A.N. So, lads and ladesses, this is Alvor. First off, thank you for waiting for us. None of our plans have really worked out, but c'est la vie. Personally, I had a close family member hospitalized, fell ill, had finals, my computer crashed, and now I'm a bit ill again.

Frankly, I kind of wanted to stop writing. Still do, a little bit, but I don't think that would make me happy. Instead, thanks to my wonderful friends and the greatest co-author in the world, I've been able to rally. We should have a few chapters for everyone over the next couple of days and, if everything goes well, we'll really try to crank them out.


Sink or Swim - Chapter 5


Taylor Hebert knew where she lived.

She understood what that meant.

And all of that realization finally hit her with every ounce of force she could feel in the half second it took for her shirt to rip.

Screeching, not screaming, but screeching with hate she pulled her leg back and kicked out. Catching the first man in the face, she smashed his nose, a loud, wet crunch filling the alleyway. His hands flew up and he screamed too, freeing the teenager to start trying to crawl over the pile of trash again.

Ignoring the stink of rot, ignoring the filth she was crawling over, the young woman moved.

"Get the bitch!"

But there were three of them. And though the words came out pained and watery, even slurred from the broken nose, the order was still audible. Whatever mercy these three might have had was washed away by years of hardship - meaning that when one of them fell, the other two simply surged forward. There would be no easy escape.

Not that Taylor expected that. Nothing in her life had ever been easy, not for the last few years at least. And she was plenty strong herself.

Throwing a bag of trash at the nearest assailant, she half ripped it open as she sent it flying. The spray of filth caused both of the still standing attackers to flinch. Desperately searching, trying to find anything she could lay her hands on, she chose a toaster of all things.

Rushing forwards, and still screaming, she tapped into the only immediately offensive aspect of her powers and flicked a spray of filthy gutter water ahead of her, distracting her opponents for a second if only out of surprise, so Taylor could bring her bludgeon straight around the nearest thug's head. He blocked, wiry, grimy arms easily able to smack the trash away. But that didn't stop all of the teenager's momentum. Instead, knowing she was falling, she went with the movement - bring her leg up as she fell. And when it made contact, she felt a sense of sick vindication.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

Screaming now too, the second man clutched his crotch, Taylor's foot having made contact with something sensitive.

She, however, was sent sprawling - overbalanced by the whole thing - and ended up face first on the asphalt. Knowing that stopping was tantamount to suicide, she ignored the pain and kept pushing.

'I will make. I will make it. Iwillmakeit. Iwillmakeit!'

"Oof."

The mantra she'd been repeating in her head did nothing when a combat boot met her stomach. Nor did it help when the third man pulled his fist back and smashed it into the back of her head. Taylor bounced when she hit the ground, her entire skull jarred and shaking. But it wasn't until the third man grabbed her and slammed her face first into the alley wall that she blacked out.

Waking up, now on the ground, there was something wet and sticky on the side of her face.

For some reason her right eye wouldn't focus and there was something sticky in her mouth.

What she could see filled her with dread though.

All three men were helping each other up, stumbling about and injured, yes, but very much still committed to what was about to happen. Even through that haze and fog, the little part of Taylor Hebert that had not yet broken forced her body into action.

Not getting up or moving in a noticeable way, she began blindly feeling around for anything she could get her hands on. It was when she found a chunk of brick, her fingers breaking a spider web and a hairy, fat bellied little creature rushing across her hand, that she felt a moment of hope.

"Yeah, I got her good!"

"Fucking bitch has it coming."

"She broke my nose, the fucking shit."

'Not yet.'

As her attackers grumbled and complained, thinking she was still unconscious, she waited.

As they sorted themselves out and got ready to do what they wanted to do, she waited.

And then, when she felt the weight of the man's body settle on her from behind, she attacked.

Roaring out with every ounce of hate she could muster, there was a wet thunk when her chunk of brick met someone's face. Falling over, the attacker, the one who had knocked her out for a moment, just slumped to the ground.

