Interlude - Gallant
Dean stepped up to the shop and felt profoundly out of place.
He'd felt that way quite a bit the past few weeks. He didn't have powers, but you didn't need powers to help people. Grandfather liked to say that, and for Dean it meant something. He'd defined that in one way for so long that he felt naked in a way without it. There wasn't any regret exactly. He couldn't change what Blue Cosmos had become, or where it was going.
Certainly not now, when so many of those he'd tried to talk into doing something about Azrael's camp were dead.
"You really think it was targeted?" he asked.
Beside him, Taylor lowered her phone. "I think it's a preposterous coincidence. They were targets. With the moderates gone, Azrael is what's left. There's no stopping the war now."
It was wrong, profoundly so. It's not how things should be. He wasn't sure their plan would actually help. It might make things worse.
But that was fear talking, wasn't it?
Something had to be done.
Something needed to change.
He didn't think he'd be trying to do it without any of the others. They were listening. Not all of them, but enough of them.
"Ready?" Taylor asked.
"Yeah."
Dean stepped forward and pushed the door open.
A bell dinged. The Doll House looked more like a workshop than a proper store. Shelves and bundles of fabric covered the walls. Dresses adorned headless and armless mannequins along one side. A few incomplete dresses and suits were on the opposite side, facing away from the windows.
Definitely a space someone worked in. It had many personal touches. A sort of bar full of cut threads, fabrics, and tools occupied the middle of the room. A small stage was present, organized like a place for someone to stand during fittings.
At the center of the room, a dark-skinned woman stood in a long white dress with a matching wrap covering most of her head. She gave Dean a wary look, but gave Taylor a warmer reception.
"I'm sorry about what happened," she offered. "That must have been very hard."
Taylor smiled slightly. "We don't always get things the way we want them to be."
The older girl sulked. "Did she really use my power to try and kill Miss Militia?"
The question took him off guard. Dean had heard it of course, that Façade's power was to copy other capes. He saw video of Parian's clone being produced by Façade. Everyone did once cell phone and camera footage started going online.
He didn't really consider how that might feel for those she copied. Everyone was talking about trigger events now. Powers came from traumatic events. That meant something to those who had them. Taylor's bullying and Vicky's fears of never being good enough. Big or small, those moments were enough to completely change their lives. He didn't know Parian's story, but she must be the same. She had powers, and having them meant something to her.
What did it feel like to see someone else use them?
"Yeah," Taylor admitted. Dean did note how she didn't meet Parian's gaze while answering, which was curious. "But we're not here about that."
Parian lowered a cut strip of cloth, a needle flying out of one side and settling on a table beside her. "I suppose you're not here for a prom dress?"
"Prom isn't for nine months," Dean noted.
The woman turned her attention his way. "You're Dean Stansfield."
"Yes."
She narrowed her gaze. "Your friends hit me with a beer bottle."
Dean wanted to object, but that would be absurd. "I know. I'm sorry. It's not how things should be."
She raised her brow in response and looked back to Taylor. "You two know one another?"
There was that feeling again, the sense of being profoundly out of place. He couldn't put a finger on why.
"We've talked," Taylor answered. "Can we sit down?"
Warily, Parian nodded and indicated a set of stools toward the back of the room.
Dean waited for Taylor to take a seat first, more out of nervousness than politeness. He didn't know Parian. He'd never met her before. Frankly, the only capes he really knew were Taylor and Vicky. Well, and Carlos, but Dean hadn't known that at the time.
What was that like for him? It felt weird to Dean after the fact.
"Are you okay?" Dean raised his head, and Parian watched him curiously. "You seem a little…"
"Oh. Sorry." He folded his hands together to keep them from shaking. "Kind of unfamiliar territory for me."
"Not that unfamiliar," Taylor offered.
Probably not, but still.
"What brings you both by?" Parian asked. "Not to rush, but I do have orders to fill."
Dean glanced at Taylor. She quietly glanced back. Right. That.
