"Rose."
Something soft pokes my mask, disturbing me from the gentle void. I gently nudge it away with my face and squeeze the warmth in my arms. Still tired.
"Rose."
Another poke. This time I curl down to avoid it, chin encountering something hard partway. If I could get a little more sleep, I'd be good. Just a little more.
"Rose, if you don't wake up right now, I'm going to resort to desperate measures."
I put the words together and decide to ignore them. Worst case scenario is a bucket of water to the face, and the warmth in my arms should take care of that.
Something tickles my armpits. Then my sides. "Dammit, Vicky was ticklish. Why can't you be the same?" I've heard this voice before. Can't place it, but the name it said rings a bell.
"Quiet. Sleepy," I grumble. A few more minutes. Like, fifteen. Or thirty. Or a lot.
"Damnit, Rose," the voice groans. Then I feel a pressure on my butt and who the FUCK is groping me!?
I roll over, bone tearing out of my skin, ripping through cloth and encasing me in armor. If whoever did that thinks they can get away with something less than a stabbing they've got-
"Woah! Chill!" Amy shouts, and my gaze snaps to her. "It's just me!" She's underneath me, eyes wide and hands spread out against the bed. "Stop!" she shouts, a pinched note to her voice, high and breathy.
I become conscious of our position. Of how I have Amy on her back, with my hand at her throat and thorns curling out of my armor. Of how the bedding is torn from my sudden motion. Of what this must look like to an outside observer.
I freeze, then slowly uncurl my fingers, pull some bone back in, and roll to the other side of the bed.
Fuck.
"Sorry," Amy says quietly, hoarsely. I'm staring at the ceiling, but I can picture her face, held still to hide the residual fear. "I didn't know you were going to react like that." I remain silent, brain searching for a response to qualify my actions. On the one hand, no, do not grope me. On the other hand, I choked her.
Why did I do that?
"Neither did I," I reply quietly. We both lie there for another minute, miserably silent.
"We slept for nine hours," Amy says calmly, changing subjects and beginning to disperse the awkwardness. I could kiss her. "They're more or less finished with the healing and initial evacuations. They just want us to go so they can clear out the rest of the tents. That, and some of the capes we healed are making noises about getting certain body parts back." Right. The women probably want their boobs back.
"Okay," I reply. "Let's get out of bed."
Mercifully, she doesn't turn it into a joke as the two of us roll off the now-ruined cot. Amy pulls on a more rugged-looking version of her costume, complete with heavy-looking combat boots. Meanwhile, I stare at the remains of my tank top and panties among the shredded sheets, skin going red under my mask. Of all the times and places to lose control of my bone projection, this is arguably among the worst. It took a long time to learn how to use my power without destroying whatever I was wearing, and during my practice sessions I always carried a spare set of clothes for precisely this reason. I grit my teeth and quietly pick up the torn fabric, storing it inside a pocket of my armor. The next time this happens, I'm going to have some back-up clothes in my armor. Maybe two sets.
"I don't suppose you have some spare underwear?" I ask Amy as casually as I can. "I shredded mine." She looks at the bed, then at me. I can practically see the lewd comments springing to mind as she flashes me a quick smile, but it's only there for a second before her expression goes back to something more professional.
"There should be a supply of clothes somewhere in the camp," Amy answers. "It'll be around the refugee organization center, and they'll have something separate for capes there." She walks out of the curtained booth and I follow.
Outside is flurry of activity, if less frantic and less colorful than the battle itself. The black of PRT agents and the white of emergency services are predominant, with a few neon yellow suits of hazard workers thrown in.
"This way," Amy says, pulling me towards a truly absurd line of people waiting in front of a row of pavilions, chattering and shouting at one another, the cacophony punctuated by the screams of children and an unintelligible intercom droning on and off at seemingly random intervals. I gape behind my mask at the sheer number of individuals, each soaking wet and dirty, each with their own wants and needs, their own story.
"Are they all from the shelters?" I ask, shaking my head at the sight. I knew intellectually that Brockton Bay wasn't exactly small, but the difference between knowing a city is several hundred thousand people and seeing several hundred thousand people is...
Staggering.
"Pretty much yeah," Amy replies. "Civvies go there to get assigned to refugee camps, reconnect with family, and to get herded to wherever they'll be most useful. There's a separate line for parahumans," she adds, pulling me towards a much more isolated area by the landing pads filled with people in costumes. "The local capes typically get seen last since they're not going anywhere, so while we wait we can get you some clothes." I see her open her mouth to make a snarky comment, then close it, a look of disappointment on her face. I sigh.
