A/N: What is dead may never die. Updates as and when, I shan't pretend.

3.2

I slept almost the whole day, the night as well. The morning saw me examining myself in the mirror. Freshly showered, I was clean, and pink and shiny, but I wasn't me. The creature in the mirror was not the girl I had seen in the reflection a day ago. I touched the cold glass and the person in the mirror reached out too. Had it really only been a day?

It felt so much longer.

The cuts to my stomach were thin and dark and scabbed. Where Hookwolf had bitten me was frayed cords held in one piece by the healing of my ring, so much that I could see the lacerations strain when I shifted my weight. All that was fine, and I could deal; it wasn't like I wore shorts even outside of winter. What got me was my ear. It was covered by a dark scab, and of all my wounds it was the one that looked the most 'healed'. It was disfiguring. It was flat, it was eye-catching, making my face look drawn and tired. I looked like a troll, or a witch out of a story book. I'd frighten children. I frightened myself. With my hair straight from the shower, the flat ear stabbed out like a cliff top, like a knife.

I spent too long staring at myself.

Normal wasn't on the cards, and it hadn't been since Emma had slapped me in the bathroom and I'd gone to the Boardwalk. Maybe even earlier, when I'd started stitching my costume, when I decided the powers meant I could be a hero, even being the nobody person that they were wrapped around. Maybe earlier, the moment Sophia had... When the charity had needed volunteers and I had wanted to feel good about myself...

I shuddered.

I wasn't my mom, and now I didn't even look like her. My fingers moved in an old pattern that came easily, putting an effort into my hair that I'd resisted for so long in my attempt to be unobtrusive, to be background noise. Over and under. I braided my hair thickly, pulling it until it lay over my ear. As long as I didn't turn my head too fast, I could hide it.

I activated my ring before I tried to leave the bathroom, lurid red wounds turning shadowy and indistinct.

Downstairs, Dad was drying up plates, from breakfast by the look of the stove. I glanced at the clock, it was only just eight in the morning.

"You guys have already eaten?"

Dad pulled a face. "Not so much. Kurt and Lacey got into it a little bit last night, and while you were in the shower." He looked at me, without turning his head, trying to be subtle.

I sighed. "Dad. Tell me."

"I don't think they're used to bottling things up. They've gone to 'talk'."

Dad took one of his just cleaned plates and served some eggs, lots of bacon. Maple bacon. He cut me a slice off a bloomer loaf that appeared from a dented bread bin "Butter in the fridge."

"We can't stay here." I tried to stop it from sounding like a question. I was a big, tough, knife-fighting, teenage villain kill- Dad slapped me hard on the back, but I couldn't breathe. I couldn't breathe. I had killed her and now my throat wouldn't open and my lungs wouldn't expand.

"I'm OK." Around gasps around of air. Dad rubbed my back, until I was almost not-purple.

"OK? Chew your food, Owl. You're OK?" He didn't look convinced but he sat down opposite me when I had said it enough. I asked about Kurt and Lacey again. "Yeah, we need to go. We'll find somewhere safe, somewhere temporary, and we don't tell anyone. Then you're going to stay there, and I'm going to go to the cops."

"Dad. If you tell them about the money-"

He held up his hands. "I'm not going to tell them about the money, Taylor. You're worth twice what was in that bag." He met my eyes and pushed his glasses down. "So you're lucky you didn't get two of them, or I'd already be on a beach somewhere sunny." He waited, expectantly. I laughed. It was dreadful, prepared, and he even had the gall to look a little proud of it.

I took a small bite. "What are we going to do then?"

"I'm going to tell them about Oni Lee. The DWU have to work hard to stay away from the gangs; before parahumans we had a big association with organized crime and it's taken years to get rid of it. Head of Hiring, it's not unbelievable. Dad once had a villain visit him on site, you know? Respected his no though, respected the Brockton Bay DWU wasn't dirty. A different type of villain to the ABB. So I say that Oni Lee came to our home, where I stood my ground and that should be that."

