Many thanks to themanwhowas, Assembler, frustratedFreeboota, and skyrunner for betareading.

Many thanks to MugaSofer for fact checking.

Hearth 5.6

"I'm home!" Sophia called as she led me in through the front door.

There was no real response. Pots and cutlery clattered somewhere a couple of rooms down, and a young man's voice echoed from somewhere upstairs.

Sophia, however, didn't seem put out by this. If anything, she looked a touch relieved. "Come in," she told me, holding the door open. "My room's upstairs."

She led me down the hallway, but we were stopped at the stairs by a man in his forties coming down.

"Oh, Sophia!" he said, smiling at her. "You're home early. And who's this?" He turned to me, still smiling, and held out a hand. "Steven Miles—Sophia's stepfather."

Smiles are an interesting thing, I reflected. In a crowd, to pick out the best, kindest person, one need only look for the person smiling at nothing at all.

Which meant, of course, that there was no better mask for a liar. Even if I hadn't been able to see the telltale way his smile failed to warm his cold eyes, or the way he showed slightly too many teeth, Sophia's rising hackles would have been plenty to tip me off.

I took his hand in a grip which, with Narya's help, was certainly a little stronger than he was expecting. I saw him twitch. "Taylor Hebert," I said. "I'm a friend of hers from school. Nice to meet you, Mr. Miles." Then, quite deliberately, I turned away from him and looked at my teammate. "So, where did you say your room was?"

"Up here." Sophia's voice was slightly lower than usual—almost cowed—and she looked neither at me nor at her stepfather as she took the stairs one at a time. I deliberately put myself between her and the man, and followed without looking at him again.

We passed two closed doors, once we'd gone up the stairs, and reached Sophia's room, which she opened with a key in her pocket. "Come on in," she said, still sounding slightly subdued.

I slipped past her and stepped inside, looking around. The small room was surprisingly old-fashioned, with one window facing east and walls paneled in dark hardwood to match the furniture: a twin bed in one corner, a vanity with a mirror in another, a bookshelf—on which I noticed a bookmarked copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare—on one wall, and a combined desk and dresser on which were perched a laptop and an old printer.

What drew my eye, though, was the wall between the vanity and the desk. It was practically lined with photographs. Some were framed in carved hardwood or plastic, and others were simply pinned to the wall. Many depicted Sophia with her family—some recent, some years old. In each complete family photo, the father figure—Steven?—was absent, cut out.

The rest of the photos were of Sophia… and a girl I knew all too well.

"Oh, God," Sophia said, passing me and crossing to the wall. "I forgot to take these down." She reached up for a picture.

I stopped her, taking her arm as I looked at the picture. It was one of those framed in wood. The picture was taken on the edge of the Boardwalk, with the sea behind the two figures standing together. In the left of the frame I could just make out the derelict ruin of the Boat Graveyard.

Sophia and Emma each had one arm around the other, and both were smiling—smiling more widely than I had seen Emma smile in years. She'd never smiled like that when she tormented me. Her expression was nearly honest.

"Taylor?" Sophia's voice was low. She sounded almost afraid.

"You look happy," I said softly.

Sophia swallowed audibly. "I cared about her."

"I know," I said. Then I frowned. "You said you cut ties with her?"

She looked away. "Yes."

"You told me the other day." I looked away from the photograph and sought her eyes, but she kept her gaze fixed out the window. "Why?"

She turned and stared at me uncomprehendingly. "What do you mean, 'why?'"

"Not 'why did you cut ties.' Why the past tense? She never hurt you."

"She hurt you! And she was going to hurt you more! She was talking about going to your house, when I—when she found out you weren't coming back to school. I didn't—I couldn't just listen to that!"

I studied her. For a moment she held my gaze, then she flushed slightly and looked away.

"I imagine she hasn't made it easy for you," I said. Emma controlled Winslow's social environment, after all. "I'm sorry, Sophia."

Sophia shook her head. "She hasn't—she hasn't been back to school since then."

There's something I'm missing. "Tell me what happened."

"I…." She stopped. Swallowed again. Her gaze darted back to me, then away again. Then she screwed her eyes shut. "I accidentally unmasked you," she whispered. "Emma wouldn't stop asking about you, and I had to tell her you'd transferred out, and then she asked how I knew and I didn't know what to say besides 'classified' and then—"

I put a hand on her arm and she stopped, breathing deeply. Her eyes were still closed tight. "I'm not in danger, am I." It wasn't a question—I knew Sophia would have told me if Emma posed any danger to my secret identity.

"No."

"Okay." I didn't take my hand away. "Tell me what happened."

She opened her eyes and met mine, as though anchoring herself. After a deep breath, she began. "She was waiting for me when I got to school. It was—it was nice. It was good to see her again. We talked about nothing until class started. But then—at break—she brought you up. And she—she was so ugly. She was a pretty normal, kinda depressed person before, but when she brought you up it was like she twisted. And I just couldn't handle it." Her gaze didn't waver, even as the fingers of her left hand twined about Cenya. "So at lunch, I pulled her away to talk. I wanted to convince her to drop you. It didn't work. She figured out your identity, and I had to stop her from hurting you, or unmasking you. So I…."

Finally, her composure broke. She fell away, catching herself on the wall, leaning against it and breathing heavily. Tears spilled from eyes that were clenched shut; her gritted teeth held back sobs.

"I didn't—know what else to do," she said in spurts. "I didn't know how. I'm not you. I can't just talk—talk to someone, and make them see. So I did what I—what I knew how to do. I threatened her. I told her that if she came after you, or unmasked you, I'd make her wish—make her wish I'd never saved her."

