I can."

"And you're wrong Taylor; in all of my life, I've yet to meet somebody that wasn't important."

A/N: I'm not happy with the last fourth of this, I feel that it's… sudden. But I was struggling with forming connections with what Taylor and Dragon were talking about and what I needed them to talk about, plus I needed a way for Taylor to start moving forward past her issues and this seems like something Dragon would do so…

And I just got to a point that I just needed to wrap it up. At some point I'll go back over it and do some patching, but for now it's, 'good enough.'

(It's not really, but I'll stay stuck on it if I don't move on, therefore, I'm moving on)