A/N: Thanks to Dysole, FuryouMiko, and Wheat Stick for beta reading.
CW: blood, implication of sexual assault.

A part of Sophia preferred nighttime.

Part of it was that night was when she most often patrolled, sure. It was the easiest time to slip on a mask and escape the endless, pointless bullshit that choked the rest of her life. The life of a solo vigilante was dangerous, but there were times it felt easier than living as Sophia Hess, high school student. Simpler.

But there was more to it than just that. During the day the city was filled up with people, plastering over everything with words and pretending and fucking games that everyone knew would dissolve the instant anyone had the guts to pull a knife or a gun. During the night places were allowed to be just… places. What they were, not what people wanted them to be. Concrete and bricks and trash. The few people out certainly didn't want you to talk to them.

It was… relaxing was the wrong word. Relaxing was for new age meditation crap, not this. But something that spent most of her life wound up tight inside her uncoiled in moments like tonight.

Her feet hit the blacktop of a roof in a familiar rhythm, something her body knew so well it didn't need her mind. She came to a street, a wide concrete canal lit in unreal Halloween orange by the glare of streetlamps. Without hesitating, she reached the edge and jumped.

The moment after her feet pushed off, change rippled through her body and she became light. Light as a feather, light as smoke as she sailed over the four-lane road in a high arc. She was headed for a billboard, whatever message it had once shown rendered illegible by rain and grime, sailing on a collision course. She smiled.

Sophia hit the billboard and passed through like a ghost, bleeding off enough momentum to land soundlessly on the roof behind. Her run began again, body turning solid the moment her foot touched the roof. There were no walls. Not for her.

She'd wondered about why people got this power or that occasionally. Every parahuman had at some point, probably. None of them were ever gonna come up with some world-shaking revelation because, newsflash, nobody understood this shit, but it was hard not to look for patterns anyway. Privately, Sophia suspected it came down to understanding.

Most people had… walls, inside their heads. Tiny little lines in the sand they drew and insisted were impassable barriers. Endless mazes of pointless rules and routines and meaningless garbage they expected everyone else to care about. And if you didn't, if you pointed out there was nothing there, reminded them that they'd drop it all the instant there was actual danger or pain, then you were the problem. For not catering to their fucking delusions.

Maybe the first step to walking through walls was realizing walls were bullshit in the first place.

She snorted. What did that mean Hebert understood, then? How to completely fall apart? That sounded right.

The amusement didn't last. The truth was, she needed times like tonight. When the thought of having to play nice with one more goddamn person made her want to scream, when she found herself having to fight the urge to grab someone by their shirt and yell in their face that nothing they were so worried about fucking MATTERED, she knew she needed to go out. To put on the old spray-painted black mask that had the strap held on mostly by duck tape and be Shadow Stalker for a while. It kept her sane, helped her not do something she knew she'd regret later.

She was going further out than usual tonight. She'd left behind the area she frequented a while ago, a familiar circle of the docks she knew as well as her own house. This was one of Brockton's nicer neighborhoods, which meant it was the same as the bad neighborhoods but with combed hair and a tie on. Not any better, just more effort put into looking good. She grimaced under her mask.

She didn't want to think about the reason she was pushing herself further tonight. That was the whole point, to get lost in running and moving, maybe even fighting if she found something. But apparently her brain wasn't willing to get with the fucking program, because a name swum to the top of her mind anyway.

Emma.

She looked like she was getting better. Bright, excited, full of new ideas about Hebert's newfound panic around fire. But it was skin deep. Her smiles were a fraction too wide, her laughs just a little too loud. The times they would have quietly enjoyed each other's company a month ago had an edge to them now. A tension like something balanced in a high place. There was something hurt there under the surface, something Sophia didn't have words for, let alone know how to fix.

A list of everything Sophia hated would be a long, long list. But right up at the very top was feeling helpless.

