Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.
Someone will complain about the US not having any ancient history or architecture and then live in a place literally called Massachusetts. I’ll kill you.
"we don't have anything this old out west!" you have. pueblos. which are substantially older
(and this would be why I'm pedantic about New England having some of the oldest European architecture in the country. there were :) :) :) many people here for many many years :) :) :) before us :) and they are still! here!)
my mom is 61 and her bf is a huge nerd and he’s teaching her to play magic the gathering and he had her watch avatar the last airbender with him and his ringtone is terra’s theme from final fantasy 6 and he paints pictures of sephiroth. my mom’s bf is nerdier than i’ll ever be.
and she does all these pinterest crafts and now she makes little bejeweled vials of healing potions for him and his buddies. my little geek heart can’t handle all this.
edit: just picture a 60-something woman with a VERY thick minnesotan accent saying “mike is having me watch the naruto”
[We’ve had past and present Minerva, but what about future?]
One day, Minerva will be familiar with the island’s crags and shelves. She’ll know the way the shore slope becomes a drop off and where the sandbars are, the color and density of all the coral, the migratory patterns of the species who pass by.
Today, she knows enough to avoid triggering the sensors. Even pauses to adjust one that’s started sagging out of place.
Minerva chooses not to walk up the beach, not wanting to track sand into the - house? Facility? Building? - not wanting to get sand caked to her feet and legs. Jumping straight up to the roof in a waterspout is also unnecessarily dramatic when there isn’t a fight to get to. So she just gathers herself, waits for a wave, and urges it a little higher, placing herself at its apex.
It gets her high enough that she can reach the railing of the overlooking balcony, with enough momentum to curl and tuck her body, cartwheeling over the rail partially just for the joy of motion. Even the smooth tiles feel rough compared to the water, strangely unyielding, and she wobbles just a little as she catches her bearings. Belatedly, she realizes she almost kicked the crap out of one of the balcony’s chairs. The little swerve she does is automatic. At least there wasn’t an audience-
“Minerva.” Says Synovus, sitting on the table because they’re deranged. There’s a surprised tilt to the end of her name, like half a question answering itself. They’re wearing civilian clothes again, and some part of Minerva’s mind can’t help noting that their arms are bare. “Welcome - back.”
One day, Minerva won’t scowl at them on reflex.
Today, she demands immediately, “Were you waiting for me?”
“Y-es?” Synovus hedges, not moving. “But also no? I was - I thought you’d be coming up from the shore.”
They sound almost abashed. But that’s too close to ‘embarrassed’ and Minerva is well aware that Synovus has no shame. She may have genuinely surprised them - they’re perched on the edge of the table, and had leaned away slightly. Synovus wanting to be a problem would have chosen a much more… blatant posture. Or at least to sit further back in the shadows. The absence of either a gaudy attention grabber or deliberate stealth indicated this middle ground was not an act. Or perhaps that’s what she’s meant to think.
One day, Minerva will not have to consciously pick aside the paranoia to see what is in front of her.
Today, it takes effort - but she does it.
With a sigh, she closes her eyes, and focuses on each part of her body, bringing herself down from the mild surge of adrenaline. One hand draws back the wet strands of her hair. The other removes the mask that was a gift. She leaves her eyes closed while she rubs the red marks out of her skin.
With her eyes closed, it’s easier to skip past the defensive retort, and say instead, “You could’ve at least had a coffee waiting for me.”
“I don’t actually know your preferences in that regard.” Synovus admits, and for a heartbeat Minerva is worried this will turn into a far too blunt conversation about homecomings, but - “Do you take it black? Iced? Green?”
Minerva scoffs, but it might have just been a laugh. Even she’s not sure. “White chocolate mocha.” She answers. “One shot espresso, oat milk.”
“Ah,” Synovus says, as Minerva opens her eyes. They seem to have had a revelation. “So that’s why Alexandria likes those Unicorn frappes so much. Hm. And here I usually go for the cider.”
A smile tugs at one corner of her mouth at the thought - Synovus, dread assassin, going to a coffee shop and ordering hot apple juice with whipped cream.
Minerva sets her mask on the table. “Stand up a minute.” She tells Synovus quietly, her voice nearly lost in the sound of the waves below.
“I don’t take direction well.” Synovus replies, even as they slide off the table and to their feet, turning to face her. There’s a caution to their movements, but also curiosity, written far more liberally across the unobscured face Minerva once never thought to see.
If Minerva meets their eyes too long, she’ll lose her nerve, so she winds up staring somewhere around Synovus’s collarbone instead. There’s a scar there, hidden for now by a high-necked top, and Minerva knows that because she put it there. It had been a targeted move: Synovus had broken her collarbone the fight before.
She wants to be better at giving back things other than pain.
“Just - give me a moment. Don’t move, please.” She’s pretty sure it’s the ‘please’ that gets them. Synovus goes so statue-still that Minerva’s not sure they’re blinking. But they don’t protest. And they certainly don’t move as Minerva steps forward.
And in one of the most awkward movements of her life, slides her arms around Synovus’s ribcage, setting her chin gently on their shoulder.
This is instantly easier when she no longer has to look at Synovus’s face. Well. When she can’t look. Can’t fixate on finding and parsing the smallest of expressions, assigning meaning to the specific tilt of a chin or speed of a blink. She’s still bad at it - hugging - because she usually just lets other people hug her, and initiating it is weird, but she can’t imagine Synovus is particularly good at it either.
After all, they’re still standing stock-still, and if Minerva wasn’t currently very aware of their breathing, she might even think they were panicking.
“Not a trap.” She mutters, and feels as much as hears Synovus’s responding huff. But their arms slowly, cautiously, hesitantly come up to return the embrace, hands resting lightly on her back. The side of Synovus’s head tips gently into hers.
One day, Minerva might not feel awkward about body contact and physical affection. One day, she may find herself as familiar with Synovus’s scars as she is her own. And she just might reach a point, eventually, where one of them could make a joke about this just being an excuse to get Synovus wet and not immediately both perish from the agony of an accidental allusion to arousal.
For today, this awkward embrace is enough.
———————————————————
Minerva probably won’t ever see a crowd as something other than a threat to be monitored.
Large groups have always made her tense, and that instinct had only gotten worse over the years. Most villains respect the ad hoc agreement about making an entrance, but there are a distinct few who would kill from a crowd. And there are those who are not villains in the distinct, identity sense, but would wreak havoc nonetheless.
So she scans the mall’s sheltered internal colonnade from behind her sunglasses, and listens to her daughter tell her about her day.
“- I just told him that I’d come from further South, and he didn’t ask me any more questions after that, but then freaking Brad asked me if I was an ‘illegal’ and I know what you mean now, about temptation to cram people into lockers. He’s lucky he’s so tall; I couldn’t fold him up to fit without taking some limbs off.”
Alexandria huffs, taking an aggressive pull from her milkshake. The stress of her life is getting to her - no teenager should have worry lines, or bags under their eyes that deep - but she insists this is what she wants. Even if Minerva sometimes wonders whether Alexandria sees herself as a member of the school’s attendees, or just a spectator who sometimes catches a stray ball.
“Did you tell Brad that?” Minerva asks mildly, mostly curious.
Alexandria sighs again, “No.” She says sullenly, shoulders slumping. “I asked him if he thought the government should determine who gets to live where, and then when he started to argue with me I told him I hoped his yacht sank with him on it.”
“Alexandria.” Minerva was still learning to find the right tone. The right amount of reproach, without exasperation or accusation. She must’ve gotten close, because Alexandria just lifts one hand in a ‘not me’ gesture.
“Specifically so he’d wash up in Mexico or Hawaii and get to be illegal himself.” She clarifies. “I don’t think that convinced anyone I wasn’t an immigrant, though. Til Seanna pointed out my grades in Spanish would probably be better.”
Minerva’s sigh is more restrained, but she points out, “There are other languages in South America. Brazilian Portuguese, for example.”
She’s not sure why she’s entertaining this, really.
“That’s true.” Alexandria ponders that for a moment, drinking more of her milkshake. “I mostly just meant to imply I was from one of the towns that got fu- uhhhh, screwed up by the power grabs.”
Minerva briefly leaves the conversation, remembering that shell of a place. The layouts, the dressings of a town, not quite abandoned yet but with nothing else to bleed.
Judging by the nudge she receives under the table, Alexandria isn’t totally oblivious to her distraction. She’s also changed the subject.
“So.” Alexandria is saying, drawing one syllable into three, “How are you and my godparent getting along?”
‘Godparent’ has become Alexandria’s favored way of referring to Synovus in public. It’s a joke on multiple levels, some of which Synovus seems to appreciate. But Minerva thinks it also makes them slightly uncomfortable, in a way they refuse to express to Alexandria.
“It’s fine.” Minerva replies, on rote. Her eyes flick to Alexandria, then back to the crowds. “What is it?”
“What do you mean, ‘what is it,’?”
“You wouldn’t have asked if you didn’t want something in particular.”
Alexandria’s mouth twists down, “Can I just get an answer without fishing for it, for once?”
Startled, Minerva looks at her again. Takes a better assessment of her daughter’s body language, the tension there. She knows she’s also gone tense.
Anger creeps into Alexandria’s voice, replacing the annoyance. “I’m not going to lose control. I’m not-“
She cuts herself off, abruptly looking away. Her fingers relax around the plastic cup, deliberately demonstrating that her strength won’t get away from her.
Minerva has a suspicion of how that sentence might have ended. I’m not like you and dad.
Reaching out physically feels like the wrong move here. So does stiffening up further and refusing to talk about it. Be better, she thinks to herself desperately, her mind flicking back to an image of a person with one foot in the water, one on dry land.
“We still… disagree, on some things. Some major things.” Minerva makes herself say. She still doesn’t like that Synovus kills people. She doesn’t like that Synovus has ostensibly killed for her, or for Alexandria. But she also feels relief that Synovus did, and a sense of gratitude she can’t quite smother. It makes her feel dirty, oily, and she hasn’t found it’s root.
Taking a breath, Minerva continues, “But… I don’t think they mean either of us harm.”
Alexandria has relaxed a little, absorbed by what Minerva’s saying. And probably having to pick through it for what she isn’t saying either.
“Would you say that you, I don’t know, maybe, trust them?” Alexandria prompts.
Minerva’s grimace is answer enough.
Alexandria sighs, “Mom.”
“It’s complicated, Alexandria.” She says, but it’s not the abrupt conversation-closer it would have once been. More… beseeching.
“Do you trust anyone?” Alexandria asks, “And like, I don’t even really mean me, here, but like. Anyone?”
Minerva remains silent.
“Do you trust yourself?” Alexandria asks, sounding a little alarmed.
Minerva hesitates - but she can’t really answer that one either.
They sit in silence for a few minutes, just the background roar of the mall’s crowds between them. Minerva hates this. She hates feeling like she can’t actually control herself, can’t master the emotional impulses she’s forcibly crammed into a box for years. She hates that Alexandria is having to pick up the conversation, make the overtures, do the work.
But any time she tries to think of a way to do it herself, her mind shies away from it. The words wilt and die in her throat. Because what if she gets it wrong?
What if she has more to lose?
Eventually, Alexandria looks at the melted remnants of her milkshake, and asks, “Can we stop at the Hot Topic before we leave.”
One day.
———————————
A week later, Rosie pokes her head into the common room Minerva’s reading in. “Minerva?”
She’d finally been asked point blank by one of them what she wanted to be called, because Athena no longer seemed accurate. Committing to Naiad hadn’t felt right either, so she’d given up her civilian name. Synovus already knew it, what was the point?
(It had occurred to her, later, that the small thrill she felt at being addressed by it was possibly what Alexandria felt at being addressed by her chosen name.)
(Also, it would’ve made Albion furious.)
“What is it?” Minerva asks now, letting one finger hold her place in the book as she sits up.
“There’s a fight drifting our way - Zephyr and a few others against the Eye. He’s made another floating platform again.” Rosie rolled her eyes, providing her professional opinion.
Minerva tilted her head, hesitating. Zephyr was a hero she’d worked with before, though they had never gotten along. He’d offered to take her flying, she’d taken that as flirting and shut it down, they’d never really overcome the resulting awkwardness. She had no idea who he’d be working with.
Eye, in contrast, was Eye in the Sky - a villain obsessed mostly with surveillance, and not being observed himself. He was a center point of several conspiracy theories involving the NRA, CIA, and a number of international organizations. She’d never fought him before, just heard the stories.
“What’s the protocol?” Minerva asks, rather than offer any of that information. She was certain this group of people knew far more about everyone involved anyway.
Rosie smiles, “Not much of one, just a lower alert status. Doll and I will make the rounds and check on everyone, Synovus is going to suit up just in case, but we won’t get involved unless territory agreements are breached.” She added, “Alexandria’s still on the mainland, we’ve made sure she knows to be suited if she makes her own way home.”
Minerva taps at the cover of her book, thinking. She feels adrift, still. This isn’t an actual fight, unless she wants to go and be Athena, and the idea of that is physically uncomfortable. It would also invite too many questions. Naiad would-
Hm. “Does Synovus want me in uniform?” She asks, sardonic.
“I didn’t ask and don’t plan to.” Rosie replies flippantly. “If they want you to do something, I imagine you’ll hear about it directly.”
Somehow, that isn’t the response she wants. “I don’t-“
“They also haven’t given any orders that you’re to be stopped.” Rosie points out, cutting her off. “The rest of us will be either in the operations room or up on the roof to watch. Klaxon if there’s trouble.”
She gave Minerva another smile, twiddled her fingers, and withdrew. Minerva shifted, and opened her book again.
She made it through two more paragraphs, then left it unceremoniously on the floor.
———————————-
On the roof, Synovus was pacing.
In a way, that’s reassuring, because even Minerva knew by now that if there was imminent danger, Synovus would be stock-still. The sun glints off the dark helmet, and threw the matte black of the rest of the suit into stark relief against the sandy-colored rooftop. Wind off the sea ripples through the cape, keeping it blown back, perpendicular to the path Synovus is walking.
The sun is kinder to Minerva’s costume, and there is no cape to blow. The dark mask helps keep her from being blinded by the sun. Athena wouldn’t be of much use here; Naiad might be.
Doll - the larger, Russian man who Minerva thought of as Synovus’s second in command - stood up here too, a viewfinder raised to cover his face. He’s looking into the direction of the wind, angled out and up, and Minerva follows that direction.
There it is - flashes of distant, shimmering silver in a cloud bank that’s thinning. Some masking device, most likely, now disabled. There’s tiny flashes of what must be powers or weaponry at use, but she can’t make out more than that.
“How bad is it?” She asks anyway, brisk and businesslike.
“The wind isn’t in our favor.” Doll comments. He’s always answered her as if she’s a coworker, and she appreciates that. “I can’t tell how much of it is powered and how much of it drifts. If there’s been damage to it -“ He lowers the viewfinder to make a hand gesture. “It might not be able to control its direction anymore.”
“Sloppy.” The comment is out of Minerva’s mouth before she can stop it. It draws Doll’s attention, if not Synovus’s. At the slightly raised eyebrow, she sighs and continues, “Disabling propulsion or navigation creates unnecessary risk to everyone involved. The only time it becomes necessary is when there’s weaponry that absolutely must be disabled, and you don’t have either the training or the time to sort out different power systems.”
Doll nods, offering her the viewfinder. “It could be self-inflicted,” he points out.
“Possible, but suicidal. That would require an exit strategy. Do you think Eye has one?”
“He’ll have three, only two of them will work, and none of them will be enough to keep him from getting captured.” Synovus breaks into the conversation abruptly, annoyed. Or perhaps professionally offended. “They’ll be personal craft.”
Meaning the rest of the platform’s crew would be left to die. Incentive for the heroes to try and rescue them rather than pursue, but what a waste.
The viewfinder lets Minerva get a better sense of the platform’s size, and also an estimate of its height and distance. She can make out a glimpse of a gray-shaded costume, diving through the clouds: Zephyr.
“If you interfere,” She asks, while her view is disconnected from her surroundings, “What would that look like?”
There’s a hesitation. A gust of wind snaps at Synovus’s cape. The distant battle continues.
“If they cross the boundaries, there must be consequences.” Synovus says reluctantly. “I will destroy the platform. Survivors will become my prisoners. If the heroes protest, I’ll fight them.”
Minerva lowers the viewfinder, and returns it to Doll. Synovus has stopped pacing. “You don’t have the facilities for a mass casualty event.”
“No.” Synovus agrees. “I don’t.”
————————————
Rosie has come out to join them on the roof by the time there’s significant change. The wind has died down some - likely a marker of Zephyr changing it, finally reaching their shores. The air feels thick and dead without it.
They’ve mostly stood in silence, watching. It feels longer than it has been, and Minerva knows it’ll be worse for those actually fighting. She’s surprised she hasn’t felt more of an urge to intervene.
Though she has been keeping watch for anyone falling to the water below.
It’s hard to say which of them notices first - their attention is collectively on the sky platform, and not each other. But there’s a decided tilt to the mostly-exposed metal monstrosity now, and in very short order, it begins to fall.
“Catch it.” Minerva finds herself murmuring. “Catch it. At least slow it-“
But no one does.
The platform hits the water at the full speed gained from a several thousand foot drop, slamming into the ocean. Those watching know that the metal will crumple on impact, water at that height and velocity worse than slamming into concrete. The surface area only makes it worse; tilted in at a slight angle, it displaces the water in a specific direction.
Towards the island.
Minerva had studied the ocean as much as she could. She knows this phenomena, and can cite times in the past it’s occurred. Not caused by the shifting of the ocean floor or tectonic plates, but by a sudden mass displacement.
They call it a super-tsunami.
Synovus is a statue beside her from the moment the platform starts to fall. Doll catches on once the surface of the water rises - and then doesn’t fall again.
“Three minutes.” Minerva calculates, based on distance and the probable speed of the wave. As many miles to cross. Much taller. “Evacuation?”
“The Jet is under repair, we can’t get it into the air in time.” Rosie answers, grim.
“Seals on the inner portions of the facility might hold, but we don’t know how long we’d be underwater.” Doll says, hitting the klaxon anyway. “The fridges?”
“Only as good as long as the power lasts.” Rosie replies. “Alexandria?”
“Still on the mainland.” Doll growls, running a hand through his hair. “Even if she could reach us in time, we’d have to get everyone onto the plane-“
Synovus has, so far, said nothing. Minerva is the only one close enough to catch when they choke out a strangled, “-fucking submarine -“
Minerva had expected Synovus to have a plan. A power, a strength, a defense mechanism. The realization that they don’t is like a fire’s been lit at the base of her spine.
She doesn’t remember grabbing Synovus’s collar, or dragging them to face her. She does remember saying, “I can stop it.”
Synovus doesn’t hesitate. “What do you need?”
There is no questioning of if she’s sure, or recommendation that she go into the waves to ride it out. No suggestion of running.
“Get me in front of it.”
Immediately, Synovus has one arm under her knees, the other around her shoulders, and they’re running. Off the edge of the roof, not quite flying, flickers of shadow beneath their feet. Minerva doesn’t have time to question it, because her attention is on the big damn wave.
When she had said she could stop it, she had spoken with a bone-deep certainty. But she’d never actually tried to divert a tsunami before, let alone one of this size. The largest amount of water she’s worked with has always been as much as she needs to accomplish her goal, and nothing more. Diverting some rain-induced flooding is nothing compared to the power of the tides.
But she can feel the ocean beneath them, as Synovus clears the island’s coast. She can sense the oncoming wave, so fast to them, but to the ocean like a flinch in slow motion. The ocean doesn’t know how to control a fall.
But Minerva does.
The trick is in grasping the majority of the wave without over extending. She doesn’t need every droplet, every molecule, but she does need the vast majority of them.
It’s like trying to get a grip on something flat with only the pads of her fingers. It’s like misjudging a stair and finding herself both plummeting and ramming into an outside force. It’s like taking the first breath of rain-rich air in the early morning, and feeling life enter her lungs again.
Minerva twists the top back over itself, breaking the wave in the wrong direction. She cuts it down the middle, diverting it off to the sides. She forbids it to go forward, as though it’s met a cliff. And as the water falls, the wave collapsing, so does she.
It takes a brief second to put together that the body that had been holding her aloft is now limp, twisted slightly as though to put itself between her and the wave. Synovus is unresponsive, the shadows gone, only the cape whipping around them as they fall. Minerva is able to catch them, now, grabbing on before they can drift away.
She reaches for the water below them, calling it up to catch them with less than bone-breaking force. It’s easier, somehow, but also harder, and she’s having trouble fixing a direction in her mind for where the wave was and where the shore should be. Hot air, harsh wind, cool water and the dimming depths as they’re both drawn down.
And she remembers, finally, that Synovus can’t swim.
—————
The disorientation has mostly worn off by the time Synovus wakes up.
Minerva had managed to follow the upset currents, but hadn’t wanted to risk trying to shape and change them. Or to fight them overmuch, with her cargo. So they’d wound up washed not to shore, but to a small opening into one of the partial lava tubes at the island’s base.
Outside, saltwater rain is still falling, though it will stop soon. The ocean’s roar sounds, to her ears, slightly confused. The sun is still shining, and the wind has picked up again. ‘Calm’ is a subjective definition, but they’re approaching it.
Minerva had been relieved to find that Synovus’s helmet was intact, even with the impact to the water. She’d managed to find its clasps, and to remove it, making sure the seals had also held and that Synovus wasn’t drowning in their own personal fishbowl. They’re propped up against her legs, which are folded beneath her, and she’s prepared for a violent awakening.
But Synovus’s eyes blink open, and Minerva is able to watch their facial muscles work as they come to terms with their surroundings.
“You fainted.” Minerva informs them.
Synovus squints at her, but doesn’t immediately protest. They also don’t try to move much, other than a slight squirm that Minerva recognizes as a full body check. Do I still have my appendages? Do my fingers and toes all work?
