Chapter 5

Amy sat at the table as Carol went through the paperwork. Brandish would barely look at her. Parian sat silently to one side, a cup of tea untouched before her.

Amy wasn't paying attention, trying to pretend she couldn't hear the sounds from upstairs as Dean and Victoria made up. It wasn't fair, she'd been happy. She'd lost her eye and her finger but she'd been happy, and then it all came crashing down. If Crash had made Vicky like her, and she'd liked it, what kind of monster was she? She'd been happy and none of it had been real.

Finishing the last of the documents, Carol pushed them across the table with gloved hands, keeping herself out of Amy's reach.

"Sign." Amy took the pen. Victoria's signature was already scrawled eagerly across the divorce application, so even that hope was gone. Carol had already completed the section for 'Mastered', requesting immediately dissolution of the marriage. Amy hesitated, touching her eye-patch with the stump of her missing finger in a nervous gesture. Was it really so wrong to want something for herself? If she could just speak to Victoria, she could change her sister's mind. The three of them had been so happy, until Velocity ruined everything.

She quailed under Carol's knowing glare and signed quickly. None of it had been real.

"Where's Parian's paperwork?" Amy asked, to deflect Carol's attention.

"Here." Carol checked over Victoria's paperwork and nodded once, almost approvingly, before she put it aside in favour of the second, larger, stack of documents beside her. There was something different about the woman, a sick vindication in her attitude. The world had proved her right about something she'd always believed, and somewhere inside Carol Dallon something had turned to iron. Amy missed the wonderful homemaker and crusading lawyer she'd had for a mother, the woman who had given her away at the wedding- the woman who never existed because it was all a lie! She sniffed, stood, and fled.

"Amy!" Carol's sharp call stopped her in the doorway. She turned to find Carol hadn't even looked up. "Wipe your face and be back here in five minutes to sign your other divorce." Amy couldn't get out fast enough to avoid hearing Carol apologising to Parian for the scene.

She hurried up the stairs, trying to get the scene behind her, only for each step to bring her closer to Victoria's voice murmuring behind the bedroom door. Murmuring she had heard at their home, just two days ago, before it all crashed down. Before her sister looked at her with so much hurt and apologised for hurting her like that, for the disgusting things they'd done, and Amy had said she'd liked it. The look on Victoria's face haunted her, being told it was something Crash had made her like, and they'd get Amy help when she didn't want help she wanted Victoria and that made her a monster and only a monster wanted their sister and Carol told her she was a monster and to leave their house and come home and Victoria had signed the divorce papers when Amy wasn't even there and run off to Dean because who would face a monster -

The bathroom had a lock, her room didn't, and it was closer. She slammed the bathroom door behind her and leaned on it, scrubbing her face with the towel to dry the tears and blocking her ears with it so she didn't have to hear Victoria's voice. It wasn't enough, but turning the water on drowned out the murmuring. Blowing her nose, she managed to get the tears under control, looking at herself in the mirror as it steamed up to check she was presentable. The empty eyesocket stared back, the scars twisting spider-like out from it. Hadn't she paid enough? Couldn't she be happy? Except she had been and it was all a lie. Now everyone could see what a freak she really was. Everyone would know. Victoria had told Carol, and Carol would make sure of it.

Her five minutes was up. Amy patted her face dry, blotchy skin and freckles, and not Victoria who could cry and still be beautiful, and opened the door. From the bedroom she could hear the murmuring again, louder. Victoria was crying and Amy took a step towards the sound without thinking. Her sister was upset, her sister needed her, and then from behind the door the lower rumble of Dean's voice and it struck through Amy like a knife.

Victoria didn't need her or want her. Amy stopped. If she could just speak to her sister, just hold her, make her see, Victoria must remember how happy they had been. Just to hold her hand again, to make her see Dean was all wrong for her -

The door handle clicked under her hand. Locked. Amy stared at her hand on it, at the solid door that was all that stood between her and what she wanted, and reminded herself that what she wanted was wrong. The sounds from inside hadn't even changed, they hadn't even noticed. Resigned and silent, she made her way back to the kitchen.

Carol had finished the paperwork. Parian sat silent with her cup of tea in front of her. The papers sat in front of them, Amy's signature on the first alone.

"...dissolution of assets," Carol said. "The Dollhouse will have to be closed, fashion work with powers is an absolute violation of superpowered employment laws." Parian nodded, still silent. "Following the divorce, the house will be up for sale. Parian, if you can get remove your property you can go home and leave Amy to me. That must be a relief." Carol actually smiled, and then it was gone and the disgust replaced it. "Amy, if you've finished your fit, sign here."

"Don't speak to my wife like that!" Parian's fist slammed down onto the table, cups rattling under the blow. Amy jumped. Parian was leaned over the table, into Carol Dallon's face.

"I'll speak to Panacea anyway I please," Carol didn't stand, but her face was stone, "and I won't be told what to do in my own house."

"Someone should," Parian said, completely unafraid. Amy's breath stopped. She was leant over a hand that could project a lightblade at any second. "Maybe your husband, if he was here."

"He was mastered. I wasn't having him in the house." Carol made it seem so utterly reasonable.

"We were all Mastered," Parian said without a flinch.

"By Crash. But she mastered my husband," the lawyer retorted, pointing towards Amy, not with a finger but a hand.

"No, she cured your husband, the whole Bay knows that," Parian snapped back, "and Mark walked out."

"That proves he wasn't himself, or he'd be here" Carol said rationally.