This stunned her, or perhaps it had been the feeling of bone breaking and giving way, but no matter the cause, she wasn't able to use the long, pregnant moment to act. Her attackers, however, did. Pure, howling rage and violent cursing and swearing came from them, the two men raining blows onto her prone, trapped form with utter abandon.

Taylor's arm snapped and at least one of her ribs broke, she could feel the heat and wetness inside of her spreading, and trying to shield her face only meant that the men's boots destroyed her arms instead.

"Slut!"

"Whore!"

"Bitch!"

Kick after kick, insult after insult, moment after moment her world was nothing but a pair of boots stomping on her face again and again and again. Somehow, she was able to cling to consciousness. Somehow, she was able to endure it. But it wasn't until one of them grabbed ahold of her pants, snapping her belt and trying to pull her jeans down that the last part of Taylor broke.

That one tiny bit of her that wouldn't snap under the weight of a traitor best friend, of psychotic bullies and the worst kind of abuse, that little part of her that was glad she hadn't killed herself last Christmas just… broke. Finally giving way as all the cruelty of the world won.

At that moment, the young woman had taken everything she could bear and so she said "no more". Swearing to God, to Satan, to anyone or anything that would listen, she promised them her very soul if only they would make it stop!

There was a loud, sudden roar, as if some great beast had filled the world, and a sudden wave of water came crashing down.

When the noise and pain finally dulled to a drip she opened her eyes, Taylor finding that the entire alley had been flooded, that her attackers were… broken, and that she was alone.

Confused, one eye still not focusing, and shivering cold she turned and vomited.

Something about her insides felt wrong, like they were twisted up, and her clothes were ruined - ripped and torn to shreds even worse than she remembered.

Somehow her legs were mostly fine, so, after turning to the side and retching against the building, she got her knees under her. A basic, wounded part of her monkey brain compelling her to find home and safety and warmth.

So it was a bruised, battered, perhaps broken girl that limped her way home.

Trying not to think about what she did to survive.


Danny Hebert


Danny didn't like to worry.

Everybody went through puberty eventually, did stupid things and had to call their parents to bail them out of trouble. Danny had done it. Annette had done it. Anyone who said they went through their teenage years without causing some kind of problem was either lying or covering up for someone else.

In truth, he didn't want to be the kind of parent who hovered over his kid all the time. Partly because Taylor didn't need it, she was smarter than he ever was, and partly because he felt like he didn't deserve it.

After screwing up so badly, there was no way he could ever justify overreacting to anything his daughter ever did again… short of maybe building a magical nuke, but that was mostly him hedging his bets against Tinker Tech nonsense. But, and this was a big but, he lived in Brockton Bay.

So he worried all the same.

Worried because Taylor wasn't out front for him to pick her up after school, worried because she hadn't picked up when he'd called, and definitely worried because it had been almost an hour and she hadn't called him either.

Worried because when he'd sat outside of her school for half an hour after dismissal, she never came out front and none of the school staff knew where she'd gone either.

So Danny Hebert fretted, mind slowly filling with all terrible possibilities. All the terrible newspaper articles he'd glanced over everyday about some unlucky kid caught in a crossfire or because they took a wrong turn on the wrong alley. And just the thought of his daughter's face in a morning article made him want to puke.

"Yes, how many can you get? I'd like to start at her school and go from there."

The one on the phone, who was it?

He'd started typing phone numbers at random. Trying to get as many of his co-workers and what few friends he had left to band together to look. He knew Taylor. He knew she wouldn't get into trouble as much as get dragged into it. Last time trouble had found her, she wound up in the hospital.

Danny dreaded to think what might happen next time.

"Yes. I'll call you later. Thank you."

Then started typing again.

He should have known.

He should have said something.

Because of course Taylor's last day at that shithole would turn out to be just as bad as the first time she'd been there. He shouldn't have cared when the school tried to throw its weight around. He shouldn't have caved in and made her go. Not after all the trouble he went through trying to help her feel safe and in control again.