“Yeah.” Synovus concedes. Their voice is raspy with saltwater, even though they didn’t get much of a chance to drown. This time.
Minerva should probably start somewhere else - like making certain they’re okay, or assuring them about the conditions outside, that the wave had been averted. Instead, she all but demands, “If you’re so terrified of water, why in the hells did you build on an island?”
She can see the balk in Synovus’s expression: a furrowing of their brow, a twitch of the nose. Synovus lifts a hand to consider covering their face, eyes the sand on their glove, and lowers it again.
“I already know you can’t swim.” Minerva says flatly.
“I can swim.” Synovus shoots back, annoyed. “I cannot swim well, there’s a difference.”
They sigh, and move to sit up. Minerva doesn’t stop them. She doesn’t expect an answer, at least not without further prompting, but Synovus continues:
“It’s… easier. The isolation. Clearly defined borders. This is mine, everyone else fuck off. And it…” Synovus shakes their head. “It serves its purpose.”
Once, Minerva would’ve accused them of grandstanding. Of the island being a show of wealth and status. She knows better now - knows that while that is true, there’s other reasons, layered beneath.
And she thinks about everything Synovus has ever told her about self control.
“It contains you.”
Synovus hesitates, partially grimacing, but nods. “Serves its purpose.” They repeat quietly.
The two of them sit in silence, in the dark shadow of the cave. They listen to the water, and the waves as they return to normal.
“Thank you.” Synovus says, into the silence.
“I don’t require thanks.”
“But I feel you deserve it, and it’s mine to give.”
“And if I don’t want it?”
“Refuse it. I will survive the disappointment.”
Minerva has the uncomfortable feeling that they are not discussing only gratitude. Rather than address that, or continue the discussion, she says instead: “I don’t know what I believe anymore.”
Synovus doesn’t reply. They tilt their head, studying her in the dark. Minerva’s dragged them into a cave and confronted them with truths after they passed out from fear doing something on her word, she should give them a break. She doesn’t.
“I should be out there looking for survivors, or recovering the dead. I don’t want to. I should’ve involved myself in the fight, reminded them to be careful of the platform’s vulnerabilities. I didn’t. I don’t feel guilt. I feel… annoyed. Angry. Because they should’ve known better.”
Synovus just turns a bit, to rest their back against a rock. “And that in turn makes you feel..?”
“Foolish. Arrogant. A bad hero, and a worse teacher. I should be patient. Forgiving.”
“They nearly killed you.” Synovus points out dryly. “You’re allowed to be angry about that.”
“And more would’ve died if the wave had reached the coast.” Minerva grits her teeth. “But that anger should be - I can’t control them. I cannot fix them. But I didn’t even try to intervene until it was almost too late.”
“But you did intervene.”
Minerva gestures, attempts to pinpoint the logic fruitless and frustrated. “Am I a hero or not?” She demands. “Do I act for others or only my own skin? I’ve spent years - decades - so sure of the answer but now -“
She raises her hands, half-fisting them in her hair. The sensation provides a little bit of grounding, enough of a distraction she doesn’t think about the words before she says them. “- now you make sense to me, and the things I thought I believed in enough to die for are - are hollow or gone or dead. And I let you kill them. I let you kill him.”
Abruptly, she draws her knees up, burying her face in them. “I let - I made - my child - our child -“
Minerva can’t tell if she’s crying or not. Her breath is coming in gasps, and her face feels hot, and this was always the part of weeping that she hated the most; the lack of control, the inability to communicate. Her eyes burn. So does the center of her chest, her stomach.
And Synovus is here, as her witness. Why not? They’ve seen every other ugly part of her, every other failure. She’s spent a good portion of her adult life fighting this person, exchanging scars, only for them to pick up the pieces and try to protect her. She’s finally had the upper hand, proven that she does have power, that Synovus now owes her in the brutal calculus of lives, and instead of reassuring her it’s broken her.
Because Synovus doesn’t trust themself either.
But Synovus trusts her.
“Do you wish I wouldn’t have killed Albion?” Synovus asks quietly.
The answer is as simple and certain as the water. “No.” She says honestly. “No I - I don’t.”
There’s a pause. Then, “Do you wish I would’ve killed you too?”
That answer isn’t as clear to find. “I - some days.” She says hoarsely. “I committed the same crimes.”
Synovus exhales, across from her, and it isn’t quite a sigh. “Alexandria feels differently.”
Minerva stops breathing.
Of all the answers Synovus could’ve given, that’s the one she can’t counter. She can’t afford to do this. To wallow in self recrimination. Her daughter is out there. And while maybe - maybe her morals are falling to pieces, and she doesn’t know who she is, but she knows that whoever she is loves Alexandria.
“Is it pathetic?” She asks Synovus, in the dark she can’t see through and Synovus can. “To need someone else to determine who I am. What I believe.”
She can hear the twist in Synovus’s expression as they reply, “That’s… inherently not a question I can answer. But, Minerva?” Synovus doesn’t hesitate, so much as pick their way across uncertain footing, “I don’t think you would’ve been able to turn back that wave if you weren’t… as much as you are.”
It’s clumsily phrased. Wavering and uncertain. But Minerva, whether because she’s reading what she wants to from it, or because it’s actually Synovus’s intention, understands.
She takes a deep breath. Then another. Then she stands, and offers a hand in Synovus’s general direction. Her voice is much more certain, calm, when she says, “I need to go organize a search party.”
——————
Minerva may not ever come to terms with her role in her ex-husband’s death, or the harm she caused her daughter. She might not ever find the rock-solid beliefs that she once thought she had.
But she might - just might - come to terms with that uncertainty. The ocean doesn’t have roots either.
She’ll have good days and bad days. She’ll need to make decisions about who she wants to become, and how she feels about who she is. But as both Naiad, and Minerva, she has that freedom.
She’ll never touch the Athena costume again.
And one day, while she’s working on a laptop in one of the common rooms, Synovus on one of the other couches and Alexandria sprawled on the floor, Minerva will say, “I have an idea. Something I’d like to do about the Pacific garbage patch.”
And Alexandria will roll over to look at her, and Synovus will glance up. And Minerva will add, “It’s not precisely legal.”
And Synovus will say, “I’m listening.”
——————————
[And so ends Siren Call! This took much longer than it’s other pieces, and there were things I debated including and things I wanted to cut, but in the end, this was the flow the story took. I’m not saying I’m *done* with Synovus and co, but I will say that I’m glad to have this chapter closed and tied off.]
[As per usual, a copy of this will go up on Ao3 soon, and I’ll find out how long it is, because I’ve once again written directly into tumblr drafts. It’s where the Synovus muse lives, apparently.]
[Synoverse? In the year of our lord 2023? It's more likely than you think! This one is in third person, set after Villains Never Retire. No idea what I’m talking about? Check out the first of the Synovus works here! I've still yet to do it as of posting, but both episodes of Siren Call will be on Ao3 here. Happy reading!]
A week after first arriving at her parents’ house, Minerva made the journey back to her own.
It wasn’t terribly far - a half-hour drive with no traffic, maybe - from where her parents now lived, still placed near to the coast. It wasn’t actually a ‘house’ either, more of a condo built in a line to save costs. It would’ve been cheaper to live further inland, but…
She’d had enough of that.
Besides, the place wasn’t actually hers. When she’d divorced Albion and come back to the coast, she’d also quit her job. With no contacts, no friends, and no savings that weren’t tied up in litigation, she would’ve had nowhere to go in her civilian identity. She also wasn’t sure if she was going to have to deal with a super-powered ex husband knocking at all hours, which was something most renters disapproved of, as a rule.
But where Minerva had no one, Athena had a lifeline. When she and Legionnaire had done volunteer work in the past, she’d always felt it was just part of her duty. An obligation that came with having superpowers. Sometimes you put the costume on to hit something, and sometimes you put the costume on to build something. Since neither of them had been dependent on their hero identity 24/7, they’d always declined any offers of compensation.
But that didn’t mean they’d been forgotten. Shepherd Flight was a volunteer group who specialized in organizing super powered individuals for rescue and relief operations - they mostly focused on the initial crisis, but weren’t afraid of working to help rebuild things too. Minerva had gone through floodwaters and hurricanes under their direction, and also used her strength to help hold up beams for building shelters. One of her favorite memories was helping plant a garden in a refugee camp.
Shepherd Flight was also known for its discretion. Several capes worked exclusively for them, staying out of hero or villain business in the traditional sense. Some of them maintained a separation between the mask and the civilian, but others didn’t.
So Minerva had gone to them, intending to ask if she could rest on a couch in their headquarters or something while she figured out her next move. Instead, a man named ‘Sun Dog’ had checked their records, asked her a few questions, and then handed her the keys to an address. Apparently, Shepherd Flight also aided ‘capes in distress.’
Minerva had scowled, but couldn’t really argue the point.
She’d looked into it since - the space they’d given her was most frequently used for helping move displaced persons who needed to travel, or temporary housing for other members of Shepherd Flight who needed a place unaffiliated with any identity. One of the questions she’d been asked was how she felt about potentially having a house full of strange guests on little-to-no notice. Minerva had grown up dealing with the Pacific Northwest’s forest fires, and had told Sun Dog she knew exactly how fast they could go. If refugees needed a place to stay, she’d gladly vacate.
So far, that hadn’t happened, though Sun Dog had also told her that someone would stop by occasionally with groceries, to keep the place stocked. And to check in on her.
She probably should’ve told them she was fine when she was whisked off to a supervillain’s private island. She hadn’t.
So she wasn’t surprised, per se, to open the door and see a stranger in the kitchen. Startled, perhaps. But neither of them attacked each other, so that was a good start.
“Uhm.” Said the person in the kitchen, holding a spoon awkwardly poised between their mouth and a pudding cup.
“Wrong door.” Minerva said automatically, holding the keys that had unlocked the front door and the guard mechanism.
“Is it?” The stranger asked hesitantly.
Minerva sighed, “No. I… lived here for a bit. As a… guest.”
“Oh!” The stranger lit up with a smile - and a touch of phantom flame that Minerva watched cautiously. “You must be the one who went missing! Yeah, they told me you might come back - hey, I’m Wi-Fire, by the way.”
They moved forward to offer a hand, slowing their approach when Minerva instinctively leaned away. Still, it wasn’t like she needed both hands to hold her bag, and once upon a time she’d been… better, if not exactly ‘good’ at this. So she took the offered hand, clasping it rather than shaking.
“Athena.” She returned, the introduction automatic. Instead of giving herself time to think about whether that was the right name to give, she forced herself onwards, remembering there were other details she was supposed to give on greeting. “She/Her.”
Wi-Fire’s grin broadened, and they bounced a little in place. “They/them!” They returned, even more cheerfully than before. “It’s the third bedroom that’s yours, right? I haven’t touched it, since he said you might come back, but I’ve only been here for about a week. That reminds me - have you called him yet? Sun Dog? He’s super worried about you, pun unintended.”
Minerva was, abruptly, reminded of Alexandria. “… No, I haven’t called him yet. I was just here to-“
She paused. What was she here to do? Spend a few hours staring at a wall, unobserved? Get the rest of her things and go? It wasn’t exactly much, just a few extra changes of clothes, a few books. She did want to make sure the space she’d used was clean, but given how little time she’d spent here, that shouldn’t take more than an hour. Two, if she stopped to do laundry.
Minerva had paused for too long. Wi-Fire just nodded, sympathetic. “Yeah, I feel that. I’m up in the attic - the other rooms are still empty, there’s nothing wrong with them or anything, I just.” They cut off, simply ending the sentence, as though a signal had been lost between one word and the next. They shrugged.
“Yeah.” Minerva echoed, thinking of how she’d chosen the room with the best view of the ocean, even if it was just a sliver.
Wi-Fire winces, “Crap. Sorry. Forgot we’re not supposed to really, like. Fraternize. I didn’t see anything?” Their last sentence is hopeful, as though an offering they want Minerva to take.
“It’s fine.” She assures them, readjusting her grip on her bag. “If you’ve seen me, you can pass on to Sun Dog that I’m fine, right?”
For a heartbeat, she thinks she’s pulled it off, and she’ll be able to just get her things and leave. But Wi-Fire just laughs.
“I mean, sure - but you’ll have to scram if you wanna avoid him.” They scrape at the bottom of the pudding cup. “He’ll be here in like. Twenty minutes?”
—-
Minerva is not done packing in twenty minutes. Actually, she’s not done in fifteen, which is when Sun Dog actually arrives. She can hear him greeting Wi-Fire from where she’s working upstairs, meticulously folding towels to be stored in the bathroom before she leaves.
Minerva snaps the final towel free of wrinkles, places it on the pile, and goes to meet him. Better she doesn’t get cornered.
Sun Dog and Wi-Fire aren’t talking, when Minerva arrives. No, that makes it sound like they’re in a stand off, and really, it’s more that they don’t need to be. Minerva catches the end of a fistbump-into-a-shoulder check, and an exchange of smiles, before Sun Dog’s eyes flick up and see her on the stairs.
“Ah!” In civilian clothing, Sun Dog looks like a Bay Area hobbyist come north. His reaction to seeing her is surprise, but also something positive. Joy? Excitement? Delight? “M-“
“Athena!” Wi-Fire cuts in, overriding Sun Dog with their own exclamation, and avoiding accidentally learning Minerva’s real name. Not that it matters, anymore.
Minerva’s spine could be used as a flagpole. “Sun Dog.” She replies, voice cool, as though their excitement at seeing her had been an embarrassment rather than an open welcome. It isn’t on purpose. “Wi-Fire.”
She doesn’t apologize for interrupting, or claim she didn’t mean to, because there’d be no point. Instead, Minerva meets Sun Dog’s gaze, “I’m cleaning up after myself, then I’ll be out of your way.”
“You don’t have to do that-“ Sun Dog starts to assure her, then backtracks. Minerva must have looked offended. “- but we’re grateful that you’d take the time.”
He glances at Wi-Fire, who gets the hint. They give Minerva a double thumbs-up, and another near maniacal grin, and then scamper off. Minerva is distracted, briefly, by the mental image of a young Synovus, gifted with fire instead of shadows.
Terrifying.
Still, thinking of the one problem won’t rid her of the other. Minerva descends the rest of the stairs to stand even with Sun Dog, her arms folded. Her expression must’ve shown something (or maybe Sun Dog just gauged the depths of the bags under her eyes) because instead of saying anything else, Sun Dog just tilts his head towards the door.
“How about a walk?”
—-
With the ocean not far, there was plenty of beach to walk along. It was too late in the season to hope for much sun, but again, it didn’t really bother Minerva. And, with both of them in nondescript windbreakers, they seemed no more suspicious than anyone else ever did.
She wished she didn’t feel like she needed to worry about being suspicious.
They walked in silence for a while, just the sound of sand crunching beneath boots, and the ever present roar of the ocean’s movements. The wind blew in from off the coast, sharp and cold. It whipped her hair around her face, but she mostly ignored it.
Eventually, Sun Dog broke the silence. “Did you know I didn’t actually intend to go by ‘Sun Dog’?”
Minerva glanced around, as though the wind and general absence of other people wasn’t enough to ensure they weren’t overheard. Sun Dog waited.
“Then why did you?”
“Media.” He answered simply. “I wanted to name myself Parhelion. Its the… let’s call it scientific word for a Sun Dog phenomena. They thought one had a better ring to it.”
“So you’re a scientist.” Minerva kicked lightly at the sand on her next step.
“Amateur, sure. But I don’t mind admitting that the name scared the hell out of me at first.”
Minerva hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. I can understand why.”
Sun Dog. In a world still recovering from the sudden disappearance of Sunhallow, any sun imagery was suddenly circumspect. It could be viewed in a hundred different lights, none of them favorable.
“I almost gave up being a hero entirely.” Sun Dog confided. “I was too scared that one day someone would show up, and tell me I was encroaching on their brand.”
Humor, but not enough to hide that neither of them speak his name. Minerva knows he’s dead - she’s seen the grave, spoken to his killer. But there is the thought that lingers. Just in case.
“Why didn’t you?” Minerva asked, staring forward at the tree line.
“Letters. One in particular, that told me he’d never be dead so long as we let him hold that much power over something so ubiquitous as the sun. They said they knew how much it must cost me, but that the world needed people like me to rebuild it, to heal over the scars.”
“And was that one from the Dalai Lama or the President.” Her voice wasn’t bitter so much as it was… dry. Humor. She’s learning how to use it again.
Sun Dog squinted into the wind. “Could’ve been either, I suppose. It was signed, but with a moniker. Eclipse.”
He glanced at her, shrugged. “I’ve never known anyone to go by that name.”
Minerva was silent for a step. Two. Then, “No. Neither have I.”
—-
They wind up stopping at a picnic table tucked just under the tree line, out of the worst of the wind. It’s one of those weather-worn gray contraptions, the kind someone placed years ago and forgot, leaving it for hikers or curious children.
They’ve talked about a few things, here and there. Sun Dog keeps offering small bits of himself, trying to draw Minerva out again, and slowly, she becomes part of the conversation. Childhood pets. Obnoxious commercial jingles that stick even after the company and product are long gone. Nothing pressing. Nothing political.
But after they’d spent a few minutes in a comfortable silence, a natural lull in the conversation, Sun Dog has pulled a deck of cards out of his pocket.
“Hope you’re not looking for poker.” Minerva said with barely a glance. “I don’t have anything to bet.”
Sun Dog laughed, “These aren’t those kind of cards. But if you’re willing, I’d like to do a reading for you. Tarot.”
“Wait.” Minerva raised her brows, leaning back slightly. “You don’t actually believe in those, do you?”
She realized, approximately half a second too late to stop herself, how offensive that likely sounded. Luckily, Sun Dog laughed again.
“You could use a tank as a baseball bat.” He said, corners of his eyes crinkled in a smile. “And have dealt with clairvoyants, shape-shifters, literal magic users - but ‘some cards’ is where you draw the line?”
Minerva ducked her head, submitting to the teasing. “Alright, you have a point. I don’t really know how they work, though.”
“You don’t need to.” Sun Dog assured her. “You just need to shuffle and draw the cards. Three of them, face down, left to right. We’ll go over what they mean one by one.”
She felt, suddenly, unaccountably nervous. She managed a murmured thanks as Sun Dog handed her the deck, no longer stiff from newness, but not quite well-worn either. For a moment, she simply spread the cards in her hands, sliding them with her thumb, and studying the backs. They were larger than she remembered most playing cards being. She hoped she remembered how to shuffle correctly.
A few cuts of the deck, and a reassurance from Sun Dog that it was alright to bend them, and Minerva fanned the cards apart, couching them back together into a bridge. Another few cuts, another bridge. And the third time, to keep them balanced.
“Three off the top?” She asked.
Sun Dog shrugged, “If that’s what speaks to you.”
He laughed again at Minerva’s displeased expression, but nodded encouragingly. “Go on. Three cards, face down. That’s all.”
Minerva sighed. She pulled the card from the top, one from the bottom, and - fanning the cards again - slipped one from the middle at random, laying them each face down on the table in front of her.
“Good.” Sun Dog said encouragingly, accepting the rest of the deck back. “So, this is something of a ‘past, present, future’ spread. Go ahead and flip the first card.”
Minerva rolled her eyes, and moved to place her hand on it - then paused. This trepidation was unlike her. She had no reason to be nervous, because this was a pre-generated deck of cards. It held no personalized information, and could not reveal anything about her of substance, because it was a randomized card.
That argument wasn’t holding up the way it normally would’ve. Some part of her resolve crumbled.
Well. She reasoned, If it’s in the past, I’ve already survived it once. I can do it again.
That seemed to do the trick. She flipped the card over, and was greeted with the image of someone in what she placed as quintessential peasant’s garb… carrying a bundle of sticks? The roman numeral for ten was placed above it, and the individual’s face couldn’t be seen, buried in the bundle they were carrying as they walked away from the viewer.
“The ten of wands.” Sun Dog identified. “Wands are associated with fire. They tend to be about passion, strengths, and willpower. The ten of wands in particular is a representation of burden and responsibility. It is good to be depended on - but not to be overworked.”
Minerva shifted, but said nothing. Sun Dog gave her a moment, then indicated the next card. “The next one, then?”
This one took little effort to turn - whether it was out of a desire to get it over with or simply because she’d shaken off whatever feeling she’d had earlier, Minerva didn’t know. This time, the card was upside down, and she moved to straighten it.
“No -” Sun Dog stopped her, “I mean, if you want to flip it so you can look at it, you can, but drawing them upside down actually means something. ‘Reversed’ cards invert or change the meaning.”
Minerva pursed her lips, flipping the card briefly to get a better look at it. A figure visible only from the waist up, in what appeared to be mail and plate armor. A star spangled canopy offered protection from the yellow sky, and the numeral for seven that floated just above it. The figure had a staff in one hand, and what looked like two sphinxes in front of it - the left black, the white right, each with a different expression.
“The Chariot.” She read, flicking the card back over to be upside down again.
“Another willpower card.” Sun Dog commented. “The Chariot is triumphant - you see how the sphynxes are angled in opposite directions? They should go nowhere, but the driver manages to drive the chariot onwards. Nothing that they carry is a gift. Instead, they are rewards earned.”
“But it’s reversed,” Minerva said dryly, “Meaning… that I’m currently a freeloader?”
“Or that you feel that way.” Sun Dog countered. “The cards aren’t quite so literal as we might hope, sometimes. Go ahead and flip the third card.”
“Another upside down one.” Minerva remarked, considering the angel depicted on the card. “Sorry, reversed. Temperance.” She snorted, placing the card on the table with the others, and then shoving her hands into her pockets.
“Ah, I love the Temperance card.” Sun Dog picked it up briefly, smiling at it, before he laid it back down. “It’s a card of transitions, that one. I - is something wrong?”
