AU: Medical News
Author's Note: Encore! Because reader enthusiasm is infectious, and we have no Panacea to cure me of it in our universe. This is a follow-up to Medical Diversions, so definitely check that out first if you haven't already read it.
Amy could not be said to be bored at the moment, but that was only because she was anxious.
"Thank you, dear," said an old woman who no longer had a broken hip. Amy nodded, smiled, maybe said something disingenuously kind and polite, and moved on to the next room in the hospital.
She was probably worried over nothing. Tattletale had threatened to ruin her life by revealing secrets, and she knew that was a genuine threat coming from any Thinker, but Tattletale hadn't said anything. Victoria was convinced it was all a bluff. The Undersiders had escaped the bank fiasco, and that meant Tattletale no longer needed to blackmail Glory Girl, so she would probably just forget about whichever of Amy's many guilty secrets she had guessed.
It would all be fine. It happened a week ago, today. If Tattletale was going to do something else she would have already.
Still, Amy found herself worrying about it. Having a knife held to her throat was a small thing in comparison to the hell Tattletale had threatened to unleash. It made her uneasy, knowing someone out there knew, and she couldn't get her mind off it. Healing certainly wasn't helping.
"You have lung cancer," she informed her next patient. "I'll get rid of it for you." He thanked her, his voice raspy, and she wondered whether he would go right back to smoking. She didn't care enough to warn him off it. Anyone who needed such a warning tended to ignore her, anyway. It usually took them decades to get to the point where her attention was warranted, and that meant most of them were old enough they'd be dead of other causes before they could properly poison themselves again.
His cancer was trivial to her power. The real trick was fixing the knock-on effects, especially in his crippled lungs. She could take body mass from him to fix it, but he was pretty skinny to start with.
She reached back and unhooked a metal thermos from the little loop she'd had added to her costume. "Drink this," she told him.
'What is it?" he asked, because while he was already trusting her with total control over his body via parahuman power, drinking something she gave him was clearly beyond the pale and demanded additional explanation. Moron.
"What I'm going to use to replace your lungs," she said shortly. "It tastes like plastic, ignore that." It would be mildly unpleasant for him to drink, and passing the residual plastic later would be uncomfortable, but it shaved off precious time from her routine and her time was infinitely more valuable than his.
Besides, she liked using Alice's formula. It was easy to work with and much more efficient than taking stored body fat. Also, it was a pleasant reminder of her distant friend. They hadn't seen each other since the week in the Protectorate facility several months back. Texted, every so often, but no more.
The man choked down the entire thermos, and she set about rebuilding his lungs. It was quick, and she decided to lecture him on the dangers of smoking while she worked. He couldn't complain, and maybe a graphic explanation of what, exactly, she was replacing and how bad it was that replacing it was easier than fixing it would stick with him…
She left him looking more than a little nauseous, but completely healthy. His room was at the end of the corridor, so she turned around and went back to the nurse station to find out where they needed her next.
Victoria was there. "Time to go home," her beautiful sister announced.
"There are more patients," Amy objected.
"Mom set a curfew, remember?" Victoria reminded her.
"Right." She gathered her backpack and other personal items, passed the thermos back to the nurse to be refilled, and followed Victoria out of the hospital. It was dark out.
Her phone had a new message waiting, from Alice. She read it as they walked.
'I think you need cheering up. And I have just the thing!'
'You always think that,' Amy tapped out. 'What is it this time?' Hopefully not another terrible joke. Their tastes in actual humor were surprisingly similar, and Alice could get dark when she felt like it, but she also liked stupid knock-knock jokes which was just unacceptable and didn't count as humor at all. It waa always a crapshoot whether her cheering-up attempts would make Amy laugh or sigh.
Victoria pushed the doors of the hospital open and they walked out into the night. Amy could have sworn it wasn't supposed to be dark yet… Maybe she had been healing longer than she thought.
Alice's reply popped up. 'I got Alexandria to set up a trip for me. Brockton Bay, here I come!'
"Seriously?" Amy said aloud. 'Why?' she replied. 'And how long?'
"What's up?" Victoria asked.
"Not sure yet." Alice rarely ever lied about anything, but this seemed… implausible. And Amy didn't want to get her hopes up too high yet. Alice visiting would be interesting, for sure, but she was currently on the other side of the country and by all accounts, insanely busy. Alexandria didn't seem the type to let Alice cross the country on a whim.
'To visit, duh,' Alice replied. 'Alexandria told me I have to take a vacation or I'll burn out. I'm planning on coming over next weekend, Saturday and Sunday. You going to be available then?'
'Yes, definitely.' If Alice really was coming, then she could clear her already empty schedule. They could do so much good at the hospital over a long weekend, working together…
The details were hashed out over a week's back and forth texting whenever Amy had the time. Yes, Alice really was allowed to cross the country for a weekend's vacation, she was being forced to go do something other than work. Yes, Alice was going to be staying in a nice hotel with two bodyguards, but so long as Vicky or a member of New Wave was going to be around she could leave the bodyguards at the hotel. No, Alice wouldn't be allowed to heal at the hospital in Brockton Bay for more than one day of her trip. Yes, Alice still very much wanted to come over, and was Amy ready to take her on an all-day expedition through Brockton Bay on the day they wouldn't be healing?
Amy was, admittedly, looking forward to that. Better yet, Carol actually approved of her showing Alice around, though her approval was couched in the usual lawyer and PR talk about making connections and representing New Wave. She didn't really seem to care that much either way, which was the ideal reaction in Amy's opinion.
The week dragged on with irritating slowness, and the patients at the hospital were as aggravatingly mundane as ever, but finally Friday arrived and Alice checked in at her hotel, and Saturday morning started bright and early with them meeting at the hospital in an empty waiting room that was always set aside for Amy's use.
Alice, Amy immediately noticed, had upgraded her costume. She wore a surgeon's face mask under her red domino mask, and had a backpack with little jars of her biofluid hanging off the sides like grenades waiting to be pulled off and thrown. A much thicker, more detailed lab coat graced her form, going all the way down to her knees. She was still short and a few of her freckles still showed around her mask, and her hair was still red with a white stripe down the middle, but she looked much more professional.
That professional look was ruined when she squealed and ran across the room, skidding to a stop right in front of Amy. She was still exactly as Amy remembered. "You're here! I'm here! Ready to get to work? Glory Girl, nice to meet you!"
"So you're the one my sister has been talking about," Victoria replied. "Nice to meet you, too." Amy felt a little flare of appreciation for her sister.
"Yes, very nice…" Alice swayed back and forth, and Amy noticed her pupils were dilating. "Oh, very, very nice…" she continued, her gaze fixed on Amy.
"Vicky, aura!" she snapped, realizing what was happening. It wasn't on full-blast, but apparently it was enough to knock Alice for a loop.