"Bullshit. He saw the way you're treating your daughter-"

"She's not my daughter!" Carol shouted, stunning Parian into sudden stunned silence. She smiled in triumph, as if her point was made and went on. "She's the daughter of Marquis and a sick monster just like-"

Amy couldn't take anymore. She slammed her shoulder on the doorframe, reeled into the wall as she got to the front door and fumbled with it, trying not to hear what Carol was saying as the door flew open and she tripped on her own feet at the top of the step, landed hard on her hands in the grass. Was that what was wrong with her? Was that why she wanted these wrong things? She really was a monster and Carol had known all these years and never told her? She didn't have enough breath for tears, her feet were too unsteady to stand, and she heard the sound of footsteps on the top step behind her. Carol come to tell her to get inside and stop making a scene.

Two hands took her shoulders, lifted her gently out of the dirt, and for a wonderful moment it was Victoria who had come to check on her, Victoria who had left Dean for her, and then it wasn't. Burying her face in the ruffles of Victorian lace, tangling her hands in it, she let Parian guide her up to the top step of the porch and sit down beside her, holding her while she shook. There were no words, she'd run out of them when she'd thought she had run out of tears after it had all fallen apart. A lace handkerchief made its ways into her hand and obediently she blew and wiped her face.

With nothing to say, Amy turned away, folding her hands in her lap and twisting the scrap of damp lace between her fingers over and over again. They sat side by side, not speaking, not touching, watching the street. Nothing to see, no breeze to stir leaves, just stillness and the distant sound of traffic. It was finally broken by Parian drawing a breath to speak.

"Your mother's a bitch."

"She's not my mother," Amy said, automatically. And Mark was not her father, and Victoria was not her sister.

"She made that damn plain." Parian sounded awkward and Amy really didn't have an answer to that.

"She's Carol." It was all she could say, because trying to explain that Carol Dallon was Carol not Mom, and that was all the Mom Amy deserved was a whole mess of things. She missed Mom, but Carol knew she was a monster. Maybe Carol could make her right again.

"Amy, would you like to stay married?"

"What? But-"

"On paper. If we're married you're emancipated. You don't have to live with her." Parian was staring at her, but the doll's mask made expressions impossible to read.

"But where do I live?"

"With me." Parian made it sound simple. "There's a house two blocks down with a fence and a cat. We'd do seperate bedrooms of course, you're underage..." she added hurriedly.

"But if Carol closes the Dollhouse, how are we going to pay the rent?" Amy spoke over her, and Parian sighed.

"Amy, I used to pay my rent from my doll displays and student loans. The Dollhouse was all Crash."

"But your childhood dreams? Your own fashion house?" All those nights they'd sat up, the three of them, talking about dreams, of Givenchy and Dior, and making silk from proteins in many colours for the shop. All those nights she'd been happy.

"Amy," Parian's voice was very low. "I didn't dream of fashion. I wanted to be an engineer." There was a pause as Amy looked up, and then the pair of them started to laugh. It was better than crying.

"Do I even know you?" Amy asked, and Parian's doll-like mask looked at her.

"No, and I guess you should." Her fingers raised to her mask. "I'm not who you think I am."

"If you're E88..." If she was, if Amy could take her down and prove she wasn't entirely a monster, prove to her family that she had a place, only they weren't her family, and Parian's mask flipped back. Brown eyes, black hair, dark skin were revealed and Amy choked.

"Sabah." Parian introduced herself, as if she wasn't sitting on a doorstep on a public street.

"You're not..."

"Crash made me think I was white," Parian said, furiously. "I put on this mask to subvert expectations and that little asshole made me live them instead. I haven't seen my family in months, I haven't seen my real face in the mirror, I haven't prayed...no, we all prayed, and if Carol Dallon has no sympathy for anyone who went through that she's a sociopath." One of the puppets on the grass punched the swingseat into splinters, and Parian smirked. "I guess I don't know you either."

"I'm Amy Dallon," she said, and wasn't sure what else to say. "I heal people. And my mother's a bitch." Parian laughed.

"Better be a bitch with insurance." The puppet stamped on the remains of the swingseat and Amy found herself laughing. It was better than she had felt in days. "So, you want to come home with me, or stay here?" It wasn't even a real choice. The windows at the house she'd shared with her wives weren't nailed shut and alarmed to prevent her leaving the house, the doors not locked to keep her in, or out, but it wouldn't be home anymore because Victoria wasn't there. But nor was Dean.

Amy nodded, and Parian put an arm round her shoulders. Amy turned into the hug, the first one in two days and found that Parian still felt the same, still smelled the same. Her wife was still here for her, and she pressed her cheek against Parian's glad that she had something that was still hers. Amy had been through the same hell as the rest, didn't she deserve something to make her happy? It would be so easy to change her, to make her never leave.

Her power moved before Amy could stop it, through the skin, tracking the nerves to the neurons, seeking the parts of the brain to govern attraction. A single tweak to orientation to make her focus on Amy, to make her love Amy as Amy wanted to be loved. It found nothing to change. Amy froze. Everything she wanted was so close. Her power helpfully suggested, if the brain did not match the body, just a few changes to hair follicles so the new hair would grow in blonde -

Contact broke, from warm skin to dead cloth as Parian held her at arms length, hands on her shoulders. It wasn't a rejection, not with the deep brown eyes that should be blue gazing into her own.

"We'll be fine." Parian's reassurance made Amy smile. Her eyes were stinging. She had a home, even if the brain that felt the way she wished Victoria did was in a body with brown hair, not gold, brown eyes, not blue, and skin that was coffee not cream. Amy could learn to live with that, she told herself, and if she couldn't...

"Yeah." She would be fine. She had someone, someone who would put her first, someone who would take care of her in all the ways she wished Victoria would. And if she wasn't Victoria, then she could be.

As Parian held out her hand, Amy smiled and took it.

-
Yeah 2021 was a pain for writing, and Amy Dallon's mindset is an absolute pain to write. They go together well.