Minerva hadn’t been able to hide her flinch at that one. She scowled, more angry at herself than anything - but it seemed the last few days had scraped her raw, left her open and readable. And… she did trust Sun Dog. So she forced herself to clear her throat, and spoke quietly;
“I have a daughter.”
Sun Dog made a vaguely congratulatory noise, a positive sympathy for someone speaking of their loved ones. Minerva’s hands bunched in her pockets.
“I spent most of her life convinced she was my son.” She said quietly.
“Ah.” Sun Dog leaned back, head canted so he could look up for a moment, considering. Minerva knew there was a wealth of information in that, and how she’d presented it, and the connections he could even now be drawing. But she’d refused to run from this. So she sat still, and unwavering, and waited for the judgment she deserved.
“I don’t think it means that kind of transition.” Sun Dog said finally, looking back at her again. “Not in this context, though a gender transition is a common reading of the card. My congratulations to your daughter, by the way.”
Minerva let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Then it doesn’t….” She trailed off, mind unwilling to complete the sentence.
“Doesn’t what?”
“This is the future card, isn’t it?” She said quietly, rather than elaborate immediately. “And reversed, meaning an inverse of the meaning. So if it was about - her transition, and how I pertain to it, then… I would be a roadblock to it. I wouldn’t…” She trailed off again, but Sun Dog only waited.
“... get better.” She finished lamely.
“That you’re worried about it tells me how much you care,” Sun Dog said gently, placing one hand halfway across the table. He couldn’t take hers, given she still had them clenched in her pockets, but she recognized the gesture for what it was meant to be. “But no, I don’t think that’s what the card means in this context. Temperance is the balance between remaining practical, and our dreams. Grounded reality, versus the water of our dreams.”
“So I’m… losing that balance?”
Sun Dog hummed, uncertain, “You might lose that balance, that could be an outcome.” He acknowledged. “But take the cards as they’re important to you. Water is fairly important to you, right?”
Minerva only nodded.
“Then perhaps the reversal isn’t telling you that you’re going to lose your balance. Maybe it’s telling you not to worry so much about that balance - that temperance is not, in fact, what you need to do now.” Sun Dog raised his hands, “I’m no expert. But sometimes we really do need to let loose.”
Minerva stared at the card arrangement for several more minutes. Her mind picked up on patterns, even when she didn’t mean for it to, didn’t intend to read into it. The past, hiding her face from everyone in a mask, carrying a burden she thought she was obligated to take on. The present, lost, her rules turned on their head as surely as the chariot driver was. A canopy of stars, protective shadows against a sky of light… and a being that was neither male nor female, free, offering her the opportunity to move on.
“I’m not taking advice from a deck of cards.” She heard herself say.
Sun Dog shrugged. “Then take it as advice from me. You see something in the cards - that’s what they’re for. Reflecting what you need to see, to be able to face it.”
Minerva let out a long breath, forcing herself to relax the tension that had settled into her shoulders and spine. She looked up, meeting Sun Dog’s gaze with her own.
“How much do you know about Synovus?”
---
[It's funny - I posted the first of Synovus's story over a year ago. I added onto it, here and there, but the draft to post this was started in... September of 2022? Yet, every day, I get a notification, either through Tumblr or Ao3, that someone has found Synovus, and expressed joy about it somehow. It's... remarkable. I love you all, and thank you for reading!]
[Surprise! Bet you thought you'd seen the last of me! I took a break from writing these for a bit, but I did want to get through the idea I had about something from Minerva's perspective. This one is in third person, set after Villains Never Retire. No idea what I'm talking about? Check out the first of the Synovus works here! There'll be a bit of a delay, but this one will join the rest of the Synoverse up on Ao3 here. How many parts will this be? I've learned my lesson, I'm not estimating.]
Minerva had stopped expecting her life to be ‘normal’ before she’d graduated High School.
When at 16 you were already having to downplay your physical strength to avoid taking doors off of their hinges, and realizing that you could never, ever join the swim team even if you could absolutely destroy any of the times they posted, there were a few other things your mind put together in the background.
Like the fact that you would never be safe again.
Hiding things about herself wasn’t exactly conducive to the kind of relationship she wanted, so romance was dead. That was fine at the time, actually, most of the people she’d been interested in had turned out to be more interested in… well, a variety of things ranging from other people to free emotional support. The point was, she’d been more upset by the idea that any of her personal goals for a career were now permanently marred by the terror that she’d have to do some kind of blood test that would brand her as a ‘cape.’
And that it would have to be hidden was never even a question. Sure, there were heroes around who people were proud of when she was younger. But every so often, those heroes would go out to fight, and be seen again as scorched remains in a crater left by a man called Sunhallow. Other villains, too. People said he was targeting anyone who might be a threat to him if they didn’t work for him.
Kids in her classes had mostly made fun of the costume.
Even after Sunhallow’s disappearance and rumored death, when she was in her senior year, people were wary. Things like Sunhallow didn’t just die. They always came back. There was always a second shoe to drop.
And no one knew about her then, not yet, so she thought maybe... maybe she could live a little?
Going off to college had felt like the last chance she had at any degree of ‘normalcy’ and even that was tempered by the gnawing sense of something missing, something wrong. She’d put it down to anxiety about her classes and pushed through it, sure it would eventually pass.
Minerva hadn’t been a teenager for about two decades now. But that sense of… something missing had never really gone away.
She'd experimented with drinking and with a few variations on marijuana, and a variety of at-home remedies like aromatherapy and meditations. She'd tried a therapist, twice, even though she felt like she couldn't tell them everything about herself, and she knew that kind of defeated a lot of the point of therapy. And that gnawing feeling continued, until it seemed stranger to imagine a world without it.
There were times it was so muted, so quiet that she could forget about it - when she was in a fight, or diving, or when Alexandria had been little. Sometimes Albion could drive it away, and make her feel sane.
But she’d never felt quite as… at peace, as she did when she was in costume. That was the only time, the only place, that the sense of something missing really faded away.
Plenty of people had told her that every cape had something deeply wrong with them, to be the kind of person to do what they did. Minerva had never corrected them.
—-
“You’re awake early.”
Minerva glanced over one shoulder, unsurprised to see Synovus draped against half of her doorframe. She’d left the door open, and Synovus was very carefully on the edge where she could shut the door in their face, if she’d wanted. Trying not to be an intrusion, even as they unrepentantly stuck their metaphorical nose into her business.
“Judging by your face, you haven’t slept.” Minerva said critically.
Synovus made a noise of mock dismay, and Minerva risked giving them a closer look. Yes, the bags under their eyes were more pronounced than usual, and their hair was a barely-contained mess, but none of that worried her. The haphazard state of their clothing was, frankly, par for the course around the island these days.
“Evil never sleeps, m-Minerva.” The slip up was slight, covered for quickly and smoothly. Once, she wouldn’t have caught it. Now, she knew Synovus better.
‘My Dear Minerva,’ they’d almost said.
Minerva ignored it.
“I’m taking that trip to the mainland I talked about.” She explained, turning her back on the most confusing human being she’d ever known in favor of checking her case’s contents for the third time.
Synovus hummed, and Minerva stiffened on reflex. She relaxed almost as quickly, but still mentally scolded herself. Synovus hummed when they were uncertain of themselves, not to try and trap her into an argument. They’d said several times that she was both welcome to stay and to leave at her discretion.
This was normal. This was fine.
“If you should… need anything, while you’re out there-“ Synovus was picking their words carefully, skirting around potential condescension or worry to come off as affable, almost disinterested. It didn’t really work.
“I will be fine.” Minerva says firmly, turning to glare if need be.
Instead, she meets Synovus’s gaze. Their eyes are clear for the moment, no shadows flickering, no lights swirling. Instead, the only thing she sees in them is… confidence.
“I know.” Synovus says, and even the faint lilt of humor isn’t enough to hide the certainty in that statement. They clear their throat, “I have no misgivings about your strength and ability to use it, Lady Minerva. But, should you wish to be better than ‘fine’ while out and about in the world…”
They trail off, and Minerva wonders, idly, if it’s possible to push them so far into discomfort that they start using ‘thee’ instead of ‘you.’ She’d rather think about that than the sheer faith Synovus had in her, and what that might mean aside from further proof Synovus was -
There were too many ways to finish that sentence. Her mind rejected all of them with a studious determination before Synovus realized she wasn’t going to finish their sentence either.
“… you will call?” They asked softly.
A few months ago, Minerva might’ve sneered at the implication she would ever ask Synovus for anything. But then she’d been captured, ‘outmaneuvered’ by a pair of up-and-coming villains with a hostage trick, and then each and every one of her backup plans came crashing down when her daughter had been thrown into a trap right beside her.
And then there had been rain in the desert, and the sound of a Villain’s taunt ringing through the spire’s PA system, and eventually - Synovus themself, there to take both of them home. Even if they’d had several reasons to do it that had nothing to do with her, or Alexandria.
“One day, Minerva.” Synovus had murmured then, “I'm going to prove to you that my affection for you is not a trap”
“I’ll call when I’m on my way back to the island.” Minerva said coolly now, closing a mental door on the reverie. “If only so you don’t wake your entire staff in a panic.”
Synovus winced. A week prior, the sensors that alerted any Cape’s approach to the island had mis-triggered, mistaking a particularly dense patch of seagulls for someone with flight making an unauthorized approach. Watching the way everyone leapt to alarm stations and fell immediately into place had been impressive. Watching a sleep deprived Synovus throw their helmet at the birds (and miss) once they’d realized what had happened had been hilarious.
"Who's panicking?" The bleary voice comes from behind Synovus, and they shift aside to let Alexandria through.
Minerva's wayward teenage daughter looked like she was still contemplating waking up - like her body had just gotten ahead of schedule, and the rest of her hadn't caught up yet. Synovus ruffled her hair affectionately as she passed.
"No one yet, though the night's still young." Synovus replied, while Alexandria stepped forward to hug Minerva.
Minerva was still trying to learn not to hug too tightly, every time something happened. Logically, she knew there was nowhere in the world safer than Synovus's island. And she knew her daughter could defend herself.
But Minerva had been afraid of losing her long before she'd ever been born, and that fear didn't die easy.
"It's seven in the morning." Minerva scolded over Alexandria's shoulder.
Synovus frowned, and made a show of finding their phone to squint at the time it displayed. Their frown deepened, as though they had caught the bit of technology lying to them.
Alexandria had shifted from a full hug to standing to one side, still leaning on Minerva. "I'll call Rosie." She threatened. The yawn that cut her off kept her from living up to her chosen moniker.
Synovus shrugged, slipping the phone back into a pocket. "I won't sleep any faster if they're yelling at me." They point out. "Anyway, your mother-" It was always 'your mother' in front of Alexandria, "-agreed to call ahead on her way back. So we don't get another birdstrike scenario."
"It'd be more like the time with the dolphins." Alexandria remarked. Minerva raised a brow, looking from her daughter back to Synovus, who turned both hands palm up and looked mildly chagrined.
"Nevermind, I'm sure I don't want to know." Minerva says, waving it off both to avoid the headache, and because she's still itching to get going.
Alexandria knows the tone well enough - she gives Minerva another squeeze, then slips away to join Synovus by the doorway. She yawns again, and calls back over her shoulder, "Tell Gran and Gramps I said hi."
When she's gone again, Synovus and Minerva consider each other - one hesitant, the other wary. After a moment, Synovus extends a hand, offering, "Safe travels."
Minerva checks their palm for a sign of something they might be trying to slip her before shaking it. "Thanks." She said flatly.
And if she finds herself rubbing her fingers on the walk down to the beach, well, it's a subconscious tic. Unrelated.
---
There’s a common phrase that’s worked it’s way into becoming a whole saying.
“You never forget your first.”
For most people, that’s a marker of a degree of intimacy - a first crush, a first kiss, a first sexual experience. But it holds true for other things as well - like a first horrific allergic reaction. And arguments can be made that that’s all love really is, anyway.
Among the caped community, there’s a different list of firsts. The first person you told about your abilities. The first time you found out you had abilities. The first other hero you’d ever met. A popular ice breaker at parties is ‘the first person you ever saved.’
Less popular are the counterpoints: the first person you couldn’t save. The first villain you encountered. The first time you had to choose in the heat of a moment, and you chose wrong.
For Minerva, a terrifying amount of her caped ‘firsts’ have the same name - Albion.
He’d been the first person to find out about her abilities, and the first powered person she’d ever met face to face. A misunderstanding wherein he thought she’d been swept out to sea by a riptide and she assumed the figure dropping from the sky was out to get her had resulted in a very confused half-fight, wherein they’d saved each other from their own nonsense.
She’d thought once that that was how it would always be - saving each other. Things had turned out more in favor of the slap-fighting and misunderstandings.
—-
Minerva is working up the courage to get out of her car when her phone buzzes.
Alex: So how’s it going?
Despite herself, Minerva smiles, just a little. She can’t put her finger on why, and doesn’t try to.
Min: I’ve only just gotten here. Haven’t even knocked on the door yet.
Alex: Okay, then how was the drive?
Min: It was fine.
Minerva grimaces. That feels insufficient. She wracks her memory for something else to add, but the drive was hardly anything, nothing stands out. Before she can come up with something else, there’s a response:
Alex: Y’know, I should’ve offered to fly you over.
Minerva raises an eyebrow.
Min: And why’s that?
Alex: I still want to let you talk to them alone and everything, but they could’ve just seen me drop you off, and been like “who’s that really cool goth girl?”
Alex: And you could say something like “I have much to tell you” and bam, ice broken.
Min: Is Synovus giving you advice on dramatic entrances?
Alex: You never told me that one time they stole a whole cruise ship for the ambiance.
Min: Is that what they’re calling it?
Minerva’s mouth twitches again. Yes, Synovus had commandeered a cruise ship, and spent the whole fight spouting off about how it was good to have ‘variety’ in one’s combat scenarios. They’d also convinced part of the ship’s entertainment crew to set up a big ‘reveal’ of who had taken over the ship, as though anyone else would’ve bothered to think of musical cues.
She’d been tempted to sink the ship.
While Alexandria goes briefly radio-silent - presumably to grill Synovus for more details on the cruise ship story - Minerva looks up towards the house she’s never seen before.
It’s a relatively unassuming one-story. It’s ten minutes on foot from here to where the coast starts, and she could have her feet in the water by the fifteen minute mark. The sound of the waves is different here than it is on the island - there aren’t any cliffs or underwater tunnels, only the long smooth curve of a beach made more of rocks than sand. It’s soothing.
A twitch of a curtain in one window reminds her she’s looking at the house, not the ocean. Mentally, she scolds herself for wasting time.
She allows herself one last white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, and one last deep breath.
Then Minerva gets out of her car, and goes to talk to the parents she hasn’t seen in seven years.
—-
When Minerva became a hero, it went something like this:
She’d always been a strong swimmer. Her family lived near the water line, always, so it wasn’t unusual for her to come into contact with the ocean at least once a day, when the weather was fair, and rain or snow when it wasn’t.
Her parents had always seemed overly cautious about calling her out of the water before it got too cold, or before she could get too tired, but that’s any child’s perspective. She wouldn’t get sick from a bit of splashing around, even if there were frost films on the windows and flurries in the air. And as she got older, they trusted her to know her limits more and more, and her confidence had only grown.
Which was why, when they’d seen the small crowd gathering at the road not far from where they lived at the time and heard the murmurs that someone had been swept out to sea, Minerva had been absolutely certain that she could save them.
She’d gone home, put on her wetsuit, and been out of her window in minutes. It wasn’t hard to find a cove out of sight of the news crews and nervous watchers. And even as the light was dimming, she didn’t feel afraid.
Because once Minerva was in the water, nothing could touch her.
It wasn’t as though she didn’t feel the currents, the motions of the waves - she did. They just didn’t have sway over her unless she allowed it. It wasn’t as though she couldn’t tell the light was darkening, or the temperature falling - she could. They were just minor shifts, like the movement of a sunbeam across her arms while she read in the windowsill.
So Minerva had swept out on the same current that had ripped a man from the shallows, and looked for the signs of a person’s floundering.
This, admittedly, had been the weakest part of her plan, because she had no idea how to find someone in the vast expanse of potential that was the ocean. All she really had going for her was that she was fast, could manually follow the currents, and didn’t get cold. And, she eventually realized, she might’ve been looking for a corpse instead of a person, and how would she find that?
Those doubts had just had time to start to settle when she found him.
Minerva never did learn his name, but he was a few years older than her, there visiting his family, which was why he hadn’t known the signs he needed to look out for. He knew what a riptide was, and that he was supposed to try and swim parallel to shore to escape it, but everything happened so fast and it was so cold, that all he could really do was tread water. At least, that’s the story she got out of him as she towed him back to shore.
The only time her courage had faltered had been when he’d asked for her name, after she’d brought him to the secluded cove, and directed him towards the crowd.
“You saved my life.” He’d explained, still dazed and weak. “Who do I - how do I thank you?”
And there had been a sudden feeling of ice water down her spine, as she’d remembered the stories of what happened to people who were saviors.
“Tell them a Naiad saved you.” She’d called, moving back into the waves. “It’s true enough!”
There’d been speculation that he misheard her, and that her name was ‘Maya’ for a while. But in the end, the story faded - and Minerva never forgot.
—-
There’s no good, simple way to repair a cut tie with someone you love.
Whether things frayed until they snapped, withered and disintegrated, or were cut cleanly, that thread can never be respun. You have to start over, and try and weave with the tangled threads of what’s left.
Sometimes the threads are still the same color - soft pastels of passing friendships that blend well enough when they’re given the opportunity. Sometimes you find that while you weren’t looking (and sometimes when you were) the threads have been dyed, and the red that meant love once has been shot through with the purples of bruises and resentment, its original hues shifted to rage. That was what Minerva expected to find, when she came home. That’s what most of her own tapestry looked like these days, after all.
Instead, she found the golden honey color of home.
—-
It took a few hours for them to all wind up at the kitchen table. They’d covered for some of the awkwardness by showing her the house - her father’s most recent crochet project, pictures of last year’s garden, how her mother had finally decided to organize the spice cabinet after six years of deliberation and relabeling.
(She’d frowned and swapped two canisters while Minerva’s father wasn’t looking, and Minerva nearly cried at the familiarity of it.)
Then had come the insistence of refreshments, of warm drinks against the coolness of the weather. The porch was a bit damp, and the living room a bit dark, but the table was mostly clear so long as she didn’t mind shuffling aside a few skeins of yarn, would that do?
And so they’d settled in, as the rain drummed softly into the roof and dripped from the overhang that shielded the window. And her father had taken a breath, met her eyes, and said,
“We love you. And you don’t owe us a damn thing.”
Minerva had blinked. That wasn’t what she was expecting.
Her mother nodded firmly, adding, “Not an explanation, not an apology - if you want to talk about any of it, Min, you know - I want you to know - that we’ll listen, anytime, anywhere. But if all you want is to come over for dinner, then that’s all we’ll do.”
Minerva stared at her cup, trying to think of where to begin. What would be polite - no, they didn’t stand on manners with family. What would be right- well, by whose standards? What did she want?
Finally, she croaked, “I think I - I want you to ask.”
And so they did.
And so Minerva told them.
She told them about how she’d become slowly convinced that her continued nearness to them was putting them in danger. She told them about how Albion was always reminding her of the need to be cautious, the importance of not ever being caught. She told them about how sometimes he’d bring up the Sunhallow purges, and try to make a plan for what they’d do if it ever happened again.
She told them about how he’d begged her to make the move, citing crime rates and health statistics and population graphs, anything to get her to concede they would be better - safer - away from the city, further inland. If not for her, then for their child. And how she’d eventually caved, because if he was so worried, and this would bring him more peace of mind, then she could bear it. It would keep the people she loved safe.
She told them about how she’d tried to look into finding a place near water - a lake, a pond, a river. Every time, Albion had assured her that he was keeping that in mind, but that he’d handle it, really. She didn’t need to stress, especially when she was keeping up with so much otherwise. He admired her for being able to manage so much, the house and the hero gig, and could he just do this one thing for her?
She told them about how the house had been twenty minutes away from the nearest large water source. About how she’d begged him for something - anything. A koi pond. A pool. A goddamned well.
“Think about how that would look to the neighbors, ‘Thena.” He’d said worriedly. “I know you - you get underwater and you don’t come out for hours. They’ll think you’re drowning yourself.”
So they’d bought the largest tub she could find, and she’d spent as much time as she could submerged in it, staring at its porcelain sides and the bathroom lighting and feeling like a fish in a bowl. She’d told herself it was a selfish thought.
She told them about how he would sometimes grab her too roughly, or slam things around her. Sometimes it was a joke, played off as training her instincts. Sometimes it wasn’t.
“I just - you’re the only person in the whole world I can let my guard down around.” He’d muttered to her, mid-apology after a shove had left her sternum aching and purple. “I love you so much, I don’t stop to think.”
Somehow, she’d wound up being the one comforting him.
And she chokes out how having accepted those reasons made it easier to believe them herself, when Alex had the occasional bruise. When she reached out to slap her hand away from something, or pulled a bit too roughly. It felt like validation for everything Albion had said - look, it was easy to fall into. It didn’t mean anything.
It happened all the time.
And there was no one, by then, to tell her otherwise, because friendships were liabilities and risks that they couldn’t take, because it wasn’t right to endanger others with a secret they would never share. There were no work friends. No PTA rivalries. No soccer parent associations.
There was only the house, and the freedom that came from going out in costume. And even then, there could be no interviews, and every statement had to be carefully measured so that no one - not a villain, or a civilian, or even another hero - could learn something they shouldn’t.
Laying it out like this, Minerva realizes that it’s no wonder she only ever felt like herself in a fight. It was the only time she didn’t have to hold back any part of who she was.
