AN: Thanks again to my beta Grey Raven 09 for his assistance!

Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to Worm. If I did, I would be FAR more productive.

Please enjoy and let me know what you think in a review if you feel like it!


Damages 03

I rolled over only my back and let out a quiet sigh as the soft breathing beside me continued unabated.

"Still can't sleep?" Lisa murmured from Madison's other side. Her arm reached over Madison's chest and squeezed my hand.

"Too wired to sleep," I mumbled. "Why are you still awake? You had a long day too, Lise."

"I wanted to make sure she actually fell asleep this time."

"The sleeping pills probably helped," I replied, sighing again.

There was a moment of quiet. I didn't have to look through my bugs to see her grimace. "You knew about that huh?"

"If you hadn't, I would've. She needs the rest. Just don't make a habit of it, okay?"

"Not planning on it." Lisa levered herself up onto her elbow and looked over Madison. "Meds only get us so far though. Do you want to try to sleep some more or do you want to shift to whatever the fancy side-room is called to talk?"

I shook my head. "Not gonna get to sleep anytime soon and Mads is gonna be out for a while. Let's move."

"Okay."

I pulled my arm out from under Madison's neck, feathering a kiss on her forehead as she settled against the pillow instead and climbed from the bed. A few moments later I had plopped myself down onto the fluffy armchair in the attached sunroom and pulled Lisa down onto my lap, her loose t-shirt fluttering as she fell against me. She pulled her legs up onto the armchair and curled up, snuggling into a small ball on top of me and laying her head against my chest. "Sometimes I forget how tall you are, Tay," she murmured, her breath tickling my chest through my own shirt.

"I kinda wish I was shorter," I replied softly, as I ran one hand through her hair and the other stroked her back.

"I don't. This is…really nice."

"I'm glad."

We sat in silence for a few minutes just listening to the soft patter of the rain outside and I kept running my hand along my girlfriend's back and she murmured small noises that I took as encouragement. Her own hand had started tracing small circles on the top of my thigh which was pleasantly distracting. I let my mind wander, checking in on my people as we stayed curled up.

Vicky had stayed the night and was actually bunking with Amy. I didn't linger long there, just enough to see them both smiling in their sleep. Emily and Mimi were in rooms next to each other, Emily was zonked out, Mimi was chatting online with…Elle apparently. I wasn't sure who that was, but both appeared happy with the discussion so I chose not to pry. Cassie had curled up in her bed with a pillow. She was…hmm, I'd have to talk to her. She looked like she had been upset before she'd gone to bed, from the way her things were neatly arranged instead of tossed around haphazardly. Paige wasn't actually sleeping yet, but was bobbing her head to some cd or other, a happy grin on her face. Lily was sitting next to her with a second set of headphones on, her eyes closed as she moved along with the music.

I shifted my focus to check in on Karen to make sure she was fine. She had decided to stay with Hannah for a few days and the two of them were apparently playing Monopoly. The recently healed Independent was also cackling like a madwoman as Hannah landed on one of her hotel properties. I smirked and moved over to Colin. He was working on something with Theresa that made my brain hurt as I listened for a few moments. Shaking my head I quickly changed over to look in on Ethan and Jessie. Ethan was dead asleep, but Jessie was cooing over…what the kid's name…Aster, Jessie was cooing over Aster.

I moved along as Aster giggled and looked for Dennis and Missy. Missy was laying on her couch, remote in hand while a monster movie marathon from Aleph played on the screen. Dennis sat beside her with his bowl of popcorn in hand. They each threw a handful at the screen as the character did something dumb.

Chuckling, I shifted focus again and looked for Emma. She may not officially be one of mine, but I still wanted to know she was safe. Especially since she wasn't exactly in a healthy place mentally and with how Madison had just acted…Better to be safe. Emma was staying with the Wards at the PRT HQ apparently. I smiled softly as I saw that she had managed to get Anne clearance to stay with her for the night. That was good. Anne would keep her safe.

I moved onto Marissa next. She was in a small apartment with Jess. Neither were conscious, but neither appeared particularly disturbed. I didn't really know Marissa enough to recognize any glaring tells from her however, so I could've been missing something with the quick glance and I had barely interacted with Jess at all. Something to fix in the future.

Dinah though…I sighed as I looked at Dinah. She was…good. She was very good. Her mom was talking with my father about upping the tutoring programs they were using and her father was reading a story to her as she drifted off to sleep.

Dad just really didn't get how he was doing so much better with her did he? Maybe that was partly my fault…maybe I needed to actually talk to him instead of just yell

"Penny for your thoughts?" Lisa murmured.

"I just wanted to make sure everyone was okay," I said shrugging as best I could without really changing my position or stopping the movement of my hands against her head and back. "With how things went down…I wanted to be sure."