"What? Shit." Victoria hastily backed away, and the feeling Amy had mostly grown used to faded away.
Alice, though… She was still swaying, even more unsteadily now. Amy grabbed her arms, carefully avoiding any possibility of contact with bare skin, and walked her over to one of the plastic chairs that lined the waiting room.
"I want…" Alice pointed at Victoria. Her heart was thumping so hard Amy could feel her pulse through the lab coat, and sweat was beading up on her forehead.
"Vicky, leave the room." Amy was genuinely unsettled by the intensity of Alice's reaction. She didn't know exactly what Alice had done to her own brain to always be cheerful, and depending on how she did it an aura that inspired positive feelings might have caused some sort of feedback loop that wouldn't stop. This might be genuinely hazardous.
"Sorry!" Victoria retreated to the door and shut it behind her.
Amy held Alice down in her seat for a minute longer. Finally, Alice slumped back and closed her eyes. "Oh… that's not good."
"Does anything hurt? How's your heart rate?" She hadn't expected her first patient of the day to be Alice herself, but if this had done actual damage she would try the moment Alice gave her permission.
"That was bad," Alice groaned. "Didn't know she would have that effect… I think it didn't do any damage. This time. Heart's slowing down, face is cooling down, I don't have any continuing urges. I'm clear. Probably. You can stop pinning me to the chair."
Amy let go and claimed the seat beside her. "I should have thought about whether her aura might affect you differently," she apologized. It was rare, but it did happen on occasion. There were a few Arcadia students Vicky knew not to be around in case she lost control at the wrong moment. Most people could take her aura in stride, but not everyone.
"No, that's my responsibility." Alice rubbed at her sweaty forehead. "That was a rush. Don't even want to know what the other effect would do to me."
"You'd need new underwear after," Amy guessed.
"I need new underwear now," Alice retorted. "Good thing I always bring a change of clothes."
"Why do you need to change?" Amy looked over at her.
"Guess." Alice looked away. "But I promise, I'm not going to hit on your sister. That's not cool. Also, after what just happened I'm pretty sure if I ever got anywhere with her I would die of a heart attack inside of two minutes. I didn't exactly take the possibility of being flooded with positive emotions into account when I fixed myself."
"Oh." Amy hadn't been thinking along those lines, but… yes, that would make Alice's reaction even more severe. Talk about a perfect storm. "I think you should maybe not be around my sister for now." For her safety and no other reason. This was not a complication Amy had foreseen in introducing the two of them.
"Agreed." Alice stood and dusted her lab coat off. "I'm going to go change, then we're going to forget this ever happened and focus on fun things. Could you tell your sister I'm sorry I had a bad reaction?"
"Yeah, I'll go do that now." She was thankful Alice was being so cooperative. At least these two potential issues were going to cancel each other out. She wasn't going to think about it any more.
"How is she? What happened?" Vicky assaulted her with questions the moment the door's latch clicked shut.
"She's fine, it wasn't your fault, abnormal brain chemistry." She frowned at her worried sister. "But we think it's going to happen every time she's exposed to your aura, and it might have actually hurt her if it went on much longer, so you're going to have to keep your distance for today." If Alice spazzed out while operating, someone would almost certainly die.
Vicky's face crumpled, and Amy regretted the necessity of telling her that… But as much as she hated to disappoint her sister, Alice's health was on the line.
"Wow, that sucks." Vicky sighed and set her shoulders. "But if that's how it has to be, that's how it has to be. Let her know I'm really sorry I can't hang around?"
"She knows, and she says she's sorry she has such a bad reaction." She nodded. "I'll see you later?"
"I'll come pick you up at the end of your shift." Vicky smiled, and Amy felt a little rush of appreciation. "Good luck! See if you and her can set a record or something. And don't forget to take breaks!"
Five hours later, taking a break was the last thing on Amy's mind.
"He had a really cute picture of his grandkids," Alice explained as she worked on a terminally ill patient, "but he was pushy about wanting me to put him in a younger body even though it wasn't even supposed to be public knowledge that I can do that, and when I told him I might put him on a waiting list in case I ever ran out of interesting patients, he got all nasty about how important he was."
"Was he actually important?" Amy asked as she handed Alice a jar of her biomass. Her other hand was on a simple bone-fracture patient, one of the many easy cases the nurses were wheeling in and out with factory-line efficiency. Alice had set that up, presumably to match her own dedicated arrangement back on the West Coast. It was a lot faster than what Amy usually did, but there was no way she could ever keep up with it on a daily basis.
"He was a senator for one of those really empty states in the middle of the country, so yeah, kind of," Alice admitted. "I didn't care that much. I put him on the list, and he might have got his turn before he died of old age. But I guess he told his senator friends, because they all started calling in to reserve 'immortality treatments' even though I never said for sure I would do that."
"Oh no," Amy said as she fixed a split lip and internal bleeding. She offered a hand to help close up the skull of the man Alice had just finished with. "How did you close that Pandora's box?"
"I told Alexandria that a bunch of important old guys were harassing me, and she told me that I was under no circumstances allowed to offer immortality to anyone who came into my workplace, no matter who they were, for security reasons," Alice explained. "Hey, wheel the next person in here, this guy's cured!"
A pair of nurses appeared to do exactly that, replacing the older man with a little boy who couldn't have been over six years old. "Brain tumor," one said. "His mom consents."
"Good, got it in writing?" Alice nodded at the proffered affidavit and shook her hand out before taking up her rotary drill once more. "The senators all complained, but Alexandria got them all on a conference call and told them… Let me remember the exact words…" She paused while her drill whined and did its grisly work. "I remember now. She said, 'no government official more important than a small-town mayor is allowed to have their brain massaged by any parahuman, no matter the outcome or that parahuman's trustworthiness. Check the law next time.' And after that they all stopped calling me and showing up in my workshop."
"Is that an actual law?" Amy didn't remember such problems ever coming up for her… But then again, she was limited to solving existing problems, and even if she could extend a body's lifespan indefinitely, sooner or later the brain would have problems she couldn't fix. She also didn't remember the last time she had treated someone genuinely important on a national level.
"Yes, apparently, because they're trying to get it amended now," Alice said. "And complaining about Alexandria, but she says that won't amount to anything so long as Costa-Brown has her back."
"It must be nice to have one of the Triumvirate looking out for you," Amy remarked. "But then again, you have to deal with that shit in the first place."
"Hey, there's a kid in the room," Alice huffed.
"He's out cold and your fingers are currently inside his skull, he can't hear any of this," Amy pointed out.
"It's the principle of the thing!"
They both laughed, and the mad rush to heal continued. Amy was having way too much fun to stop.
Light and sound were hellish inventions crafted by the devil himself.
"Amy, you overdid it."