"You get one-" I start.
"Gee Rose I knew I was good but I didn't know you were into the kinky stuff wanna try hanging onto those panties for a little longer next time I'm pretty sure I can find a far better bed for you to choke me on," she interrupts, the words rushing out all in one go before she descends into laughter, long and loud and mortifying. I sigh again, shaking my head.
"This is why we don't hang out more often," I mutter darkly. There's no heat to it though, and once Amy's able to walk again we proceed to a folding table manned by a woman in a neon yellow vest with reflective tape, work jeans, and a brown shirt.
"Names and needs please," she says, short and to the point.
"Isidis and White Rose, clothes and secondary services. We're locals," Amy says, still smiling. We get some directions to another tent, and less than ten minutes later I'm no longer going commando under my armor. It's a small thing, but it does help me feel a little more human. It also makes me think about my probably-destroyed dresser, about how I'll have to buy an entirely new wardrobe, about how much that's going to cost, about how I'll have to explain where the money for that comes from to Dad-
Fuck. Dad.
"I'm going to go check something out," I say casually. Amy gives me a skeptical look, then motions subtly to her face. I nod, and she nods back solemnly.
"Come back to the medical tent when you're done," Amy says, shooing me with one hand. "I'll be giving people their bodies back, plus or minus a cup size or an inch." I don't bother replying and instead head back to the cape help desk. Another wait in the line and I'm in front of the same woman.
"If I wanted to look up someone on the database of survivors, how could I do that?" I ask quietly. She opens up a laptop, hits a few keys, then spins it around. There's a search bar in the middle of the page, cursor blinking steadily.
"Enter the name you're looking for, then hit control, alt, delete," she says. "This computer's been programed to wipe itself very clean after each search, so don't bother trying to figure out any other cape identities." I let the implied insult pass and type in Dad's name, then hit enter.
For a few agonizing seconds the screen is blank.
Then it's not.
When I get to the medical tent it doesn't take Amy long to figure out something's wrong. Maybe it was my lack of response to her jokes. Maybe it was my lack of response to anything. I don't really keep track of what happens for the next few hours besides that the fact that the regenerator who offered to donate flesh for the sexual organ reconstruction pool was far less tolerant of the wood chipper than Dorian. A combination of apathy and broken eardrums got me through it, and once we stopped giving women supermodel bodies Amy dragged me off to meet her family.
I don't remember a whole lot about what happened after we left the medical tent. I do remember getting introduced to Brandish ("Call me Carol when we're not in the field."), Flashbang ("Are you okay?"), Vicky ("Guys...") Manpower ("Hey.") and Shielder. I remember deciding not to ask about where Lady Photon or Laserdream were.
Also, apparently Brockton Bay has been condemned.
Normally they send a survey team to assess the damage first and try to see if there's anything salvageable, but Dragon's photos from space, eyewitness testimony, and the fallout from some of the more absurd powers used to combat Erinye has made that a foregone conclusion. Better to just start the relocation process now. Carol offers me a place to stay in the interim. Amy gives her a look that could split rocks, but I appreciate it in a distant kind of way.
A few hours later I get teleported to the PRT headquarters in Boston with the rest of New Wave. A boy made of metal greets us and directs us to some guest rooms.
"They're as secure as we can get them," he assures us. "Feel free to let your hair down." I incline my head politely and head into the room, closing the door behind me as I check it out. There's a dresser filled with a variety of men's and women's clothing, a small-but-not-cramped bathroom, and a bed large enough for two.
I undress, then lay down on the bed. Once I'm comfortable, I slowly push out a shell of bone, a continuous object that runs from my toes to my mouth. The cloth recedes from my senses, a muted pressure on my back, and I slowly eliminate all connection to my skin, pulling into myself until the only thing I can feel is bone.
I stay there, observing the sensation. It's not enjoyable, but it's also not miserable. Purgatory.
Then I shatter the shell as violently as I can-
"White Rose?"
I slowly pull myself to the land of the waking, sitting up and taking in the injuries I've inflicted on the room. The bone shards didn't seriously break anything, but there are more small nicks in the walls than I care to count.
"Are you alright? It's been twelve hours since we've heard from you, and you weren't answering the phone," someone yells through the door. I look at the bedside table. There's a landline there with a blinking red light at the bottom. The handle is a little scuffed up, but it weathered the explosion remarkably well.