She’s expecting her parents to condemn her for not realizing when she’d turned from - (her mind skitters away from the term ‘abused’) bystander to accomplice in Albion’s behavior. She’s expecting hurt that she didn’t trust them to make their own decisions about risks. She’s expecting them to say they taught her better than this.
Instead, they listen. Even when there are times one or both tightens their grip on their mugs, or wrestles to avoid showing some emotion (because it is no mystery where she got her temper; none of them are strangers to righteous rage) they do not interject outside of the quiet, prompting questions. And when she finally stumbles to a halt, before she’s even gotten to Synovus and the kidnapping, her mother comes to kneel beside her and wrap her arms around her, while her father stands at her other shoulder and does the same.
“You’re free now?” Her mother asks, running her fingers through Minerva’s hair. “You and Alex both?”
Minerva nods. She clears her throat, enough to force two words out, “Albion’s dead.”
She realizes that there’s an implication there, that she wielded the spear that killed him. The idea doesn’t hurt as much as it would’ve once - but neither of her parents so much as blink.
“Good.” Her mother says firmly. “Then that’s all you need to focus on right now, Min. No matter how long it takes you to untangle the knots he’s tied you in - you’re free.”
—-
Truth be told, Minerva doesn’t know when her parents figured out she had powers. For all she knows, they had known since she was born.
But one night, when she and Albion had been staying with her parents for a week, and they’d gone out to fight, they came back to see one of her parents on the porch, the other in the windowsill.
“You’re both alright?” Her father had asked.
No surprise. No exclamations. No how-could-yous. Concern. Acknowledgement. A reminder of when breakfast would be ready.
And that was that.
—-
The guest room in their new house isn’t the same as a childhood bedroom, but to Minerva, it feels similar. She’s under their roof again, with all the reflexive memories and half-forgotten ones tugged along with them.
She had expected to feel… well, different. Not good, probably kind of bad. And she didn’t feel lighter yet, the way people said confessions were supposed to make you feel. Instead, Minerva felt… raw. Sticky. Like the truth she’d tried to ‘set free’ had just come back to cling to her.
She was too emotionally exhausted to try and parse that. Better to get some sleep, if she could.
Minerva unzipped her suitcase, flipping it open on the bed. Her suitcase, that she’d checked so many times over. The suitcase with all of her clothing and things in perfect organization, untouched.
And a postcard sitting loose on top of them.
It had to have been custom-made. There was no stamp, for one thing, no actual postal markings. Just the same shape and size, with the same stylized ‘Wish you were here’ emblazoned across a picture… a picture of Synovus. On the beach. In full costume. With the necessary additions of a woven wide-brim hat and loose Hawaiian floral shirt left unbuttoned, on top of the helmet and body armor. They were holding a glass of juice with a little umbrella and a silly straw.
Alone in this bedroom that wasn’t hers, but might’ve been, Minerva burst out laughing.
[And the end of Villains Never Retire - this one took much longer to finish, and it's a bit longer than the other segments at 11,334 words. Warnings for death, and rather more descriptions of violence than have thus far been typical. As always, catch up on what's come before from my pincushion post, and find this chapter on Ao3 here!]
How do you keep a clairvoyant from knowing that you are coming for them?
The short answer: you don’t.
The long answer is that it is, technically, possible. However, masking your movements from a clairvoyant is dependent on what type of clairvoyant they are.
Do they read actions, or intentions? If actions, work through someone else or manipulate the environment. Do not decide on a course of action until one conveniently presents itself. A spur of the moment blitz. If intentions, hire multiple actors. One of them will slip through the myriad warnings eventually. (Personally you think this method is a waste of assassins)
Do they only read the short term, or can they predict further into the future as well? If the short term only, poisons over time work best. If long term, be sure to act both kind and hostile in equal measure, until the method of their death is confused.
Is their ability only clairvoyance of the future, or can they read the past as well? If they can, you can never speak of your intentions aloud. Hide your correspondence in code, and send an assassin.
Of course, this all assumes you have time and assassins. You, personally, have neither.
But you do have something else: connections.
—-
When you recognize Athena and Menace in the broadcast, you want nothing more than to tear out of your lair and into the night like the wrath of hell let loose.
But there are several flaws in that plan, including that it is currently daylight, and that doing so would certainly get more people killed than you intend. Specifically people you care about, so that’s out.
Instead, you make a few phone calls.
“Optix.” You were still staring at your phone as the broadcast continued, promising an hour of execution. “Are you the reason I’m seeing this?”
You still weren’t sure what, exactly, Optix was - but it went by ‘it’ and had given its name, and was inherently jacked into any electronic cloud you had ever encountered. You didn’t know if it was a person, a program, or a genuine Artificial Intelligence, but you did know it could be helpful when it chose to be.
A thumbs-up emoji appeared in your messages.
“I owe you.”
A ‘no’ emoji, the red circle with its diagonal line.
“Do you have a location?”
Another ‘no’ emoji.
“Noted.”
The broadcast ended, you swept your phone back into your pocket.
“Boss,” that was Doll, looking very pale. “This is-“
“A trap? A problem? A truly blindingly idiotic move by a pack of misguided muppets I’m about to return to the scrap pile? Yes. Yes it is.”
The shadows are still writing around you, but they are drawing closer to your skin. You managed not to vaporize anything this time.
“Your eyes are glowing.” Doll notes uncertainly.
Glowing? Hm. That’s a bad sign. Normally it’s the shadows that appear there first.
Of course, the shadows come to hand when you are furious, when the anger is hot and choking. They rise when you are defensive, murky and obscuring. But this emotion - you are not certain you can call it anger, anymore, that somehow feels too weak - is cold at its core. Not the freezing, biting cold of fear, but the frost wind that steals warmth and cuts like knives.
And that emotion, whatever it is, is what calls the light.
“I am in control.” You inform Doll flatly. “Gather the others, make travel preparations. I have calls to make.”
Doll nods, bolting out of the room. You know it isn’t to get away from you so much as it is to get to work doing something, to feel as though he can help.
You replay the broadcast, short as it is.
By the time you’ve finished watching it a second time, you have a plethora of messages - other villains, sending you the clip. You don’t bother responding.
Instead, you flip to the number pad. Four digits into the number you intend to dial, it rings, from the same source.
You answer. A frustrated voice spits out a coordinate string and disconnects.
How do you keep a clairvoyant from knowing how you are going to kill them?
You use another clairvoyant, of course.
—-
When you drop from the underbelly of your plane, you do so alone.
Your minions are there, of course - Heather's piloting, with the rest on support positions or with other tasks when they actually land. But you will not take them with you into a brawl when you can help it.
You cannot fly, but you can use a different trick you learned through some very difficult trial and error - summoning sections of shadow and solidifying them, to 'run' across the sky. It's a peculiar feeling that combines vertigo with certain mental acrobatics to circumvent the laws of physics. If you fuck up, you'll fall.
So you don't fuck up.
You also don't try and stay airborne long. Instead, you let yourself drop in increments, cushioned by your shadows, until you reach the scrubland below.
You are, perhaps, a mile out from the outskirts of the town that you've been given the coordinates of. There's no question of whether it's the right one - there's a giant, gleaming metal spire in its center that doesn't belong amidst the southwestern architecture.
(The question of who endorsed these idiots is a problem you will handle later.)
There is no sign of movement in the town itself. The residents are either already casualties, imprisoned, or fled. You don't actually care which, you just want to know if you'll be stepping over more corpses than the ones you make.
There's only one way to find out - so you start walking.
---
Earlier, when you were first starting to train Alexandria, she had asked you why you never carried weapons.
"I don't really need them." You'd answered, even as you went through a practice pattern with a padded staff. "My shadows are amorphous, I can craft them however I need to. Harder mentally than fixing them into shape, but more difficult to physically counter."
Alexandria had been taking a break, perched on top of the giant tire you'd been having her lift. "You sure it's not just an image thing?" She'd asked skeptically.
You'd grinned, "Oh, it definitely adds to the image. I am unarmed, because I am always armed."
"Mom says you should do the opposite." She'd remarked. "Carry a weapon so that people think you're reliant on it, and then when they disarm you, they're surprised."
"That trick only works on someone once - though your mother does put it to good use. Also, her abilities are a little easier to disarm than mine. Shadows are everywhere - water? Not quite so easy to come by in certain circles. And the spear adds to her reach for better maneuverability. Your father too, I suppose, though he's more likely to bash someone with that shield."
Alexandria had studied you. "You really know a lot about how they fight."
In answer, you'd twirled the staff in your hands, and mimicked some of the spear patterns you'd seen both Athena and Legionnaire use.
"'Therefore I say: 'Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.'" You quote.
"Sun Tzu?" Alexandria sighs, "Please don't make me memorize the Art of War. I've already got paragraphs of the Iliad I'll never be able to get rid of."
"Memorization's pretty useless." You toss the staff instead, spinning it for fun instead of a combat pattern. "I just want you to understand what it means, not how much gold you need to allocate per li traveled."
Alexandria had eyed you suspiciously, "How many times have you read the Art of War?"
"No more questions." You'd declared. "How's the flight coming?"
---
Thunder booms by the time you've made it to the spire itself.
The sky has been steadily darkening, as you've picked your way through the empty streets. There are pock marks in the asphalt, holes in the buildings. Some of them are burned to the ground or melted - Cobalt's work, most likely.
You briefly wonder if they have a recovery factor, if you'll have to put them down again today. It doesn't change much, either way.
No bodies. Bloodstains, crumpled cars. Someone's had the wherewithal to clean, at least. Or someone who could raise the dead showed up already - hard to tell from context clues.
If you weren't wearing your helmet, you could've taken a deep breath and smelled only the heat, melting into the softer gentleness of rain. You could've felt the wind on your face, in a steady breeze.
But you were wearing your helmet, so you only noted those things distantly, and that made it all the more contrasting when you stepped into the trap that had been laid for you.
---
There are sirens wailing, somewhere. The few who have not been cut off already, cut silent as the screams of the living have been, one by one and in waves. The hush that should follow is denied by the high pitched whining of machinery and the sound of burning things. There are sparks, and pops. Something like words worn smooth in the background, run over so many times that they're part of these floorboards that are now cracking and failing, released again at the moment of unmaking.
You focus on the sounds, because you cannot see the devastation. You focus on the sounds, because you cannot smell the burning. You focus on the sounds, because if something does not force you to confront it, you do not know how fast or far away you would be running.
You shut your eyes and fight for air. Your hands close into fists, and you feel the world roll around you. An earthquake? You should be running -
Breathe. Weigh the situation, then move.
The sirens are too loud. The flames - you would've noticed them earlier, seen the smoke. The pieces of this scenario do not match.
You flip the settings on your helmet. The sounds do not change.
A mental effect, then. An illusion?
On a hunch, you blanket the area around you in shadow. From a building to your left, you hear a squeak of terror.
Slowly, not trusting your sense of direction, you turn towards it and take a single step.
"I know that you are there." You say calmly. "Your illusions are good, but they are not perfect. Come out, or my shadows will drag you out."
There's a pause, and the illusions intensify - you can feel the heat of fire on one side of your body, smell harshly chemical smoke - then the thunder cracks again, and you are abruptly returned to the near silence of reality.
A shuffling of footsteps. Then a small head pokes around a doorframe.
You run your shadows over them anyway, to make sure this is not an adult pretending to be a child. If they are, they're either much better at illusions than they're letting on, or they can also shapeshift.
You'd say the figure that steps into view is no more than eight years old.
"What is your name?" You ask, still calm, still gentle.
"Ciaran." The answer is in a near whisper.
"They did not give you a code-name?"
The child pales. "Ch-Cheshire. Like the cat."
You nod. "Very well, Cheshire. I am Synovus."
You look up and down the street, and compare the feelings of your vision to the area that surrounds you now. A few things make sense.
"I know." The child says, swallowing. "Please don't kill me."
"I will only kill you if you try to kill me." You answer, matter-of-fact. It's no use protesting that you don't kill children, no one ever believes you. "Your abilities - that wasn't an illusion, was it? It was a memory. A memory you pushed into my mind."
Cheshire nods, hesitant. "Ez - Jester said I should make you scared."
"And so you chose something that had scared you." You complete, "I felt your fear. And why did Jester want me scared?"
"I'm not supposed to answer any questions."
"You already have."
"You're going to hurt me. Hurt them."
You fold your arms. Why do you keep winding up in moral arguments with children?
"That will not change based on what you tell me, little one."
"I wasn't supposed to be here." Cheshire blurts. "I was supposed to wait - to wait until you came inside, and then -"
They fall silent, and you nod. "And then Jester would teleport behind me, hm? And why are you out here then, alone?"
"Because I don't want you to hurt them. I thought I could make you run away before you fought."
"Others have come here before me. Have you scared them away too?"
The child scuffs a foot. "Some of them. No one's ever found me though."
You crouch. "You've done a very stupid thing, coming out here to face me. But I am not here for you, and I am in a hurry. Hide, and I will not hurt you."
Cheshire steps back, but hesitates. "And Jester?"
You sigh. "They must face the consequences of their actions."
Cheshire's bottom lip wobbles. "Don't kill him! He's - he's my brother, I don't - promise you won't kill him!"
Sometimes, you really do hate yourself. Past, present, and future.
"I promise." You grit out, "That I will not kill your brother, Jester, on the condition that you hide, and not use your powers again, until a woman named Rosie comes to get you. Do we have an agreement?"
A stubbornness enters Cheshire's expression. "Pinky promise."
Again, you feel like this is a trap. Also, you're mildly offended that you would need to make a further oath than the one you've already made, but this is a child. So you hold out one hand, as far as you can, and Cheshire does the same.
When Cheshire nods solemnly, you straighten, and turn back towards the spire. The sound of scuffling marks the child's scramble through the rubble, and you hope you haven't made a terrible mistake in letting them get away.
You allow yourself another heavy sigh, and call Rosie to tell her what to expect.
---
You don't actually know for sure whether or not you have siblings. But wanting to sacrifice yourself to save a family member? You can remember feeling that way.
You know who your parents are (sometimes you wish you didn't) and you're reasonably sure your mother didn't have another child after you. Your father could have a whole bevvy of children, a miniature army, and you would never have known. An elder full-blooded sibling could've been taken away prior to your conscious memory.
Your father was known as Sunhallow. He who is Hallowed by the Sun. A god-made-flesh, who seemed to bleed gold and healed in the sun, and could incinerate enemies in beams of light.
Your mother was simply your mother to you, and if she ever did anything with her minor telekinetic gifts beyond keep up with you, you never heard about it.
When you were young, an enemy came calling. Several, perhaps. You were packed from your private tutoring into a safe room, and you did not come out for several days. It was you, your tutor, and a few others, who you knew would die to protect you on pain of a worse death at Sunhallow's hands.
When you finally came out again, you were brought to see him. He told you that your mother had had to go away, but if you worked hard enough, you could be allowed to go see her again. When you would not be a burden to her work.
Desperate to please, you had thrown yourself into your education and training. Combat, economics, athletics. Trying to find a way to call the sun the way Sunhallow could, in vain.
Several months in, your shadows had finally manifested for the first time. You'd been delighted to show him, begged to be allowed to speak to your mother - a letter, a phone call.
Sunhallow had refused.
After that day, he called you his moon-child. You became his shadow, never speaking, never moving unless called upon to do so. Your training, somehow, increased.
And when you had done that for a month, you were brought into a room where a caped hero had been restrained on a table. You knew their name from the list you were to memorize, and their strengths and weaknesses accordingly. Their name was Willowsteel.
Sunhallow put a dagger in your hands, and pointed at Willowsteel.
"There is the man who took your mother." He told you, "Go and get her back."
You had torn into them as though somewhere inside them was a key, and you could use it to open a door, and on the other side would be your mother, happy to see you after so long apart. But there was no key: only blood, and eventually that ran out too.
When you were done, Sunhallow had led you to another room, and showed you your mother's corpse.
---
The rain began to fall just as you stepped over the threshold of the spire.
It caused an interesting audio phenomenon on the inside, as it rang off the metal in a discordant harmony with the hum of the air conditioning. Thunder rumbled again.
There was no one in the entry hall that you could see. Only an empty room, wide and spacious, with a large grand staircase leading up. It feels more like a warehouse than a lair.
“Optix.” You whisper inside your helmet. “Does this place have an intercom?”
A two note trill that you take as a yes.
“Would you be so kind as to patch me into it, for a moment?”
Another two note trill, then the sound that usually heralds you should leave a message in a voicemail.
“Perhaps I was not clear enough, the last time we spoke.” You drawl, and in your voice is cold fury and disdain. There are sounds of startled movement from the stairs. “Allow me to clarify.”
Metal really is a horrible building material - the boots of anyone who is coming ring with such finality as they run to meet their deaths. A line of those you take for goons, pale-faced and unsteady and armed with automatic weaponry you know is stolen.
Your voice doesn’t waver, doesn’t change. Each word is delivered with gravitas and perfect diction. “Thou hast fucked around.”
You take several steps forwards into the room, your cape billowing behind you. The empty black blank of your helmet offers no reprieve or indication of humanity - only their own reflections.
“Thou shalt find out.”
Thunder shakes the sky - and the goons open fire.
—-
How do you keep a shadowmancer from killing you?
Well, that depends on how you define a shadow.
Must it be pure, pitch darkness? In that case, arrange for sufficient lighting, and they will be powerless.
Must it be a living thing’s shadow? Lure them into a trap, provide sufficient lighting, no living shadow to work from.
But can it be a half-shadow? If so, sufficient lighting becomes a problem. One need only cup their hand to create a negative space within the light, and draw a shadow from there. A bundle of a cape edge. The hollow of one boot.
And speaking of hollows - if a shadow is simply where the light isn’t, what, then, of a body’s hollows? The spaces in the mouth, the lungs, the small pockets inside various cavities. The slim space between brain and skull. Are those shadows?
Because if they are, a shadowmancer does not need external shadows to kill you.
And how do you keep a shadowmancer like that from coming to kill you?
Short answer: you don’t.
—-
You don't bother to count your kills. The ticker on that particular statistic is long broken, and you will not linger here. You grant them the mercy you have to give, and make things quick.
It takes you less than thirty seconds to go from staring down a wall of automatic rifle barrels to stepping over corpses, and up the stairs.
About halfway up the first level, the air shifts.
You pause, and when no immediate strike is forthcoming, you turn. "You do not have so many opportunities available to you that you can afford to waste an opening like that." You chide.
Jester is flushed, their breathing heavy. They stand where you were seconds earlier, and stare at the room, and then up at you.
"What did you do to Dymania?" They ask, and you see the edge of desperation in their eyes.
You decide that this is a lesson that can only be truly taught once. "A better question." You say thoughtfully, "Would be what I did to Ciaran."
At the mention of their brother's name, you watch Jester's face go through a variety of emotional contortions. You wouldn't bother to name all of the shades, but 'terror' features predominantly among them.
To Jester's credit, they learn quickly. The next time they teleport, there is no more pretense of talking.
---
In the rooms above you, you cannot see it for yourself, but you will learn later that Dymania is paralyzed. They lie on the floor, in the room crafted for them to get the most from their gifts. Overloaded with a thousand potential futures, each only a maddeningly small difference from the next, they occasionally shout or spasm.
In the room above them, Minerva has finally found an opening. She is trailing more goons, there is a bullet in her shoulder, and her leg is still not completely healed, but she manages to reach the rainwater, and that is all that she needs.
On the same level, down the hall, Alexandria is no longer held in check by her mother's captivity. They far underestimated her strength, and she has broken the bonds on herself and several others. When someone tries to enter the room, she takes the door off of its hinges and literally sweeps a path clear for the other hostages to flee.
Outside, Rosie is sitting on a chunk of concrete rubble, talking to a little boy who has no idea there are four others hidden in the area around him, ready to strike anyone else who approaches.
And a single figure hurtles through the sky, with no way to know that he is already too late.
---
You probably could've ended the fight with Jester much sooner, but... okay, so you were maybe having some fun with it.
Not because he was so clearly distressed, mind, just because how often did you really get to brawl with someone? No super strength, no weapons, no summoned spouts of fire, just a good old fashioned punch-out.
Yeah, sure, the kid teleported, but that just made it more interesting to fight him.
(You weren't sure what would happen if he solidified in a space he happened to share with, say, your arm, and you were disinclined to find out, so you had to lead your movements just enough and - well, it was harder than it sounded.)
And yes, you are furious still, but that fury was largely alleviated by doing something, and with the pieces you have set into motion, you will have to trust in the others in the building to play their parts. Also, you did promise not to kill this one, specifically.
So when he tries to gain enough momentum to blindside you by teleporting up and coming down, and you sidestep on the blood-slicked staircase, there is not a spike of shadow waiting to impale him if he does not teleport again quickly enough. When you see an opportunity to force him to carry through a motion and crack his skull into the railing, you stay your hand.
Mostly, though, you move in circles that broaden to leaps of your own, until Jester decides to try and pick up one of the guns of the dead goons.
You fold your arms as he aims at you. "Nice try."
Jester furrows his brow, the mask contorting to match. He glances at the barrel, does a doubletake, and swears. Frantic scurrying only turns up more of the same.
"I don't - what - how?" He cries, jumping from body to body for a gun that works.
"Solidified the shadows in the barrels." You lean against the railing and cross one leg over the other. You're only mildly winded.
“You can do that?” Jester cries in horror.
You hum. You aren’t entirely unsympathetic. “I can do many things.”
Jester looks up at you, something like determination in his eyes - and disappears.
When he does not reappear, trying to punch you again, you sigh. “Damn it.”
You click your way through to Rosie again. “Yeah, I overdid it. No, I’m fine. I am not that old. The roof? Fine. There better be an elevator.”
Grumbling, you find the elevator at the heart of the spire. They haven’t locked it yet - so you’ll take however many floors you can get out of it before they do.