Helping her negotiate and work with her powers.

'I should have just called the PRT, if nothing else she'd have been safe.'

Ignoring the niggling voice in the back of his head reminding him that it wouldn't have changed anything was hard - he'd have just made things worse if he'd forced his daughter to do something she genuinely didn't want to do. The voice that sounded like Annette when she was scolding him for getting into trouble back in college… Danny's breath came out in hurried wheezes as he called the next number.

By the time he finished begging Kurt to get the word out, he was in his truck, the engine was going, and he was pulling out of the driveway.

"Even if Taylor makes it back to the house, she has a key and me just, just sitting there won't do anything for her!"

On the other end of the line, his friend cautiously and slowly responded, doing everything he could to respond in a way that wouldn't make Danny angrier.

"Look, when she gets back she's gonna want to see you. The whole union is gonna be out and looking soon enough - that's a couple hundred guys. We'll have the city combed top to bottom before the cops even do more than put out an APB. And when we do find her, she's gonna be pissed at having to wait another half hour to see her dad because he wanted to go out and cause a ruckus."

Slamming on his breaks, Danny swore and flipped off another driver as he skidded to a stop at a red light.

"Yeah. And she'll be more pissed if I'm sitting there with my thumbs up my ass if she's in trouble! I… I screwed up Kurt. And I can't screw up again. If she needs me, I have to be there."

From then on nothing else mattered. He called the police, he called his friends, he called his enemies, he called everyone who owed him a favor, he called everyone he owed a favor to. The only person he didn't call was Kaiser, the Empire's standing offer of "protection" for the DWU almost enough to tempt him in the moment.

However, it was the thought of what Taylor herself would say if she found out he caved in a moment of potentially pointless weakness and panic that stayed his hand.

Instead, he called their neighbors down the street, the ones he hadn't talked to in two years and only had their number because he did some house work for them one time, and asked them to keep an eye out for his daughter in case they saw her.

When they told him someone was inside his house, Danny swerved back.

He sped through every light, almost hitting a slow cyclist who barely made it to the sidewalk.

At that moment nothing else mattered.

Nothing but getting home.

Instead, he called their landline. Only for it to hit the automatic machine. That only made him speed up further, crossing a light just as it had gone red. He'd barely cared for the insults and screams thrown his way. It didn't matter. They didn't matter. The only one who did could have been hurt or worse or…

By the time he arrived, Danny felt his breath come out in shallow puffs.

His chest hurt.

His eyes burnt and hands shook even as he unlocked the front door, barrelling through it.

"Taylor! Are you home?!"

Nobody answered, but he could hear the sound of the shower upstairs, the noise echoing on his ears as he ran upstairs, heart beating against his chest like a drum.

Please let her be okay.

Please! Please! Please!

There, discarded on the floor. He could see a pile of clothes. Dirty, torn, and smelling like someone had fished them out of a trash can. It brought back unpleasant memories. A fear that she wouldn't have fumbled the safety on his .45 and that he'd have never been able to start fixing his mistake, couldn't give his child everything she deserved and more.

What made his heart stop were the pieces of glass spread across the floor. He didn't need to think twice about what they were, not when Danny could see the red liquid spreading across the floor. The healing potion his daughter, the light of his life, could make, was already staining the boards of the hallway. The broken glass of a dropped bottle or two of the stuff being little more than another warning in a long series of already obvious red flags.

Healing meant something had gone wrong. Meant someone had gotten hurt. That she was hurt. Danny wondered if his heart had stopped. He felt so cold inside, it was like the pit of his stomach had widened and taken everything else.

Slowly, dreading the sight, Danny knocked.

"Taylor? Are you there?"

The shower suddenly turned off and he heard short steps.

But no words. Why wasn't she speaking?

"Taylor?" He tried again. "Are you okay?"

A loud thump sounded like his daughter had fallen against the door and the terrified man kicked the crap out of his way and moved as quickly as he could.

His daughter, wrapped in a towel, fell forward with a small, terrified whimper.