"But–"

"Where I stood my ground. OK?" There was no alternative to nodding. "Anyway, I've got something I need you to do while I'm at the station. I got this out of your costume before I washed it." He reached over the table to hand me something, a small business card. Palanquin was written on the front in a stylized, italicized font.

I flipped it over. On the back was a much messier scrawl. On the left Whitelist was written and underlined, and on the right was Blacklist. Under each was what looked like a username, the other way Spitfire had given me to contact Faultline and her.

"While I'm gone, you're going to write down what you want on your page, then later I'm going to make it on a warehouse computer. Then..." Dad rubbed his eyes under his glasses. He wasn't looking at me, and I saw him take a deep breath.

"Then what?"

"Then – Annette help me – I'm going to launder this money for you."

'Santa baby, just slip a sable under the tree for me, Santa baby. Been an awful good girl, Santa baby.' Dad flicked Kurt's radio off, muttering.

"It's not even Thanksgiving yet. Every year it's earlier."

Dad was right, Thanksgiving was next Thursday. There was no way it'd be safe for us back in the house by then. Would it ever be? The tires of the truck against the asphalt and the sound of cars whipping by in the other direction toward the city were too normal for the danger we were still in. It could've been any other road trip with my dad.

"No brooding. We'll be OK, we'll order something in, or go out of town. We'll figure it out. Somehow. You got that?" Dad was looking at me, eyebrows furrowed.

"Road, Dad." Was I that obvious? I sighed. Why was I even thinking about that, or the house? We had bigger problems than Thanksgiving and they needed solutions more specific than 'something will turn up'.

Dad sighed, too. "Listen. You don't solve big problems with big solutions. You take them one obstacle at a time, and you find your way through the maze without knowing every turn. Prepare for what you can. Accept that you can't prepare for everything."

It had the ring of hollow wisdom, the sort of phrase you wanted to be true but not a lesson you could actually believe. It was the sort of over-general thing you'd find printed on the driftwood sold to tourists on the Boardwalk. I turned to look out the passenger window at the suburbs. It didn't help me.

"I believe it. Ever since your mom said it to me. Maybe if we were still at home, or you'd told me this when you got your powers then we'd be fighting or pulling in opposite directions, because I'd be thinking about college, you know, or you getting into trouble you couldn't get out of, and you'd be wanting to change the world right that second and go out helping people." He laughed. He was looking straight out at the road but his eyes looked like he was seeing somewhere else. "And I don't... I'm not attacking you."

I knew that, but I didn't know how to say it. We were talking, really talking, somehow, but it had come at a price. A price with a lot of zeros and our lives ripped to shreds.

"Yeah," Dad agreed, "so maybe we don't have that same luxury for growing pains and arguments now. The cat is firmly out of the bag." He looked quickly towards the bags on the back seat. "Or not the cat, I guess."

"How are you doing that?" I saw him consider whether to pretend he didn't know what I meant and mess with me and I scowled.

"I've been seeing those faces since before you were born, Taylor. Your smarts you got from your Mom, but your moods you got from me."

"I'm not moody. I'm just thinking." I uncrossed my arms. "There's a lot to think about."

Dad nodded quickly, the way he did when I shut things down. Then it was quiet, and then it was awkward. It was awkward for me and so I was making it awkward. It shouldn't have been and I knew that, and I saw it start invading his shoulders and his face, and I was ruining it but knowing that just made me even less sure what to say about ... anything.

"I do have something I want to ask, that I keep thinking of," he said. Dad tapped his fingers on the steering as we rolled to a stop at a red light.

I tensed. It was going to be yesterday. Through his birthday and this morning, I'd waited for this question, and here it was, but was it going to be about the night I took the money, or about yesterday morning? What was he going to ask? What would I be able to admit to?

"Why does your power look like your grandpa's umbrella?"

I laughed. I couldn't help it. That was what he kept thinking about? I laughed so hard I cried, and my cheeks hurt so I had to rub them and do that half-breathing half-laugh thing that happens when you know anything at all will just start you going again. He laughed a little too, a bit, though he didn't get it. Just cause I was laughing.