"Yeah." She fell silent, but after a second she squeezed my thigh and I felt her back tense slightly under my hand. "Taylor? When you say you were looking in on everyone…just how were you doing that?"

"I have tagged patrols in everyone's home now. Better to be safe than sorry." I sighed. "I know I'm probably getting paranoid again, but I'm not worried someone is going to betray us, I just want to be prepared in case someone gets kidnapped again."

"…Everyone's home? Including the Rig?"

"Yeah. Why?"

Lisa laughed and the slight manic edge to it had me pausing in my ministrations. "No reason. No reason at all."

"Lisa…"

"No, it's just - look I don't want to do this right now, okay? Please?"

I sighed and nodded. Resting my chin on the top of her head I resumed massaging her back and playing with her hair. "Okay. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize. You have nothing to be sorry for. I just…everything's changing and I never dealt with change well. Not when I wasn't the one who made it happen. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm a bit of a control freak, Tay."

"You? Never! Perish the thought!"

She snorted. "Hardy har har. I'm getting better."

"Uh huh."

"I am," she whined.

"Whatever you say."

"Bitch."

"I've been called worse," I chuckled. I kissed the top of her head as Lisa grumbled. Then she lifted her head from my chest and looked into my eyes, blinking rapidly.

"Those people who did that to you…They had no idea what the fuck they were missing out on." She leaned up and pressed her lips to mine. My eyes drifted closed and I just savored the moment for as long as it lasted. This hadn't happened nearly enough or for nearly long enough when it did. We didn't get to slow down enough. We didn't get to just be there. And now…It was wonderful, it was amazing. It was everything it was supposed to be. The taste, the smell, the sounds, everything. All too soon, it ended and she pulled back, smiling up at me, letting her head drop back against my chest again. "No. Idea."

"I kinda feel like I should be defending Emma since she was moulded by Psycho Bitch while she was having a breakdown and that I should defend Madison since she was…in over her head I guess? But it's late and I'm tired and that kiss was really good and I'm just gonna shut up now."

"Good call, Tay," Lisa said chuckling.

After letting it lie for a moment a niggle at my thoughts came to the forefront that I couldn't really ignore any more. "Lise, can I ask you a…somewhat personal question?"

"Shoot. Just know I might not answer."

"Do you still get, you know, the sensory overload thing when we kiss? I know before I tried to blank myself a bit to see if that helped, but I don't know how much it really did anything."

Lisa stayed quiet for a long time. Long enough that I was worried she wasn't going to say anything. Finally she shook her head and burrowed against me even more. "It's…hard to explain, Taylor. Before the other day, I could kiss you. I could go further too, but it was hard. I had to get really into it and really tamp down on things. I really like you and you're enough of a good person that most of the details I got from you I could deal with. There were a few turnoffs, but nothing that was an immediate 'oh dear god, abort, abort now!' like with some other people I'd tried to date. With them, it was things like 'she reminds me of my mother!', 'this is exactly like fucking my sister!', 'ooh I can pretend she's that cute blond from History I always wanted to mess around with!', or my personal favorite 'I can finally fuck that Empire trash and beat the bitch senseless without worrying about the gang coming back for retribution'. Yeah, reported that fucker to the BBPD right away."

I think I stopped breathing as my eyes went wide during Lisa's little speech. She took one of my hands and held it to her chest, pressing it between her breasts and holding me tight. "You were different. With you it was always more along the lines of 'she's beautiful', 'why am I looking at her breasts?', 'am I gay?', 'how do I keep attracting lesbians to me?', 'do I actually want to keep attracting lesbians?', 'I am enjoying this aren't I?', 'golly it's adorable how she's so much shorter than me'. Stuff like that. The overload was annoying, but nothing really off-putting."

"That's…good to hear I suppose," I mumbled. How I managed to speak through my blush I had no idea. There was so much blood in my face I had to be close to passing out.

"But now, things are different. My power is different." Lisa shifted and she curled her arms around my hand. "I can't see things like I used to. I don't get flashes of insight anymore. I'm…I'm less than I was, Taylor."

"Hey, hey, don't say that." I stopped running my hand down her back and wrapped my free arm around her shoulder pulling her against my chest as hard as I could. "Just because your power is different now doesn't mean you're worth any less as a person or a cape, Lisa. Don't think like that!"

"I can't help it." She shuddered. "I've lived with my power constantly whispering at me for so long. It's been a part of life. And now it's just…not. It's like someone scooped a chunk of my head out and left me empty. Except I don't know whether I should be jumping for joy or cursing the universe because it's gone. I mean, yeah, I don't miss the headaches, at fucking all, but…I liked being the smartest person in the room…"

"You're still really smart, Lisa. And you were always good at reading people even without your power."