"I'll be out in a minute," I call, spinning in place and putting my feet on the ground. The bone scattered on the floor warps flat under my gaze, turning into ivory tiles that cover the carpet fairly tastelessly.
I can't bring myself to care.
I throw on the first set of clothes that fit from the wardrobe then unlock the door. There's a girl far shorter than I am in a black and red costume standing there. She promptly turns around.
"Uh, I'm not sure if I'm cleared to know your identity," she starts, staring at the wall. "I think there are some masks in one of the drawers if you want." Right. Identity. I push out bone around the clothes and walk down the corridor towards the elevator at the end of the hall.
"Oooooor you could do that," the girl say quietly. "That's also cool." Two steps echo in the corridor before she tries to talk to me again. "Anyway, it's lunch time, and the crazy corpse girl told me to get you for food or else she'd start a zombie apocalypse. I think she was joking, but better safe than sorry, right?" I think about it for a moment, then dismiss the thought. Isidis needs to be touching the meat to animate it, and even if she could create a plague of some sort the moving corpses wouldn't necessarily be under her control. Better to just give a cult Brute ratings and declare herself queen of whichever city strikes her fancy.
"Right?" the girl says, searching for reassurance. I don't supply it.
Eventually we reach the lifts, and the girl swipes a key card at the door. The silence continues as the elevator arrives and we get in.
"My name's Roulette, by the way," the girl says. "I'm a Ward from Boston. Which is the city you're in." Another silence. "Uh, could you say something? I'm kinda getting serial killer vibes here."
"Isidis probably couldn't start a zombie plague," I say. The door opens and I walk out of the metal box, leaving behind the sputtering girl.
I follow the signs to the cafeteria, then load up a plate with sandwiches, fries, and two hotdogs. Once I'm done grabbing food, I scan the room. The metal boy from last night is sitting with what looks like a hunchback and another boy in a fox outfit at one table, and several members of New Wave are eating at another. PRT troopers are scattered about in small groups, talking and laughing at this or that, and one of them notices me, making eye contact and motioning to the seat next to them.
I walk over to an empty table, sit down, and eat. The food tastes like food, but I can't bring myself to care about it. I get through maybe half of what I picked up. The rest goes in the garbage.
I head back to the elevators and just stare at them for a while, waiting for someone to card me back to my room. Eventually an arm reaches around me and swipes the front of the reader, then presses the down button. I look to the owner. Amy.
"Want to go to the hospital?" she asks, looking straight ahead. When I don't respond, she goes on. "I'm not going to have the same sort of set up that I had in Brockton General, but I figure I can help a few transplants go better. If you wanted to help out I can probably do more." I give it a thought. Stay here, go out.
I can't bring myself to care.
"Sure," I say noncommittally.
Amy's right. She doesn't have the same resources that she had in Brockton Bay. I grind up some organ donors to start her off, but they don't last long. It'll take a while for people to get used to Isidis, for families to start donating the recently deceased to the general pool. Until then, we're limited to working with a few good, dead samaritans that volunteered for organ donations and fixing broken bones with the material I push out.
Ten hours pass faster than I can feel.
We both head back to the PRT building. Apparently Carol is looking into more permanent residences already. The fund for Endbringer relocation is generous, and her homeowner's insurance will pay out by the end of the month. Chances are they'll end up with a nicer home than they started with.
I pick up a proper badge. Now I can card myself in and out. The agent who hands it to me makes it clear that losing it is a crime. I tell them I understand, then head back up to my room. The bone tiles are still there. Once more I strip down, toss the clothes on top of the dresser, and lay down on the bed. I push out more bone, isolate myself, and experience near-nothing.
Then I shatter the shell as violently as I can-
Amy tries to make small talk in the down time between patients. It's never anything heavy, nothing of importance, so I don't bother replying. She doesn't stop though, and she keeps dragging me out for lunch.
She brings guests sometimes. Vicky's clearly uncomfortable and tries to make up for it by filling the air with chatter. I can feel the effort, but it comes across as forced, more irritating than anything else. When she brings her boyfriend he convinces Vicky to tone it down, to let the silences drag out a bit. I appreciate it. In one instance Amy leaves me with a pale-skinned, brown-haired boy. A work friend of Dean's, she says. Once she disappears, he asks me if I'd mind if he did some work. I say no. He promptly pulls out a tablet and starts sketching, staring at the screen grimly and swiping the stylus like a surgeon, each move tight and controlled, like a man on a mission he's not sure he can complete.
