Many thanks to BeaconHill, GlassGirlCeci, and dwood15 for betareading.

Radiant 13.2

Dawn was fast approaching as the last van wheeled back into the Rig. From my perch on a balcony overlooking the garage, I watched the troopers file out, yawning drowsily and clumsily stripping away their Kevlar and plating. My knees were drawn up to my chest, hands curled loosely around them as I considered the movement below.

Footfalls rang against the metal platform behind me, and Carlos sat down beside me, his legs swinging over the edge. "You all right, Taylor?"

My eyes darted over to his face, though my head didn't move. He'd changed out of his costume, and his nut-brown forehead was furrowed with concern. "We did well tonight," I said.

"Yeah," he agreed, still looking troubled. "Took down Hookwolf and a few dozen Nazis. So why are you up here on your own?"

I shrugged, looking back down at the garage. "Just… uncertain."

"About what?"

I sighed. "It's really nothing. I'm just feeling broody, I guess."

He paused for a moment. "If it's bugging you, I'm happy to listen," he said.

"I appreciate it," I said. My mind wandered back to a few hours before.

"If I'd gone in first…"

"Then he might have been able to keep his power, at the cost of increased risk to you," I said, meeting her eyes. "His power wasn't worth that to me."

She looked away.

Sophia's expression flickered in my mind's eye. In that one moment, she had been unreadable, even to me. "Do you think…" I began aloud, then trailed off, staring down at the garage.

"Do I think what?"

I blinked. "Never mind—what's going on down there?"

The troopers were unloading something out of the back of the van. No—someone. Two someones—a man and a woman, both glowering impotently at the PRT officers leading them, handcuffed, toward the holding cells.

Carlos followed my gaze. "Prisoners, I guess?"

"The Empire mooks were taken to the jail," I said. "Why are these two here?"

Carlos glanced at me. "And more importantly, why weren't you told?"

I pursed my lips. It was… unsettling, to remember just how much sway I now held in the local PRT/Protectorate hierarchy. Thinking about it always reminded me of how I'd seized that power. But I couldn't ignore Carlos' point. "I'm going to find Piggot," I decided, reaching up to the handrail and pulling myself to my feet. "Or Dragon. Either of them should know what's going on."

"You want me to come?"

I shook my head, smiling slightly at him as he floated to his feet. "No, you get some sleep. We have another operation tomorrow. Or, well, today. You need your rest."

"So do y—" he paused, then chuckled sheepishly. "Oh. Right."

I laughed. "Go to bed, Carlos. I'll wake you if anything happens."

"Okay. Later, Taylor." He drifted back to the ground and strode off towards a door.

I turned away, grabbed the handrail in both hands, and swung under it, dropping towards the floor twenty feet below. I struck the concrete with barely a sound, though several troopers around the room started at my sudden appearance. With a nod to a few of them, I followed after the two prisoners.

They'd gone down a corridor towards the elevators. By the time I arrived, they had already taken it down to the cells, but two other people were standing beside the closed doors.

"Director," I called, drawing their attention. "Sam. Shouldn't you both be asleep?"

Piggot gave me a faint, dry smile. "Believe me, An—Taylor, that's my next stop. Just…" She glanced at Sam. "Some last business to take care of."

I raised an eyebrow. "What sort of business?"

She grimaced, her eyes on Sam. "It's…"

"Long story," he interrupted. His eyes weren't quite meeting mine. "It's… it's not a problem. Just something I have to figure out."

"Can I help?"

He started to shake his head. "No…" Then he stopped, hesitated. "Maybe," he allowed, glancing at Piggot, then back at me. "Yeah, uh…" The elevator doors opened behind him as he hesitated. The chime startled him, but as he turned back to me his face was set. "Yeah," he said. "Can you come down with me? We should talk."

I nodded, walking forward. "Is this about the prisoners?"

"Yes," Piggot said, looking from Sam to me and back again. "You sure about this, Browbeat? If you want, I can…"

"I'm sure," he said firmly, holding the door for me. "Thanks, Director."

She nodded and watched as the doors shut behind us.

Sam pressed the button for the first sub-basement and the elevator began sinking. Then he leaned back against the wall, crossed his arms, and looked down at his feet.

I mirrored him on the opposite wall. "So, what's up?"

He glanced up at me, then looked away again. "I'm sorry I haven't told you all this before," he said after a time, during which the elevator passed the basement. "It's… not something I like to talk about. I'm not proud of it."

"I can empathize." As the doors slid open, I held my hand out to hold them. "After you."

He walked past me into the lobby, and I followed him. The room was largely bare, except for a few uncomfortable metal benches along one wall, and a fenced-off desk on the other side where a bored-looking officer was shuffling papers.

Sam went up to the desk. "Browbeat here to see the new prisoners," he said.

The guy looked up. His expression sharpened with interest. "Right, yeah," he said. "They're being taken to cell block D. Minimum security, what with them not being capes. If you go now, you might be able to catch them in processing."

"We'll take our time, but thanks." Sam turned and led me through a door labeled with a capital 'D' painted on the metal.

As it shut behind us, he stopped and turned to me. "You've probably already figured out what this is about," he said.

I gave him a small smile. "The prisoners. Family of yours? Friends?"

"My parents." He looked away again, his eyes fixed on the wall beside us. "The Keene family is pretty closely related to some of Empire's big names," he said. "Or so I've heard—I was never old enough or important enough to know the civilian IDs of the capes."

A great many things were coming together in my head. "I can't imagine that made for a pleasant childhood," I said quietly.