"No- no. I can answer, I can answer. It is Grandpa's umbrella, just like this is one of Mom's rings you gave me."

He peered at my finger, and I let it turn back to normal for a moment. "Huh."

"So you turn things into magic things?" He spun the wheel, and there was a bump bump as we entered a parking lot. I looked out the window. There were a few cars, none of them too beat up, and a big sign declaring that we were at a motel with vacancies. Dad parked us in so our nose was pointing out the lot and toward the road. He took the keys out and held them, but neither of us made to get out.

"Yeah, that's half of it. I turn things into different things, and it's those things that have a power, not me. It takes time, and the nicer they are the quicker it is." I shrugged before he could do much more than form the word why. "I don't know, why." I let him process.

"So you're like Armsmaster, you're a tinker." I was surprised he knew the term, though maybe I shouldn't have been considering he'd lived through the triumvirate and Hero appearing. More than that though I was worried at the hope that bloomed in his eyes. "You make things."

I knew exactly what he was thinking.

"I make things that only I can use," I said, quietly. "I've tried. There was–" I felt his hand on my shoulder when I tailed off and I looked up to see his worry.

"I can't slip up what I don't know, when I go to the station. But if you need me, you can tell me right now, Taylor. You can tell me."

The sting in my eyes is from laughing. Old habits were hard to break. I could deal and Dad had more than enough crap on his plate because of me already. "It's okay," I said. "One problem at a time, right?"

It took him a moment before he nodded, as he searched my face, but he did nod. "Right." His door opened with a heavy clunk. "Let's get inside."

"Dad," I said, "that's half of it."

He turned back, with an eyebrow raised.

"The powers that my items get, I copy them from parahumans I've met. They start weak but they get stronger every day." There it was, the truth, and I'd finally said it out loud. Plainly.

I could see it in his face, in his eyes. We'd seen the same films, read the hometown hype around Dauntless, and seen international headlines about the Yang Bangs, or that villain who all but ruled Ecuador by herself. He thought what I thought, what I hadn't wanted to admit to myself. These sorts of powers were rare, but you always heard about capes who had them, heard about what they had done, what they were doing, what they could do. Their power captured the imagination; their trajectory got attention. We could both think of twice as many other capes or teams who were supposed to have grown to be as strong as the Triumvirate.

"Does anyone else know that?"

I nodded.

"Ah," he said, then nothing, frozen halfway out the truck with one hand on the door. "OK then. Grab a bag and let's get inside. One turn at a time. You don't need to see all the paths to get out a maze.

"One turn at a time," he repeated. He led the way to our motel room.

I followed.

He left.

With a lot of contingencies, and worrying, he left.

We had rehearsed exiting via each window, and talked through using the truck, which Dad had left here. We were in Newfields, which was technically outside of the city, if you squinted, and Dad had shown me the avenues and the terrain on a map he'd apparently borrowed, planning escape routes and potential hiding places.

Finally, he'd given me something from his bag of toiletries and borrowed clothes; a something I hadn't realised was missing since yesterday. He'd been hesitant when he held it out.

"I don't know where you got this. If they find you and you don't have it… I'd never forgive myself."

I hadn't been able to meet his eyes.

"Keep it close. Keep your eyes open. Stay here."

We agreed on a password, in case he needed me to believe someone. That I should be silent and they would say it. We agreed on a fake one too, in case they couldn't be trusted and Dad wasn't in a position to say no. I almost asked him not to go, then.

He paced, and worried. We planned. He mentioned mazes a few more times.

And now he was gone.

I put the revolver on the armboard on the wall on the other side of my bed. Then into the drawer. Then it came out because I noticed the bible and it felt wrong. I put the bible in the bathroom, and then I put the gun in the drawer and closed it.

I chewed my lip. "Fuck!" But it didn't make me feel any better.

I got the gun out. Two bullets, that was what Dad had gotten from my costume. There had been more, before, but I had no idea where they'd gone.

I put them into the wheel so they weren't in the chamber. Carefully, I counted.

Three.

