In which the wound fades, but the pain remains.

Seriously. Groceries.

Ugh.

Victoria sighed, dropping bags of FEMA-issued rations in front of the pantry.

At least that was over with. She'd only had to stand in line for an hour, or maybe two hours, God she had no fucking idea. Being a cape didn't give her priority, which was either the best idea anyone had ever come up with or by far the worst idea anyone had ever come up with. Sure, no one gave her shit about standing in line with the rest of the normals, so that was nice. On the other hand, she couldn't reach Dean - probably doing Wards stuff - which meant she didn't have anything to do but listen to everyone's anxious mumbling. And then she actually got to the end of the line and was promptly guilted into carrying stuff around when one of the relief workers recognized her and mentioned that they needed supplies moved from the staging areas. Being a glorified delivery service… actually felt kinda nice when she saw people looking up at her and cheering while she brought in pallets of bottled water and food. But still! It was literally glorified delivery work! They didn't need a superhero to do it, not when there were still convoys that needed to be protected and patrols to be made and so many better things she could be doing.

Hell, she could have even been taking Amy to Weymouth, if not for her sister's weird freakout about it. And seriously, what on Earth was that about? Amy liked Victoria much, much more than she liked Carol. That wasn't even remotely in dispute. Why would she suddenly decide that mom had to come along?

Honestly, she was still a little worried about it. Wasn't like Amy at all. And yeah, her sister's normal behavior wasn't exactly happy, so maybe a little weirdness was a good thing? But this didn't strike Victoria as a good thing.

While she was wondering what the hell to do, her phone buzzed.

Ah. She was wondering where Mom and Amy were. Shouldn't they have been home by now?

Parental Unit 1:
Come to Weymouth Mall
We need to talk

Wait what the fuck.

Me:
What's going on?

Parental Unit 1:
Something big happened
Don't want details leaking until we decide how to handle it
Make sure no one follows you

Me:
Seriously, what's going on?

Moments later, her phone rang.

"Victoria," her mother murmured, her voice slow and a little pained. The sound of flowing water swirled around her in the background.

"Mom, what the hell is going on?"

"I'm okay," Carol insisted.

"You don't sound even remotely okay."

There was silence for a moment. Her mother coughed, as if to emphasize the point. Then a long, troubled sigh.

"Alright. There was an… accident, I think. Amy and I were hurt. Riley says I'm recovering well, and I believe her for the moment, though I'm less sure about your sister." She paused, listening to a faint voice in the background. "Ah. They say she's 'almost back in her skin for now', whatever that means, exactly. Seems like a good thing."

Victoria's heart beat like a drum. "Mom... Carol, what exactly happened?"

"A lot of things. It's… I told you I don't want to leak details. But we do need to talk about it. Come here as soon as you're able. I love you."

Victoria barely got out a reflexive "Love you too" before her mother hung up.

This was suspicious and scary and it'd be a bad idea to run in there to rescue her family, but damn if she had any other idea. It'd take hours for the Protectorate to respond, with how thinly stretched they were right now. Gallant and the Pelhams were both presumably on patrol or doing some other Important Superhero Thing.

That just left her.

Carol had sounded stressed, but not like she was being held at gunpoint, or powers-point, or something. But with Master powers, you never really knew. The Devils - no, wait, weren't they calling themselves Eden now? - probably weren't Masters, but there were always other possibilities, Tinkertech or hidden powers or other capes altogether.

Still, if she was being genuine, and Victoria was starting to think that was more likely than not, then enlisting random people to help would just increase the chance of something getting out and hurting the family somehow.

Wait a minute…

Victoria's eyes widened, and she mentally kicked herself before flying straight up the stairs.

Her father was in the bedroom, as was not uncommon. Mark's eyes stared out the window, out into the rows of too-similar houses behind white picket fences, out towards the wall that protected their little gated community from 'undesirable elements'.

Victoria carefully made her way to his side. He barely seemed to acknowledge her existence.