Freezing as he caught her, the hardened dock worker instantly took in a dozen visible injuries on her face alone. Her right eye had swollen shut, puffy and ugly, her lips had been split twice over, and her jaw had an ugly bruise growing on it. Several small cuts covered one side of her face and there was a sticky, tacky, mostly dried crust of blood on the back of her head. To go with what were obvious abrasions, there were a few clumps of hair missing too and her nose definitely looked broken.

His brain ground to a halt and it took him ten or fifteen seconds to do more than cradle his daughter in his arms.

Slowly, lowering Taylor to the ground, the single father tried to figure out where to put his hands. Mostly he was terrified of hurting her more as, when he'd tried to support a bit of her weight, his daughter had let out a thick, ugly sob of pain.

It wasn't loud or sharp, instead being thick and clogged up.

Her destroyed nose made all of her sounds thick, that alone making it clear Taylor had more than lost a fight. Finally finding a way to hold his baby that didn't cause her more pain, Danny tried to start taking stock of the situation, figuring out what the worst pain was and focusing on a way to alleviate it.

"I… who… baby, can, can you breathe?"

He got a short breath and a jerky half nod. Ghosting his fingers along his daughter's ribs, the union man used his basic first aid knowledge to guess that her ribs were at least bruised, maybe cracked, maybe worse on the right side of her torso - if only because his daughter's chest was so swollen when he managed to coax her into letting him see. After that he checked her pupil, made sure she could actually focus on him, and when her responses were sluggish he almost screamed.

A burst of panic in his chest as thoughts of concussions and brain damage made his blood run cold he made a small choking noise when his lungs stopped working.

"Taylor, honey, I need you to look at me." His voice was cold and hard, the tone he'd used the two times he'd had to deal with someone who'd been severely injured on site, and the elder Hebert kept speaking. "I don't want to move, but I have to get the phone, and I don't know if it's safe to move you."

There was another whimper, his daughter making a noise of pure panic that made his heart hurt so much the middle aged man almost feared a heart attack, and she whispered a plea.

"No. Don't go."

Danny didn't have the strength to move, to do more than slowly, tenderly, gently try to stroke his baby's hair.

"Daddy." Another quiet sob. "I killed someone."

Dread gripped him again, a certainty that told him everything was falling apart. So he did what came naturally.

Gingerly picking his child up, the desperate man made his way over the house phone and, still cradling his daughter in his arms, called emergency services as he kept telling her everything was going to be ok.


Taylor Hebert


Going to the hospital was unpleasant, even with little sprites of water splaying about her.

Having been to the hospital only a handful of times in her entire life, Taylor admittedly had a biased view about it. She'd been here when her mother was officially pronounced dead after the accident and she'd gone to one in another city when her grandfather had died too.

They were where people went to die, not to get better.

So it was understandable why, with her body aching, cuts and bruises bandaged by a nervous doctor, and an IV in her arm beeping away that she might not enjoy there, sitting and waiting for a maybe. Admittedly they were here in part because of her own stubbornness and she was glad they let her dad, her old man softly snoring away on a too short couch just a few feet away.

Dad would probably be happy if she simply drank the vial of Rubedo she had in her pants pocket, but it would also defeat the entire purpose of documenting her… assault.

Taylor still wouldn't be taking her pants off any time soon.

In the end, nobody went to the hospital because they wanted to have fun, not unless you were as sick a fuck as Jimmy Saville, or enjoyed staying in line for eight hours. All while Brockton Bay went about its nightly business. If you were lucky, you'd just have to sit pretty and wait until a doctor showed up. Other times, you'd have a front seat to the victims of the latest gang fight.

And if there was a cape fight?

Forget about it.

In many ways, Taylor's experience with Brockton General shaped the kind of hero she wanted to be. The way she wanted to use her powers. And the reason why, after spending so much time and effort making potions that helped heal people, she still felt like she had to do more with her powers.

How many people wouldn't be here if she could mass produce Rubedo?