—-
When you were younger, your mother told you about the things that made someone Great.
You can’t quite say they were stories, because they were more like… half-anecdotes, strung together on a line. But they were always meant to entertain and teach, and you could listen while you did other things.
For a long time, you thought they were all about your mother and father. She was every brave woman who thought to heal instead of breaking, every woman who drove a weapon’s blade through solid stone, every woman who adventured and every woman who stayed home.
Your father was every man who proved the truer than his enemies, who rallied others to his cause, who truly believed and in that faith called others to follow. Inspired them, rather than commanded.
And you? You were both of them. You had your mother’s adventuring and wisdom, your father’s effortless grace and pure heart. You did not need your own stories, when you could frolic in the mix of theirs, leaping from one tale to the next, an ephemeral sidekick.
Your mother never corrected you. But you learned, eventually.
Your father was never the protagonist in those stories at all.
And where did that leave you?
—-
The elevator stops about two stories up, by your reckoning, and had you been standing by the door like a dunce, you would've been pummeled by a torrent of water.
And had there not been mirrors at the back of the elevator, you might've pummeled Minerva with a torrent of shadow.
But there were, so you could see it was her from your vantage of tucked-into-the-corner, and she could see it was you as the center mirror cracked and shattered.
(You weren't sure if you should commend these young idiots for thinking of the corner tricks, or condemn them for putting in wall to floor mirrors. Really, those things shatter no matter what kind of treatment you give them.)
"Synov-" Her incredulity is cut off, as you sweep around the corner - and sweep her into a hug.
She must be exhausted, because you get away with it. She stands rigid for a moment, bracing, likely thinking you're tackling her or some other nonsense. Once it becomes clear - oh, a second or two later - that you're only wrapping your arms around her in reassurance that she's alive, some self-preservation instinct drops.
For a moment, she rests her head on your shoulder, and gently presses one arm against your back.
When she pulls away, you do too.
"I should've known you'd come for Al- Menace." She says, and her throat is raw. Smoke? Screaming? (You're going to burn this town a second time) "Had to show me up one more time."
"One day, Minerva." You say quietly, "I'm going to prove to you that my affection for you is not a trap, or some kind of proxy for your child. But for now -"
You spread your hands, summoning shadows between them. You spin them like thread, that thickens to wire, that thickens to cord, pulled taut and bulging on one end. That end clarifies - sharp edges, a wide base that narrows to a point. A replica of Athena's spear.
Minerva - Athena? - takes it, weighing its balance. She opens her mouth to say something, but you are already holding out a disc in the shape of her shield.
"The weight's wrong." She says, taking the shield.
"Shadows." You say apologetically. "Not the heaviest things. Shall we?"
Minerva clears her throat, "Menace is searching for more cells. They had a lot of people here."
You nod, and follow when she walks away. "Anyone other than Jester and Dymania I should worry about?"
Athena adjusts her shield. "Not while I'm around."
---
When you were Sunhallow's shadow, he called you 'Eclipse.'
You were not his enforcer - he did that well enough on his own. You were the spy, the assassin, a card near the bottom of a very stacked deck. An observer, time and time again.
And, as proves inevitable when someone is taught to find loopholes and make observations, they will begin to find chinks in their predecessor's armor. They will learn to ply their skills for their own gain, rather than only on instruction. It is what makes them good at what they do.
You were very good at what you did.
In all of your searching and spying, you put together several pieces. You conducted your own investigations, slipped additional questions into interrogations, took the time to talk to your targets before you killed them.
Their words painted a very different picture than the one you'd been given. They showed that your mother had not been abducted, but had left willingly. May have even opened the door. They showed that Sunhallow was not the first to claim godhood, only the most recent to become so prominent. And that not everyone, as he had claimed, recognized his inherent superiority.
Your father told you that one day, you would become Holy, as he was. The Sun would hallow your bones, bless you, and raise you to take over where he left off. But you knew what he looked like when he was lying, by then. You also knew he liked to tempt others by offering them the idea of his position, his glory. It was bait.
And the day the light finally responded to your call, you realized that you were going to have to take it.
---
When you and Athena find Menace, it's by finding the end of her trail of ducklings - nearly thirty people, milling about in varying levels of distress and shock.
Someone screamed when they caught sight of you, in your distinctive costume, and Athena with her spear and shield of shadows. You sighed, unsurprised, but didn't have time to even start trying to explain yourself before a head rose above the others. And kept rising.
Nearly flat to the ceiling, Menace shot over the heads of her flock, and hurtled into the pair of you to grab you both in a hug.
"Super-strength, super-strength, super-strength," you chant in warning, wanting to come out of this reunion with your trachea intact.
"You saw me ten minutes ago." Athena chides gently, but her heart isn't in it, and she hugs Menace back just as tightly.
“I’ve never been so happy to see a pile of garbage bags in my life.” Menace says, giving you a very careful squeeze. You have time to make an offended noise before she turns her attention back to her mother; “And you - you got shot? I specifically requested you not get shot.”
“The people.” Athena reminds her, nodding towards the shambling mass of mundanity.
“None of them got shot either.” Menace replies mulishly. When Athena sighs, she relents. “No major injuries so far, though some of them are pretty banged up - bruises, scrapes. I think I’ve gotten most of them out by now, unless there’s a basement to this place.”
Athena looks at you, and you shrug. “It would make sense that they did, but the elevator didn’t go down that far, and herding prisoners down stairs gets very annoying very quickly. If there is one, I’m betting it’s maintenance.”
The shambling mass of mundanity has been whispering since you arrived. You could wait for Menace or Athena to soothe them - but you’d rather not.
“Oh, shut up.” You tell them crossly. “If I were here to kill you all I would’ve blown up the place and been done with it. You all get to live and deal with the trauma for the rest of your sorry lives. Lucky you.”
There’s a collective gasp of shocked breath, and the nearest ones edge back from you a little more - but they do go silent.
Athena elbows you in the ribs. “Synovus does have a point about the stairs.” She says calmly. “And the elevator isn’t safe. Have we found an alternative exit?”
Menace sighs, “I could punch through an outer wall and carry people down?”
Athena considers the group size. “That would take some time. And we would be vulnerable during movement.”
“The ground level is secure.” You mention idly.
“Which doesn’t rule out snipers or the two remaining supervillains.” Menace points out.
“You.” Athena says suddenly. “You can make discs of shadow, and you can hold them. You can make one wide enough for them to all stand on, so they can be lowered down together.”
You could also make a slide that curves around the spire all the way down, but you don’t say that part out loud.
“I could.” You concede. “You would be putting their lives in my hands.”
“If you wanted them dead, you’d have killed them by now.” Athena counters. “So time to live up to not wanting them dead.”
You survey the crowd. You have an image to maintain - or, well , partially reconstruct.
“Fine.” You drawl, and stalk closer to the group. You shoo them all to one side, and rest your fingertips on one wall, feeling for the vibration of the rain. “This is the outer wall?”
Athena breaks off reassuring the people to call to you, “It is. Maybe four, five inches?”
You resist the urge to make inappropriate jokes. Someone in the crowd does not. Someone else smacks them on the back of the head. The first person mutters something about stress responses and apologizes.
Experimentally, you lodge a spear of shadow into the wall. It sticks until you dismiss it. You can see a faint gleam of pale light through it.
Well. Shit. Shadows are very adaptable things, but they don’t cut very well - they’re more brute force and occasionally piercing.
Which means you’re going to have to use the light.
Whatever. At least it’s not made of concrete.
You don’t bother to explain yourself to your companions, not with an audience present. Instead, you raise a wall of shadow between yourself and them, thick enough to block the glow of radiance when you summon light to your hands.
A beam would be easiest, here - but it would also be like setting off a beacon. The most subtle would be to use the light as a knife, as you normally do when you have to use it, but that would take forever. So… laser cutter?
You use three sharp, long lines to hack off either side and a new roof line, giving it a shove near the top with your shadows so it doesn’t try and fall inward. Another slash at the bottom cuts it loose. The chunk of metal falls away with a relatively soft screech (which is, still deafening) and drops with the rest of the rain, and your shadow wall.
You reveal yourself again, already turned to face the group, with the rain now drumming on the metal flooring (you may have erred on the side of excess for height) and the wind blowing your cape out dramatically. You gesture to the open air, shadows already weaving a basket to hold a large group of people.
They cannot see you smiling, but they can hear it. It is not a polite or joyful smile. “Your chariot awaits, dear friends.”
—-
No one thanks you for putting a raised edge on the platform.
Menace would’ve caught them, of course, but still. Did your efforts to save them from falling mean nothing?
Had circumstances been different, you might’ve complained about that to Athena, loudly and at length. Instead, you stayed quiet, and kept time in your head as you lowered a herd of sheeple to solid ground.
You stay up in the spire, though Athena rides with them to reassure them, and Menace drifts alongside. Once they’re down, she argues with her mother for a moment. Then she flies back up, carrying Athena.
“Refused to stay put for her injuries?” You remark, having found a chair to lounge in. That actually did take a significant amount of energy, though you’ve done everything you can to disguise that.
“Yes.” Menace grumbles.
“I told her I’d climb the spire by hand if I had to.” Athena says stubbornly. To Menace, she said firmly, “I let someone slow me from coming to you once. Never again.”
“You two are going to have the strangest rivalry.” You said admiringly, to break the tension. Both of them turn to you instead, and even if Menace’s head is covered, you’d bet their expressions are identical.
You raise your hands in mock-warding - and pause as the air shifts again.
There are two people in the hallway. One, the bruised-but-mobile Jester. The other, slumped against a wall and looking much worse for wear, is Dymania.
Menace and Athena both tense, drawing a step closer together in preparation for a fight. You cross one leg over the other at the knee.
"You know, you two are terrible hosts." You call, casually flicking a crease from your costume. "Leaving us alone for so long? Incredibly ru-"
"Shut UP Synovus!" Jester yells, near manic. You can see the whites of his eyes all the way around, even under the mask. "You weren't even supposed to be here! You're retired!"
"Someone doesn't check Twitter." You remark, amused.
"I - What?" Aw, you've genuinely thrown this one for a loop.
"Twitter." You repeat. "I tweeted 'nvm, comma, I'm back' an hour before I arrived." You enunciate each letter in 'nvm' instead of approximating a word.
Athena sighs, "Synovus."
"Yes, honored colleague?"
"Shut up."
You respond by rising, and giving an overexaggerated bow. Dymania yelps and throws themself to one side - because as you straighten, you throw lances of shadow at both of them.
---
The fight really didn't take long.
You're pretty sure the only reason they got Athena or Menace was by threatening the hostages they already had, and you could've wiped the floor with them on your own. You still didn't kill Jester, and even helped cushion a hit he took from Menace.
(The hit wouldn't have hurt him as much as the rebound against the floor. Menace would've been terribly upset to have accidentally killed him.)
(Though, if she or Athena killed him, you wouldn't be in violation of your promise.)
(But - no. You wouldn't do that to either of them. Not now.)
The end of things really came when Athena managed to pin Jester against the wall with her good arm, and you'd managed to herd Dymania away from his companion. He stumbled back again, and wound up crossing into the area where the rain was still falling.
(Lightening up, you noticed. Better finish things quickly then.)
The change was immediately noticeable. Dymania stiffened, clutching at their head with both hands, and tried to run forward out of the rain - only to find you there, walking them back to the edge.
"H- how did-" They cut themselves off, and you nodded.
"How did I know about the rain?" You asked politely, as much taking pity on them as taking the chance to grandstand. "The Silent Ones told me. You know how they feel about Clairvoyants who don't conform."
It isn't really possible for more color to drain from Dymania's face. Instead, they drop to their knees with a groan.
"What?" Menace asks, looking up from where she's trying to convince Athena to trade off with her.
You raise your voice a little, so she can hear you better. "The Silent Ones. An enclave of Clairvoyants, hidden from most of the world. When two clairvoyants cross each others paths, it's like putting two mirrors opposite each other. Endless reflections. They hate it."
You watch Dymania try to stagger back to their feet, and feel no pity. "That includes if one shows up in their own futures. It gives them headaches at best. Sometimes they wind up in comas, if they're particularly unprepared. So one of them eventually hit upon the idea - what if all of them lived together?"
You glance towards the sky, calculating how long you have left. "They live according to a very strict schedule, and interact as little as possible with each other. If everyone does exactly as ordered, there's no need to make predictions. No traps to fall into. They don't force others into it, but they certainly don't like it when someone has plans that conflict with their order either."
"You mean like, someone leaving?" Menace asks, having managed to take half-ownership of keeping Jester pinned. She sounds offended on their behalf.
"No, they can leave whenever they want. Its the ones who want to do something about their enclave - like find it, exploit it, or destroy it - that find themselves suddenly overwhelmed with bad luck. And the chaos of the rest of the world is often too much for them, once they've gotten used to the enclave."
"So its... more like a sanctuary?"
"Yes. And they know you, Dymania. They know that you cannot stand the rain."
"Make it stop." Dymania begs you. You aren't even sure they've been following the conversation - their eyes are unfocused, trying not to see or feel the falling water around them.
"Clairvoyants, as a whole, despise rain." You mention idly. You have not moved. "The randomness involved in where each drop falls - it ties them up into knots. Worse, if they predict how the droplets will feel on their skin. Some of them can filter it out, like white noise - Dymania is not one of them."
You tilt your head, and then turn back to the others. "Very well. Let's go."
Like you know they will, Dymania gives a cry of desperation. They push, once more, to try and make it to their feet. And at the point where their future diverges, they try to draw the handgun Jester had forced them to carry.
You pivot, and in one smooth motion, kick Dymania out of the spire.
"Dy!" Jester cries.
"Yes." You muse. "I suppose they will."
---
The fight goes out of Jester, after Dymania falls.
The three of you drag him up to the roof, at your direction. Once the skies clear, Heather will bring the plane back around, and all of you can reach it easily enough from the highest point. Plus, at this point, it's less stairs to go up than it would be to go back down, and you really don't want to do the disc trick again.
It turns out the roof is less a flat roof, and more of a ring near the top. You notice Menace shudder as you reach it, and tilt your head at her in question.
"They threw hostages over the railing here." She says quietly.
You nod. This explains why neither Menace or Athena protested much, at what you'd done. But you don't protest or labor the point either - instead, you clasp her arm in sympathy, and look up at where the sky is clearing.
"How did you time that so well?" Athena murmurs when you come up alongside her.
"Weatherwitch owed me a favor." You reply casually.
"Weather witch. The Silent Ones. Your council. What else is there, some kind of... Villain union?"
"Well..." You admit, "there is... something of a minion union, though I stay out of their business, mostly."
Athena sighs.
You almost take your helmet off to grin at her. You probably would've, but then you hear Menace, and the sudden tension in her voice as she says, "Mom?"
You both turn immediately - and see Legionnaire, hovering at the railing, and staring at you.
---
You didn't forget Legionnaire existed.
No, really, you didn't - but you did try really hard not to let yourself think about it for too long.
When you had named him (and Athena) as your rivals, you had made your choice based on what you thought was a genuine good in them. They did not hesitate until the cameras arrived. They did not extort or demand. They took some care for collateral when lives were involved, if not property, and they regularly showed up to help with rescue or relief efforts when they could.
And there was the fact that they had a kid.
You'd fought them enough times to know that they didn't mess around to grandstand or showboat. They maintained secret identities fairly well. They weren't like Dazzler, who would try and seduce villains in the hopes of fucking them back to civility. They weren't like White Shadow, who was always high enough when you fought them that you weren't sure they knew what was happening.
The closest, you thought, to real heroes.
So when you'd seen those bruises on Alexandria's arm, that first day, you'd been... surprised. You didn't exactly have the highest opinion of humanity in general, and you'd learned too many early lessons about pedestals and how much they hurt when they fell over on top of someone. But you had expected better of them.
From your observations, conversations with Minerva and Alexandria, and the things they didn't say, you'd pieced together a lot over the last year. That Minerva did have her flaws, but was trying to be better. That her healing factor meant that any bruises or sprains would've healed long before anyone else saw them. That Alex, though wary of Minerva sometimes, had still talked about her when she wasn't around. She almost never mentioned her father, and when she did, it was only questions about how you knew him, or in conjunction with her mother.
You had been worried, at first, that you were conflating him with Sunhallow. A man claiming holiness (the Sun made him Hallow, the Son of Mars) with strength and a following (A cult, a fanbase) and who coerced their child into working for them (Eclipse, Mercury) and who harmed them-
So you hadn't let yourself go out to find him and have it out. On better days, you admitted it wasn't your fight to have - it was Minerva and Alexandria's, if they wanted it. On worse days, you weighed the benefits and consequences of hiring someone versus doing it yourself.
And you had kept a degree of surveillance on him, just in case. Nothing in depth - you didn't know what brand of frozen pizza he bought or his Netflix account, you didn't care if he still had a job or had lost it - but just. General locations. Whether he went out in costume. You had Legionnaire watched, and not Albion.
But sometimes those lines blurred - so you knew that he had started drinking more heavily when Alexandria left. More again, after Minerva. The last two months, he'd seemed to be getting better, but he had stopped going out in costume.
And now he was here, and you had no idea what to do.
---
For what feels like an eternity, you all stand in silence. Athena had been startled into dropping Jester, automatically readying her shield and then stilling herself before she could aggravate her bullet wound any more.
(She still held the shadow set you'd given her, you hadn't found her usual weapons in the spire, though you had personally looked.)
You grabbed Jester, who was glancing back and forth with confused interest.
"Say a word, or try and teleport away." You tell him quietly, head next to theirs. "And I will make Dymania's death seem like a kindness."
Judging by the way he nods, slowly, he also remembers that you technically have Ciaran.
And Menace - oh, Menace - has lifted from the ground, hovering, with her hands curled into fists.
It's Legionnaire who breaks the silence first; "You inherited my powers."
He sounds... proud. Tired. His voice is rough. He's looking at Alexandria as though she is a prized pupil who has shown an aptitude in his favorite subject.
(He doesn't deserve that pride.)
"I have my own powers." Menace corrects him, her voice clipped and short.
Legionnaire moves his hands gently in a faint 'settle down' motion. "Of course." He says quietly. "All yours, Alex."
"Why are you here, Albion." Minerva demands. She's pulled off the Athena mask, and glares him down as he looks her over. Notes the shadow-weapons, the injury.
"I saw the broadcast." He explains, gesturing to the spire. "I thought - you needed help."
"We're fine." Minerva says flatly.
It's hard to shift uncomfortably when you're flying, but Legionnaire manages it - as his gaze slides to you.
"Oh, come off it." Minerva follows his gaze, and now sounds heated.
"Can you really blame me, Athena?" He says, and sounds beseeching. "This all started with him, when he took Alex -"
"They." Menace interrupts, nearly strangling the word. "Synovus is 'they,' not 'he.'"
Legionnaire bites his lip, flicks his eyes away, then back again. "Fine." He says, though his calm is less even now. "They took you, Alex. And then they took your mother, too."
"I left of my own free will." Alexandria has risen now, a little further up. Not quite even with her father. "And my name. Is Alexandria."
There's a certain exasperation in Legionnaire's expression that he can't hide fast enough. Changing tactics, he looks to Minerva again instead, "Athena, think about it. Synovus changed you! You know they used to say he - she, they - had manipulative powers. They've kept you isolated, and now let you get captured just so they can sweep in to save you-"
"Synovus." Minerva grits her teeth, "Did not make me move several hundred miles inland, away from my family and the source of my powers. Synovus did not discourage me from getting involved in the community, in case I accidentally gave our identities away. Synovus-" She has taken a step forward, with each line, and the tip of her spear is slowly lowering to point towards him. "-did not hurt my daughter."
Legionnaire exhales, "So did you." He points out. "It happens, it's not anything unusual - its how kids learn! I-"
"I am ashamed of that!" Minerva shouts. Alexandria has sunk an inch. "We were supposed to be better, Albion! We talked about trying to save cities, to save the world, and we couldn't even save our own daughter from ourselves!"
"No one is perfect." Legionnaire deflects.
Minerva points her spear at you. You do not flinch. "I have lived with them for over a month." She says, with a steely calm. "I have seen those who live with them. I have seen how they are with Alexandria." There's a subtle emphasis on the last half of the name, a pointed correction. "They provided me medical care without blinking, and though I have yelled and raged and attacked them, they have never raised a hand against me while I was in their house."
Legionnaire scoffs, "So Synovus learned to play nice for a while, that's not -"
"It's more than you ever managed." Minerva says with venom.
There is a silence then, deep enough that the entire spire could fall into it and further, swallowed by a negative space that never ends.
Finally, you speak again, but only when you are certain your voice is under your control. "The plane is here." You say calmly. "Someone should make sure this one-" You jostle Jester, "-is received properly."
There is a two-fold offer in the statement, and one you know both Minerva and Alexandria hear.
Tell me to leave, and I will.
Because you will, if they want. You are party to this story, but it is not yours. It will hurt you, and you will worry, but you know about closure and what it can take to find it.
Tell me to take care of him, and I will.
One more death will not be a burden on your conscious. Not when you feel responsible that he was allowed to continue - that you have protected this man for years. Logically, you know that's ridiculous. It isn't necessarily Logic that wants to kill him.
This pause is shorter, lighter. Minerva whirls on you, searching. You wait for the protest - that she can fight her own battles, and you should fuck off before she comes to her senses and fights you again, a villain at the scene of a crime.
Instead, she glances at Alexandria, who is still hovering, still staring at Legionnaire.
"Alexandria." Minerva says softly. "Our priority is still the people."
"Yes." She responds automatically. It takes her another moment to move, to shake herself out of her paralysis. "I can carry you both."
You know that does not include you.
"Athena, don't -" Legionnaire starts.