A hand shook her shoulder. She responded by rolling over in bed and pressing her face into the pillow. Just five more… years.
"I feel no sympathy for you."
She wrapped the pillow around her head. The shoulder-shaking continued.
"You spent twelve straight hours healing people. No break. No food. And then you pigged out on hospital cafeteria food."
She remembered that. It had been fun.
"You should be perfectly capable of getting up when your alarm goes off."
She should. She wasn't. She wanted to sleep in.
"It's not like you're hungover. Or sore. You're just stubborn."
The shaking was getting more insistent. She didn't have any more pillow to burrow into. At this rate she would never get back to sleep.
"Get up or so help me I'll ask mom to chaperone you and your friend today instead of 'forgetting' to tell her that I can't go."
Amy surrendered and let go of her pillow, reluctantly raising her head to face the bright mid-morning sun and her bright, mostly cheerful sister. "Please no."
"So you can function before noon," VIctoria crowed. "Your friend was calling. She wants to know if you'll be conscious enough to make lunch, or if she has to come over and inject you with adrenaline."
"Don't tell her yes, she would actually do that," Amy groaned. She was slowly waking up… Very slowly. "Coffee?"
"There might be some in the kitchen." Victoria's presence retreated. "Come down and find out!"
Amy waited until her sister was gone, then rolled out of bed to start her day. She never was an early morning person. Or a late morning person, apparently. Or a social one; her throat was actually physically sore from all the talking she did yesterday. It was annoying. She hadn't missed the telltale sensation of a sore throat from childhood colds, and this was the first one she was stuck enduring since getting her powers.
One hurried shower later, she stumbled down into the kitchen and discovered that there was coffee. Cold coffee from several hours ago. Victoria was nowhere to be found to vent at, so she settled for letting her indignance power her as she wrangled their temperamental coffee maker into doing her bidding.
She did make it to the front door by noon, and Victoria was there to ferry her across town. They met up with Alice and her guards – two inconspicuous women with mirrored sunglasses and an air of competence – outside Lord's Street Market. Alice was much more obvious, wearing her domino mask, a red blouse and jeans.
"Don't forget your flight is scheduled for eight tonight," one of Alice's bodyguards reminded her before they left. "Or alternatively tomorrow morning, if that ends up not working for you."
"I'll make the first one, probably," Alice assured them. "Don't worry."
"We're paid to worry," the other told her. "Stick close to New Wave and don't hesitate to call us in if something happens."
"I'll be fine," Alice sighed.
Victoria hovered nearby – but not too close – until the guards were out of sight. "Okay, you two good without me?" she asked. "I don't want to intrude…"
"How much control do you have over your aura?" Alice asked, smiling up at Victoria. Amy resisted the urge to tell Victoria to go further away; as long as Alice wasn't giggling or declaring her undying attraction, she was probably fine. Victoria's aura didn't slip out all the time, just on occasion.
"Enough that I feel bad about skipping out on today, but not enough that I would risk your health if slipping up means I hurt you," Victoria answered.
"I'll know what's happening if it slips loose again," Alice assured her. "It will probably be fine. Come on!"
"Oh, okay?" Victoria looked to Amy. Amy shrugged her shoulders. She didn't know. It was up to Alice.
"Alice, you don't need a hunting knife," Amy found herself arguing a short while later. "What would you even do with it?"
"It looks cool," Alice argued. She hefted a tacky-looking knife with a blue plastic handle. "And you never know when you'll need a sharp edge."
"The younger miss makes a good point," the old man who owned the stall suggested. "Never know what might come around in a city like this."
"Oh, I'm not worried about self-defense," Alice told him. "What if I have to cut something open? I don't get to bring my scalpels everywhere."
The old man frowned at her. "That ain't a carvin' knife, it's a stabbing knife. I have carving knives, though." He picked out two much sharper blades with serrated edges from among the weapons arrayed on his table. "One of these catch yer fancy?"
"Alice, you won't be able to get it through airport security," Amy argued. Really, she just didn't want Alice to be carrying around a weapon for the rest of the day.
"You can mail it to me!" Alice suggested.
"I don't actually know if that's legal," Victoria chimed in. She was at the next stall over, examining a piece of knockoff cape merchandise. "Hey, Amy, weigh in on this. Insulting affront to all that is good, or hilarious gag gift?"
Amy turned to see what Victoria was talking about. Her sister was holding up a 'Clockblocker' figurine, but there was something different about it…
Namely that someone had taken the joke Dennis based his name off of and designed him an over-the-top alternate costume that fit the origin of the pun. "Put that down!" she hissed.
"Affront to all that is good, got it." Victoria held it out to the stall owner. "I'll take it!"
"I didn't think they let Wards have R-rated merchandise," Alice commented.
"At least put it in a bag," Amy begged. Victoria might be laughing now, but if someone got a picture of her holding it out and put it online, it would never go away. The internet made enough fun of her as it was.
"Only if you get something too," Victoria bargained. "Come on, this stuff is a riot!"
Amy reluctantly shuffled over to the knockoff cape stand. There were the usual nearly-legitimate shirts and hats and plastic masks, but this particular stall also had a whole line of quality 'alternative' parody merchandise, too. The Armsmaster-face girls' panties were there, of course; legitimate Protectorate versions were rare because of how quickly the line had been discontinued, but the knockoff line was still going strong. Then there were the Clockblocker figurines, and a Vista-fied stretch Armstrong doll which was actually kind of cute, and an Aegis sponge 'for soaking up blood' which was both insulting and gross…
"Alice, come look," Victoria invited her. "We can come back for a knife if you still want one later."
Amy was still engrossed in the admittedly impressive collection of parody merchandise. They had Miss Militia dart guns, which the Protectorate probably only didn't sell because they weren't allowed to make knock-off Nerf products, and then there was a Dauntless-themed 'choose your own power' adventure book, and packs of 'Battery' triple-A batteries complete with their own special theming…
"Ooh, there's a New Wave section," Alice said from behind Amy. "Dibs on the Panacea 'I'm too busy saving lives to deal with your shit' sticker collection!"
Amy looked, and much to her horror there was a little pile of New Wave joke products, including packs of stickers with her face and assorted irreverent quotes. She looked up at the stall owner, a young woman, and mouthed an exasperated 'really?' to her. There was no way the woman hadn't recognized her and Vicky by now.
"Hey, it sells," the woman said. "If you want a cut take it up with Skeevy Steve, I'm just manning the place for him today."
"I'll take three sticker packs and a Glory Girl tiara," Alice declared. "Amy?"
"Oh, fine… I want a Vista stretch doll."
They left the market with a bag of knock-off merchandise, a pocket knife as a compromise for Alice, and a few other little things. Alice had a Panacea sticker on her shirt, just above her collarbone, and Vicky had one on her cheek.
"Where to next?" Alice asked.