How much easier would it be for doctors and nurses to work if they had an easily available treatment for any and all maladies at the tip of their fingers?

Even now, she couldn't help but wonder how many people sitting around her wouldn't need to wait their turn if she had the resources to perfect the process of making the miraculous red cure. Dozens of lives saved in a single night. As much as one would expect to be lost from a cape fight between the gangs!

And Taylor could save them.

More pressingly, if she didn't need to come here, didn't need to wait on a doctor, didn't need to wait on a cape to come heal her, and didn't need to… to think about what had led her into this situation, then maybe others wouldn't have to either. Because no matter how much her head hurt, she wasn't going to be able to ignore the fact she was still relatively sure she killed someone.

"Damn. Morphine is strong."

Streamers of water continued to swirl about her fingertips, larger than ever before, but not nearly so large as what she commanded in the alley. Moreover, they were more responsive and felt right dancing there in the flickering light of her hospital room.

"Ms. Hebert, are you awake?"

A nurse knocked at the door and it was her father who answered, waking with a start and rolling off the couch.

"She is. Come in."

Taylor was glad, she didn't want to have to speak. When she did it caused her cut lip to stretch and pull and it made her mouth feel… weird. Like it wasn't quite right. Which, she supposed, might be another symptom of her probable concussion. Mostly she was just glad the hundred other injuries, large and small, didn't hurt quite as much any more.

"Panacea is here, are you ready for her?"

Danny looked at her this time and the doped up young woman had to giggle.

"Daddy, your name is funny. It's spelled the same way as Danny, but with two ds. Heh."

"Yeah, morphine will do that. Has she started hallucinating?" A mousy looking girl in white robes, with a lot of freckles and a red scarf entered the room. "If so, I can start eliminating the opioids before it gets too far."

Now that she was looking for it, the alchemist did notice that there were more water sprites in her room than she had conjured. And one of them looked suspiciously like Armsmaster dancing a jig.

The image was absurd enough to make her giggle again.

Dad looked worried. Maybe he didn't like the shapes? She could do bubbles if he liked them better. It would be sad to see Jiggymaster go away though.

"Do you consent to being healed by me?"

Oh right, there was a cape here.

Without asking any questions, and Taylor did suppose that they would be redundant, the member of New Wave dodged around the still slightly sleep-addled grown man, came to a stop next to the wounded cape's bed, and just… held out her hand. Taking the time to get a better look at her, the teenage potioneer realized the most famous healer in the world had more freckles than not and looked a lot like the vintage newspaper cuts her father kept in the garage.

But that wasn't right! The Marquis wasn't a tiny healer!

"Has she been concussed?"

Dad looked like he couldn't tell whether to laugh or sigh.

"She's never been this… talkative."

She totally was!

"Nah, that's not possible. No way. Anyways, yeah, you can heal me."

See!

Her words came out a little thick, owing to her still broken nose, but she did speak clearly. So, with a sigh that said she'd done this a few too many times, Panacea gently placed her hand on the bruised and battered young woman's arm and set to work. After flinching slightly, she brought her hand back down and, with a furrowed brow, set to work.

There were no comforting words, no bedside manner to speak of, and with her father speaking to the nurse in low words, it let Taylor appreciate the last few moments of opioid induced nonsense she was going through.

"You're cuuute."

That got her a raised eyebrow and nothing more.

"No, no, I'm serious. Also, your power makes my marrow itch a bit." Trying to find the words she needed, the alchemist furrowed her brow in frustration. "It's not like… you're not like Miry-Myrn, ah screw it, Merlin or Armsmaster, you know? More like Vista. But that's not right. People want Vista to be cute. You're… a medic."

"I'm glad you've noticed."

Panacea's tone was so dry it could have cracked glass. This fact also entirely flew over her patient's head.