She snarled, throwing herself from a measured jog into something more like a sprint. She didn't need these fucking thoughts. Emma was a fighter, a survivor. She'd come back from far worse. Sophia was still Emma's friend, spending time with her, all that "being there" crap. It'd be fine. It had to.

She launched herself into the void again, becoming something insubstantial as mist, only person shaped. No more pounding heart, no more heavy breaths. They came back, of course. They always did, in the moment she landed. She could only jump, never fly.

There was something happening down below. Sophia yanked her focus back to the here and now, the ugly lines of the city snapping into sharp relief. There was a head of long blond hair picking her way down a narrow alleyway. Some bitch who thought that 'Empire territory' meant she was safe ducking through a back alley in the middle of the night, just for being white. Or in other words, an idiot. The question was, was she lucky and stupid, or—

There was a man standing in a doorway further down the alley, out of the girl's sight. Just regular stupid, then. Sophia crouched by the lip of the roof, making sure she was ready to jump down.

She couldn't hear individual words from this high up, but she could make out tones of voice. The man's was loud and sloppy as he stepped out of his hiding spot, maybe drunk. Something metal glinted in his hand.

The girl flicked her hair, speaking a bit too fast. Nervous but trying to play it off. She tried to push past him and got shoved into the wall for it. The man pointed the maybe-gun at her head, hissing words Sophia couldn't hear. So far it looked like your garden variety mugging—

Even from four stories up, Sophia swore she could hear the sound of a zipper being pulled. The man gestured.

Oh.

Not a mugging.

Sophia's stomach twisted, her grip tightening on the roof's edge. She gritted her teeth. The girl was talking again now, her earlier bravado gone. She sounded scared. Sophia's gaze burned into her, as if she could will the girl to act differently. To take that one first step.

Hit him, she urged. Curse him out. Just spit on the bastard for all I care.

The girl knelt.

Give me something I can work with. Anything.

Oh, she could jump down there right now and save the day. Nothing was stopping her. She could play the hero, pretend she was making everything alright. Tell the girl she was all safe now, act like she was actually helping, and maybe the girl would even believe her.

But she wouldn't be.

Because then Sophia would leave. And next week or next month or next year when it all happened again, Sophia wouldn't be there. And the girl would.

Nothing ever got better until you finally lashed out and hurt someone. She'd had to learn that the hard way. There were other words for it, survivors and victims, predators and prey. But that was what it boiled down to in the end: you either hurt others, or you got hurt. That was the ugly truth of this world.

Some people spent their entire lives running from one shelter to the next, always thinking this time they'd be safe, never understanding why it didn't work. Some managed to finally figure out the message written in pain. And some never had to learn in the first place, because they hurt people anyway, because they wanted to. Because it was fun. The real monsters didn't need a reason.

If you wanted to be safe, to be okay, you needed to pay for it by making sure someone else wasn't. Who didn't matter as long as the scales were balanced. All you could do was try to make sure it was someone who deserved it. Like the man below.

Sophia pointed her crossbow down into the alley, finger on the trigger. If this got any further she'd have to jump down anyway, stop what was happening here and now, leave everything else to fester until it happened again. She'd still get to fight someone, to work out her frustration, to look like a hero. And no one but her would know she could have done more.

This is your last chance. I can't fix anything unless you take the first step, only stick a bandaid over it. Let me help you.

Please.

The girl bit down. The man screamed.

Sophia was in motion the instant the bolt left her bow, vaulting over the edge. The arrow sank deep into the man's leg and she followed it, plunging from the sky. Flesh flickered to shadow and back again as she corrected momentum. She landed on the man's shoulder with one foot out and something under it gave a wet little sound as it broke.

She landed in front of him as he flailed, too close for him to aim the gun without twisting awkwardly. His arm passed through her and met only shadows. Sophia spun, and the steel toe of her boot impacted his knee with a muffled crack, caving it in sideways. He crumpled.