"I was thinking somewhere for lunch," Amy suggested. "There are some good seafood places not far from here…"
"I heard you have this place called Fugly Bob's," Alice remarked. "It's famous for being horribly greasy and having an eating challenge, right?"
"Yeah, but they do good smoothies too," Victoria said. "They're actually here, on the other end of the Market. You two could go there."
"What about you?" Amy asked.
"I had fun, but I think I'll leave you two on your own for now," Victoria said. "I feel like a third wheel."
"Ugh, no," Alice mimed gagging. Amy nodded seriously, in total agreement.
"Really?" Victoria looked at Alice, then Amy. "Wow. Totally misread the mood, then. Still. Let me know when you want to be picked up, Amy. It was nice meeting you, Alice!"
"Nice meeting you too!" Alice called out as Victoria flew off. "So… Fugly Bob's?"
"If you want the tacky tourist experience, sure." She wasn't too bothered by Alice's desire to see the local tourist trap. They did have some good things, so long as one knew what to order. The Challenger and other mega-burgers were for the fools with too much money and no appreciation for what cholesterol actually did to the body.
"I've got this priority list," Alice explained in between bites of her Challenger burger. "For healing. Kids first, obviously, and the bigger the problem the higher up on the list they are. Then teenagers and adults with life-threatening conditions, then people with quality of life issues. That's not really innovative, right?"
"Not really," Amy agreed as she picked at her salad. She had a similar system, albeit one complicated by the regular gang warfare that introduced the question of whether she should be prioritizing lethally-wounded criminals or badly-wounded innocents.
"My new thing that I thought up is how we rearrange the schedule for urgent cases," Alice continued. "Only so many hours in a day, and I'm not allowed to work more than eight of them in actual surgery. I set aside the first surgery 'slot' in my schedule every day as a flexible one; people who want to skip ahead in line can come and wait, and if there's no emergency I take one of them. If there is an actual emergency, I do that instead."
"What if there's an emergency after that time slot?" Amy asked. She eyed the massive bulk of the Challenger burger Alice set down, wondering whether it contained enough biomass to reconstruct the cow that had given its life to make the patty. Maybe she could do it with three Challengers.
"No system is perfect," Alice admitted. "But most brain problems aren't urgent to the point where twenty-four hours will mean the difference between life and death. The ones that are never make it to my clinic in the first place, because they die in transport."
"Lucky." Amy's own moral dilemmas never seemed to solve themselves like that.
"Do you think I could do more?" Alice asked, suddenly serious. "I think I'm doing really well, but if there's some way I can be better, I'm all ears."
"Do more?" Amy's first instinct was to suggest Alice work longer hours, but that died between her brain and tongue as she considered how miserable she felt after working long hours for weeks on end. Alexandria probably wouldn't let Alice do that, anyway. She was here on an enforced vacation, after all. "It sounds to me like you're doing as well as can be expected. There will always be assholes out there who say you could be better, do more, but there's a limit.'
"That's good advice." Alice took a big bite of her burger, then wiped her face with her third napkin, the first two having been discarded once they were more grease than napkin. "I think I'm done," she admitted, setting the burger down. "This thing is big."
"I did say," Amy told her.
"Yes, but I wanted to try it," Alice said. "I try not to stop myself from doing the things I want to. The little things, anyway. It all… builds up, otherwise. Hard to live like that."
"Yeah." She knew what Alice meant.
"Want some?" Alice asked.
Amy eyed the burger. "If I ever need to give someone a D-cup on short notice, maybe." That was all that mass of fatty gristle was good for.
"Do you do cosmetic stuff?" Alice asked. "I wouldn't think so. Your hospital here was really packed for such a small city."
"No, never." That way led to madness. She couldn't even keep up with the serious injuries.
"Me neither," Alice agreed. "I mean, I could, but I would need my tools and at that point why not just go to an actual cosmetic surgeon? They might be cheaper, too."
"Wait, you charge people?" Amy had assumed Alice was doing it like she was, free of charge.
"Yeah, it's a reversed pay scale," Alice said, eager to explain. "If it's something incurable, we charge like a hundred dollars or something. If it's really, really hard to cure with modern medicine, a little more. The idea is that the less necessary I am, the more they pay. That way my clinic isn't a big drain on resources, and the people who need my help most don't have any trouble getting it."
"You've got it all figured out." Amy was envious, plain and simple. Alice's setup sounded like a well-oiled machine, and she had only been working for a few months. It had been years and the hospital situation was still very much an ad-hoc volunteering thing, and Carol still wouldn't even entertain the idea of charging for her services.
"You think so?" If Alice smiled any wider she would need surgery to put her face back together after.
"It sure sounds like it." Amy drained the last of her drink and waved a waiter over. "Want to go check out a museum?" The art museum, to be exact, one of Brockton Bay's most high-brow tourist attractions. The proverbial pig's lipstick.
"Is it going to be all abstract art?" Alice asked. "I like the things I can actually make sense of."
"Probably?" Amy had no idea. It wasn't like she made regular trips to the museum. "We can at least check."
It was all abstract art. Bright colors, splashes that appeared to the naked eye to be incidental, but when explained by a slightly star-struck tour guide… still came out looking incidental but with a veneer of self-important artsy bullshit put into justifying the randomness as more valuable than the output of a random number generator.
Or maybe Amy was too cynical. But at least she wasn't alone in that.
"My hospital scrubs have more appealing patterns of red and off-yellow," Alice remarked as they passed the offending red, white and yellow painting in the gallery. "And I have to throw those in the medical waste bin at the end of the day."
"That one looks like you ran around in the grass after a storm and then scooted across the canvas," Amy replied, pointing out a green-streaked thing.
An old couple sitting on one of the gallery's benches glared at her as she passed. Neither she nor Alice were speaking quietly.
"What about that one?" Alice pointed to a crazy warped Picasso-like thing.
"We live in the same town as Vista, that's just an accurate rendition of the streets when she's fighting muggers," Amy joked.
"Too colorful, this city is all browns and grays," Alice remarked.
"True… Vista fighting a paint-themed parahuman." She remembered the stretchy Vista doll Vicky had taken home for her. She seemed to be coming up a lot today. Her and Aegis with his blood-sponge knockoff products…
She tried not to see the messy results of Aegis in a fight in the next two-dozen abstract splatter-fests they passed, but it was hard. He was the worst to heal. Not hard, not interesting, just… complicating himself with barely-adequate replacement biology that couldn't even sustain itself without constant energy input from somewhere. His power cheated.
"Hey, I think I can see something in that one!" Alice walked up to a three-foot square painting and squinted. "Is it a face?"
"The title says 'Birds in Autumn," Amy pointed out. "But it could be called 'Paris During a Thunderstorm' or 'A Large Pile of Compost' and it would be just as recognizable, so you probably do see a face." Rorschach had nothing on this artist.