"Dad?"

Slowly, his eyes turned to her.

"I need you," she insisted. "Mom and Amy might be in trouble."

He blinked. A major expression for him, on one of his worst days.

"I was going to try and see what the hell was going on, but I couldn't reach Aunt Sarah, and the Protectorate was too busy. But I need backup."

"And you want me," he whispered.

Victoria nodded.

Flashbang stared at her in silence for a little while longer.

Then he pushed his hands under his body and lifted himself up.

"Then let's go."

Her dad gradually grew more animated as she explained the situation. Victoria supposed that was a silver lining. Mark wasn't a capital-T Thinker, but he'd always been a thinker, and she'd long since come to realize that the closest thing to a reliable way to get him out of a funk was to give him an intellectual problem, give him something to do with his head.

How to get two open capes into another open cape team's semi-known base without being followed or recognized definitely qualified as an intellectual problem.

They decided to put on some generic, concealing costumes. Victoria found a box of masks in the coat closet, and a vaguely-sky-colored hoodie from maybe six months ago. Mark pulled out an old grey bodysuit from the walk-in, and thankfully didn't need her help putting it on. At his insistence, she tied a few colorful bands around her sleeves, the better to at least pretend it was an actual costume. She got him back with wayward splashes of color over each side of the bodysuit, a half-hearted tie-dye effect that'd simply have to do if they didn't want to be here until tomorrow.

They even agreed on fake cape names in case they ran into anyone (and wasn't that funny? False false identities!): she was Vega and he was Lightshow and they were new indie heroes checking out the neighborhood.

Mark went so far as to draw up an elaborate plan to throw off the scent, with switchbacks and costume changes and alternating between walking and flying along the route. Worthy of Accord, she said, even if all Victoria really remembered about the man was that he was a major villain in Boston and a Thinker with a penchant for convoluted plans. (She would readily confess to being a cape nerd, but there were a lot of capes out there, and even her nerdery had its limits!)

It was almost a shame that no one tried to follow them. Nobody Victoria noticed, anyways. They slipped out the back door in silence, climbed over three mostly intact fences and four not-so-intact fences, got spotted by a very startled woman who apparently lived in that particular house, flew off before said very confused woman could call the police on them (or worse, see through their half-assed disguises), circled around in arbitrary directions for a few minutes, stopped in at a ruined building and walked maybe half a mile, flew off again and did a few more zigs and zags, and finally, after all of that, came up on Weymouth Mall.

Victoria didn't even have to use their fake cape names. What a damn shame.

It was easy to recognize the building that Eden had converted into their base. Maybe not so much from the ground, but from any decent vantage point, the tree growing out of the middle of the mall was hard to miss.

She carefully set her dad down on a stable-looking piece of roof, letting him stretch his legs for a moment. "Did you want to come down with me, or stay up here…?"

"Bring me down fast," he answered. "I can't support you from up here, and I don't trust this roof any more than you do. But I'm afraid your arms aren't a tactically advantageous firing position, either."

She couldn't help but chuckle, but she nodded all the same.

Victoria looped her arms around her father one more time, carefully lifting him into a perfect bridal carry. The absurdity of carrying Mark like this had been funny the first time, but by now she was almost used to it. And it was by far the most comfortable position to be carried in.

Still, he offered her a little smile, just for a moment before she took off.

Then Victoria was in the air, the wind pushing Mark into her arms. The edge of the broken ceiling came up before her, the massive tree peeking up over the lip. This close, she could make out the texture of the bark, terracotta veins molded across the branches, glowing sap oozing down the trunk in rivers of life, strange fruit swaying below the leaves.

She dove.

"Ah! Victoria!"

Venus's airy voice greeted her before she could get a word out. She blinked, turning to face the girl, finding her practically on the opposite side of where she'd been looking. The angel of light fluttered in an archway of curving metal, her wings and eyes spread wide, not relaxed but watchful, widening as they took in Victoria's presence.