You ignore him, and look at Alexandria. "Menace." You address her by the title, helping knock her out of it a little more.
(Yes, remember - you want to tell her, - you are more than his daughter. You have stood in a room full of powerful people and held your own, and more.)
"Lady Synovus." Menace returns. You know it's specifically to spite Legionnaire's earlier assumption that you were male.
"As Legionnaire is your rival -" You ignore Legionnaire again when he starts to interrupt, raising your voice to talk over him, "- it is your jurisdiction as to what measures I can take."
The formality is a shield. You hate to ask this of her, to force her to say - but even if you weren't bound by the rules you'd created, you need to know. If she asks you not to hurt him... well, you'll try.
Alexandria pauses, watching Minerva. Minerva looks back at her, meeting her gaze through the helmet.
"It's your decision," She tells her daughter, "But I will stand by you, no matter what you decide."
"What's this about 'rivals'?" Legionnaire tries to interject.
Alexandria stiffens, as though she might yell at him, and you brace yourself to have to intervene - but instead, she just reaches up and removes her helmet.
Alexandria looks her father square in the face as she says, "Lady Synovus, I give you leave to do as you feel appropriate. No restrictions."
"You are certain?" You ask, because you want her to be sure.
"I am." Her voice doesn't waver.
Minerva takes Jester from you, frowning to remember that he's here, and he's overheard all of this. Alexandria drifts backwards, to gently gather both her mother and the defeated villain into her arms, before going up.
Legionnaire tries to follow - but can't, as you've already got a shadow wrapped around his ankles.
You slam him back down with relish.
"No." You say, your voice chilly, "You are not invited into their lives anymore, Legionnaire."
"And you get to decide that?" Legionnaire demands, trying to slice through your shadow. You tighten its grip in answer. "You get to decide I can't talk to my wife, my son-"
You are glad Alexandria is out of earshot.
"You have never had a son." You say harshly. "And Minerva is not yours in any capacity. You have had months to figure this out, Albion. Time's up."
He seizes on your word choice. "Figure it out - so you did do something! You took my family from me!"
The words, similar to the ones Minerva had yelled at you only a day earlier, make a sheltered part of you ache. But, you remind yourself, she did defend you. She trusts you.
Granted, looking at Legionnaire, still trying to find a way out of your shadows, you admit the bar is pretty fucking low.
"You did that yourself, you idiot." You hiss. "You drove Minerva away. You refused to accept your child. I am not the reason your life is terrible, Albion. You are."
He straightens, and you recognize the arrogance that returns to his posture. He still thinks you're trying to fool him. That he is correct. And he will not be swayed.
"Say whatever you want, Synovus!" He yells, "You won't keep me from the ones I -"
This time, it's a shadow that shuts him up - drawn out of his throat and coiled to serve as a gag. His eyes bulge. He did not know you could do this.
With a flick of your wrists, the shadows holding him down are gone - and replaced with chains of brilliant light. They drag him down, relentless, scorching the skin they touch, until he is pinned to the floor.
"I believe." You say, as you pick your way over to him. "That the missing word there is 'love.' But I am going to choose to believe you were going to say something else - because everything you have said today, Albion? It is not love."
You stare down at him. "You came here. You knew where they were. The lives in peril were of no consequence until it was Minerva and Alexandria. You did not come to save them. You came to try and make them listen to you again."
He may not be listening, but it doesn't matter. You do love a good monologue, and this particular serpent has been coiled in your chest for a long time.
"That isn't love, Albion." You tell him softly. "It's obsession. Possession. You don't respect them enough to consider that they have opinions and wants different than your own. And they deserve so much better."
You pick up the spear that he'd been forced to drop, and twirl it idly. He redoubles his attempts to struggle, to escape - he's always been so strong, but you have always been stronger.
You are very tempted to cast your powers aside here. You want the satisfaction of feeling his bones break beneath your hands, the visceral feeling of grabbing and tearing away. You want to make him suffer.
You want to look for a key that will give Alexandria and Minerva their happiness back.
But you know that those keys don't exist, by now. And you do not need to make yourself more of a monster to kill this one.
"They did love you, at one point." You muse. "And in another world - who knows? Maybe that would have been enough."
You plant one foot on his chest, and lean in. The tip of the spear rests on his throat, and finally, Legionnaire goes still.
"But redemption's never been my style." You hiss.
You slide the spear home.
---
A week after you return to business, you lead Alexandria and Minerva to a secluded part of the island.
The beach is shallow here, particularly at low tide. You and Minerva slosh through water up to your shins. Alexandria drifts over instead, occasionally splashing her feet in the water.
"Not much further." You assure them, though neither has shown signs of complaining. You are nervous. This place is not sacred to you, but it still has power over you.
There is a sea cave of black rock, out of the way. It does not tunnel into the rest of the island very far - a few hundred yards, that's all. A lava tunnel once, long since collapsed, and the inside filled by now with sand.
You pause at the entrance, staring at the void of perfect shadow. You love the shadows - they have always protected you, and you know this one does too - but you do not want to dive into its embrace. You want to run from it.
You clear your throat, "In here."
Carefully, you summon a small globe of light. The three of you (okay, the two of you) pick your way carefully through the cave's unsteady footing, until eventually the ground rises, becoming smooth stone instead of rocky black sand.
There isn't much ornamentation, here. Just a marker, in the form of a rock, carved with the sigil of the sun.
Minerva stiffens. "That's -"
"Sunhallow's sigil." You croak, and clear your throat again. "Yes. This is - this is his grave."
You stand in silence for a few moments - or at least, if Minerva or Alexandria speak, you don't hear them. You're staring sightlessly at the small obelisk you'd carved, so that you would always know if someone tampered with the body.
You still hate him, decades later.
You still sometimes wonder if you were wrong.
A touch at your shoulder startles you back to the present. Its Alexandria, who is looking at you, and not the grave. "You said that this was your father's grave."
"It is." You make yourself respond, then gesture to the front of the cave. "We should - the water gets higher, later, and I know we don't necessarily have to worry about that, but -"
"But you don't want to be here anymore." Minerva finishes. "That's okay, Synovus. We don't have to stay."
You are silent, until you are back out in the sunlight. It should be the opposite, you think - the sunlight was always his, the shadows were yours. Now he has a lair of shadows, and you seek refuge in the light? You'd accuse the universe of irony, if you hadn't brought this upon yourself.
You are not in costume, today. None of you are. It means that they can see the expressions you have lost control over, as you pace back and forth beneath a clump of palm trees, near the shoreline.
"Sunhallow was my father." You say finally, abruptly. Your shoulders drop. The tension - the weight - isn't gone, but... saying the words didn't hurt. Your throat didn't swell closed before you could force them out. You didn't deflect, equivocate, or dodge.
"Sunhallow was my father." You repeat.
"We gathered that." Minerva says, and you are grateful for her dryness.
"I-" You draw in a breath, and turn, shrugging out of the light wrap you wear. Beneath it is a backless shirt that Alexandria had insisted you buy, for one of your more feminine days. You hadn't had the heart to tell her you never exposed that much skin.
Because on your back, centered on your spine and between your shoulder blades, is a large tattoo of the same sigil. The ink is stark against your skin even before it begins to change. Touched by the sunlight, from the center out, the ink turns a glittering gold.
Hallowed, by the Sun.
You can tell from Alexandria's 'woah' that she thinks it's cool as hell. You can tell by Minerva's sharp inhalation that she knows what it means.
You pull the wrap back into place, and turn to face them.
"I killed him." You say, and you speak quickly, as though someone is going to cut you off and you will never get a chance to tell this story, the one you have never told anyone before. "I worked for him for years, as an informant and spy, but I was too good at what he taught me. I learned things he didn't want me to know - didn't want anyone to know - and I - I learned when he lied. I learned about, about the purges."
When Sunhallow was challenged, he had taken to targeting groups of people. Heroes, villains. Towns. It was purification by sunlight, in great quantities - Hallowing the place, with the Sun.
He did not leave survivors.
You swallow, "He was healed by sunlight." You explain, "So I smothered him with shadows."
You knew he would never let anyone into his rooms after nightfall, when he was most vulnerable. So you'd killed him at noon, when the sun was highest, and you'd have had to be stupid to attack him.
You did sometimes do very stupid things.
"I killed him, and then I packed his body into a trunk, and I brought it out here, and I buried it in the cave where the sun will never touch it again." You are surprised, a little, at the vitriol in your voice.
You hadn't taken any chances, moving him. You didn't know if he could come back from the dead, but you didn't want to find out.
Minerva is staring at you with something like wonder.
"It was you." She said softly. "You were the Eclipse."
You nod, exhaling. "The Heresiarch Heir." You echo glumly. "Patricide. Oathbreaker. Murderer. And coward, besides."
Minerva pushes off the tree she's been leaning on, and reaches for you. "Brave." She says firmly. "No one could stop Sunhallow - but you, you couldn't have been more than twenty when he died."
You laugh, short and hollow. "Sixteen."
Minerva blinks. "I couldn't have done such a thing." She admits. "How...?"
You blow out another breath. "He killed my mother." You say, staring into the middle distance again. "And made me kill Willowsteel."
You do not elaborate on how long it took, or how you knew it had been Sunhallow's hand that had killed your mother. Some things you were not ready to talk about, even now.
"Willowsteel...." Minerva muses, "They had a metallurgy ability, didn't they? Or was it magnetics?"
You still have perfect recall of that list. "Metallurgy, with a particular talent for shaping weaponry." You respond automatically.
And you had known that, even when they'd put a steel knife in your hands. And he had known it too, as you stood over him. But in his eyes, you had seen something like a horrified acceptance.
You had been a child. He could've easily overpowered you, or turned the blade aside. For a long time, you had told yourself that it was because he knew Sunhallow would kill him anyway, and he wanted it to be over.
The day you buried Sunhallow, sitting outside the cavern and watching the sun rise again, you'd forced yourself to admit it - that Willowsteel hadn't killed you, because he would rather have died than hurt you.
Truer than his enemies. A man with faith and belief, even if it wasn't in a god, or a man who pretended to be one.
You couldn't plant willow trees on the island - the climate didn't agree with them - but on one of the estates Sunhallow had once owned, there was a grove of them, in a perfect ring around a monument to all of those lost in the purges.
You spend the rest of the afternoon telling stories, when you could stomach it. They asked questions, sometimes. About your mother, about how you'd scraped yourself back together as a villain under your own power. How you'd drawn the others together, forced some degree of order from chaos in the cape-population explosion after the purges had ended.
You knew that both of them understood.
---
Days later, you are waiting in a room decorated in pure white.
The room is quiet, and you can hear the distant roar of an ocean that is not yours. You sit in the dark, one leg crossed over the other, pretending not to be bored.
When the light flips on, the woman in the doorway stiffens, but tries not to show any other signs of distress.
You lift your head, the black shine of your helmet giving her nothing to work with. Another dark-clad figure waits to one side, a third (though in blue rather than black) is keeping watch outside. She has not noticed them yet, you think. She will be furious about that.
"My dear Tallflawes." You drawl, leaning forward. "We need to discuss some of your more recent... investments."
[And so we come to the end (for now!) - thank you to everyone who's made it this far, whether you've been here since the beginning or are only recently catching up. My goal was to finish this during Pride Month, and I have succeeded! Sum total, VNR is just over 34k words, with Call Me Menace sitting at about 8.5k.]
[And a shoutout to 'daddythedragon' and Daphanae for correctly guessing the show Alexandria was watching last time, which was Murder, She Wrote! (Columbo and Magnum P.I. were good guesses too).]
[Another day, another installment, another piece of evidence I can't resist a good monologue. Warnings for this week include more graphic descriptions of drowning, 80s TV references, and Synovus putting their foot in it. Repeatedly. See you in part four!]
[New here? See the start of the series or a part you missed here. As per usual, this chapter is also up on Ao3.]
‘Moping’ is, in your opinion, a highly underrated art form.
There are those who prefer the drama of the romantics; sighing and draping themselves over surfaces in elegant dismay. There are the hermits: creating a den and retiring to it until someone is brave enough to drag them, kicking and screaming, from a pile of blankets and misery. There are the students of the tantrum, who follow the subject of their distress in a very not-purposeful-certainly-not way to be pointedly fine or vaguely annoyed in their periphery.
You ascribe to none of these three schools. No, when you are upset, you become a spider.
Not literally - shapeshifting has never been one of your gifts - but in nearly every other way. You scuttle away from interaction with others, create stashes of supplies in hidden spaces, and watch the world from a dark corner or rafter.
You’re usually willing to admit it’s a bit of a juvenile response, to go brood and watch your minions at work. It’s never stopped you, though.
Your minions are used to such behaviors - enough that even if one of them does manage to spot you perched twenty feet up on a steel beam, they don’t acknowledge it. If you don’t move for more than four hours, sometimes they’ll send someone to make sure you haven’t died.
(Usually, it’s Oflok. She throws snacks at you to make sure you’ve eaten something. If they get really worried, they send Doll to try and coax you down.)
(Doll is still on vacation, so you figure you can get away with this for two more days at least.)
At least you aren't vying for space - neither Alexandria nor Minerva seem to share your proclivities. You haven’t seen either often: it’s easier to move from one room to the next via the maintenance hatches than to risk an awkward confrontation when you do spot them.
(No, you aren’t hiding from your guests in your own home. That would be ridiculous. You have nothing to be ashamed of.)
Still, there are signs that neither has quite forgiven you for what they’d learned at the meeting, now three days ago.
You'd passed through the training room yesterday to find it absolutely trashed - the dummies shredded by a sharp point, and a spear lodged in one reinforced wall. Minerva, then.
Your birthday gift to Alexandria, a custom Lego model of the ancient library she’d named herself after, is still sitting partially constructed in your lair’s library - meaning she hadn’t worked on it in several days. You’d helped her with the early stages before getting sidetracked by explaining some of the various theories you’d heard over the years about potential relics recovered from it or supposed secrets it was burned to conceal.
Personally, you were considering taking up knitting again. Or perhaps embroidery? It would depend on how much you felt like stabbing something.
---
It was while you were trying to recall how to properly set a purl stitch, that you finally overheard something you shouldn’t’ve.
You’d settled into the cross of two support beams in the mess hall to work on it. Between your costume and the fact that you were up above the hanging lights, it wasn’t even necessary to use your shadows to hide. Even the yarn you were using - a very deep purple- wasn’t likely to give you away, unless you dropped the skein.
Below you, a few of your minions were gathered at one of the tables, talking again about the turmoil on the mainland while they played cards. None of them seemed worried, exactly, just… slightly unnerved. You weren’t really focused on following the conversation.
You did hear, however, when Rosie stood up from the table and called, “Doll!”
You paused in the process of carefully undoing your last failed stitch, and leaned forwards to get a better view. Yes, that was Doll, half-jogging up the steps. He wasn’t due back for a few more days. You had a sinking suspicion you knew why he was back early.
“Rosie!” He returned, spreading his arms wide for a hug. There were a few moments of overlapping greetings and welcomings, his nickname interspersed with his real first name, Andrei. Chairs were shuffled, cards were reshuffled, and then he was dealt into the game.
“So.” He asked, as the group finally settled, “What’s got all of you so worried, hm?”
There was a mass exchanging of glances. Some of them were directed upwards, but none of them spotted you. You couldn’t see Doll’s face now that he'd sat down, but you could hear the slight grimace when he said, “If you cannot speak of it, you should have called me back earlier.”
“It’s not that,” Heather murmured, shaking her head, “it’s… well, we’re not entirely sure either.”
Theo was stretched out on a bench, rather than playing. “Syn got called to another meeting.”
“They are retired.” Doll said, as though that were an answer.
Heather shrugged, “I don’t think they were expecting it either. Anyway - Menace went with them.”
“She’s okay.” Rosie clarified, before Doll could stand. You could see her lay a hand on his arm from here. “No one was hurt. But Athena went with them, too.”
“In the new costume Syn made.” Oflok was definitely grinning. You contemplated throwing a knitting needle at her.
“That sounds like a good thing, rather than a…” Doll trailed off, making a vague circling gesture with one hand.
Rosie sighed, “Well, it would’ve been. But none of them have talked to each other since they’ve been back.”
Heather shook her head, “I’m used to having Syn destroy a training room every so often - but if Athena keeps this up, I’m going to run out of training dummy materials.”
“And Alexandria’s been spending most of her time in the sky, too.” Rosie noted. “And that’s after she’s weeded the garden for me and dug a new irrigation channel.”
“And Syn?” Doll asked.
“Skulking.” One of them mutters.
Doll laid his cards down. “Angry-skulk or emotional-skulk.”
You aren’t sure which they would’ve answered (and were slightly mortified they talked about this enough to have a commonly understood difference), as, about that time, Alexandria drifted up over the railing of the stairway.
“Doll!” She cried, smiling broadly.
“Menace!” He returned, just as cheerfully as he had when greeting Rosie. He stood to go offer her a hug - and didn’t notice or care that Oflok swiped his cards as soon as he turned away.
“I didn’t think you would be back for a while.” Alexandria said, once she’d gingerly extricated herself from the hug.
Doll shrugged, “What can I say, hm? I missed the sun.”
Alexandria chuckled, but her heart wasn’t quite in it. She moved forward, towards the table, and out of your line of sight. “Doll, can I… talk to you?”
There must have been some exchanging of glances or other signal, because your minions abruptly dispersed.
Oflok stood first, dropping a hand onto Heather’s shoulder and declaring, “I need someone to cut things. You’re helping.”
Theo, eager to dodge the same fate, had swung upright, “Oh, hey, that update should be about finished.”
“Fair Lady, those carrots should be about ripe. Want me to see if I can find ten of them that are ready?” Rosie offered.
“Better be at least twelve or don’t bother.”
The three of them moved off towards the kitchen, bickering about how long a carrot needed to be to be useful for whatever Oflok was planning. Theo ambled out a side door, and caught two more who might’ve otherwise wandered in.
When the door had closed, and it was just Doll and Alexandria (and you hidden in the rafters), you heard Alexandria say quietly, “I didn’t mean to drive them away.”
“You didn’t.” Doll assured her, “I did. I just got back from traveling, and I don’t want to have to move from this chair.”
Alexandria made no response to that, but she did sit.
There was a beat of silence, while Doll gathered the cards everyone else had left behind, and reshuffled them again out of habit.
"Why did you kidnap me?" Alexandria asked.
Doll sounded relatively unruffled as he replied, "Because Syn asked me to."
"Asked?"
"Told, if you want to be specific, but I could have refused without much trouble. They don't force us to do things, to work for them."
"Why did Synovus want me kidnapped?" The corner of a light blocked her face, but you could see one hand curled into a fist, resting on the tabletop.
"Because we needed to keep your parents busy for a few hours." Doll continued shuffling the cards, occasionally fanning them or bridging them in tricks that you knew were a sign of anxiety. One of few tics and tells he had.
"Why did you need to keep Athena and Legionnaire busy?"
Doll hesitated, and Alexandria added, more heatedly, "And don't tell me you can't talk about it, I know about the deal with Gray Gangster."
"If you did, you would know why." Doll returned, sounding annoyed. His tone gentled as he continued, "You should really ask Synovus, if you want the full story."
"No thanks. I want the truth, not to be lied to." There was a bitterness there. You managed not to flinch.
Doll set the cards down, and folded his arms. "Alexandria. What is this really about?"
"What do you mean 'what is this about'? This is about why I was dragged out of my bed to an island in the middle of nowhere, essentially as bait!"
"You have had over a year to be upset about this." Doll remarked. "And while I do not mean that you cannot be upset about it - I would be, I think - I mean that I think there is a reason you bring this up now, when you haven't before. A reason it is eating at you."
There was another moment of silence, which you silently interpreted as a staring contest. Alexandria must've lost, because when she spoke again, it was quieter.
"Is all of this... did Synovus do this just to.. to get at my parents?"
Your grip tightened on the knitting needles until you could've snapped them in half. Of course that's what she would've assumed, but your own stupid promises -
"Fuck no." Doll said, and he sounded like he was trying to downplay how offended he actually was. "We kidnapped you to preserve the Right of Rivalry, sure, but after? That was never part of any plan."
"That you know of." Alexandria countered. "They could've -"
"Let me make one thing clear for you, Alexandria." Doll said firmly, "You are right. It is entirely possible that Synovus had plans none of us knew about. Half the time I don't even understand the plans they do explain. But if you ask me a question and then counter it with hypotheticals, I don't think you cared about how I answered at all."
Another silence.
Doll sighed, "Synovus is not a kind person." He said. "But they are not a monster. The difference is that their mercies are invisible - because they are almost always a matter of restraint."
That, at least, prods a bit of curiosity out of Alexandria, "What do you mean?"
Doll picked up the cards again, shuffled them one last time, and began to deal. "You went to a meeting. Who all was there?"
"Tallflawes, Gray Gangster, Dr. Wraith, Unwritten, Chanter, Galactic Prodigy, and two people with wings I didn't recognize."
"Ibis and Vulture." Doll supplied, "That's most of the usual set. You are an observant girl. Why would so many powerful villains gather in one place?"
"Mostly, it seemed like they wanted to argue about territory rights."
"And why would they do so, peacefully?"
Alexandria shrugged, "Because it's in their best interest to, I guess? That way they don't waste time fighting each other, and can better hold off any heroes who come for them?"
Doll hummed, "You are forgetting something. Every supervillain, and that is what all of those people are, has an ego larger than the moon."
Alexandria snorted.
"They don't make concessions well. At least, not publicly. Not to each other. And most of them are worried about getting stabbed in the back on a moment's notice."
"They seemed pretty well organized, from what I saw. Tallflawes must be pretty intimidating when she wants to be."
"Tallflawes?" Doll paused, in the way he normally did when raising an eyebrow and expecting you to reconsider your statement. "No. Tallflawes did not create that structure. Synovus did."