"It's a masterpiece!" the same old lady from before said. "You don't appreciate art!"
"I'm a bitter woman with an ax to grind against all that is good," Amy deadpanned. "Don't take it personally."
"I'm as cheerful and optimistic as they come but I still think this is shit," Alice added.
The old woman gasped, her equally elderly husband stood up, and both Amy and Alice decided it was time to go. Amy did not want to take time out of her day to fix an indignation-induced heart attack she caused.
"So you have a boardwalk," Alice said as they walked. "We're walking on it now. Beach scenery, beach within running distance, all sorts of people walking on the beach within eyeshot, bright blue waves…"
"It's nice by this town's standards," Amy confirmed.
"But I can't go on the beach," Alice continued.
"No, definitely not." Amy shuddered at the thought.
"Why?" Alice asked plaintively. She pointed at the water and the people picking through the tideline. "They're doing it!" Most of them were bums searching for valuable flotsam, but she didn't seem to care.
"First of all, it's too cold to swim. Second of all, most of those people are suicidally stupid." Amy shook her head. "There are enough used needles buried in that sand to fill a dump truck. Notice how there aren't any kids out there?"
"I did think that was weird," Alice admitted.
"And notice how nobody is going around barefoot?" Amy continued.
"Yes…" Alice said reluctantly.
"So no. I can clean up anything you get from a needle, but you don't want me doing that." That would involve looking at Alice's biology, and she had proven she would rather cut herself open than allow that invasion of privacy. Amy didn't understand, but she respected that opinion.
"It wouldn't be… so bad." Alice shrugged. "If you had to heal me."
"The beach isn't worth it," Amy said sternly.
"No, you're right. I meant… whenever." Alice continued to stare out at the shore as they walked.
"We cut you open to avoid me doing that," Amy reminded her. If Alice didn't feel so strongly about it after all, why had they gone to all that trouble? Aside from disturbing and annoying that guy. That was a worthy cause.
"I didn't know you that well," Alice said. "You didn't know me. Now it's different. If I'm hurt or you really need to look, you can."
"Sure, whatever." There was no accounting for the optimism-addled trains of thought that might run through Alice's head. At least now if something happened and Alice needed healing but wasn't conscious, Amy wouldn't have to violate her standing request to save her life. It was unlikely to happen like that, but this was Brockton Bay.
Amy looked over her shoulder, but the boardwalk remained peaceful. No rampaging Hookwolf or Lung, no crazy gangbangers starting a riot, no Tattletale coming out of the woodwork to destroy her life with the truth…
Today was a good day.
"Maybe if I bought boots first?" Alice mused.
"There aren't any good shoe stores here on the boardwalk, let's go to the mall and look for some there." Amy didn't actually know if anywhere on the boardwalk sold boots, but the mall was out of sight of the beach and ideally would distract Alice so this nice day didn't end with Amy purging some horrible bloodborne disease from her friend.
Three fat flies buzzed in the air above the food court, circling predatorily over Alice and her ice cream.
"Touch me and you die," Alice threatened, glaring up at the persistent pests. "I mean it."
Amy leaned back in her chair and watched, the noise of the food court a pleasant backdrop. She was feeling enjoyably lethargic, her feet sore from all the walking and her stomach full.
One of the flies dive-bombed Alice, landing on her hand. It proceeded to crawl around on her wrist before dodging a lazy smack from her other hand.
"Dead, huh?" Amy asked.
"It would have fallen in my ice cream," Alice grumbled.
They hadn't found any suitable boots, not that they had really been looking. The day was old and winding down now, and Amy didn't have it in her to do much else.
"Don't let them ruin it," Amy offered.
"Nothing could ruin this day," Alice assured her. She smiled, tired but obviously content. "Really. This was fun. The most fun I've had… Ever."
"Surely not." Amy didn't consider herself a fun person; Alice probably could have had more fun wandering Brockton Bay on her own.
"It's been great," Alice sighed. She pushed the remains of her ice cream away. "Here, flies. Have it."
"Feed them and they'll breed." Not that she cared. Amy could count on one hand the number of times she had voluntarily entered a mall. At worst, the offspring of these flies would be recruited for an insect gang and contribute to the violence that plagued the city…
She laughed. "Wow, I just realized that in Brockton Bay there is an actual chance that these flies might be criminals."
"You have a bug cape now, right?" Alice asked. "The one at the bank."
"Skitter." With the creepy yellow lenses and the gray suit and the spiders. "She's not the worst part of that gang. Tattletale is. But yes, a bug cape."
"Tattletale…" Alice looked up at the high ceiling of the food court. "Tells tales?"
"Bitch digs up things that should be left unsaid," Amy groused. A familiar twinge of anxiety flared in her chest, but she ruthlessly smothered it. Not today.
"Secrets," Alice sighed. "Do you think… Should secrets be kept or shared? If sharing them might cause problems?"
"Kept." That was why Tattletale was so dangerous. She knew too much, whatever her power really was.
Then Amy remembered who she was talking to. "Unless you're talking about your mother," she added. "Have you found her yet?"
Alice met her curious gaze. There was an odd reluctance in her usually cheerful friend's eyes, in the way she tapped her spoon on the table, heedless of the little splatters of melted ice cream. "I know who she is and where she is, but no. I haven't told her yet."
"When you're ready," Amy suggested. "But don't wait too long."
"It's always easier to agree with advice than to carry it out," Alice said. "But… yeah. I know."
They sat in silence for a while. At the next table over a tired toddler was starting to throw a fit, but his mother quickly rushed him out of the half-empty food court, and the low rumble of conversations continued in the background. It was peaceful, in the way that anonymity in a crowd could be. Nobody cared that she was Panacea. She was just another random mall patron sitting around at a shitty food court table digesting over-processed sugars and fats.
"I think it's time to head back," Alice remarked. "I can catch a cab from here, right?"
"Yeah, a few hang around the front of the mall most of the time." Brockton Bay had a cab industry. Not a very good one, but enough that Alice probably wouldn't have to wait long for one. "You want me to walk you to it?" She kind of wanted to sit around a while longer before calling Victoria to pick her up. Going home would mean an end to the day.
"I've got it." Alice smiled and pushed her chair back. She picked up their various plastic utensils and empty cartons and dumped them in the nearest trashcan, then stood by the table. Amy stood, feeling suddenly awkward. How was she supposed to say goodbye? They would be back to texting by tomorrow, it wasn't like they would never talk again. But Alice was going back across the country.
"See you some other time," Alice offered with a lopsided smile.
"Come back to Brockton Bay anytime you want," Amy told her. "Maybe for longer next time."
"Can't take too much time away from saving lives," Alice said. "But yeah. I'd like that. If you'll have me." She left the food court, her red and white hair swaying behind her as she walked.
