*pats parahuman* this baby can fit so much trauma in it


Content warning: Carol is a bad parent, at least in this fic. Also Cauldron. They've been… well, you'll see.

I have betas now! Everyone say thanks to FirstSelector, Spytheengineer, and Kinsfire.

I think it's a shame how many people don't acknowledge how Vicky is so easy to see through the lens of how much her power deflects attention from the vulnerable human underneath (when I was discussing this, the phrases "illusion of perfection" and "gifted kid burnout" were thrown around).


Contrary to what Taylor had expected given her previous experience in shopping with Vicky, the blonde was actually quite restrained, both in the sense that she wasn't pushing Taylor nearly as hard to get out of her comfort zone (as had been used to describe it last time) and that her positive demeanor was, while better than it had been to start, still not enough to prevent Taylor from noticing that she was wrestling with something underneath.

"Not to be rude," said Taylor, trying to approach the topic sideways, "but this is a very… different… experience from the last time you took me shopping."

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Well, last time I was really trying to get you to push yourself out of your comfort zone, so I was going a little overboard on that one, but as it stands, you're doing a decent job of that on your own," Vicky replied, gesturing at the bags of (significantly less restrained than her previous style, both in color and cut) clothing that Taylor was carrying as if they weighed less than a thought. "That, and also part of that was me playing things up for Ames, it's kind of a thing."

"...that addresses some things, but, uh… it looks like something's really bugging you." Vicky snorted at the fly that Taylor sent buzzing past her nose to emphasize the pun. "Wanna talk about it?"

The blonde sighed. "Not really, but I probably should, right?"

Taylor raised both hands, palms out. "If you don't want to, I'm sure not gonna make you," she said. "Norns know pushing me this time last year wouldn't have been particularly helpful."

The unusual reference sent one of Vicky's eyebrows scurrying for the cover of her hairline, but instead of deflecting, she just sighed again. "Yeah, fair. It's just… Mom is…"

"I've, ah… had the privilege of seeing Brandish on TV. She doesn't look like a particularly easy person to have as a relative."

Vicky huffed out a half-aborted laugh. "You can say that again. Mom is… well, she has very high expectations of everyone, except for Dad, and that's because I think she sees him as having failed her expectations already. Those expectations manifest in… different ways, between me and Amy, and they've changed a lot. Before Amy Triggered, she was expected to stay out of sight as much as possible, but now… it's like Mom is looking for any excuse to tear Amy down, or something. It's… well, it's almost like she's pushing her until she turns into… something else, and I don't know what that something else is, but based on how Mom treats her, I really don't want to see it."

Taylor pressed her lips together. "Hmmm. And what kind of expectations does she have for you?"

"...too many and not enough, it feels like," said Vicky, with no small amount of exhaustion in her voice. "Like, even before my Trigger, she expected me to be, like, this idealized version of a daughter, obedient and composed but with no opinions of my own. I was there to be… almost a safety blanket, because no one would try things around a kid, you know? Aunt Jess tried to help, when she was still around, but once she was gone, I didn't have anyone to turn to but Amy, and I couldn't afford to put any more of my stuff on her. But that… well, long story short, it just kept building up, and up, and up, until…"

"You Triggered," said Taylor.

"I Triggered, from being fouled at a goddamn basketball game- and then, when I looked at Mom, because that's what you do with your parents, right? You look at them and expect them to protect you? But not now. Mom was… she looked like she didn't care. Hell, Dad was pissed off, but not Mom. And then… it kinda clicked. She… she's just as broken as us, even more so, in some ways, she's just better at hiding it, unless you need help. So, I got my power, which lets me stand on my own, safe from any kind of just one-off attack and with the kind of add-ins to not face more than the one-off. In hindsight, looking at things through the lens of Trigger Theory helps me sort of distance myself from the problems, but… well, knowing where you're hurt doesn't really do a whole lot directly to let you stop hurting, especially when it's something like this."

At some point during the conversation, Taylor realized, they had wandered into a more sequestered area of the mall, which was probably intentional.