Turning his attention back to Parian, Dean took a deep breath and said, "I need capes." And that was already wrong. He was normally better at this, wasn't he? "We need capes."
"Interesting opinion coming from a Stansfield," Parian replied.
"I'm not my father." Admittedly, "I'm not my grandfather either. Blue Cosmos has failed. It's become something that's not helping anyone anymore, and after what happened in Hartford there are even fewer people in the organization who think that."
"A lot of the group's moderates were killed in the incident," Taylor clarified. "I suspect it was intended to be that way."
The gears in Parian's eyes began turning. Façade approached her a week ago. What did she say? What did Parian think about what happened?
"There are those of us," Dean continued, "who no longer feel Blue Cosmos represents what we want. We can't stand with it anymore. That means I have a lot of everyday people, but I need capes too or nothing will change."
The woman's lips parted to speak, but she stopped herself.
Yeah, that did raise a few question marks, didn't it? "I want"—want wasn't enough—"I need you."
Parian looked at Taylor and Taylor shrugged. "Don't look at me. It's his idea. I was thinking smaller."
"I've already talked to a few heroes and villains," Dean pressed. Stupid that being in a room with two capes felt weird, but sitting down and talking to one woman a few years older than him felt natural. "But I don't want this to just be about heroes and villains. It's not good enough. We need to reach for more than that."
They needed to find some way.
The PRT was a failure. It's sole interest was law enforcement and disaster relief, if that. Sometimes it felt like it was more about public relations. All those things were important, but the scattershot approach was, at best, making things no worse than they already were. At worst, it did nothing to make anything better.
The Protectorate didn't afford any opportunity to regular people. Of course, a normal person couldn't fight Endbringers or the Slaughterhouse Nine, but the division the PRT and the Protectorate drew left everyone on opposite sides of pointless lines. It forced people to see capes as the threat. The structure and the rules governing them made their actions opaque and their abuses unaccountable.
It fed the hate, made it easier for snakes like Azrael to twist the fear and the anger into something worse.
Leaning forward, Dean said firmly, "We need to change how this works. We need something where everyone comes together. It needs to be more than the PRT or the Protectorate."
Parian mulled as he spoke, but then she said, "Sounds like the Elite. They've hounded me too, and I don't like them any more than the PRT."
Again, Taylor sat silently and Dean rejected the comparison.
"The Elite are thugs. They're not all criminals, but their entire worldview is cynical and selfish. It's not good enough."
Dean's hands gripped his knees, and he wasn't sure when he pulled them apart.
Just thinking about it made him sad.
He wasn't the right person for this, no matter what Taylor said. If he could have convinced the others, if they hadn't been killed, any of them could have done this better. Xavier could have done this. His daughter was a cape and he loved her. Is that why they died at Hartford? Because Xavier and Gloria would have been the image of how the world could get through the past?
Cecily was all that remained.
"I've been too close to Azrael for too long. No one will believe me. I'll do what I can and more. He has to be stopped. He's insane, and he'll bring us all down with him…but I can't be the face of this. Not anymore."
There was no one else.
…
That's why he was supposed to have died, wasn't it? Because Teacher didn't want anyone to have the choice. Because if Dean lived that night, he'd be right here, where he was supposed to be, doing what no one else was left to do.
"It has to be us." He looked Parian in the eye. "There's no going back. Capes are part of the world now. Someone has to model how all of us live together. Heroes and villains aren't a model for a prosperous future! It's war, and nothing else. Constant and unending, with lives thrown to the flames in the crossfire."
"Capes need to find a place in the world that isn't picking fights with each other and taking what they want because their powers let them," Taylor added. "You're one of the only capes I know who can show the rest of us how to do that."
Parian looked surprised at that. She shook her head, "I'm not—"
"You are," Dean interrupted. "I'm sorry, but you are. You want people to question how things are and why, to think about how they think. We can do it together. Capes and non-capes have to find a way to live together, and it can't be one side wiping out or subjugating the other."
It would only breed hatred.