There were three empty spaces until a bullet would be in the barrel. Three empty pulls before a bullet would be fired, as safe as I could make it. I kept the gun on me for now. I would let it charge until I went to sleep. Until Dad was back.

Sitting there was an exercise in patience. It was the morning, and I wasn't allowed out. I understood this. I agreed with this. Ideas still popped into my head. I should get a cake for Dad.

No. I should see if there's wifi. I should scope out the staff here. No.

Repacking the money tightly into the new and smaller bags took up an hour.

Above the two single beds there was an air vent. It wasn't big enough for a person, but it would fit the bags. A quick use of my ring let me unscrew it open and then I slid the bags into the vent until they were out of sight. That made me feel a little safer. I coughed. Dusty.

In the bathroom I checked the window's slidiness. Good. Easy if I was in a hurry. Here on the second floor of the motel, it was just high enough to be discouraging, which would make it a better escape route if whoever found me wasn't a cape. I slid it a few more times. Open. Closed. Open. Closed. What was happening to Dad, was he being grilled now? Had he even made it to the station?

The TV didn't work well, the channels full of noisy static. With your ear against the motel door it was clear you'd be able to hear it. I clicked it off.

My foot tapped against the stained carpet. It was rough under my sock, I could feel the fibers scratch against my foot.

I felt like when I'd first gotten my powers. In the first days, still trying to cope with the shit that had happened at the center, and the rapidly approaching return to school, and with seeing Sophia, and Emma. Emma who had to have sent Sophia to the center so that I'd know that vacation changed nothing, that nothing would be better when I got back to school, that they could get me anywhere, and they had gotten me. They'd made it clear without a word that I wasn't going back to hell because I was already there, no matter who I met, no matter how hard I worked, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they were there, everywhere, forever…

I tapped my foot faster.

It had taken me days to realize that I even had a power, my power's change so insignificant that it was almost invisible. All I had known was that I'd felt like I had an exam coming, or like I was about to step back into school after a weekend, or like I had heard them laughing behind me in the corridor. Constantly.

Much like I had at the center, I had gotten on with stuff around the house. I had ignored it. Only the job in front of me was important: cleaning a pan, sweeping the floor, organising the basement. And when I was in the zone, when I was really focussed on something, I did feel better.

It'd taken two days of vacuuming, washing, cooking, and cleaning, and scouring the pans, and then doing it all over again before I had realised that it wasn't me. I wasn't scared of school, I wasn't drowning, that what had happened in the center hadn't ruined me, left me unable to look up and step outside. Two days for me to realise that it was my power, that I even had one. Two more days after that, I became able to pour it into more than one item at a time, and feel drained, and feel my mind and my body slow down. Two days after that I had realised what it meant for me, that I didn't need the center, that I could make a difference on my own, without needing anyone.

And on the seventh day, I tested.

The only thing charging right now was the gun. I put my shoes back on. From my belt I drew out my necklace and my handcuffs. That made four. It helped. Usually that was enough to nearly knock me out, to have me feeling like I'd not slept the night before and that even going to the fridge would be a herculean labour. Right now, I felt … better, maybe a bit worn out.

I looked at my umbrella. The murder weapon. I fished out my costume instead and laid it on the bed. It was more important to fix my costume. The belt dug into my back, and the mattress was rock hard, and cold. It smelled musty.

The charging to my costume resumed. My limbs grew heavy, and my mind slowed a little. The turning, heavy tightness in my chest slowed. Still there, still heavy, but slower, my power straining, without any spare energy to push into me.

In the bag next to me were my power notebooks, and my journal. I pulled out the latter and opened the first pages.

I will go to school

I will succeed for my future after Winslow

I will endure ("the present is only a second long")

My self-belief and identity page. My goals. I tore it out and scrunched it up. School was done, my future was dead, and the present was hour to hour now.

The next page was my first attempt to draw how the power at the center of my chest felt. The crystalline mechanism that I imagined grinding and spinning in my chest. At the top in pencil there was a bullet list of physical anxiety symptoms. I had circled chest pain before I had understood what was happening to me. I tore that out too.