"After the game, some things changed, but others… didn't. Mom doubled down on appearances, insisting I have to present myself as this paragon of heroism, which… well, I leaned too much on Amy to help hold that image up when it cracked, and if it hadn't worked so well, we probably would have fucking gotten somewhere with the damn Nazis because we could afford to just take the damn kid gloves off and pay them back for Aunt Jess, but no. Even with the power to stand out, stand on my own… even if I don't think I'm letting Mom control me, she still has her fingers all over my mental state," Vicky said, shaking her head.

Taylor set her bags down on a nearby bench, leaving a couple of bugs on them to keep tabs on them, then carefully wrapped the blonde in a hug, resting her chin on top of the shorter woman's head. "You don't have to stand on your own anymore," she said, carefully maneuvering Vicky around to where she could set them both down on the bench next to her bags.

"I don't know how to do anything else," admitted Vicky quietly, tears glimmering red in the intermittent flashing of a tattoo parlor's sign.

"We can learn together," said Taylor, awkwardly patting Vicky on the shoulder.

After a moment of sniffling, Vicky wiped the last of the gleaming tears from her face, chuckling ruefully. "Sorry about that, Taylor," she said. "I didn't mean to bring the spirit of things down so much, I just… well, Mom is a lot to handle and it looks like I'm not as good at it as I thought. I understand if you don't want me around for the rest of the day, or-"

Taylor cut Vicky off with a glare that was not made any less fierce by the one eye she had to make it with. "I'm not going to leave a friend to suffer alone."

Vicky's tears increased in frequency and she buried her face in Taylor's shoulder.


Taylor wasn't expecting Styx to show up after they left the mall, per se, but given some of the things that she had said, as well as some ineffable instinct (not to be confused with a plan, ineffable or otherwise), she wasn't exactly surprised to see the clone of Sophia Hess step out of a dark alleyway and fall in step with both Taylor and the puffy-eyed Victoria.

"Styx," she said, eyeing the muscular girl with no small amount of trepidation. Outside of the adrenaline-pumping confines of Coil's base, and more specifically in the light of the sun, the resemblance to Sophia was much more pronounced, between the exact slant of her cheekbones, the exact shade of her eyes, and even in how she held herself. It wasn't enough to make her nearly as uncomfortable as being around Sophia would have been, there was something about the alternate version of the girl who had helped Emma make her life a living hell that just… set her at ease.

"Call me Bella," came the reply.

There was an awkward pause for a few moments.

"You have questions."

"I do," said Taylor and Victoria in tandem.

"...not here. Follow," said Bella, walking back into the alley. She approached a wall, but right before she ran into it, the shadow under her feet darkened as it oozed up the brickwork, leaving a void that she stepped through.

On the other side, Taylor could feel bugs scurrying around, and took a moment to nudge them away from what felt like a living area, although not fast enough to stop Bella from skewering a few of them with shadowy blades.

"After you," said Taylor, gesturing Vicky through the slowly closing portal.

"Dork," said the blonde, floating through the portal before Taylor nonetheless.

Taylor followed Vicky through the portal, at which point it irised closed to reveal cracking drywall that displayed brickwork through the largest gaps. A moment later, Taylor registered the three other presences in the building and relaxed mere moments before an unmasked Vista stepped through an odd distortion in space, followed by Quarrel and a blonde girl with delicate features who somehow gave off a feeling of warmth.

"Taylor, I am so, so, so, so sorry about what we let Sophia do to you, I-" started Vista.

"Did you help Sophia shove me in the locker?" Taylor interrupted.

"Uh, no?"

"Did you give her the shit that she put in my locker?"

"Also no."

"Did you cover up what she was doing like Piggot did?"

"Hell no, I would never-"

"Then you have nothing to apologize for. You had a bad coworker who did some fucked-up shit outside of her job. That's not your fault." Taylor's proclamation had the entire room blinking in shock at the level tone she had delivered it in.

Something opened the ground floor door with the sound of rusted hinges squealing, and everyone tensed. Taylor, on the other hand, focused on her bugs' senses, then shook her head. "Just Amy."

Vicky blinked. "What do you mean, 'just Amy'?"

