In which Lisa is not okay, but receives help from an unexpected source, before having a difficult conversation.
Lisa barely had an hour of sleep since the phone call with Aisha, since the whispers invaded nearly every waking moment.
It was like triggering all over again. Not the event itself, thankfully, but the aftermath.
The foreign presence in her head, speaking to her at the least opportune time.
Overstimulation. Loss of control. The headaches pounding away in her brain.
The confusion, the fear.
God's voice echoed in her ears, a voice that sounded like her father and Coil and that one enforcer from the Boardwalk and every man she was afraid of talking at once.
'The woman must be held in her place, for she is weak, and cannot stand on her own, no matter how vast her cunning.'
Also, God was a fucking asshole.
Lisa thought she heard other voices too, but his was by far the loudest of them, trying to worm its way into her lungs and use her as a mouthpiece.
She barely had room in her head to think. She just wanted them to shut up. Voices are a manifestation of the Trump power. Manifestation varies depending on the individual, often relates to powers. You hear voices because you already heard your power,
'She sees so much but she sees none of the things that matter. She did not see how she hurt the shaper, she did not see how she lead the insect to her doom, she did not see when her brother-'
"Shut up!" Lisa screamed, as though the thing in her head was human enough to listen. Her own voice drove pounding nails into her skull, her hands clapping over her ears as she shoved her head into the couch.
There was a moment of blessed silence. Then the whispers came back, louder and more chaotic than ever, and Lisa wailed in agony as they told her everything she didn't want to know about herself and about everything around her-
"Lisa."
A single voice, soft and gentle, cut through the din like a knife. A voice she recognized, knew well. A voice she'd never expected to hear like this.
A voice that was real.
"Lisa," Rachel cooed, high pitched and sweet. "Come here, girl."
She rolled on the couch, just enough to see the figure of Bitch, crouched low and beckoning, with an expression on her face that Lisa could maybe read as concern. 'Cast out the feral child,'
She tried to push her head up. The change in blood flow made a thousand knives cross through her brain. With a gasp, she fell back to the couch, flailing her arms out in an agonized attempt to make Rachel come to her.
The girl seemed to understand the gesture, or at least understand that Lisa couldn't move in her condition. Slowly, as if to avoid startling her, Rachel padded across the room.
Her bleary, tear-filled eyes made out the shape of Rachel as she came to a stop in front of the couch, still seemingly unwilling to initiate contact.
"Shh shh shh, it'll be okay," Rachel sang, and Lisa was once again struck by the absurdity of the girl using that voice on any human being, much less her. Was this even real?
This is real.
She pushed her hand out, groping half-blind until she found Rachel's waist, pulled her weakly inwards.
The girl's soft, sweet nothings drowned out the whispers as she drew close, pressed her hand delicately into Lisa's head.
She clung to Rachel as if she could ward off the madness, and somehow, she did.
Maybe there was only room for one set of whispers.
Lisa didn't know how long she spent under Rachel's caring hands and gentle, meaningless words.
She finally managed to gather herself, beat back the pounding, the sounds in the corner of her mind, enough to look up and see the girl's face.
"Why?" Lisa croaked, her throat dry from so many words tumbling out before.
Rachel's gentleness shifted into an expression that Lisa couldn't read. Not that Lisa was ever good at reading Rachel's expressions. "You needed it," her teammate whispered.
Doesn't like you. Understood your distress. Feels guilty for not helping you earlier. Drawing associations with her foster siblings.
"I… did," Lisa agreed, more to fill the space than anything. Rachel gave her a look as if to say 'that's what I just said.'
"Do you want me to fuck them up?"
"What?" Lisa whispered, even though she already knew the answers.
"The Devils. Fuckers did this to you, didn't they?"
Did they?
She breathed in, thought about the question.
You're not an enemy of them. None of them would do this without reason. Devils and those infected with Devilhood exhibit powers-based stress responses. You have been under high stress. The voices are a stress response.
"They didn't mean to," Lisa finally said.
Rachel scowled. "Still did it."
"It'll be fine," she protested. "As long as I'm not too stressed out."
Rachel gave her an irritated look, and Lisa sighed, slowly pushing herself upwards until she was seated upright against the couch.
"We can," she wet her lips. "We can get some answers from them later. I need to recover a little longer, okay?"
Rachel grunted, which Lisa took as assent. She paused, breathed in, felt air rough against her throat.
"I need water," she finally mumbled.
Rachel nodded. Lisa watched her go, not that it was far.