"Yeah, but that's not your power, you know? You can heal, but you can do other stuff too. Me too. But I mostly wanna heal. I, well, I think I killed someone today. There were these guys and they were chasing me, then there were other guys and they wanted… to do what guys do to girls when girls don't want to do that. And I didn't mean to do what I did, but I still did it. Right now I don't think I want to be a hero, I just want to help other people." Sinking into the rough hospital pillow a little, the teenager finished with a rather somber tone. "Helping people is good, I think you've got the right idea."

Getting into fights didn't help people.

"I… just get better." With a combination of exhaustion and anger, the healer still didn't take her hand away. By now the erstwhile miracle worker had felt the little bit of pain that slipped through her morphine drip slowly fade away, her various injuries becoming faded bruises and the broken bones sliding back into place. Taylor gave the other young woman a smile and leaned back, sighing as the opioid haze intensified when there was another buzz from the automatic dispenser and even the hint of pain became nothing but a pleasant, muddled thought.

You hurt them, you got hurt and bedridden and wasted time when you could be helping more people.

Addled as she was, Taylor felt a newfound respect for the tired-looking healer. She'd never thought much of Panacea before. It was all about Photon Mom and Collateral Damage Barbie, the flashy capes who got into fights and took the bad guys to jail. Something she'd gotten a taste of earlier one way or another.

She could have gone without it.

Getting hurt sucks.

Hurting others sucked too.

Taylor hadn't wanted to kill someone. Mom would be pretty disappointed if she heard her daughter was out there getting into fights. And she had been planning on being a support cape either way. This just helped her come to the conclusion she had already seen coming a while ago.

'Healing is definitely better.' She gave Panacea's retreating back another look, eyes heavy, and wondered if she could ever do as much good as the biokinetic had.

It was a nice thought to fall asleep to.

Several hours later and her thoughts were not so nice as a nurse politely removed one of the needles.

"Dad, why in the Hell did you let them put a needle in my arm!?"

Taylor, doing as most teenagers enjoyed doing, began to loudly complain as the police officer left, tipping his hat to them both and pausing their interview long enough to let the young woman eat her breakfast.

"They gave me morphine! You know what that stuff can do."

"Yeah, I do." Her father chuckled. "You told Panacea she was cute."

Gaping like a fish, the young woman tried and failed to articulate her outrage. Instead, she settled on an embarrassed silence and decided that, no, she was not blushing. Nevermind the heat in her cheeks. What was important was that she had a tray of scrambled eggs in front of her and she didn't really expect to die from hospital food.

"Honestly kiddo, I'd say I'm sorry, but I'm not." Her father sat down too, five o'clock shadow coming in hard from where he hadn't shaved in a few days and his eyes still a little bleary from a night spent on a too small couch. "The simple truth is that you needed help and I wasn't going to tell them not to help you. Besides, you aren't so weak that I'll come and find you sprawled out on a couch over this. That kind of addiction, well, I just don't see it getting to you."

He was rambling a little bit and it gave the young woman a moment to chew on her food, wishing she'd been able to brush the sleep out of her mouth before eating.

"It's ok. I hear ya." Speaking a little more quietly, she shrugged. "Besides, I think it's all out of my system by now."

Letting his daughter eat for a bit, the aging father eventually did more than run his hand through his just starting to thin hair.

"You did great with the cop, too. But I have to admit myself, are you sure you wanted to do this now, without a lawyer present? It would be a lie to say I was close to putting my foot down."

Rolling her eyes, and deciding to focus more on the fact she called a famous heroine cute to her face than on why she had been speaking to a cop, Taylor spoke with a tone that said she thought her dad was being an idiot.

"They weren't exactly pumping me for information, you were right there, and I want to get ahead of… what happened before it becomes an issue. This way we're the ones who initiated the process and the police know what to look for and where. Besides, weren't you the one who said it might not have ended the way I thought it did?"

A conflicted look passed behind her father's eyes and the young woman felt her shoulders slump a little.

"There's always a chance."

And that was that.

Another day, another step forwards, and another fire to put out. But leaning back into her pillows, Taylor was at least glad she'd be able to go home soon, chug a vial of Rubedo, and put all of this behind her.

One way or another.