She stepped forward, and brought her heel down on the wrist of the hand that was holding the gun. There was a satisfying crunch. She kicked the weapon away.

Behind her, the girl spat something out onto the ground. Her teeth were dark red and bloody. "I—who—he was, oh god—"

She turned and vomited against the wall of the alley.

Sophia watched her, keeping one eye on the man. His eyes here half lidded, glassy, either knocked out by the fall or off in some private world of pain. Not a threat. Still, it paid to be careful. She slotted another bolt into her crossbow. "Congratulations."

The girl straightened up, wiping at her mouth. "For what?" There was an edge to her voice, wary, not sure if Sophia was another threat. Smart.

"For hurting him." This close, Sophia could see the scattered freckles across her cheeks. "He had a gun, all you had was teeth. That took guts."

The girl scoffed. "Fat lot of good it would have done me if you hadn't been there," she said bitterly.

"Did you know I was there?" Sophia met her eyes and held them.

There was a silence before the girl finally looked away. "No."

Sophia smiled. "But you did it anyway."

"Do you have a fucking point here?" she demanded, throwing up her hands. "Is it just that I was an idiot and needed you to rescue me?"

"No." Sophia stepped forward, crouching over the unconscious man. "It's that you're smart." She could still use this arrow, as long as she checked to make sure the shaft hadn't bent. "If some fucker's trying to hurt you, hurt him first. That's the only rule worth knowing. You got that, even if you're second guessing yourself now." She reached for the bolt.

"Wait—!"

Sophia stopped, fingers on the shaft. Her head turned slowly. "Problem?"

"If you just yank that out you're going to kill him. I'm a—a medical student," she said hastily. "It's going straight through his femoral artery. He'll bleed out if it's removed."

She didn't look like a medical student. Too young, closer to Sophia's age. Her hair hung limp in a way that suggested it had been a while since she'd had access to a shower. Her oversized denim jacket was worn and frayed, and not in the deliberate way Emma might have gone nuts over. Sophia wondered if she'd come into the alley just to find a place to sleep. But that wasn't the problem.

She'd been doing so well up till now, too.

"So?" Sophia stood to her full height, a few inches taller than the other girl. "Look me in the fucking eye and tell me he doesn't deserve to die for what he tried to do to you."

"He does! Of course he does. Just…"

"Just what?"

"You can't just kill people!" Her face twisted, and she looked like she regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth. "I don't want to have been hanging around at a murder scene. I don't need the cops after me!" she protested. "More," she added under her breath.

"You can, actually." Even to Sophia's own ears, her voice sounded cold. This was way too much like talking to herself from years ago. A Sophia that hadn't quite gotten it yet, still clinging to denial even as the facts stared her in the face. The past she wasn't anymore. "Do you know how many murders are committed in Brockton Bay each year?"

"Why the hell would I know that?" the girl hissed. "I've only been in this city a few days, who goes around memorizing crime statistics—"

"Do you know how many murders get solved?" Sophia said over her. "Because I'll give you a hint, it's not the same number. Not even close."

"...You. You do," the girl said slowly. Her eyes were wide, distant, like she was reading off something Sophia couldn't see. "You went to the library and looked up murder rates and convictions and statistics and read them over and over again until you had them memorized, until you could repeat them to yourself whenever—"

Her crossbow snapped up almost without conscious thought. The point of an arrow was trained dead on the girl's throat. "Shut. Up."

Sophia was strong. A survivor. She'd worked day after day, night after night, year after year to bury that scared little girl and move on. She wasn't a little kid any longer. So when the memories came boiling up she managed to only flinch.

She remembered the accusing crescents of red under her fingernails that wouldn't go away no matter how many times she washed her hands. How she'd bitten her nails to the quick, chewed until they were bloody and raw trying to hide them.

She remembered the weight, the almost physical pressure of eyes against her skin, crushing her under the fear of what they might know. She remembered the panic growing until she couldn't breath, couldn't move, couldn't ask for help, couldn't show anything because then someone would know. She remembered forcing herself to act normal, like nothing was wrong, the effort of being perfectly ordinary until it felt like her bones would snap and her skin would tear under the strain.