Amy sat down and pondered the possibility of talking her shoes off to rub her feet; they were actually really sore from all the walking she had done today. On the other hand, she didn't want to be that weirdo who did weird things in a mall food court, and with her luck it would be caught on video somehow.
A fly landed on her hand. She contemplated Mirandizing it and taking it in to be interrogated on the actions of its possible Parahuman overlord, then laughed at herself and brushed it off. It buzzed around a bit, then landed on the only thing left on the table. A scrap of napkin…
Not a napkin. A piece of notebook paper, neatly folded. 'For Amy' was written on the top.
"What's this?" she muttered, shooing the fly away as she took the paper. Under the 'For Amy' was written, in smaller letters, 'Read tomorrow. Or whenever. Or throw away. Your choice.'
"Really," she said, louder. "What is this?" Obviously it had been left by Alice, but why?
This was not a mystery that could wait until tomorrow, or never, no matter what the note might say. She unfolded the paper and flipped it around to reveal the actual message inscribed on the inside.
The note was written in blue ink, little scratches of a thin-nibbed pen. The words themselves were scrawled in a cramped script across the whole page, leaving no margins, and were crammed close together to have enough room on the scrap of paper. The handwriting was oddly familiar.
'Amy,' it read. 'I shouldn't give you this. It means I chickened out. Please don't think badly of me. Please. It's hard. I'm always cheerful but I can still worry. I'm writing this on the plane. Just in case.'
Amy squinted at the messy handwriting, noticing that it was getting worse as the note progressed.
'Remember what I told you during that week we first met? About my moms? I left things out to keep them secret.'
The next few lines were scratched out, wholly illegible. The legible writing picked up again underneath.
'But I always meant to tell you. Someday. My mom is a parahuman. Also, she's never had sex. That was my way of not saying that every time she touched another parahuman, she made a copy. An evil, deformed copy with a random variation of their powers.'
Amy had to reread that last line twice. 'Evil' was scratched into the paper so hard there was a hole where the tip of the 'i' was supposed to be, and the rest was no better. Also, what it meant… Not easy to wrap her head around. But once she had reassured herself that it actually did say what she thought it did, she kept reading. A hollow, uncomfortable feeling was growing in her chest…
'I was one,' the note continued. 'But I had the power to fix myself. I did. I didn't lie.'
The entire next line was crossed out so many times it was illegible. The lines after that were scrawled just above the ragged bottom of the paper, cramped and half-sized to fit.
'Please don't hate me, mom. I'm not evil now. I fixed myself. I'm doing good. I never did anything bad. I cut it all out of myself before I could. Now I've gone back to Los Angeles to keep doing good things. I hope it will be enough, but if I left this note I wasn't sure.'
'I wasn't sure whether I've done enough yet for you to accept me.'
'-Your Alice.'
Amy sucked in a ragged breath. This…
She had no words. No reaction. It wasn't real. It couldn't be.
It couldn't be real. She didn't know what it would mean if it was. How she was supposed to react. What to do.
In a way, it changed absolutely nothing.
In a way, it changed everything.
If it was even true.
She had never been cloned. She would remember.
Alice said it was her.
She would have noticed if Alice was a clone of her. Surely it would be obvious.
Alice, who had a similar but different power.
Alice, who hadn't wanted her looking. Not at her biology. Not at the genetic markers unique to every individual.
Not when she might recognize her own DNA.
The DNA Alice had deliberately hidden from her with reasonable excuses. The DNA Amy had worked so hard not to look at.
It was all a trick. A lie. She was saying that she was an evil clone, that was just ridiculous. Alice was crazy and funny and weird, evil never entered the equation. Unless it was all a trick, but then why leave this note? Alice couldn't be bad, she was only safe because she was a better person than Amy, one who could handle the responsibility of openly working on brains and by extension everything that made a person a person.
Amy could feel her blood pumping, and she stood from the crappy mall seating, though she didn't know yet what she was going to do. Alice was gone, she had left this note tearing down everything Amy knew about her, she hadn't even had the courage to stay and face the music or at least admit to her stupid, tasteless attempt at a prank.
No.
Amy refused to let her get away with that. She was going to come back, and she was going to explain her deception in person, right the hell now! And if she didn't come back, then Amy was going to find her and shake the truth out of her once and for all.
Forget not knowing how to react; Amy knew exactly what she was going to do. She kicked her chair in flush with the table and stomped out of the food court. Then she was running, because fast walking wouldn't be enough to catch up before Alice caught a cab or something, she had been gone for a good three minutes or more.
As she ran, she fumed, anger bubbling up and growing within her. This was just a shit thing to do to a friend, a stupid joke of a lie and not at all possibly real, and if it was then she was going to do something–
Amy spotted a long streak of red hair ahead of her, going up an escalator. The white going down the middle was distinctive, and now she knew why Alice wasn't that worried about her civilian identity, and that only made her madder because it was so not obvious even now that she knew the truth. How could it be true? It wasn't.
Running up an escalator wouldn't work, so she found the stationary stairs and stomped up them, pumping her legs as fast as they would let her go. The burning in her calves didn't deter her, and neither did seeing that Alice was almost at one of the exits. People got out of her way as she ran.
She didn't call out to Alice; that might let the sneak run away better. Instead, she stormed up behind the shorter girl just as she was leaving the building, grabbed her arm–
Alice whipped around and smacked at her. "Fuck off!" the normally cheerful girl yelled, but then she caught sight of who exactly had grabbed her and paled. "I–"
"No," Amy growled. She dragged Alice along the side of the mall's exterior until they reached a little recess in the brickwork. There was a service door with a knob, and when Amy tried it the door opened to reveal a dingy little hallway. She pulled Alice inside, out of sight of any gawking bystanders, and locked the deadbolt behind them. "What the fuck is this?" she demanded.
"Let go, you're hurting me," Alice complained. "I was just going to–"
"Fucking leave me with this fucking bombshell?" Amy cursed, yanking out the letter to shove it against Alice's chest. "No way! You don't admit to shit like that in a note you don't think I'll read until you're halfway across the country! You don't pull that shit!" She wasn't even angry about that, but it was the first in a whole list of grievances she had come up with during the chase and now fully intended to vent.
"You're hurting me!" Alice yanked her arm out of Amy's grip. Ugly tears streaked down her face. "I was afraid! But I thought you deserved to know anyway, so I did it the only way I could."
"You're damn right I deserved to know!" If it was true, which it might very well be, Alice was her clone. Her messed-up clone who was toying with peoples' heads and gallivanting around without a care in the world, pretending to be her friend, crushing on Victoria–
Lusting after Victoria! Her clone was openly drooling at her sister and showing the feelings she herself couldn't stand even the thought of revealing!
"You did! And now you do and everything is terrible!" Alice yelled. "I didn't want to ruin everything!"