The sound of running water was music to Lisa's ears.
Rachel returned with a plastic cup, freshly filled.
Lisa grabbed it, spilling a little as she greedily gulped, gulped, gulped- only to splutter as Rachel yanked it back out of her hand.
"The-" Lisa coughed, spat out a little stray water. "The fuck?"
"Slow," Rachel chided.
Lisa felt her face flush.
After a moment, Rachel let her have the cup again, and she nursed delicately from it, savoring the texture and the coolness on her tongue.
Lisa swallowed, set the cup down on the coffee table. The whispers were still audible at the back of her mind, a low, thoughtless drone.
She looked up at Rachel again, taking in the girl's silently questioning expression.
"I need to… find Taylor's father again. I need to talk to him."
"When?"
"...now's good."
"I'll come with you," Rachel said, and it was most assuredly not a question.
Lisa considered protesting anyways, then decided against it. She'd need the backup if something happened on the way.
"We're going to talk, not to fight, but bring a dog or two, in case something happens. And let me give you some makeup. Maybe some hair dye."
"The fuck you want that for?" Rachel growled.
Lisa winced, but pressed onwards. "We don't need him getting in trouble because someone recognized you going into his house."
"Mnh."
For all of Rachel's grumbling, Lisa knew that she'd won.
Lisa had been here before. Once to deliver Taylor to safety after she'd suffered a concussion against Bakuda, and then again, when Taylor had called her to escape an argument with her father.
Her last words to him, before Leviathan.
It was already a questionable neighborhood, and Leviathan hadn't exactly helped. So many broken windows.
"Feels like someone's watching. Don't like it," Rachel grunted.
Lisa looked over the girl. Her hair, dyed several shades darker, a flat color that was about all Rachel could tolerate. Her face, adjusted as much as Lisa dared, and further concealed by a baseball cap. There hadn't been time to get her clothes, but Lisa had at least convinced Rachel to let go of the jacket she usually wore.
It was a shit disguise, but it would have to do.
"PRT has a couple of guys around here," Lisa responded, inclining her head in the direction of the van parked a few houses down. "Nothing fancy, just covering their asses. They've got way more people around the hospital Taylor's in. As long as we don't make ourselves obviously villains, they shouldn't bother us."
"Still don't like it."
She sighed. "Just follow me and don't escalate, okay?"
Rachel made a noise. Lisa wasn't sure what it meant, but she'd take what she could get.
Daniel Hebert's house hadn't changed much since she last saw it. There was still the broken step, the faded paint. The lawn hadn't been tended since Leviathan, if not before.
There was a light on, but was anyone home?
Lisa walked to the door, forcing herself to make the motions casual as she skipped the broken step. Rachel followed behind, a pair of smaller dogs that Lisa didn't recognize on her leash.
Chosen for size and demeanor; less aggressive than her usual dogs.
She tried the doorbell.
Nothing seemed to happen when she pushed the button.
So Lisa knocked. Hard.
The door sounded almost sick. Was it rotting?
She waited for a moment. Then, when she heard no movement, she tried again.
This time, she caught something. Faint enough that she almost thought she imagined it, but her power confirmed it for her. He's here.
They waited.
And waited.
"Fuck, do you want me to bust it down?"
Lisa shook her head, but knock-knock-knocked one last time.
She didn't need her power to confirm the noises, now. She could almost see him stumbling forward, his steps uneven and erratic.
Daniel Hebert opened the door, and it was like looking at a man unraveled.
He positively reeked of alcohol and sweat. Only half dressed, his belt missing loops and his shirt simply missing. His glasses sat skewed on his face, and Lisa could see cracks spiderweb through the lenses. Even as she stared at him, he swayed uncertainly, everything about him coming undone.
'The rat is a pathetic creature, a scurrying vermin amongst a horde of so many others. Pity the rat, for it is too simple to see the future as God can; it can only see the past that will inevitably be lost to it, and thus does it covet, thus does it cling foolishly to that which can no longer be had,' God whispered.
"...Lisa," he finally croaked, recognition pushing through the haze in his eyes.
She didn't trust herself to speak. She simply nodded.
Recognition turned to anger, adrenaline pushing out the alcohol.
"Tattletale," he hissed.
Lisa didn't know what her face said right now. She wasn't sure she wanted to.
"What the fuck are you doing here? You took my daughter from me!"
"No she fucking didn't!"