She remembered the iron certainty that each new moment would be the one they finally broke the door down and dragged her away. The moment she faced her punishment. That was how the world worked. She remembered the hours turning into days, into weeks.

Most of all she remembered the moment it all broke. When the walls in her head crumbled and she realized what she deserved wasn't coming. And she remembered feeling light. The lightness of no consequences, no walls to hold her up, no ground under her feet. The lightness of knowing nothing was real.

She'd murdered her own stepfather and no one cared.

The blonde's eyes were so wide you could see the whites all around the iris. It was hard to see what color they were under the pitiless orange light. Maybe green. She was babbling.

Sophia wasn't listening.

"—look, I'm sorry! I swear I didn't know that was your—"

"Shut up."

Sophia closed her eyes. She took a breath. Then she spun and kicked the man on the floor so hard he lifted off the ground.

She hated the fact that she was breathing hard. She hated how glad she was that her mask hid her face. She should just go. She'd done her part, more than most heroes in this goddamn shitheap of a city would. The rest was up to the girl, and whether she fucked it up or didn't wasn't any of Sophia's business.

She didn't move.

She remembered Emma, standing in a different alleyway on the other side of the city. She could have walked away then too. She nearly had.

She remembered Emma now. The too-wide smiles, pretending she didn't see anything wrong. Pretending she didn't feel helpless. Her fist clenched.

Sophia rounded on the girl, who froze in the act of edging away from the scene. "You're running away from something," she said. It was a guess, but easy money about a homeless girl who was new in the city. "And you ended up here." She gestured to the alley, the bleeding man on the ground, the filth and the blood. She stowed her crossbow and clapped slowly. "Good job."

The girl glared back, a lot braver now she didn't have a crossbow pointed at her neck. That more than anything made Sophia want to see how far she could push her. "What's it to you? Do you just get off on threatening girls or something?"

"You've got a choice to make," Sophia said, ignoring her. Trying to make her understand. "Do you want to spend the rest of your life in places like this? Repeating the same story over and over again with different actors? Or do you throw out the script and actually fucking change things for once?"

"Let me guess: this is the part where you tell me about our lord and savior Jesus Christ, right?"

"No. This is the part where you rip out that arrow yourself."

"What?!" Her eyes went wide, flickering back and forth between the man and Sophia. She took an involuntary half step back. "You—you want me to kill him. Why do you want me to kill him?" Before Sophia could answer, the girl grimaced and rubbed her forehead. She glared at her. "He's going to bleed out anyway if we leave him here!"

Sophia folded her arms, watching the girl's eyes dart from the crossbow at her waist to the end of the alley. Watching them snap to her face as she realized Sophia had seen. "Then why do you care? He dies either way."

"I'm not getting my fingerprints all over YOUR murder weapon."

"I'll wipe it off after. You can watch, even." She shrugged. "Hell, keep the fucking arrow. That's not the point. Laws aren't some special invisible bullshit that keeps existing when no one's looking. They're crap people do. And those people? They don't give a fuck about you or him. They're not here. You are." She made herself smirk behind her mask, trying to imitate the taunting voice Emma pulled off so well. "But that's not the real reason you don't want to, is it? What are you really scared of, here?"

The girl sucked in a breath, hesitated, then let it hiss out between clenched teeth. She met Sophia's eyes. "And if I tell you killing somebody is wrong, even someone like him?"

"Then you'd be an idiot," Sophia said, then cut her off as she opened her mouth. "But you're not. Because if you were really stupid enough to believe that, we wouldn't be having this conversation." She stepped closer to the girl, watching her tense for a moment then relax. "You want your life to get better? Make someone else's worse. Starting here with him is lesson one."

"In what, murder? Not sure I want that on my CV, thanks."