"Synovus?"
"I know - they seem so anti-authoritarian most days. And you'll notice there is no official leader to that group, only whoever winds up hosting. For a long time, that was here."
Alexandria seemed to turn that information over. "They said something... I asked about the rules, and what happened if someone broke them."
"Synovus happened." Doll agreed. "I've seen it, once or twice. It's not a pretty thing. But they were warned, and a threat isn't a threat if you never follow through."
"When we got there, Tallflawes said something about, about saying words and living them. Rosie said something like that, when I was here before?"
"'If you cannot hold yourself to your oaths, I will.'" Doll recited. He shivered, "I have never worried about Synovus turning on one of us. But I admit... I do sometimes still have dreams about that day. Dreams I'd rather forget."
"So then... all of the Rights, the meetings, all of it... was because they were scared of Synovus?"
"Not all of it - most of it just made sense, like you said about the not wasting effort. And not everything is ritualized either. Villains aren't big on rules, as a whole, you know?"
Alexandria confessed, "I was kinda surprised they had so many."
Doll shook his head, "There are only three. The Right of Parley, which is the agreement for a ceasefire at meetings. The Right of Privacy, which means that if you try to steal someone else's secrets, they can retaliate without consequence. And the Right of Rivalry."
"Which is... Supervillain dibs?"
"More or less. It keeps them from stepping on each others' toes. Imagine if more than one group had showed up at your house that night - chaos!"
Alexandria had a card in hand now, and was slowly turning it over, cycling it against the tabletop. "Doll." She said slowly, "Is that... almost what happened?"
Doll sighed, "If it had been Gray Gangster's men at your house that night, Menace, it would not have been to kidnap you."
"You mean they would've...?"
You had had enough of hiding in the rafters. "He had plans for a bomb."
Both Doll and Alexandria flinched and looked up. You took the time to stash your knitting where it wouldn't fall, then dropped down.
"He had plans for a bomb." You repeated, "And wanted to know if I thought it would work on Athena and Legionnaire. Because he had a prison break planned, and they couldn't be allowed to intervene."
Neither of them could see your expression behind the helmet, but you didn't bother trying to hide the weariness in your voice. "He had plans for a bomb, and he was only bothering to tell me, because they were my rivals."
Alexandria looked somewhat upset to see you - though that might've been because of your 'entrance' - but she wanted the answers more. Enough she didn't turn and leave, at least. "But he didn't use it."
"No." You agreed. "Because I told him that I had plans of my own for that day, and if he interfered with them, I would tear him apart. And when he left, I scrambled to find something that would make it true."
There was another moment of silence. Just as it would've stretched into uncomfortably long, Alexandria spoke again, "So, what you said about Rosie, before..."
"That part is true." You confirmed, "It was just happenstance that the doctor was in the same prison. But I had sworn not to talk about Rosie's cancer with anyone, and until she released me of that oath, I couldn't even tell you that."
“And now?” Alexandria challenged, raising her chin.
“In my more foolish youth, I swore never to disclose what happened at our meetings to anyone who had not attended one. And don’t start about my not saying something earlier, you’re the one who flew off without a word, to me or your mother.”
Alexandria made a frustrated noise, and a few hand gestures like she’d like to strangle you. That wasn’t an uncommon sentiment when people dealt with you. Call it a gift.
After another heavy sigh, she made a motion as though physically pushing something to one side. “Okay. Whatever. I’m still mad.”
“That’s fair.”
Alexandria regarded you suspiciously. “You never break your oaths?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“How many times has that happened?”
That was an unpleasant memory. “Once.”
“Will you swear an oath to me?”
In a way, this had been inevitable. “That depends on what you ask of me, Alexandria.”
She watched you for a moment. You almost wondered if she could see, somehow, past the helmet, to the mixture of despair and resignation on your face.
Carefully, as though each word was specifically selected, Alexandria asked, “Will you swear to always tell me the truth about your rivalry with my parents, and how it relates to me?”
On reflex, you ran through all of the potential outcomes of this situation, all of the things you might be forced to disclose, every oath you’d made that might conflict with it.
And, very softly, hating that you could not even offer her this, you said, “No.”
You tried not to see the hurt on her face as you turned away.
—-
A few hours later, it’s Rosie who finds you this time.
It’s a mark of your bad mood that you don’t come down to talk to her once she’s made it clear she’s looking for you. Resolute, she just finds a ladder, and joins you on one of the wide beams over the workshop.
You’d left your knitting in the mess hall, and hadn’t gone back to retrieve it - so you’d spent most of your time mentally rearranging work desks and plotting projects that you knew you’d never be able to pursue, now that you were retired.
Still, you don’t leave. And part of you keeps track of Rosie’s progress so she doesn’t fall.
“Stuck with the short straw?” You drawl as she finally settles.
“Synovus.” Rosie frowns, “What the fuck.”
“What?”
“What. The. Fuck.” Rosie repeats. “Are you doing.”
“Waxing philosophical about my own impotence.”
“I don’t give a crap about that.” Rosie says dismissively. “What are you doing about Alexandria and Minerva?”
“I -“
“Because whatever it is it isn’t working.”
“That’s-“
“I like them.” Rosie says defiantly. “Both of them. I’m upset that they’re hurt.”
“Well, that’s-“
“Fix it.”
And with that declaration, Rosie swings her leg back over the side, and makes her way down the ladder.
Groaning, you knock the back of your helmet against the wall.
—-
You find Minerva down by the water.
In an attempt to signal peaceful intentions, you made yourself dress in something other than your costume. You left your face uncovered, and ensured you were wearing something that could stand being dragged through the sand in case this conversation went poorly.
Minerva, it turned out, was in the Naiad suit - which you wanted to take as a good sign. It could also have just been that she still had few clothes of her own here, though.
(You’d offered to send someone to purchase clothing for her, or retrieve clothing from her house. She hadn’t wanted to tell you where she lived, now, and you didn’t want Alexandria to go alone into that chaos. Between the extensive closet you rarely used and your minions’ donations, she’d amassed a small pile of loans.)
You caught her coming in after a swim. She caught sight of you when she was still knee deep in the gentle surf of the inner bay, and froze, staring at where you stood on the beach.
You hold out one of the two drinks in your hands and called over the waves, “Smoothie?”
Minerva doesn’t respond. After a minute or two, in which neither of you move, you sigh.
You take a sip from one of the smoothies, bending the straw to claim it as yours. Then you place both of them on a disc of summoned shadow, solidified enough to hold them, and levitated off to one side.
“Alright.” You call to Minerva, “Go ahead, drown me or whatever.”
“Would anyone weep, if I did?” Came the icy reply, and you grin.
“I hope not.” You respond lightly, “My funeral is to be a strictly no-crying zone. Only celebrations, and dancing upon the coffin.”
“Is that how you live with yourself? Everything a joke?”
Your grin fades. “Only myself, dear Minerva.”
The waves stir, a new current introduced. You try not to react to it. Minerva’s warning is venomous, “I’m not your ‘dear’ anything.”
Slowly, you turn your hands so that the palms are facing up, showing that you are not gathering your shadows. “My mistake.”
“The only reason I have not killed you,” Minerva tells you steadily, “Is because you’ve been, somehow, good for Alexandria.”
The waves are rising now - little tiny whitecaps as they froth over, still no higher than her hips when they crest.
“You sound as though you are reconsidering.”
“Even too much medicine becomes poison.”
It is a struggle, not to bare your teeth at that and taunt her. You close your eyes, rather than risk letting her see them swirl black.
After a few heartbeats, Minerva demands, “Well?”
You open your eyes again, powers held tightly in check. “I’m not sure what you want me to say.”
“I don’t want you to ‘say’ anything.” She growls. “I want you to give up on this charade of civility. Of charity.”
You stiffen, “Have you a complaint about my conduct, Lady Athena?”
She hisses. Oh, you should not have used that name. But it is too late now.
The waters of the bay shiver, and part. Suddenly, there is a clear path of damp sand between you and Minerva, as the water rises at her urging, summoned into shapes.
You take a step back.
“Go on, Lord Synovus.” Minerva takes a step forwards, and you can see a glint in her eyes, even if you can’t decipher it.
Wary, you take another step back. “Minerva. I know my word doesn’t mean much for you-“
That’s as far as you get before the first torrent of water slams into you.
It’s strong enough to take you off your feet, but instead of simply flattening you to the sand, it drags you further into the water. You had the briefest moment to take a breath before being dragged under - only to have it knocked out of you.
The force of the current pulls you in a kind of desperate cartwheel, while you scrabble for purchase in the cursed-soft sand. Saltwater stings your eyes and your nose, and a small voice in the back of your mind remarks, quite calmly, that you probably deserve this.
You can’t really address that though, because the vast majority of your instincts are screaming at you to save yourself; either in a mix of frantic animal instinct to orient and kick and breathe or the trained instinct of a super, to orient and kick and hurt before you can be hurt further.
Luckily, Minerva doesn’t seem to be genuinely out to kill you. At least, not immediately: you surface before you’re forced to suck in water, sputtering and coughing, in water up to your waist.
Resigned, you drag one hand through your hair and use the other to wipe excess water from your face. You glance around, trying to find and track where Minerva is, where the next attack may come from-
The answer was your ankles, naturally.
A current as strong as any riptide twines around your ankles and shins, yanking fiercely and suddenly, and causing you to go face-first back into the water. You struggle, because you cannot help what you are, but you keep a death grip on your powers. If you reacted now, by instinct, you are not sure how much damage you would do.
Again, you are spun until you lose all sense of direction, and again, you surface with barely time to breathe. Now you are treading water, and the babbling fear in your heart insists that if you don’t do anything, Minerva will sweep you out to sea and leave you to drown.
The part of you that has always survived, the part that became the Scourge of the Western Seaboard, classifies things much more coolly. There are several things you could say or do to make this stop. Several ways to return the sense of fear or pain.
You choose none of them, and instead take another sharp breath before you are once again pulled under.
But you are beginning to fear that you will have no other option, if you want to come out of this alive.
The next time you are allowed to breathe, you realize Minerva is shouting at you. Probably has been, but you’ve been a bit busy drowning to notice.
“-you took my family from me!”
You open your mouth to try and respond - just as you slip beneath the surface again.
This time, there’s no helping it. You choke on saltwater and brine, and the automatic response of your body to try and force it out only makes you inhale more. You should be focused on trying to reach the surface, but the animal panic has only risen, and it’s taking everything you can muster to try and keep the energy inside of you from exploding - as shadows, as light, as something raw.
So instead, you sink. And another current grabs you. And you have just enough time to think that it’s a shame Minerva will only kill you now, when you are no longer rivals.
And then you are slammed into the shore, and the water leaves you alone.
You spend several moments coughing up or vomiting seawater. You are drenched, and everywhere you are drenched, the sand sticks to your skin, clothes, and hair, in a gritty paste that stings worse than the saltwater. And yet, you are alive. For now.
When your lungs feel as though they’ve been scraped raw, and you’ve had time to catalogue the deep ache that is already spreading through your body, you look up to see Minerva, still standing in the water. She looks imperious. Cold.
And maybe you’ve suppressed your survival instincts too much today, because when you force words out of your mouth, what you say is, “Are you done?”
Minerva’s expression takes on a sharper edge, and she might have killed you for real (and you wouldn’t have fucking blamed her at that point) except for the blur of movement that slams into the sand between you.
You throw up an arm to shield your eyes from the spray of sand. When you risk lowering it, you recognize the admittedly-blurry outline as Alexandria.
“Oh hi menace.” You mutter in a small voice that might not actually have made it to full words.
“What the fuck!” Alexandria yells, looking back and forth between you.
“Language.” Minerva says automatically, proving you aren’t the only one with a faulty autopilot.
“What the fuck.” Alexandria repeats, just as emphatically.
“We’re okay.” You wheeze, and this time you’re fairly confident those are audible sounds.
Judging by the incredulous look Alexandria gives you, you must not look okay.
Minerva must have come to the same conclusion, because she comments, “You look like a drowned rat.”
“And whose fault is that?” Alexandria demands, rounding on her mother.
“And here I got all dressed up just for you.” You half croak, half croon.
There’s a very brief pause of dead silence between the three of you, before Alexandria turns back to you again.
“Did you make a pass at my mom?”
“What-“ the force of your own outrage is enough to send you into another coughing fit.
“Because if she’s beating the stuffing out of you for hitting on her, I’m just going to fly away again.”
Minerva has one hand over her eyes, “No, that’s not- that’s not what's happening here.”
“Well then, what the fuck.” Alexandria repeats, but this time it’s more plaintive than anything else.
Intentionally or not, it breaks the worst of the tension.
She glances at where you’ve devolved into another round of dry heaving (not due to the implications, simply due to the near drowning) and sighs.
Kneeling next to you, she pulls a bottle of water out of the small pack you hadn’t noticed she was wearing, and offers it to you. After a few carefully measured sips, you feel like you can talk again. Not that that means you should, but since when has that stopped you?
“Thank you, Alexandria.” You say politely, and don’t bother trying to stand. You do manage to scrape yourself into a sitting position, however.
There has to be a way to resolve this. Something you can offer, a bridge between where you both currently stand. Some kind of reassurance?
“I swear.” You say quietly, “That I do not mean either of you any harm.”
Minerva snorts, but Alexandria sits back on her heels. She’s frowning as she watches you, her head tilted, as though there’s something she can almost see behind your eyes.
You hold her gaze long enough to underline the sincerity of your statement, then look to Minerva instead. “You don’t believe me?”
“No. I don’t.” Minerva answers, folding her arms. The waters around her have begun to return to their normal state, but there are still signs of agitation. “Why would an oath matter to someone who’s killed hundreds? What I believe is that it’s a feint. Tell someone over and over again that you never break your word, when it’s properly given, and they’ll eventually put their guard down.”
You can’t really fault her for that belief, it’s certainly the kind of trickery you’re capable of. Known for.
“Why do you put so much emphasis on oaths?” Alexandria asks.
You lift one hand helplessly, “Because, at a certain point, it becomes all that you have.”
Alexandria pointedly looks around at your island.
“I don’t mean like that - yes, I have plenty of material wealth.” You correct. “I mean in the… not quite moral sense. I am..” You hesitate again, choosing your words carefully.
“I am a liar. A traitor. A villain. I have no goal, no ultimate aim, but I don’t seek sensational pleasure or wealth either. I ascribe to no religion. I commit atrocities. And I have a considerable amount of power at my disposal.”
You take a sip of the water again, while Minerva sighs, “If you’re just going to brag, Synovus, you can skip to the point.”
“The point-“ you say with a glare, “is that it would be very, very easy for me to fall into an aimless chaotic melancholy. But a promise, an oath, those are things that are so very easy to break.”
“Restraints.” Alexandria murmurs.
You try to find the words to explain, “There isn’t a - a sign of some kind, a pop-up message that tells you if you’re about to betray someone’s confidence or break a promise. You have to know. And so yes, I am very careful about what I promise myself to, because if oaths stop mattering to me…” You shrug, “What will?”
“They make you stop and think.” Alexandria reasons, and you nod at her, grateful that one of them understands.
“And, of course, this leaves us only with your word, to take on faith.” Minerva notes sourly.
“Trust me or don’t.” You snap, because these are explanations you have never given anyone else, and you are raw on the inside and out. “You live in my house. I’ve spent years saving your life. I nearly let you drown me in a temper tantrum. I’ve never lied about who or what I am-“
You go to gesture, out of habit, but only succeed in jarring the arm holding Alexandria’s water bottle. It knocks you out of your tirade, at least.
You look down to avoid looking at Minerva, and focus on breathing. You grimace are the grime you’ve smeared on the bottle. In measured tones, you say to Alexandria, “I would offer to return this, Alexandria, but… allow me to make a suggestion? I’ll keep this, and you can have my smoothie.”
You gesture in the vague direction of the disc of shadow, still floating patiently. “Or your mother’s, if she’s still refusing my peace offerings.”
For a moment, you think Alexandria is going to refuse. She’s pursed her lips, and still seems unsatisfied with the whole endeavor.
“You sound like you’ve been gargling seashells.” Alexandria remarks, even as she stands to go retrieve the drinks.
Minerva is staring at where they’re levitating, perhaps remembering your offer, but - no, not the drinks, the disc. She’s staring at the slim oval of solidified shadow. The proof of your abilities, that you hadn’t lost hold of, even while drowning.
You… honestly are a bit surprised it's still there yourself. It hadn’t been a conscious decision, but apparently in forcing yourself not to change how your powers were being used, you’d inadvertently preserved the disc too.
“I lose control of all sorts of things.” You tell her, hoarsely. “But never my powers. Never.”
You intend for it to be reassuring - that you will never use your abilities against her or Alexandria in anger, that you are willing to allow yourself to be drowned if it means a chance at reconciliation.
Instead, Minerva’s face closes off even more. You realize, much too late, that it could be taken as an accusation instead. Mockery, as she had seemed so afraid of before she told you about her name, her uncertainty.
There was the hero, who had nearly drowned someone who refused to fight back.
Here lay the villain, painted as the martyr.
You lunge to your feet, reaching out as though you could catch her by the wrist, find some way to explain - but she is gone, into the water where you cannot follow, before the second syllable of her name has even cleared your lips.
There’s a frustrated noise from beside you, and you turn long enough to see Alexandria’s glare.
“Even dad never made her that mad.” She accuses.
The depths of that blow must’ve shown on your face, because Alexandria takes a step back, and looks momentarily uncertain.
“Thanks for the smoothie.” She says, and walks down the beach before taking to the sky again.
Eventually, you trudge back up the hill to your lair alone.
—-
You pass Rosie in the hall. She stops to stare at you, in all your sand-encrusted glory.
“I’m working on it.” You growl at her.
She doesn’t say anything.
—-
The next morning, you are woken by the whumpf of a teenager with super strength flopping into your bed. This, due to the laws of ‘Synovus being startled’ if not the laws of physics, results in you briefly experiencing flight about a foot and a half off the mattress.
“Good morning.” Alexandria says cheerily.
“Augh.” You reply, through your pillow.
Merciless, she finds the remote necessary to start clicking through what you have available on streaming services. She’s been really into a murder mystery show from the 80s recently - sure enough, you recognize the distinctive pattern of its opener a few seconds later.
“I’ve forgiven you.” Alexandria informs you.
“Mmpf?”
“I still don’t like it, and I’m not saying you’ve got full license to do it again or anything, but like. I don’t know. You’re a supervillain, of course you have secrets. I just don’t like when they involve me and I don’t know about them, you know?”
“Mmm.” You concede.
“Anyway, I realized that I could also keep secrets now.”
You roll over enough to crack one eyelid at her. She grins. You shrug. It’s her life.
Her attention is rapidly absorbed by the plot of the episode, and you go back to dozing.
And for a little while, everything feels alright.
—-
When you wake up for real, Alexandria’s on a different episode, and has an empty glass on the table beside her that still bears marks of a smoothie.
“Decided you were a fan?” You ask, gesturing to it as you start the process to drag yourself out of bed.
“The fruit here is much fresher than I’m used to. And Oflok might be magic.”
“Oflok is definitely magic.” You agree, and go to scrape yourself into the shape of something presentable.
Once you’ve curried life into your limbs and brushed away the last vestiges of sleep, you return to find that Alexandria’s swapped away from her show. Instead, she’s now clicking through news feeds.
“Was it the doorman?”
“Nope - he was framed. It turned out to be the neighbor.”
“Hell of a way to lodge a noise complaint.” You muse. You nod at the screens, “So, what’s the damage?”
“Bad.” Alexandria answers frankly. “The group we met before - the one you put in the hospital and the other two who left? They’ve staked a pretty big claim on Southern California, and actually seem to be able to enforce it. A few capes have disappeared closer to Seattle, six different people have claimed to know why, but there’s no evidence.”
She clicks through to a different channel, “Oh, and it’s a free for all in Death Valley.”
“We do love our sense of irony.” You admit. You scan the displays for people you recognize, signs of actual trouble versus someone looking for fifteen minutes of fame.
Something at the bottom of the screen catches your eye. “What’s that about? An anti-retirement petition?”
Alexandria grins, “Apparently a lot of them want you to come back.”
You are aghast. “Why?”
She shrugs, “A single tyrant is better than a super powered gang war? One person they interviewed said that at least you had class.”
“Clearly, I should’ve blown up a few more buildings before I retired.”
You watch the newsreel for a few more minutes - that petition has over 3,000 signatures, which is frankly ridiculous - before Alexandria asks, “Did you know this would happen? When you retired?”
You sigh, and readjust the pillows you’re now leaning against. “I expected something like this.” You admit. “There’s always a power vacuum. My retiring left a fairly large one.”
You squint, “I did think it would be more resolved by now, instead of escalating. Maybe I should’ve faked my death instead.”
“Would that have really made a difference?”
“If someone had claimed to kill me, they could’ve pushed to inherit all of my territory by right of conquest.” You point out. “The trouble with my not actually being dead would’ve made it more difficult for anyone to make an unarguable claim though. Maybe not.”
“Why did you retire?”
You frown, and look at her with disapproval. Alexandria only shrugs, “Hey, I can ask. Didn’t say I expected an answer.”
“I… know what it’s like to have super powered parents. Guardians. Life administrators.” You concede reluctantly. “I didn’t want that for you.”
“Awww.” Alexandria says, one hand over her heart. “You think you’re my parent.”
“Don’t make it weird.”
“You made it weird by existing.”
“Touché.”
There’s a brief pause, as a commercial comes on that distracts both of you. In addition to its general absurdity, you have no idea what it’s for until the end, when it pivots to the intended product with a complete non-sequitur. You mock it together.
“You know, you don’t talk about them much.” Alexandria notes.
“My choice in toothpaste brands?” You ask, raising a brow.
Alexandria rolls her eyes. “Your parents.”