I feel that.
We both just sit there in silence for a while, and when Amy comes back words are had about the lack of conversation. Her final gambit is to track down John and have him treat me to a meal. He asks about opening up shop again. I try to make flowers. To make the spheres of bones. To make anything.
All that comes out are blades.
He decides to delay his plans for the foreseeable future, and gives me his card. Again. When I get back to my room I cover it in bone, a smooth pill of white, and gently place it in the dresser among the clothes too small for me to wear. It'll be safe there.
I lie down on my bed, fall into my power, and shatter the shell as violently as I can-
"You wanna go out?" Amy asks, sipping water from a cheap hospital cup. I shrug. "Cool," Amy says, nodding decisively. "Let's head out." She tosses the cup into a garbage can, then heads for the showers.
We shower in relative peace. Amy makes a few comments when she looks in on me, but I don't bother responding to them. More stupid jokes. Amy-stupid, but still stupid. On the way to the cafe she tries more small talk, but I'm too tired to even bother pretending to respond. Eventually, she trails off and we walk in silence, trapped alone in our thoughts.
It's almost worse than talking.
"Table for two," Amy mutters to the host. We get directed to seats on the street next to two other couples. They quiet down as we approach, but once we're sitting and perusing our menus they go back to their respective conversations.
"So, what looks good?" Amy asks. I shrug.
"The special," I answer, dropping the menu onto the table. All restaurants have a special. All of them are palatable. It doesn't make a difference in the end.
We sit there in an awkward silence, Amy staring at me as I stare at anything else, searching for something to hold my gaze. Eventually I just cover my eyes with bone, the lenses of my mask preserving the illusion of attentiveness, and let the chatter of pedestrians and other diners wash me out of the world.
Some time later ceramic clinks against ceramic. "Your meals," a woman whispers.
"Thanks," Amy says, irritation creeping into her voice. I pull my bone shutters back and look at my meal. Tubular noodles in red sauce. Edible. I form a fork out of bone, spear a few, and slowly begin to eat. After a moment I notice Amy staring at me, food untouched and a decidedly angry expression on her face.
"You know what that is?" she asks, and I can hear how fragile her civility is, like glass trapped inside a tornado. I shrug and go back to eating. "Penne all'arrabbiata," she continues. "The first thing we ate together." I wait to see where she's going with this. Amy drops her head in her hands. "Oh my fuck. I have been trying to get a rise out of you for days. I dropped in on you while you were showering, tried to talk about that flower stuff you're so into that it practically counts as a language, and set up, like, six different dates, including this one! What do I get? Not recognition, that's what," she mutters, head coming up just enough to glare at me, and gesturing at my bowl with one hand. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to convince a noteworthy chef to pick a pasta dish as their weekly special? Then to tell them to deliberately sabotage it with more spices than anyone can enjoy in a desperate attempt to shock some sad sack out of her funk?" She's shouting now, her other hand adding to the exaggerated motions she's making, animated in a way I haven't see in a long time. "Like, Jesus, Rose, show me something." She looks up at me, pleading. I take another bite of pasta, mulling over her words.
"It does taste hot," I say quietly. Amy stares at me. Then she lets out a noise somewhere between a huff and snort of disgust and glares at the street.
"Vicky, aura."
A glow of admiration suffuses me, loosening the knot in my chest I didn't know I had even as fightfightfight courses through my system, telling me that there's something scary here hold them close and feed it blades! I lean back towards the source of the sensation, armor peeling off, trying to get closer to it, pulling Amy with me because she needs to feel this too, searching for any threat to the source with cilia and eyes and who fucking dares?
And then the feeling is gone and I come to my senses.
I've turned around in my chair, half in and half out, and have pulled Amy across the table, one arm around her, bare skin rubbing up against harsh costume weave. My other arm is curled around something hard and immutable and I can feel a hand pressing against my head, as soft and forgiving as a battleship. Out of the corner of my eye I see platinum blonde hair and blue eyes glaring at me with a combination of cold calm and barely-restrained hostility.
"Let. Go," Victoria says, steady and hard as stone. Slowly, shamefully, I do, starting with my arms (promptly sheathed in bone once more), then moving onto the blades pointing out in every conceivable direction, angry and twisted. Once those are done I pull in the tendrils, reeling them back in, receding into myself until it's just armor, just me in the seat with the Dallon sisters on either side and a dozen civilians staring at what could've become a massacre.