"Seeing what's actually there." Sophia gestured sharply, as if she could rip the right words out of the air. It was harder out loud, in her head she just understood. "Most people have… things, inside their heads. Can'ts and need tos and must bes. 'I can't kill him' is one. All this bullshit that only exists in their minds, and they see that instead of whatever's actually staring them in the face. And then they whine about there being nothing they could have done, because they pretended the whole time they didn't have a choice."

"I—" the girl's voice caught, inexplicably rough. "I had a choice, huh?" She laughed. "Here. Tonight, I mean. Against this bastard."

Sophia looked at her, at the flecks of blood still clinging to her lips. "You could have gone for his throat."

For a long moment there was silence, just the distant echoes of traffic and voices. The sounds of people who didn't know about any of this, and wouldn't give a shit if they did.

"…Fuck it." It came out as a whisper, but the girl repeated it much louder. "Fuck it! Fine. Doing the creepy murder-initiation thing." She stalked forwards, knelt over the man who'd tried to force himself on her. Wrapped her fingers around the metal shaft.

And tore it out.

She'd been right about the artery. Blood fountained up, pushed by the heartbeat of a dying man. It splashed across the wall of the alley, covered the girl's clothes and hair. Sophia turned to shadow and let the drops pass through her, splattering on the ground under her feet. The orange streetlights made the blood look black.

The girl stared down at herself, frozen.

Sophia opened her mouth. "So how—"

"…Stupid. Stupid!" she hissed. The girl wheeled on Sophia, furious. "THESE ARE MY ONLY CLOTHES, YOU MORON!"

Oh. Right. Homeless.

She shut her jaw with a click. The girl glared at her, the arrow wrapped in white-knuckled fingers. Sophia looked her carefully up and down.

"…I have a friend who's about your size," she said eventually. "Wait here, I'll get you some of her clothes."

"Oh, and I just hang out covered in blood next to a dead body until you get back? Brilliant! Fantastic plan there."

"No." Sophia gritted her teeth and pushed past her, heading for the doorway the man had been hiding in. Locked, of course. She stepped through the door and opened it from the inside. A few moment's groping revealed a light switch. The room inside looked like it had been a restaurant kitchen once, dusty and abandoned.

The girl followed her inside, more subdued now. It was easier to see colors under the grimy old florscents, the red of the blood and the green of her eyes. Sophia had been right about the eyes.

"Wash your hair in one of those sinks," she said, pointing. "I'll be back with a change of clothes in about twenty minutes. I can move pretty fast when I need to."

"And then you leave? We never see each other again?" the girl asked, sounding like she was just making sure.

"Pretty much." She wouldn't, couldn't be there next time. That was why this time was so important. She suspected the girl would be okay, though. She acted like a survivor, even if she'd needed some pushing into it. She'd do just fine.

"I just… Why?" The girl winced and rubbed her temples. "You talk about how I need to hurt people, how there's nothing stopping us from killing, and then you turn around and get me new clothes? How the hell does that fit together?" She glared like Sophia not making sense was a personal affront.

Sophia shrugged. "Because I feel like it."

There wasn't much more to it than that, once you stripped away all the bullshit and posturing people loved to spout. There was no rule saying she had to be a good person. You had to hurt people, that was just how the world worked. They didn't have to deserve it.

But they could, if you bothered. There was no rule stopping her from finding a bunch of bastards who deserved exactly what was coming to them, either. She'd decided back when she first put on the mask that putting in the extra time and effort was worth it to her.

Shadow Stalker was a lot of things. But she wasn't a villain.

"Anything else?" she asked, turning to go. Getting to Emma's house and back was going to take a while, even going all out. Best to start as soon as possible.

"Do you have a name?"

Sophia paused in the doorway, one hand on the frame. "Shadow Stalker. You're not getting the other one." She looked back. "You?"

"I'm—" She hesitated, but just for an instant.

"Lisa. Lisa Wilbourn."