He chuckled hollowly. "You'd be surprised." He cleared his throat. "They were… good to me," he said. "They weren't distant, or violent, or neglectful, or abusive in any way, really. To them, there wasn't any conflict there. And there wasn't for me, either. Not for a long time."

"You were a child," I said gently. "Children learn from their parents. It's not your fault."

"I know." He met my eyes. "I'm proud of where I am," he said quietly. "It's been hard. I've… I've lost things. But I pulled myself out of that, and I'm proud of it." He sighed and looked away again.

"What started it?" I asked. "Was there a moment when you realized something was wrong?"

His lips twisted. "It's a cliché, but…" He huffed a dry, mirthless smile. "The moment I started wondering was when I realized I was a lot less interested in sneaking glances at the girls' locker room than I was in hanging out in the guys'."

"That would do it, yeah."

"It didn't, though. Not by itself." He swallowed visibly. "I thought I was going crazy, I thought something was wrong with me. I doubled down. I made fun of other guys for being gay. I got a girlfriend. I threw myself into football, did everything I could to be… masculine, I guess."

"And nothing worked, of course."

"Of course," he agreed dryly. "And everything changed when…" He stopped. Chewed his tongue for a moment. Started again. "His name was Jackson," he said quietly. "He was on the football team with me. Thoughtful, funny, gorgeous… and black.

"I tried to push him away. He wasn't having it. He wasn't like you, but he saw right through my shit. And eventually I couldn't keep lying to myself."

I had a feeling that if this Jackson was still around, I'd have met or heard of him by now. "What happened to him?"

Sam hugged himself, and in spite of his broad shoulders and thick arms, he looked as small as Missy in that moment. "I don't know how the Empire found out," he said. "They didn't even talk to me. Never said a word. I just came to school one day and Jackson was gone. I should have figured it out when my parents asked if anything had been different at school that day, but I didn't get it until the news broke the next day. Some Empire recruit had been sent after a high school football player for his initiation. They caught the recruit, but not before he'd done what he came to do."

"I'm so sorry, Sam."

He nodded woodenly, looking down at the floor. His cheeks were dry. "My parents never mentioned it again after that hint, the first day," he said. "And I didn't, either. I just… shut down. Closed off. I wasn't sure if I hated them or myself. I didn't know what to do. The world just didn't make sense anymore." He glanced up at me. "You know what my trigger was?"

"Not that?"

"Not right away." He breathed out heavily—not so much a sigh as a purging of air. "I don't think I was suicidal," he said quietly. "I don't… it wasn't that deliberate. I was on a boat—a yacht, really—at an event with my parents. Probably an Empire hangout. And I was just looking over the side, at the bay. It was the middle of winter. And I just thought—what if I jumped? What would happen? Would my parents miss me? Would they be relieved? Would things be normal again, if I wasn't a part of them? It wasn't really a decision. It was a moment of morbid curiosity, and before I knew it, I was in the water. When I woke up, I was in a hospital, and my cousin was trying to sell me on joining the Empire. They knew I'd triggered—there must have been a cape on the boat."

"And did you?"

"I played along for a couple days, then ran away and joined the Wards the moment I had a chance." He looked up at me with a wan smile. "Triggers are horrible," he said, "but in my case it was the end of a horrible part of my life. It shook things up. It made me look at things, really look at them. And I realized that I was never going to be an Empire kid again, even if I wanted to. And I didn't. They'd—they'd killed Jackson. I hadn't really let myself think that before, but once I did—I hated them. And that was what let me break away."

I studied him. His eyes were dry, clear and hard like burnished bronze. Though his posture was still small and vulnerable, there was steel in his spine now. "Thank you for telling me," I said quietly. "Have you seen your parents since then?"

"Not really," he said. "I think I caught glimpses of them, at Empire events, once or twice. Never went face to face with them or talked to them. I'm not even certain they know I'm Browbeat. Probably do."

"And now they're here."

"Yeah. When Piggot realized, she had them transferred here. Thought I should at least have a chance to talk to them without making it a thing for the whole jail to talk about, if I wanted to."

"And… do you?"

He snorted. "That's where you come in. Taylor—do I?"

I blinked. "You're asking me?"

"You're the one with super-empathy. Everything's mixed up in my head. I hate the Empire now, and I loved my parents once. Where does that leave my parents now? I don't know how I feel about all this. Do I need closure? Do I even want it? Can they give it, even if I do?" His voice rose almost hysterically as the questions flooded out, but at the last one he gritted his teeth, swallowed, and deflated. "I don't know what to do, Taylor."

I reached out and pulled him into a hug. "Sam," I said quietly. "It's six in the morning, you've been up all night, and you've gone from a cape fight to pouring your heart out in under six hours. I'll tell you what you should do—get some sleep. Your parents will still be here this afternoon if you decide you want to talk to them. They'll keep."

He chuckled roughly, his arms closing around me. "Not sure I can sleep right now," he said.

"Try?" I asked. "Please. For me. You're in no condition for a really heavy conversation right now. Get some rest, please."

"…I was kind of hoping you would help me," he said quietly. "Help me find the right words, help me say the right things."

"You told me you were proud of how far you'd come, of who you'd become," I said. "If you want to do this—you can. You, not me."

He let out a shuddering breath in my arms. "Okay. Thank you, Taylor."

"Thank you, Sam." I pulled away. "Go get some sleep. If you want to talk to me, I'll be here when you wake up. Well," I added, glancing out at the concrete corridor. "Not here. On the Rig."

"Got it," he said with a chuckle. "I'll see you in a few hours, Taylor."

"Good night, Sam."

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