They couldn't go back, but they could go backwards. Parahumans ruling over naturals like feudal lords or being wiped out for fear they'd do that wasn't the way forward. Humanity had come too far to be undone now.
They couldn't give in to fear now.
"The law currently restricts you and the kind of business you can do with your power," Dean explained. "You can get around a lot of those restrictions as a 501(c). Namely, type eight."
Parian raised her brow. "A fraternal organization?"
She knew her section 501(c). Maybe she'd already thought of this?
"We band together as many as we can," Taylor said, "and we incorporate them under one name. The law is rigged to force capes into the Protectorate and Wards, or to make them go villain. It's too focused to be coincidental."
Cauldron wanted it that way. It kept capes in a narrow space that made them easier to manage. It was no way for everyone to live together.
"We make it a charity," Dean continued, "and we circumvent most of the laws."
"Capes have tried that before," Parian noted. "It didn't work."
It didn't. The current laws forbid capes for classifying themselves or their teams as charities. They had to file and structure themselves under their own laws to operate as cape teams.
Cape teams being the operative words.
"They were just capes," Taylor noted.
"This is about more than capes," Dean agreed. "It's about everyone. You're not going to be a cape on a team of capes. You're going to be a member of an organization dedicated to community and progress who happens to be a cape."
The structure wrote itself. Dozens of volunteers and staff who could coordinate together, with capes mixed into help, back them up, and be backed up. Not a hero team. Not a gray market cabal like the Elite.
"We'll still be sued, but it doesn't matter." Dean narrowed his gaze and affirmed, "I know plenty of lawyers."
Parian had gone from skeptical, to surprised, to shocked.
"I've already gotten a few capes on board," Taylor revealed. "Nyx and Nix in Charleston. The Foundation. They're here in Brockton Bay now. Chariot and me. StarGazer."
"Bakuda?" Parian asked.
"Not yet."
Yet, she said. "We want more rogues," Dean emphasized. "If all we have are a bunch of heroes and heroically inclined do-gooders, this will just look like a new hero team."
"I'm talking to Agnes Court," Taylor admitted. "Canary and Garde too." A singer and an artist.
"You're talking to Garde?" Parian asked.
"You know him?"
"I know of him."
"She's got Schwartz Bruder on board too," Dean added. "If everyone we're talking to now agrees, we'd launch with thirty capes in five cities, and about sixty coordinators and organizers." The number raised Parian's brow again. "In total there'd be over a thousand people at the start once we count all the volunteers."
"I've secured financial backing from Celestial Being, the Turbines, and Yashima." Taylor tilted her head to one side. "And as soon as Theo Anders kicks all the Nazis out of the boardroom, we'll have Medhall too."
Taylor had been plotting this for a long time. Dean realized that once she sat down with him and revealed how many resources she could bring. Maybe she hadn't fully decided how she'd do it, but she knew she was going to.
Folding his hands back together, Dean took a breath. "Cecily Fairchild is helping too. And the estates of a few of those who died in Hartford and believe Façade spoke more truth than lies. We have the resources. We just need the capes to help us start."
Parian watched them both, as if only slowly realizing how serious they were.
"You know things can't keep going as they are," Dean insisted. "Something has to change, and we shouldn't be waiting around hoping for others to change it."
The woman relaxed her shoulders, face softening for the first time since they'd entered. The gears were still turning in her eyes, but Dean had a feeling.
Why be afraid? She'd either say no, or she'd say yes, or she'd say maybe. It would be what it would be, and if he didn't like the result he'd try again. They weren't even close to the end. Not yet.
"What's this group supposed to be called?" Parian asked.
He couldn't help but smile. It was perfect, far more than he thought when he asked a grieving woman if he could use it.
If someone really set out to ensure Xavier and his daughter would die in Hartford, then they had this coming. Death wasn't the end. The memory lived on. It gave the name power. The starkest of reminders that the divides had to fall, or everyone would lose.
"Its name is Londo Bell."