"How would me knowing ruin anything?" Amy demanded. "I'm not–"
"You're doing this." Alice shoved her, physically pushing her away. "Crowding me in a tiny space and screaming at me and not trusting me with anything. It's my worst nightmare. Literally! I cut myself open and cut out all the hate I'm supposed to feel for the original, and I replaced it with love instead, but the only mother you ever had was Carol and I know how that feels! And now you're acting just like her!"
Amy recoiled as if she had been slapped. She would have preferred a physical slap to that. "I am not like her," she hissed.
"I didn't think you were, but you're proving me wrong right now!" Alice retorted. "What's this, huh? You're mad at me for things I can't help, for my parents, for what I could do with my powers, for being afraid to tell you everything? For lying to try and have a better relationship between us before I came clean? Ringing any bells?"
"Fuck you!" Amy spat.
"Branching out from your sister?" Alice retorted. Her eyes widened, and she recoiled. "No. I didn't mean that."
"You said it anyway." She had acknowledged the thing Amy couldn't stand to have known. The thing she hid, the thing Tattletale had threatened to reveal to the world. And Amy felt hollow inside.
Alice stepping over the line had paradoxically pulled them both back from the edge of rage; neither of them spoke for a long moment. Amy was still simmering with righteous fury, but other things were starting to creep in around the edges…
"I tried so hard to be the person you would want me to be," Alice sniffled, wiping ineffectually at her face with her sleeve. "And it's all gone to hell now. But I'm not going to stop. I'm not a bad person. I'll go back to Los Angeles, I'll be better. With or without your approval. But I really wanted it." Her sleeve slipped down, revealing the beginning of finger-shaped bruises around her forearm.
It was instinct. A mixture of appalled regret and the need to fix the things she had just damaged. She reached out and touched Alice's forearm, intending to heal.
There it was.
Amy didn't know her own biology well, her power didn't work on herself. But she recognized the traits every cell of Alice's body intended to express. She saw the places where plastic surgery had reshaped things, where permanent hair dye had killed off the brown roots of hair, where her height had been reduced… Where horrible deformities had been corrected.
Alice's body was a template that had been overwritten, but the template was still there and it described Amy if she had been born deformed and somehow inexplicably survived with them to her current age before they killed her. And there, up at the top, was the mind. The brain, and all of the figurative razed ground and forcibly restructured connections. Horrible things had happened there, and drastic things had been done to negate them.
Vile graffiti and foul unnatural craters marred the metaphorical walls of Alice's mind, but she had turned it all into a mural. Connections meant to enforce undying devotion were softened to affectionate but not overpowering love. Indiscriminate hate burned out so thoroughly that she probably couldn't properly hate anything anymore, and in one case instead redirected to the same love. Hard-wired connections rewired because they could not be removed, complicated but parsable, cause and effect layered up upon itself. Feedback loops of self-destructive anger were redirected to cheer, still unstoppable but no longer destructive.
Amy stared into Alice's puffy, tear-stained face. "You really are…" She couldn't finish. Because Alice wasn't her. Not anymore. Maybe not ever, with all of the unnatural alterations to her brain that she had changed but not been able to remove.
"Please don't," Alice pleaded, shrinking away from Amy's touch. "I'll be good. Don't change me."
Her fearful words were a dagger to Amy's heart, and she left everything, even the bruise she had originally intended to heal, completely untouched. She broke contact, and once more the only thing she could see was her altered duplicate's miserable face.
"I'm not going to hurt you." She wasn't. She wouldn't. No more than she would hurt anyone else with her power. It wasn't even tempting, here and now. She was angry, but her anger had long since been eroded away, and now…
Now she was ashamed. Ashamed of her actions, ashamed of her attitude, ashamed of her indignant rage. But it was too late. She wasn't going to get a second chance, if she even wanted one. Not with this. Not after blowing up at Alice so viciously.
Here was a damaged girl who thought of Amy as her mother, and what had Amy done to her? Validated every single fear she had, and physically threatened her to boot. Even Carol had never done that. Amy wasn't like her, she was worse.
"I'm not going to hurt you," she repeated, at a loss for how she could possibly fix this. "I… shit, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"No, I am," Alice sniffed. "I should never have tried to tell you."
"I shouldn't have chased after you and dragged you into a tiny enclosed space like a psychopath," Amy retorted. She was only now properly looking around, and the scene of their confrontation was dimly lit, dirty, and completely away from prying eyes. She could have done anything here and nobody would have known except for the handful of people who had noticed her bringing Alice inside in the few seconds it had taken. And of the two of them, Amy's variation of their power was more effective for immediate conflict; Alice couldn't change her as fast as she could change Alice, and Alice needed her tools and biomass to do most things.
"You shouldn't have done that," Alice agreed. "It scared me."
"I'm sorry." She wanted to crawl into a small hole somewhere and hide from the rest of existence. If this was how she acted when something made her mad, then the world was doomed because all of her self-control could apparently go up in smoke at any time.
"I wanted to tell you myself," Alice said. "I should have. This is my fault."
"It's not your fault, it's my fault that I'm a shitty human being." A budding friendship, and she had thrown it away at the first sign of trouble. She was so stupid. Forget everything else, if she had just waited and had this confrontation over the phone, she wouldn't have been able to hurt Alice with anything more than words. They might actually have worked it out before she went too far. But no, she had to go after her.
"I am too," Alice said. "Give me another chance?"
Amy didn't immediately answer. She took a few seconds to really think about it first. This was such a huge mess… But it wouldn't stop being a huge mess if she said no and walked away. There was no path to fixing her own mistakes if she said no, either. But if she said yes, she was… what? Going to have to listen to a longer, more drawn-out story about how she was kidnapped, cloned, and then how her clone felt about it?
"Yes. Let's start over." They could do it properly this time.
Both of them.
Several long, awkward, occasionally mortifying hours later, Amy parted ways with Alice for the night. Alice left to catch a cab and in the morning an early flight to replace the one she had missed.
"Thanks," Alice said before she went. "For listening."
Amy still didn't feel she deserved to be thanked for getting it right the second time around. Having heard Alice's story in full, all of the little details filling out the broad overarching structure she had been told months ago…
She still didn't know how to feel about the connection between them. There was no normal equivalent to being the parahuman progenitor of a formerly evil clone created by a second parahuman at the behest of a third who had her kidnapped out of her bedroom one night, drugged into unconsciousness, cloned, and then dropped back off in her bed like nothing happened.
Amy was getting locks for her windows, that was for damn sure. And figuring out a way to push New Wave toward investigating Coil, the fucker who had her abducted to use with Noelle. But as for how she felt about Alice?
Not angry, that was for sure. Mostly guilty, at this point. Guilty and worried that she was going to fuck up again.