I went through each page of my journal, my goals, my reflections, my vision of being a hero and my research on the capes of Brockton Bay. The Empire: wrong. The ABB: wrong. Independents: all wrong. I tore out every page, until the bin was nearly full and the journal was blank. I snatched up the cheap motel pen from the bedside table.

Beliefs:

Capes will kill you

You will kill capes

There is no way out

Everyone you know is in danger

I dropped the book to the floor.

Maybe the Empire or the ABB would track down Emma and her friends if they found Dad's old photos in our house.

I rolled over and something crunched under me. Fuck. My costume. I emptied useless purchases from my pouches: my climbing chalk, the fishing line, my cape phone, and my new smartphone, the one I had gotten when I returned the broken one. The cape phone was off, but I took the battery out to be safe, the case coming free after I hit it with the butt of my gun.

Lunch came and went. Dinner I managed to eat: sandwiches and OJ that Dad had bought and kept in the room's refrigerator. I went through setting up my new phone, swiping through radial menus.

I spent hours reading about cellphone tracking, about wifi and cell towers and GPS and VPNs. It didn't mean much against tinkers but it was something.

When I got bored of that I looked up the Lists. The Whitelist was pretty, easy to use, clear. It was split into two, the dot US and the dot net. The Blacklist didn't really exist. It was a function of several websites and things that weren't even really websites that you needed special programs to use. It was cryptic and hard to get into, hard to navigate, and everyone seemed to speak in acronyms and weird Greg like terms.

I read guides on starting out, on making a brand, on building a following, and on making a Whitelist bank account, a service offered by the dot net side of the site. Without making a profile page I couldn't even see the dot net half, which was were team-ups were requested and some jobs were posted. The open side was for public networking, for interacting with fans, and making blog posts and videos and stuff like that, and it looked way more informal than I expected.

I held off. In order to verify my account I had to post a video that would be processed by whoever was on the other side of the Whitelist, and I wasn't making that in the motel.

By nine, Dad was still nowhere to be seen and I had reached number 314 on the Whitelist's All Capes ranking page – Caretaker, up 108 places this month – setting up a page that wouldn't even be verified was looking much less risky than it seemed.

I made one under a new name that I'd never given anyone. Panoply. I left the picture as a blank template, a woman with a long braid. It fit too well.

I left the profile blank in a lot of places, scribbling down the sort of things I'd seen on other profiles and on the Whitelist forums. For the little I wrote, when I next looked up another two hours had passed.

I left it there till Dad was back, because he was coming back. Even in self-defense, this had to take a lot of time to clear up. We had agreed he wouldn't call me, that was all. Too traceable. I just had to wait.

After a while, even looking through the very few local heroes' Whitelist pages wasn't enough to distract me.

I watched videos on my phone quietly, until my eyes were heavy at around 1 a.m. Youtube was full of stuff like 'Carjacker picks the wrong cape's car'. I read the comments—

I blinked and it was light. How? I was fully dressed. I didn't think I'd gone to sleep but it was natural light coming in from under the door. I wiped some drool from my face, rubbed my eyes. Dad's bed was still made.

Three quick knocks came at the door and then I was completely awake. Knocking. That was what had woken me up. I rolled off the bed onto the carpet. My heart took a while to catch up, thumping heavily in my throat.

There were voices. I couldn't hear them clearly, but they were male. One gruff, the other quieter. There was a pause.

The knock wasn't gentle. This time they were banging on the door, big booming knocks that shook it in its frame.

My hand snaked up and under my pillow and found my gun.

"Protectorate. Open up."

Fuck.

Flat to the ground, my chin scratching against the coarse carpet, I tried not to notice the stains as I began to army crawl my way to the bathroom.

"If you're in there, Taylor, I'm supposed to say 'She taught something precious to each of us'."

I stopped. Fuck. What had happened to Dad for him to have given them that one?

A/N: Some stuff about her trigger, a recap of her power, and a replanning of her priorities to open her Act 2. All concrit welcome, any grammar or britishisms that ought not to be there, like rubbish instead of trash or garbage etc. please let me know.