He stomped forward, and Rachel stomped up to meet him, teeth bared in a snarl while her dogs barked and stepped up to protect their mistress.
Pressure and whispers bore down on Lisa, and it was all she could do to raise her voice, to try and cut through the confrontation. She wanted to mock him, to beat him down. The words she eventually said felt like the hardest five words of her life.
"Yes, I did. I'm sorry."
Rachel whipped her head around, studying Lisa's face. Daniel actually blinked, his momentum arrested, his face going through an unreadable mess of expressions before settling on angry confusion, beginning to build back up to another fireball of rage.
"Is that why you're here? To apologize?! You're a criminal, a villain, and you expect an apology to make everything alright?"
'How many people have you hurt?' God murmured. 'How many lives have your words upended?'
"No," she agreed, fighting tears off of her face. "I lost the right to call myself a good person a long time ago. But when I met your daughter, it was obvious she needed a friend. And I tried to be that friend. It wasn't… it wasn't supposed to end like this. To get her hurt."
"I can't imagine why," Danny growled. "It isn't like you recruited her for your criminal organization or anything-"
"I know that! I'm sorry, okay? I never even wanted to be a villain! Coil recruited me at gunpoint!"
"Maybe I'd believe that, if you'd ever shown a hint of remorse about your actions, Tattletale. I looked up everything available, once I learned who my daughter's 'new friends' really were. The only difference between you and Hookwolf is that you're not a Nazi and you hurt people with words instead of knives."
He glared at her, and even Rachel looked at her in a way that Lisa wasn't altogether comfortable with. She could hear the voices judging her, too. Condemning her.
She wanted to deny it. He was… he was going too far.
But…
"I tried to fix things, once," she mumbled, ignoring Daniel's unimpressed look. "Tried to help people whenever I could. It was never enough. The world's too broken for me to try and save. And… breaking things is so much easier than fixing them. And so much more rewarding."
"...not for me," Rachel suddenly said, sounding almost... Shy? "Taking care of dogs is better than fucking up assholes. It's just as hard, but well-treated dogs will love you forever. Fighting only makes you happy for a little while."
"I guess that makes you a better person than me," Lisa found herself mumbling, and Rachel grunted in vague agreement.
Daniel shook his head in raw disbelief. "Aren't you Hellhound? The murderer?"
"Name's Bitch," she growled, all traces of softness vanishing in an instant. "You wanna make something of it?"
"It doesn't matter," Lisa managed before Danny could speak, feeling a vein throb in her forehead as he and Rachel stared each other down again. "We're not here just to waste your time, Mr. Hebert."
"Could have fooled me," he spat.
"We need to-"
A flash of pain ran down her neck as the words of God echoed in her ears. 'Who are you to tell him what to do? How dare you think your words mean anything but pain,' it thundered, and pain became agony, a wordless cry falling from her lips before she could stop it. Her vision swam as she fell to one side, crashing into Rachel's solid form, the larger girl grunting as she took the impact.
If he said something else, Lisa didn't hear it. Rachel filled in the silence, pushing forward with Lisa in tow.
"Move."
"Get… get the fuck out of my house!"
Lisa thought she heard a scuffle, but it didn't end with anyone on the ground, and Rachel kept going. "She needs to sit down."
She held on, wrapped both hands around Rachel for support as the girl guided her forward. Her heart pounded in her ears. The whispers, gently mocking her. Two sets of footsteps, one firm and one hesitant. Her own feet, more dragging than walking.
Then Rachel let go of her, and Lisa fell into the couch, groaning as her back hit the cushions.
Her eyesight resolved enough that she recognized the Heberts' living room. Recognized that this was the same couch that they'd laid Taylor out on after the battle with Bakuda.
The irony didn't escape her.
It didn't escape Taylor's father, either. The man must have followed Rachel, and now he was looking down at Lisa's form, ignoring the butch girl glaring at him off to the side.
Drawing associations with Taylor-
Then he looked away, stared at the wall.
And Lisa did too.
She didn't deserve to be compared to the girl she'd gotten hurt, after all. And she definitely didn't need her power telling her that.
For a minute, there was only tense silence and the sound of her own breathing.
Only then did Daniel turn back to her and speak. "What… what did you come here for, then?"
"I wanted to talk… about your daughter," she carefully enunciated. "And how we're going to save her."
His eyes narrowed in suspicion, though she thought she saw the hope hidden beneath. "You can't be serious. And… even if you were, you couldn't do it."
"I couldn't," Lisa agreed. "But... I know who could."