"...and Mark?" the girl added, after a moment.

Glory Girl narrowed her eyes. "Where are they?" she demanded, drawing all the height and presence she could summon, looming over the little ball of wings for all of her scale. (That she was still cradling Mark did slightly ruin the effect, admittedly.)

Venus let out a little eep, almost adorable if not for the context, and swam backwards through the air like some kind of reverse flying fish. "T-they're right here!" the Devil stammered, gesturing frantically behind her.

Victoria met her gaze, searching those countless eyes for any trace of deception. She was no empath, but she saw only fear and guilt.

She settled for a vaguely threatening, wordless snarl, a sort of 'you'd better behave if you know what's good for you' noise that drew another little squeak from Venus. Glory Girl ignored her, and barely remembered to set her father down on his feet before she rushed through the archway…

...and stopped cold.

"...oh."

She struggled to take in the scene before her eyes in all of its macabre glory. Whatever the room had been before, it was occupied now by a broad, shallow basin, almost-picture-perfect swimming pool tile stained by black tears and the vines that crawled across the walls and shadowed the floor. It wasn't like any hospital room she'd seen before, but it was obvious what it was being used for right now.

After all, it had patients.

Her mother rested on one side of the pond, up to her waist in clear water. From the neck down, Carol was a mess of discolored handprints and raw-red flesh, her chest moving with heavy, labored breaths. Victoria was vaguely aware of Riley scraping away broken skin and Neptune swirling dead tissue off of Carol's body. She was far more aware of her mother's eyes as they rose to meet her, tired and pained and angry and determined and so, so sad.

Her sister was on the other side, and somehow she was even worse. It was like someone had been given a half-dozen sets of human body parts and told to put them together, without any idea how they were supposed to combine or even that they were meant to be part of separate people. Arms pressed against legs pressed against necks pressed against hips without rhyme or reason. A tangle of limbs and bodies rose up from the pool, in spite of Jupiter surrounding the pile of flesh and attempting to keep it in check. And it was all recognizably Amy, down to the loneliness in three pairs of eyes.

And down to the ache that ran across Amy's every feature as she caught sight of Victoria, a dozen arms and hands instantly erupting from beneath the water, grasping instinctively for her sister even as the rest of the pile seemed to be attempting to recoil, to push itself away.

"Vicky," Amy sobbed, and it shattered what was left of Victoria's heart.

"Ames," she whispered, her voice catching in her throat. "Mom."

Her father stepped past her, his head slowly panning from her mother to her sister in quiet horror. "What… what is this?" Mark mumbled, and Victoria didn't know who he was talking to, his gaze slowly fading into the middle distance. "Darling… Amy…"

Devils glanced at each other for explanations, direction. It was just a momentary pause, and Venus opened her mouth to speak, but Carol beat her to it.

"They're-" she began, only to cut herself off with a thick, hacking cough. Concerned eyes turned towards her, Victoria's the least among them. Riley rubbed Carol's back with one hand and offered her a mug with another. Shaking hands cradled the thick cup and lifted it to her lips, taking an uneasy sip to clear her throat of blockage.

Carol swallowed, waited a moment, and tried again. "They're contagious," she finally answered.

Victoria blinked, and stared. An angel of light stared uneasily back at her, and a swirling storm of hands, and a living lake, and a golem of clay and paint.

And a wretch of limb on limb, flesh on flesh, arm on leg on shoulder on torso on neck on head on hand on foot on every terrible, grotesque combination.

Finally she understood the truth, in all of its impossibility, all of its terrible majesty.

Victoria narrowed her eyes. "What the fuck, Eden."

"We didn't do anything!" Venus protested. "The Devil is something inside you, not-"

Carol's tortured sigh silenced her. "You… you knew it could happen. You carried on anyway."

"Been hearing that a lot, lately," Neptune murmured, her eyes slowly lowering to stare into the pool, to gaze into the depths of her own waters, thickened with flesh and regrets.