"I mean," said Taylor, watching as Amy walked up the rickety stairway to their position on the third floor, "that the person is only Amy and we don't have to worry about it being, like, Victor. Or the Butcher."

Quarrel shivered. "Nah, they wouldn't show up outside of the most inconvenient moment for us. We used to joke about that being a secondary aspect of… well, one of their powers, back before." Her voice dropped at the end, melancholy audible (and visible in how she slumped over somewhat).

An awkward silence fell over the group, which lasted long enough for Amy to stomp up the last of the stairs. "Alright, it's time to- oh, hey, Taylor, Vicky."

"Hi, Ames. What brings you here?" asked Vicky.

"We're going out hunting Nazis," said Amy.

"Does that make you Brad Pitt, then?" asked the unfamiliar blonde.

"Who now?" asked Amy.

"You know, Brad Pitt, the guy who went out and did the recruiting in that movie from a few years ago, Inglourious Basterds?"

Amy blinked. "You mean Nick Cage?"

The blonde pressed her lips together. "Ah. I forgot that Bet is weird about actors."

"Well, yeah, of course we would be after the Elite took over Hollywood," Amy shot back, a smile on her face despite the subject matter.

"Hang on," said Vicky, confusion visible on her face as she turned to the blonde. "Who are you again?"

"Oh, right. Hi, I'm Mars, but you might know me as Sundancer of the Travelers." She flicked her index finger up, a tiny orb of yellow-white light manifesting above her hand. "Huh, that's new."

"What's new?" asked Amy.

"My power normally isn't this… precise."

"Oh, right, that," said Amy. "Yeah, no, it's because the part of the corona that controls your power was hooked into a section of your motor cortex that got fucked up by whatever Master you ran into that altered your neurochemistry and neuron structure. When I wiped that out, I, ah, took some liberties with the way that I reconstructed things and you should have a lot better control over the way they manifest."

Mars blinked. "You… you what?"

"If you have more questions, ask them on the way, we've got a Nazi asshole to hunt down and Aunt Jess to avenge." Amy turned to Vicky. "You coming?"

"Actually," said Bella, "I was hoping to have some time to talk with both your sister and Taylor about some things that came up yesterday. It's one of those things that you want to address as soon as possible after it first comes up."

"...fine, keep your secrets," said Amy. "Vista, Quarrel, you want in on this?"

"Absolutely," said Quarrel. "I've been hoping to have some acceptable targets to test out some of my new tricks on."

Vista gave a put-upon sigh that Taylor was fairly sure was being played up. "Fine, you need someone to supervise you."

Bickering good-naturedly, the four capes trooped out of the building, leaving Bella, Taylor, and Vicky alone in the room.

"Okay, so, right, context," said Bella. "Alright, to start, what do you know about the mental influences powers have on capes? Ah, no, farther back than that. What do you know about passenger theory?"


Rebecca Costa-Brown never forgot anything.

This was not the case with most of the capes that were thought of as having perfect memories. A lot of Noctis capes, like Weld or Miss Militia, for example, were thought of as having perfect memories due to the common misconception that the process by which an Agent suppressed a parahuman's need to sleep gave them perfect memories, something reinforced by the common perception of Noctis capes being strongly influenced by Alexandria herself and Dragon as well as Noctis, who for various reasons had perfect memories of their own.

She was one of the few capes who was cursed never to forget. Like Dragon. Like Contessa.

She remembered the pain of the Siberian tearing her eye out as if it was mere minutes ago. She remembered the sensation of the vial, the one Doctor Mother had given her all those years ago, leaching all the heat from her body, and being convinced she was going to freeze to death.

She remembered every single cape who she had ever overseen in the process of taking their vial.

Victor and Charles Gladly were, initially, not particularly special as far as vial candidates went. They were entrenched in an organization with capes held above the rest, and sought to rise to their level. The only thing that stood out was their vials of choice.