"Thank you for telling me," she had replied, though a part of her wished she didn't know. It was easier, that way. But not easier for Alice, who had beamed despite the terror and despair she had been inflicted with earlier that same day.
"I'll text you when I can," Alice had promised, and then she was gone, skipping up the boardwalk towards the nearest main road.
Gone, but not out of Amy's life. Not even close. Their friendship was… not repaired, not quite, but still holding together. It would bounce back. Alice would force it to bounce back, if the speed at which she had regained her cheery attitude was any indication.
Amy sent Victoria a text, letting her know the day was over and that she was ready to be picked up, along with her location, and waited under the stars.
There was another number in her contacts now, just above 'Vicky', one simply labeled 'Noelle'. Alice had given the number to her, along with the full story of how she came to be.
Amy wasn't going to open that can of worms for as long as she could get away with. At least she knew Alice. She had no obligation to interact with Noelle. Just being there for Alice was going to be weird enough. They were friends, and hopefully she could just keep being a good friend with a bit of added familiarity. It wouldn't change their dynamic too much. Alice had known from the start who she was. Now Amy knew too. That was all.
A shape blotted out the stars above, descending from the heavens to land on the docks in front of Amy. "Have a good day?" Victoria asked.
"Some of it was good." Maybe on the whole, it was a good day, but there was one really shitty part that stopped her from saying so. That shitty part was at least half of her own making, though.
"Tell me about it," Vicky complained as she picked Amy up in the usual bridal-carry position. They were off, up into the sky. "No, really, do tell me about it, I need to be able to say what you were doing all day if Carol asks."
"Well…" She had a choice to make. A very important one, and in a way the exact same choice she had just been on the other side of. Alice had given her blessing either way, which was a third can of worms Amy was going to have to unpack and deal with sooner or later…
It was all so complicated, and she could keep it a secret, maybe indefinitely, but she needed someone else in her life who knew what was going on. Everything that was going on, even the horribly uncomfortable parts that she had been threatened with not that long ago. She had almost done something unforgivable today, manhandling someone and berating them and violating their personal space, and if she had been a tiny bit angrier she might have gone even further.
Having seen the edge of the cliff and been pulled back by an unreasonably forgiving almost-victim, she knew something had to change. So she bit the bullet and decided to do something drastic and terrifying.
"Turns out I'm a teenage mom?"
Vicky almost dropped her out of sheer surprise. Almost. She didn't, in the end, fumbling for a renewed grip while complaining about stupid jokes cracked by idiots with no sense of self-preservation.
Amy chose to believe that was a sign that she was doing the right thing, and proceeded to spill her guts. About everything.
Alice was a better person than her. Victoria was a better person than her, too.
But that just meant she had to try harder.
Author's Note: "Hey, wait, we wanted a fun reveal scene. What the hell is this?"
Or so I imagine readers might be thinking. And hopefully most of this chapter lived up to the 'fun' expectation. But the actual reveal, well… First, I wrote a version where Amy handled it genuinely well, in a way that was kind of in character. It was the version where nobody got hurt or even hurt feelings. Then, that out of my system, I considered a side-step and writing it where Amy kind of figures it out as the day goes, so that when Alice accidentally drops one hint too many she kind of just goes 'yeah, I already know', but that was definitely out of character and didn't really work because the amount of bald-faced references I would have to write Alice as giving for Amy to plausibly make the leap to anything close to 'you are my clone' would strain credibility to the breaking point and back.
Finally, the mild and indirect options exhausted, I wrote a version where she blew up and did things she regretted after and almost crossed a few different lines, which felt much more in line with her character. Threading the needle where she almost ruins it and then manages to bring it back was much harder, and thankfully Alice is very much in a position where she basically has to offer forgiveness, which isn't great for Alice's own mental health if it backfires but happens to be exactly what Amy needs to not spiral out into a descending stream of compounding bad decisions. Instead, she jumps to a huge overreaction (looking at you, 'self-condemning to Birdcage without even fixing your sister' canon Amy) in the other direction.
Suffice to say I really don't envy anyone involved in that confessional. But it felt like a suitably 'Amy' thing to do on the back of all of the crap she's had to think about in the last few months. Alice pushes her boundaries and forces her to confront herself, quite literally in some respects. Faced with a genuinely worse-off version of herself who has 'fixed' her problems by force, she's broken out of a lot of ruts of thinking and routine, and this is the mostly optimistic end result.
Or so I think. This one's emotionally whiplash-y, but that's kind of intended. Amy's anger burns hot and fast, and then she gets bitch-slapped by her own actions and goes to take them back (again, just like canon, but less severely fucked-up so she actually can). Ugh. Who knows if it works. It's my best attempt at present, and I like the drastic overcorrection ending it naturally leads to, so I'm keeping it.
Anyway… Other things!
It might interest readers to know that I constructed the first part of this AU with a 'suspect list' in mind for the mystery. The individuals on the list all got at least one Red Herring each, along with several disqualifying clues (though not the actual identity, of course, that one got a lot of real clues and no disqualifying ones). The individuals on my list were Taylor, Madison, Emma, Bonesaw herself, and all the possible combinations of 'Bonesaw and/or Panacea clone made by Bonesaw or Noelle'. Interestingly, I didn't see any specific reader guesses outside of this suspect list (though 'Taylor's mind in Madison's body' was certainly a combination I hadn't anticipated someone guessing in any capacity). Actually, I don't think anyone even mentioned Emma, which is fair because the only real hint towards her was red hair. And a lot of people seized upon the S9-heavy possible explanations as their guesses, some citing Friendly Face as a big piece of evidence for the S9's involvement…
Which, I'll be totally honest, was never my intention. Friendly Face is, as I said last time, totally coincidental to the story. I needed 'cape handler' as a role, decided to ad-lib him, and gave him his power, no joke, because I thought the arrival scene as I first wrote it was sparse on details and went 'yes, that's probably just subpar writing I could fix, but what if it was actually this guy's fault!' From there I just developed his character and power in the directions that explained his presence and role in the story.
I find it hilariously meta that I said 'Friendly Face isn't important' in the closing author's note last time, but nobody acknowledged it while several people pointed to him as evidence. Maybe his power affects me but not the readers? I wish I could claim that was my intention, but really. He's exactly what he seems. A Friendly Face…
(You'll never know for sure if I'm doing this on purpose or not.)
There's probably going to be a fourth entry in this AU sometime later. I want to follow up on the consequences of Amy going full secret-spiller to Victoria, and Alice, and Noelle, and how all of this diverges the canon plotline we've been running mostly parallel to up until now, but that's going to be its own story and I won't write it until I know where I want to go with it.
Why do I say fourth?
Let's just say I want to stretch my humor and/or crack capabilities with a bit of non-canon silliness based on this AU. That's coming first, and soon.