Damnit.
"Sorry," I say quietly, looking down. "I don't know what came over me." Amy snorts, once more on her side of the table, costume stained by spilled food and drink. She doesn't seem to care though, and Victoria slowly adjusts her chair until she's facing me, face set and arms crossed.
"My aura projects awe for me into people I like and terror into people I don't," Victoria says, remarkably calm for a woman who just got manhandled by a crazy parahuman. "People that I have a more complicated relationship with get a more complicated mix."
"She was here from the beginning," Amy says, the displeasure in her tone digging into my heart, a screw twisted into an open wound. "I asked her to be here because I really, really want my friend back. That, and I don't want to see you in pain anymore. It's not okay for you to be hurting yourself all the time, and if I have to literally master you out of your funk, then so. Fucking. Be it," she says, and underneath the near-snarl I can hear worry, the same frantic doubling-down on her own competency that she goes to when the patient is very, very far gone, so far gone that she's not sure she can bring the whole person back, that she's not sure what fragments will be left. I can imagine the set of her arms, the furrow in her brow, the bunch of her jaw as she clenches it, pushing down any discomfort she feels to get the job done. It's the same sort of expression she'd be wearing in a pediatrics ward on a bad, bad day, but I'm too busy staring at my hands to see it.
"Sorry," I say quietly. What else is there to say?
"I don't want 'sorry'," Amy says, and I can hear a chair creak as she settles into it, more control seeping into her voice. "This isn't about fault, about someone being wrong, about settling the scales. This is about you not suffering anymore, or at least suffering less. You don't say anything unless other people talk first, and even then you stick to monosyllables unless absolutely necessary. You're not doing art anymore, and when I asked John about why you weren't he plead the Fifth. Rose," she says quietly, reaching across the ruined meal to grab my shoulder, "I can't help you if I don't know what's wrong. Please, let me in."
We sit there for a long time. Long enough that people drain from the restaurant completely, leaving the three of us alone. Eventually Victoria gets a call and floats off after exchanging a few mumbled words with Amy. Then it's just us alone in the restaurant. I imagine people gawking at us from the street as we sit there. I don't hear any cameras though. No requests for autographs, for a selfie. Amy must have her angry face on.
I'd be more amused by that if I didn't know it was aimed at me.
Eventually I get up, puppetting myself with bone. I try to think of something, anything, to say.
Instead I walk out of the restaurant, silent. Amy follows a step behind me all the way back to the PRT building, her presence pushing me forward, a different kind of hurt that's always on the edge of my perception. When I get back to my room I pause at the door, thinking about the shards of bone in the room. What Amy would say if she saw them.
"Amy-" I start.
"Are the next words out of your mouth going to be telling me to go away?" Amy asks quietly.
I don't answer.
"If you want to isolate yourself, if you want space..." I can hear a tremor in her voice, so alien it takes me almost a minute of silence to recognize it as despair. "I can do that," she whispers, defeated. "Just tell me you'll come back. Eventually." There's another silence. "Please," she asks, an almost-choke in her voice. "I don't want to lose my friend."
I nod, forcing an assurance I don't fucking feel into my stance as I continue to stare at my door. I hear footsteps moving away from me. I wait outside, staring at my door as I hear the elevator open, then close, then slightly hum as it moves to a different floor.
I try not to think about Amy. Instead, I quietly enter my room. The debris on the floor is now ankle-deep, and if I didn't armor up with boots the shards would be cutting my legs with every step. There are gouges in the walls, mostly shallow. The wallpaper's ruined, and there are a few spikes that stick out, little claws and teeth that I can feel singing to me ever so slightly.
I don't mind the sound. One more thing to distract me from my thoughts.
I toss my undergarments on top of the dresser as I walk towards the bed. Someone's been leaving new ones for me. I don't know who. I appreciate it though, enough to leave a sunflower for them every time. It's always still there when I get up though, and the pile's beginning to get a little unreasonable.
Once I brush the splinters off my bed, I lay back and think about nothing. I try to, at least. I think about Vicky, about the patients we've seen, about the taste of the pasta, switching subjects as soon as they get too close to Amy.
I have no idea how badly I've fucked up.
None of it matters because Dad is dead.
I roll over in the bed, screw my eyes shut against the pain that I can't get used to, push out all the bone I can even though it doesn't help and shatter the shell as violently as I can-