She hiccuped and I could feel her squeeze my hand hard enough to hurt my fingers. "I know, but it's not the same. I don't have the security blanket anymore and it terrifies me."

"Okay, that's understandable," I murmured. I had to get her off this topic or she would end up crying herself to sleep just like Madison had been doing before we got her to drink the damn tea. "Well, what does your power do now?"

[Negotiator] now -

Shush, I'm talking with your [Host]. She'll explain it and if I need clarification I can ask you later. Deal?

This is acceptable. [Negotiator] is curious how close Lisa[Host] approaches to the actual ability expression!

Lisa sat up and looked at me with a small grimace. "Don't freak out okay?"

"Okay?"

"Promise me. This is…going to be…weird. Even for us."

I just nodded. She climbed off my lap and stood a few feet away, took a breath, closed her eyes and when she opened them again, there was an intensity I had never seen before. It was like she was boring into my soul. She kept staring at me for about ten seconds then held her hand out in front of her. A small miasma of greenish-black energy coalesced in her hand and after another few seconds she was holding a pistol. Her eyes looked deeper and the pistol morphed after another thirty seconds into something larger and more intricate. It had distinct tinkertech hallmarks on it and I could hear a dim whine as a gauge on the side of it lit up. It also had a laser sight now that was locked onto a point just between my eyebrows. Her gaze didn't waver an iota and after another minute the gun shifted again, growing into an assault rifle and becoming almost full tinkertech. The next iteration was a full-blown sniper rifle and with almost no analogue to normal, non-tinker guns.

It was at that point that Lisa gasped, let her grip slacken, and squeezed her eyes shut. The weapon vanished back into thin air and her breath came in short ragged gulps. I surged off the armchair and pulled her back into my arms. She melded into me and slowly her breathing returned to normal. "Fuck. That didn't screw me up nearly so bad when I tried that with anyone else. Fuck."

"So it's not always a gun?" I asked.

"No, it's always a gun," she replied, shaking her head. "And it always gets more complex and more tinkery the longer I focus on the weak point. It just never escalates quite like that. It never gets to a point where my mind is exploding with numbers and figures and cross-dimensional locations and tech that will hit multiple worlds at once in order to target a single point and it's…fuck. Taylor, I don't know if you can be killed without power fuckery anymore!"

I forced down my initial reaction to that and I tried to ignore that shudder that passed down my spine as her words sank into me. "So, um, with other people…"

"The gun just gets bigger and stronger. It can shoot further and more accurately, or more powerfully if I need to get through shields. When I focused on Vicky, it became a two-stage mega cannon that was anchored to the ground and I was just holding the trigger. Mimi's was a freeze ray. Paige's was some sort of sound deadening ray gun coupled with a projectile round. I don't know for sure; it's hard to remember the more esoteric ones after I stop focusing on specific people."

"So instead of figuring out information around you, you're figuring out what? How to beat people?"

"Weak spots. I think. I tried to focus on an Endbringer shelter to see if it would work on non-living things. Didn't do shit. But I can focus on anything living. Bitch's dogs for instance. I paid her a visit and asked her to transform one. My power focuses on the actual dog not the shell around it. It becomes a pile driver of sorts."

"Huh." Well this was…different. "This could be incredibly useful, Lisa."

"It's also incredibly lethal." She scowled. "There's no way to dial it back, or if there is I haven't found it yet." She shuddered and I squeezed her harder. "You put me on a roof and I probably can kill almost anyone if you can keep them distracted long enough. But I can't do anything except kill them. I also apparently burn out if I start focusing on someone that needs special effort to reach the weak point."

"Like me," I murmured.

"Like you," she agreed. "Taylor, this thing, it wasn't targeting you. It was targeting your shard. I…I don't know if QA is going to let you die by normal means anymore. Between QA and Amy, or really, between QA and Shaper…"

Another shudder ran down my back. "Yeah. Yeah…"

What was I becoming? What had I become?

Was I even human anymore?


AN: So Grey Raven had suggested (rightfully so) that this would actually be a perfect place to end the story, as many threads are tied off, there are hints for the future and several different types of hope for an ultimate resolution while everyone is also healing. If we had lost interest in continuing to the planned conclusion, this would be where we could leave off...Good thing I haven't lost interest eh?

Fanfic Rec: 'In Which Amy's Revenge Misfires' by Peanuckle. On QuestionableQuesting. A long oneshot where Amy makes Taylor into a custom futanari after the Leviathan battle solely to molest Lisa and suppress Lisa's powers for revenge against Tattletale. This backfires rather horribly as Lisa ends up enjoying it. It's a good example of Lisa getting too much info from her powers before they wind up suppressed. It's very good though obviously smutty.