Jupiter, for her part, rolled her hands onto Venus's body, wrapped her fellow Devils up in that cloud of hands, pressing into Riley's forehead and Neptune's side and Venus's face, a firm touch with just a hint of reproach. "She's… she's right, Ve. We fucked up. Come on, we've already had this conversation. You're better than this, don't blind yourself to it."

Venus stilled, closed her eyes, and slowly inhaled, before breathing out. "No, I… no, you're right. I'm sorry. I've… forgotten what it feels like to make a mistake."

"It sucks," Riley confirmed. "But it sucks for someone else even more."

Victoria didn't feel reassured. "So you're calling all of this a 'mistake'?"

The angel rallied herself. "Things were said that needed to be said," she insisted. "The Devil's not a mistake-"

"Not like this," Carol croaked, and Venus's wings fell to the ground, her eyes weighed heavily.

"...not like this," she admitted.

"Fine," Victoria growled. "Fine. So it was an accident, or a mistake, or whatever. How, exactly, did this happen?"

"I-it's my fault," Amy mumbled, her voice overlapping with itself as it spilled out of myriad mouths, nearly swallowed up by unshed tears from six sets of eyes.

Just looking at her took the wind out of Victoria's sails. Sitting there in the water, broken, folded on herself, begging someone to save her from herself…

"Oh, Amy…"

Victoria floated through the hands, brushing Jupiter aside and dipping into the water until she was level with a face streaked with sorrow, a wide-eyed gaze meeting her own.

"Talk to me, Amy," she whispered.

"I-" Amy sniffled, ducked her head as she wiped a tear from her cheek. Slowly, she raised a hand, a pointing finger. Victoria followed it with her eyes until she found herself staring at Riley.

"S-she's… she was Bonesaw th-the whole time. And Caro- then Mom called her R-riley and I was just… I just got so mad, I don't know…"

The little girl just nodded sadly.

Victoria… had suspected something, to be honest. But right now, she couldn't think about it, or to get mad at the girl, not when Amy was right there, bawling her eyes out.

She reached up to put a hand on one of her sister's shoulders, but before Victoria could reach her, she recoiled, her eyes widening to impossible sizes, a cacophony of shrieks erupting from the mass of lips and flesh, from deep within a half-dozen lungs.

"Don't fucking touch me!"

"Amy? Amy, what the fuck?"

Arms spilled out of her body as she wailed. "You shouldn't touch me! First Mom and Jupiter and now you! Just stop, just leave me alone! I wasn't born good, okay?! Just look at me! Look at what I did! I'm a monster, aren't I? A-aren't I? You can't deny it, can you?"

"No," Carol called, straining her voice to speak and whipping Amy's frantic eyes away from Victoria.

Their mother accepted a glass of water from Riley, took a couple of sips, then cleared her throat. "You're… no worse than me."

Amy just stared at her, as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing. Victoria took this opportunity to test a hand against her side, and when she didn't thrash in response, Victoria's arms followed, wrapping Amy in a firm hug.

"I… I…" Her eyes fell, her body slowly sinking into Victoria's touch. "...I don't know. A-and… and you wouldn't be touching me, Vicky, you'd h-hate me if you knew… if you really knew how awful I was…"

"Amy," she murmured, rolling her fingers into soft skin, "what could possibly make me hate you?"

Silence, hesitation, doubt, trepidation.

Then Amy leaned into her ear, and told her.

Victoria didn't say anything for a long time. She stepped back, tried to process, but she didn't dare move away.

Finally, she spoke.

"Okay."

"O-okay?" Amy repeated.

Victoria nodded, feeling the tiniest of smiles come over her face. "Inappropriate crushes are a fact of life. Remember when I was convinced I was going to marry Aunt Sarah for some reason?"

At that, Amy burst out sobbing again.

But these tears, at least, were tears of relief.

Victoria could live with that.