She slid down the wall and put her hands around her knees. I knelt beside her, one hand still on her arm, letting her cry.

"What kind of monster am I?" she mumbled, once she'd gotten herself back under some control. "I broke her, Taylor. I made her into that—and now, I can't be bothered to try and fix her? I just—I just leave her wallowing?"

"You're not a monster, Sophia," I said gently.

Her eyes met mine. "Cenya gives me perspective," she whispered. "You want to know why I—why I took her under my wing, or whatever? Why I 'helped' her by twisting her into the bitch who tortured you? Why I went along with it—why I shoved you into that fucking locker?"

I met her eyes. "No."

She twitched. "What?"

"No," I said again. "You've changed. This"—I nodded at her—"is proof enough."

"You—you don't care?"

"I'll admit curiosity," I said, "but I'm more worried about my friend now, who's crying on her bedroom floor, than I am about my enemy then."

Her mouth opened and closed wordlessly two or three times, and then renewed tears welled up in her eyes and she threw herself into my arms.

I held her as she cried, still biting down on her sobs to avoid making noise. Long before she was done, though, a knock came at the door.

"Sophia?" It was Steven. In my arms, she tensed. "Do you or your friend want snacks?"

I let her go, stood up, and crossed to the door. I carefully unlocked and opened it.

From his perspective, Sophia was hidden behind the vanity. He glanced at me, then roved his eyes around the room, trying to find his stepdaughter. "Hello, Taylor," he said, not meeting my eyes. "Sophia's in here, right?"

"Yes," I said, not moving. "No, we don't need snacks, thank you."

He finally looked back at me, blinking. "I—"

"Take my advice, Mr. Miles," I said quietly. "Give Sophia her space." Without another word, I shut the door in his face.

Sophia was quiet now, and as I returned to her she stared up at me. "How did you know?" she asked.

I shook my head. "I don't," I said. "I just know a liar when I see one."

Once more she swallowed, and then she looked down at the floor. I watched her for a moment, then cast my eyes along the rest of the photographs, and the man cut out of many of them. Rather than focusing on the empty space, I looked at the others.

Mrs. Hess—or Mrs. Miles, now—was a woman in her early forties in the most recent pictures, with a frame that spoke of old musculature and fitness, now worn away by neglect. I could see a trend, looking at her through the years. With each passing span of time, she seemed to grow more tired—and in each successive photograph, she seemed to hold Sophia a little more tentatively, a little less close.

Sophia's older brother looked even more athletic than Sophia did. Where she had a runner's lean physique and a fighter's wiry muscles, he had rounded, broad muscles, which he happily displayed with sleeveless or short-sleeved shirts. In each family photograph, he tended to stand near to Steven.

The final member of the family was a little girl of perhaps four or five. She was in every picture, at least those of the family, after her birth—even in the cases where it was her father who held her, Sophia had carefully avoided cutting her out, instead cutting around her to remove as much of the man as possible without damaging the child.

"What's her name?" I asked.

"Whose?" Sophia's voice was slightly muffled by her arms where her face was buried in them.

"Your sister."

"Angela." Sophia looked up as she spoke, and her voice softened. She craned her neck up to look at the pictures.

"She's lovely."

"Yeah."

There was silence for a time.

"When did your mother marry Steven?"

A muscle visibly jumped in Sophia's jaw. "When I was eleven."

Ah, I thought, and remembered.

'When did you trigger?' I asked.

'…I was twelve.'

Outwardly, I only nodded. "Does your mother know?"

"She thinks it was an accident. He apologized very, very—what's the word?—profusely."

"He's lying."

"He told me it was deliberate. Predatory."

I looked down at her. She didn't meet my eyes. "Predatory?"

She didn't answer.

'Because we fucking trigger,' I'd told Piggot. 'Because we go through days that are so bad that they color the rest of our lives! Because we get broken down into something less than human, and get rewarded for it with more than human power! You'd be fucked up too, Director Piggot, if you had to deal with what we do! If you had to use powers which, every damn day, reminded you of one of the worst moments in your life!'

I squatted before her and said, "You're stronger than him."

"I have powers. Of course I'm stronger than him."

"Powers that remind you, every moment, of how you got them."

She shuddered again, repulsed.

"Do you really think power makes you stronger?" I asked quietly. "Power is just a... substitute. It lets you get by, it lets you survive. It's easy to get complacent, when you're surviving like that. It's harder to grow past it."

She looked up at me. "I hurt Emma last week," she said. "I'm not growing. I'm still hurting people, just because it's easier than helping them."

"I told you once that I would help you become what you wanted to be," I said. "You wanted to be a hero. Now, for the second time—did you think it would be easy?"

Her face twisted slightly.

"It's not too late to help Emma," I said. "Just like it wasn't too late to help you."

"What do you want to do about her?"

"Me?" I asked in surprise. "What have I got to do with it?"

Sophia blinked. "She was…." She trailed off.

"Oh." I shook my head. "No. I'm quite finished orienting my life around Emma. That was my step forward."

Sophia nodded slowly. "Any advice?"

"Tell her the truth," I said with a shrug. "Remember that you don't want forgiveness or absolution—you want to give her closure, not the other way around."

"Right." Sophia hesitated. "Thank you."

I smiled. "My pleasure." I stood up and crossed to the bookshelf. "You're reading Shakespeare?"

"Yeah," she said, pushing herself to her feet. "Been working through King Lear. Cordelia's great."

The rest of the evening, and the night which followed, had a comforting lack of discussion of triggers, traitors, or anything more emotional than books and battlefield tactics.

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