At first, their choice of Magister-class vials wasn't particularly sensible, given the way that both the general public and the Herren clans specifically valued flashy powers, and the Magister family of vials was known for creating Masters like Mama Mathers, Gallant, and Bad Canary. However, given the number of more direct powers present in the Herren clans' ranks, and the level of success they'd been experiencing… well, the ability to sabotage their enemies to one degree or another couldn't hurt.

As a result, Alexandria had been chosen alongside Contessa to oversee the two when they took their vials- after all, Doctor Mother didn't have the kind of defense her personal stasis or the Path offered against Master effects, which was what the two were predicted to receive.

That was a mistake.

"...and in the wake of Coil's death, we should revisit the viability of the Terminus experiment," said Doctor Mother, her gaze sweeping across Rebecca, Contessa, and the Number Man- the planning core of Cauldron.

"That won't be necessary," said Contessa.

Doctor Mother frowned. "Oh?"

"Coil is only the primary candidate for the experiment. Kaiser and his Empire will serve more than adequately in his role, given their entrenched position and unifying ideology," said Contessa, with as much emotion as she could put into her voice. None of the rest of the room could distinguish it, but Rebecca could hear the fury as clear as day.

Internally, Rebecca pulled up the mental list of reasons why the Empire was an unviable candidate for the Terminus project. They had been historically propped up by both the Herren Clans and Gesellschaft, they were a nexus of white supremacists from all over the nation, their primary income stream was from the international pharmaceutical giant Medhall, and more.

None of it mattered.

Even the memory of Victor Gladly's power, lashing out unpredictably in his unconsciousness, was enough to bind her tongue and force her to treat the man as an ally. She'd spent the past few years carving out an area in the back of her mind where his power couldn't bind her, and in theory she would eventually be able to escape the specter of the man's power, but as it stood, all she could do is bury her hatred in her voice and try to claw her way out of the pit of hatred, brutality, and bigotry that it was trying to push her into (well, further into, in the case of brutality- she couldn't exactly afford to be lenient, given Cauldron's mission). Evidently, Contessa was in the same boat as her, between her own sotto voce anger and the almost uncharacteristic actions and words around the two.

"Hmm. Very well," said Doctor Mother. "The experiment will continue."

And with that, the meeting adjourned, with the Number Man not even having contributed one word.

Doctor Mother and the Number Man both departed the room through the entryway, exiting back out into the blank white corridors of Cauldron's main facility.

"Door to Berlin," said Contessa, prompting Doormaker to open the hole in space.

Before she left, Rebecca turned to her. "Is Volur still immune to the Path?"

Contessa inclined her head. "Ever since her Trigger Event, I believe."

Alexandria nodded. Taking it as the dismissal it was, Contessa stepped through the doorway and let it wink out behind her.

The only hope Alexandria had, beyond learning how to work around the compulsions layered on both her and Contessa, was that Victor Gladly's power would fail once he died, either of natural causes or of the… unpredictable nature of caple life- not that that last part was likely, given how she extrapolated the way that Contessa was forced to use the Path and how it limited the people (or things) that could reliably deal with them to Eidolon, Scion, the Endbringers, and a few other precog blindspots like Volur (who she personally thought was most likely to take enough umbrage with the man to kill him, given his actions around her identities).

Until and unless that happened, however, she was just as bound to his defense as Dragon was to her restrictions.


And that's that!

One thing I'd like to clarify off the jump is that Contessa does not have perfect memory in the way that Alexandria thinks she does (PtV lets her fake it well enough to fool Alexandria, who is… well, more infallible than Tattletale due to better information access, but she's still fallible).

I've mentioned bits and pieces of this elsewhere, but Gladly's power has unpredictable effects on capes with extra shard mental effects: think Thinkers, Breakers, some Changers, people with deadhead (which is iirc a term used in that one alt power fic where Taylor's power is just multitasking for people whose mental processes are offloaded into their Shards, iirc it's called The Othersiders) and very young Triggers (and also reduced or no effect on Masters). Alexandria has some degree of deadhead and her perfect memory is a result of that, on top of just thinking faster than a vanilla human. Contessa's vulnerability to Gladly's power is… something else that might or might not end up being discussed explicitly later on (feel free to guess).

That's it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!