“Correct.”
“Sore subject?”
You rise, and stretch. “Just not much to talk about. They’re both dead now. Have been for a while.”
“I’m sorry.”
You laugh, and it’s more of a bark, “You might be the only one to say that about one of them. But I appreciate the sentiment, little menace.”
Alexandria makes a face at you. “By the way.” She says casually, “I’m going to fly to the mainland later. Want anything?”
You are, perhaps, too glad to change the subject to be appropriately suspicious. In hindsight, that will have been purposeful, and you will appreciate the maneuver as much as you are frustrated that it works.
“Some sort of non-chocolate candy, so it doesn’t melt in your pocket.” You poke her shoulder, and head past her into the hall.
“I’m going to bring you back a single jolly rancher.” She yells to your back.
—-
Later that day, after Alexandria’s left, you get a text message from an unknown phone number.
Not Unwritten, who does admittedly go through phone numbers at an alarming rate, but a genuine, never-texted-or-called-before number.
UKN: Hey, Syn? It’s Menace.
UKN: I uh. I may have dropped my phone on the flight over.
You stifle a snort.
Syn: Noted.
Syn: I will presume any further messages from your number are instead from a particularly enterprising cephalopod.
UKN: Why do you assume an octopus?
Syn: Octopuses are dope.
UKN: Sometimes talking to you is like talking to a thesaurus.
UKN: Sometimes you hit me with ‘Octopuses are dope’
Syn: I contain multitudes.
Syn: Pre-paid cell, I presume?
UKN: yep.
Syn: Don’t lose this one until you get back to the island.
Syn: … also Doll says hello.
UKN: hi Doll!
You wave Doll away before you can become an intermediary for a text conversation. He gives you a baleful look, but goes back to his current task: teaching you to play ‘the dungeon room game.’
He tells you it’s actual name several times, but you like yours better.
—-
“Doll. Doll. Andrei. I’m telling you, it doesn’t make sense.”
Your minion has his head on the table, as though not watching you will in any way spare him from listening to you.
“This economy - its terrible, Doll. In what - in what world is a custom made signet ring cheaper than a mass printed book?”
“In this one.” Doll says weakly.
“Bullshit. Two gold for a signet ring - you said one copper is the equivalent of one American dollar for vague estimations, and multiples of ten to class up, so that’s $200 for a signet ring, fine. But then -“
You recheck the book, and your math, just in case, “twenty-five gold for a book?!? If it was a spellbook or something maybe I’d understand but - Doll that’s two thousand dollars. That’s worse than textbooks.”
With disdain, you shuffle the papers in front of you, until you come back to the one with the ‘character goals’ box. You add ‘become bookstore mogul’ to the list.
Doll has rolled his head on his arms, enough to peer at you. “You’re going to be a rules lawyer player, aren’t you.” He says morosely.
“Not at all. I’m - what was it, neutral evil? Neutral evil. No law to be found.”
He sighs, and sits up, “Alright, if you are finished mocking the fictional economy, we can look at backstory-“
You are not, in fact, finished mocking the fictional economy, however you don’t get a chance to continue to dismantle it either. Instead, your phone vibrates.
At first, you assume it’s Alexandria, giving you a heads up call so she doesn’t set off the klaxons. But Doll frowns and reaches for his phone as well, and the screens in the room flip on.
Each screen - from the oversized one you used to play D.D.R. for Alexandria’s birthday, to the smaller screens still locked behind cabinets, to both of your cellphones - plays the same video. A live camera feed, depicting two figures you recognize for their insignias, if nothing else.
Dymania - you still think of them as 'ringleader.' The one with the white patterns, that's Jester. Clairvoyance and teleportation, with a side of potential emotional manipulation.
"Boss?" Doll asks. You hold up a hand, still taking in the details of the video.
"Someone wants to make sure I see this." You murmur. "Let's find out why."
They're against a wall, so you can't tell much about their surroundings (metal, large panels, industrial?) but the camera is steady and stays in focus (tripod, high quality capture and broadcast, no one holding it. Not completely amateur) as Jester steps forwards and declares,
"Citizens! It's been a while since you've heard from us direct, hasn't it? I'm terribly sorry about all of that, but it's only because we were waiting to have a proper show for you all."
Dymania, the calmer of the two, falls easily into pattern. (Rehearsed? Pre-recorded?) "The current upset must be such a burden for those of you who would prefer to return to life as normal. Nevertheless, rejoice - for we are closer to that calm prosperity you so desire."
"Not everyone agrees with that philosophy though." Jester chimes in, rocking on his feet. The energetic enforcer to the calm mastermind. "For example, try our visitors from earlier today. At first, we thought they were here to stir things up, but..."
"They've been kind enough to volunteer instead. To serve as examples, that we might sooner reach our goals."
"And to demonstrate that we do believe in equality..." Jester closes to the camera, and the view changes - not in the blurry motion of a camera spinning or the sharp cut of spliced footage, but in the blink-and-done of a transfer from one feed to another.
Your heart drops. You feel cold. You are conscious, barely, of Doll's sharp intake of breath, of a cry from further down the hall where this must be playing, of the shadows that are twining around your limbs and the humming of the light in your bones.
Jester's narration continues, cheery and jarring and signing a death sentence with every word, "We've got someone from all sides for you! Civilian, government, military..."
The three people kneeling with their hands bound do not interest you. But beside them, there are two more, one in white and gold, and the other in matte black.
[This is part two of three for Villains Never Retire, and the third overall installment of Synovus’s story! As usual, if you’d prefer the Ao3 posting, you can find that here, and the master post with links to all of the parts of the Synoverse pinned on my blog, or here. Enjoy!]
All told, you think you did a pretty good job staying out of the scramble for your territory.
Yes, you did somehow manage to get caught up in one of the first power moves someone made and put one of them in the hospital on principle. And okay, maybe you were… tetchy… about people starting to lay claim to titles that once had been yours.
But hey. You were a villain. Selfishness was in your nature.
There was, however, one very significant hurdle to overcome.
You were very quickly becoming dangerously bored.
Normally, you kept yourself busy by partaking in various villainous pastimes. You exercised your powers, studied pop culture to keep your witticisms up to date, and actually studied various goings on from political shifts to news from other villains. If you had a plan upcoming, you worked on filling in its details. If you were in recovery from your last plan… well, you were in recovery.
But with your grand plan of retirement, there was no reason to do any of that. All you had to keep you occupied was a private island full of state of the art facilities, a teenager, and your small army of minions.
Okay, so it shouldn’t have been that hard, but you were used to multitasking, okay?
It didn’t help that everyone else, rather than trying to avoid the news of what was happening on the mainland, were actively keeping up with it. It seemed like every time you entered a room, someone scrambled to change a TV or radio channel, or stop a video’s playback. Several times, you showed up to eat in the dining hall, and found everyone else furiously debating something in a corner - only to stop cold as soon as anyone saw you.
And you also often lost the war against your own curiosity. Typically late at night (by your reckoning, which could mean any time on the clock at all depending on when you’d woken up last), you wound up skimming headlines, or going through your emails.
Still. You didn’t intervene. Not even when fucking Dazzler showed back up, and you hated Dazzler so much you’d spent a year specifically running them out of the hemisphere.
It was tempting, though.
Your self-imposed exile - sorry, retirement - was interrupted about a month after the fighting over the West Coast began in earnest. You woke up one morning to find an invitation set out on your balcony, complete with a completely unnecessary white rose threaded through a signet ring.
You stared at it for a minute. Then you raised your phone and snapped a picture of it, and dropped it into a group chat.
[Syn]: Someone care to explain what this is about?
You left it where it was, and went back inside. You’d need to do laundry before you dealt with that. And probably inform people of where you’d be going.
—-
By the time you were dressed and had eaten something, you had a response.
[Tall]: It hasn’t been that long since you came to a meeting, Synovus.
[Dr.W]: We even gave you a few hours’ notice. This time.
You hissed at your phone as you replied.
[Syn]: I recall the last meeting. I also recall, not long after that, delivering my resignation to each and every one of you in this chat.
You might’ve gone on to say more - but you nearly ran into Minerva, and abruptly had to reach out to steady her.
“Watch- Synovus?”
The once-hero was balanced on crutches, which she was not adapting to with any fluidity. Her leg, broken at Alexandria’s birthday dinner a month ago, was nearly healed. Or at least, it would be, if she stopped trying to walk on it. The wonders of a heroic healing factor.
“That is my name.” You reply intelligently.
Minerva scowls at you, and at first you think it’s for nearly running into her or your reply, but then she surprises you by going so far as to take one hand off of her crutches - to indicate your clothes. “Where are you going?”
“Well, you needn’t be so suspicious, dear Minerva.” You drawl. The helmet is still tucked under one arm, but you already feel the mask of your field persona slipping back into place. It’s comforting, if inconvenient.
For a moment, Minerva blocks your way, staring you down. You meet her eyes, relatively unbothered. You two have done a variation of this particular dance too many times by now not to know how it ends - with you getting away.
She whistles.
You wince.
“What’s up?” Asks your young protégé, poking her head out of a door in the hall. “Did you throw one of the crutches aga- oh.”
Alexandria slips more fully into the hall, considering you curiously. “I thought we didn’t have any more training exercises today?”
It’s a reasonable assumption. You and Alexandria have been keeping to her training regimen, at least. Those sessions are the only times you’ve donned your costume since you delivered your notes of notice (for all the good that seems to have done you).
“We do not.” You answer shortly. “I have a meeting.”
“With who?” Alexandria asks, tilting her head. Minerva is still watching you with an intense scrutiny you find more annoying than unsettling.
“Individuals.”
“Villains?”
“Presumably.”
“Anyone I’d know?”
“Probably.”
“Where’s the meeting?”
“Elsewhere.”
“When is it?”
“Soon.”
“Can I come?”
“No.”
“Synovus!” Oflok calls, jogging down the hall after you with a small box in one hand, “good, glad I caught you - these are for Tallflawes.”
Either oblivious to or uncaring of Minerva and Alexandria’s reactions (one a sharp start, the other a more subtle tensing) Oflok tucks the box of what you know are cookies into your upturned helmet, while you pinch the bridge of your nose.
Minerva recovers first, “Tallflawes, as in the supervillain, I presume?”
“The Scourge of the East Coast!” Alexandria sounds, if anything, like she might start squealing in excitement. “Oh that makes sense that you two would cooperate! Hey, did you know that there’s a group on the Internet who thinks you two should date-“
“I am not dating Tallflawes.” You snap, flushed. You know exactly who to blame for that stupid fan theory.
Oflok gives you a look. “You’ve done worse.” She comments, and you wish she meant the murdering.
Scowling, you tug on Oflok’s shadow, turning it briefly physical to tug at her ears. Most people find the reminder of your ability to manipulate their personal shadows suitably intimidating.
Oflok sticks out her tongue at you.
You resist the urge to respond in kind.
“Do you know who else is going to be at this meeting?” Minerva demands, but she’s looking at Oflok.
“Ah.” Oflok glances at you, and you throw up your free hand in askance. “Lord Synovus-“ (it was one of those kinds of days, as you’d told her earlier) “-is sworn not to discuss those meetings. You know how he is.”
Alexandria nods, “Well, if Tallflawes is there, and it’s not a one-on-one, that’ll probably mean… something to do with territory? That’ll mean Gray Gangster at least, since he controls a good chunk of the area between you two? I don’t know anyone else who has significant enough territory to bother.”
“Dr. Wraith.” Minerva says grimly. “And the mages, Unwritten and Chanter.”
“Touched as I am that you all are so concerned about my social circles.” You interject, before they can keep guessing your comrades. “I do, in fact, need to get to this meeting, so if you will just scoot your righteousness to one side-“
“I’m going.” Alexandria announces, “So lead the way.”
When you glare at her, she shrugs, “I am your apprentice.”
Minerva’s expression at that is a study you don’t have time for - not the least because she informs you, “I am not allowing my daughter into a room full of supervillains without me there.”
The idea of it - taking Menace as your shadow, while Athena stands guard at your shoulder in furiously disapproving silence - is. Well. It just is, and it shouldn’t be, because this should never have come up.
“Easy fix.” You reply smoothly, on autopilot, “as neither of you will be going. This is not a meeting for apprentices or injured over-protective heroes.”
“I’ve fought through worse injuries.” Minerva says stubbornly.
“Mom, I don’t need you to protect me so much anymore-“ Alexandria abandons that angle completely at the look Minerva gives her, and tries another, “- it wouldn’t make any sense for you to go, why would Athena be there?”
“Then I won’t go as Athena.” Minerva says, irked. “Synovus has to have spares. That’ll do for one evening.”
You nearly have a heart attack in the goddamn hallway. Mental image of Minerva in your costume aside, you can’t think of any way to declare that you are hiding someone more clearly than to have them show up in your hand-me-downs. Even Menace’s costume was designed to be different, regardless of the similarities between them.
Tallflawes and Wraith would have a field day.
“This.” You tell Oflok, deadly serious. “This is why we keep our mouths shut, my dear Fair Lady of the Kitchen. This. Is your fault. Fix it.”
“Well, there is that project we’ve been working on.” Oflok muses, and that is when you know you are well and truly fucked.
—-
At least you finally get a chance to reply to the group chat again.
[Tall]: Yes, I did get your note. Very elegant.
[????]: Yeah about that… the swirling miasma of chaos that is my life kinda… ate it before I could read it?
[????]: Saw the Twitter post though.
[Tall]: Decidedly not elegant.
[OP]: I did not receive a note. This upsets me.
[Syn]: Optix, give me a physical location to find you, and I will gladly remedy my error.
[OP]: No :P
[Dr.W]: Come on, Synovus. You didn’t really think the rest of us would continue to suffer through these meetings without you, did you?
[Ibis]: My companion and I will also be in attendance. We wish to see you, Synovus.
[*GP*]: Ooh, wouldn’t wanna upset the goddess, Syn
[Syn]: Someone remind me why we added Prodigy.
[Dr.W]: I believe it was your suggestion, with Optix’s support.
[Dr.W]: You did not elaborate on your reasoning, but Optix said something about ‘memes’ being ‘fire.’
[Dr.W]: It was mixed with emoticons, so I can only presume my interpretation is correct.
[*GP*]: [FortniteDance.gif]
Syn, ????, Tall, Dr.W, and Ibis have reacted to this message with *thumbs down*
[OP]: Synovus, bring your guests
[Dr.W]: Guests?
[Tall]: Optix, I feel obligated to remind you not to listen to anyone through our devices.
[Tall]: Additionally, I second both the question and the suggestion.
[Syn]: …
[Ibis]: We wish also to meet your allies.
[Ibis]: Unless they are prisoners - then we will respect your rights to your own sacrifices.
[Dr.W]: Here - all in favor of extending the Right of Parley to Synovus’s guests for the duration of the next gathering?
Tall, *GP*, ????, Ibis, and OP have reacted to this message with *thumbs up*
[Syn]: … Will the teleporter you sent me even take more than one person?
[Tall]: You’ll have to stand rather close together, but I see no issue - provided, of course, your collective mass does not exceed the specifications.
[*GP*]: Wait, who’s playing host this time? Need to know if I should eat before or not.
Resigned, you get the details from Tallflawes, and promises that the others will intervene if anyone else at the meeting not in your chat - namely, Gangster and Chanter - try anything.
While the banter continues (now at Galactic Prodigy’s expense instead of your own - the poor soul had made a typo), you set your phone down, and rub at your face with both hands. You are currently sitting in your own - well, okay, it was technically a sitting room.
You were waiting on Minerva and Alexandria, was the point.
You pull the package of cookies out of your helmet and tuck it into a pocket where it won’t get too crushed - you’re tempted to just eat them, but you know Oflok will make you wait while she makes more. You’ve had enough peer pressure for one day.
Helmet now clear, you slip it on, and find comfort in the familiarity of the interior, and being closed off from the world again.
As the clasps are sealing and the audio is syncing, you catch Menace’s voice, calling, “Ready!”
You look up, noting that she also has her helmet on now - though you could tell from the voice. Like your helmet, hers has a slight affectation, allowing her to sound more feminine without focusing. Though yours is featureless, hers has angles, more akin to a motorcycle helmet with a permanent visor.
And behind her is Minerva, in the results of some of your attempts to avoid boredom.
(Well, that wasn’t the only reason you’d designed it - but it was the reason you’d gone from concept to testing, ostensibly just to see if you could do it. You’d never intended to actually show it to her.)
‘Athena’ had been styled after a war goddess, what was worshipped by her partner. This costume, which you’d mentally dubbed ‘Amphitrite,’ was meant to fit the woman who wore it. You knew it wasn’t quite the same, given it was your design and not Minerva’s, but-
“Are these real pearls?” Minerva demands, running a hand over the scalloped edge of her half-mask. The pearls in question are set into the brow, at different points to accentuate the design.
You blink. “Why wouldn’t they be?”
Minerva makes a disapproving noise, and you roll your eyes. “They’re not load bearing, and they’re naturally harvested with mindfulness for the environment. You can pry them out to give to the poor or people who help you if you want.”
Minerva narrows her gaze at you, though it’s filtered slightly by the glass lenses of this mask. “You’ve… put a lot of thought into this.”
You shrug as you stand. “It seemed a shame not to have something more fitting for your costume.” You don’t intend for that to be a double-entendre, but given that this suit does hug the figure more, you realize it could be. You move on rather than address it, circling to check the seals and explaining as you do.
“It’s modeled after a wetsuit, so you won’t have to worry about potential wear and tear. The interior is woven with Kevlar and padded for ballistics. I presumed you’d prefer something more akin to your old costume in terms of contact, if only for familiarity, ergo-“ You gesture to the mask, “No full helmet, and the collar not reaching your chin. All of the compartments are water tight, and the compression should help with deep dives.”
You fold your arms, considering, “I wouldn’t recommend relying on it in arctic waters, we didn’t get to testing that factor.”
Minerva blinks, having stood warily still throughout your inspection. “And the color?”
Rather than white and gold, as her old suit had been, ‘Amphitrite’ was a darker blue, with slight lines of distortion. There were panels of extra fabric at the waist for modesty, though they were shorter than the skirt of Athena’s chiton.
You’d kept the gold accents though. Small gleams at the neck, wrists, and hips. Lining under the eyes of the mask. It worked with her hair.
“Camouflage. White or black stands out in the water. Blue seemed both fitting from a design standpoint, and practical.”
Minerva rolls her shoulders, quietly pensive. You realize you’re holding your breath.
“Well?” Menace prompts, leaning in to poke at her mother.
“You think it’s creepy.” You conclude, sighing. “I promise you the measurements were guesses-“
“It’s - a little unsettling.” Minerva admits, “But not for the reasons you think. Before I became Athena, I… would occasionally go out for ocean rescues. I wore a wetsuit… and a snorkel mask.”
She reaches up to touch the edge of the mask you’ve given her again. You can place that hesitancy now - it’s wonder.
“I didn’t know.” You say softly, and it’s the truth. “Though I take it that means you don’t dislike it?”
“She loves it.” Menace informs you.
“A- Menace.” Minerva scolds.
You are grinning, beneath your helmet. “Well, in that case, there is one other matter of business before we can leave.”
“And that would be?”
“A name!” Menace crows, “A villain name!”
“I am not a villain.” Minerva corrects her quickly.
Menace shrugs, “You are for this meeting. I suggest Pacifica, after the ocean.”
“In my notes for the costume, I referred to it as Amphitrite, in keeping with your previous naming convention.” You offer.
Minerva shakes her head, “When I first started,” she says quietly, “I told people, when they asked, that a Naiad had rescued them.”
“Then a Naiad you will be.” You accept. The name, both Greek and tied to the water nymphs, feels right.
But you weren’t here to play dress up.
“The others you’re going to meet today know I change methods of address, but for formality reasons, will default to the neutral. I ask that you do the same. Do not speak unless spoken to, and even then I might intervene. You have been granted the Right of Parley for this meeting - that means you must also agree to grant it to others. That means no violence, no mental influences, and no poisoning. If someone else draws, you may do the same - but you must let them make the first move to strike, or the agreement is void.”
“What happens if someone breaks the agreement?” Menace asks.
“I happen.” You say flatly. "Questions?"
You leave out the times these meetings have turned into full scale brawls. You’d had to learn who could be invited and who couldn’t, and it was an ever shifting roster.
“Several.” Minerva - Naiad - says grimly, “but none, I suspect, that you would answer. Let’s get this over with.”
“Menace has been recognized as my student. Naiad, you will be a petitioner I have granted sanctuary. If anyone asks further, tell them you invoke right of privacy. They’ll still push, but it means officially they’re supposed to go to me about it as your sponsor.”
When they both nod, you gesture for them to follow you to the balcony, where the ring and rose still rest. You pick them up, and decide it’s better to show than tell.
You pull the rose free of the ring, and drop the signet to the ground. It expands, metal fluid and shifting now that it’s been triggered, but maintaining the perfect circle.
Once it stops, you step into it, and gesture for Naiad and Menace to join you. It is a little awkward - like trying to stand three people inside an oversized hula hoop - but as Tallflawes promised, doable.
“Pemberley.” You invoke - and you snap the stem of the rose.
—-
Between one blink and the next, you are there, and then you are here.
‘There’ had been a balcony in the Pacific, balmy air coming in off of the waves, the sun just past its zenith.
‘Here’ was a well-furnished room in the modern style, with one wall consisting of floor-to-ceiling windows, showing you the night sky and the distant Atlantic.
You shake your shoulders, dispelling the strange sensation teleporting always gave you.
“Pemberley?” Naiad questions. “As in-“
“Yes!” Calls a delighted voice from behind you, because Tallflawes is, after all, a villain. “A delightful choice of name for a home, isn’t it?”
You step out of the circle before you turn, letting the stem drop and tucking the rose blossom into a pocket. It gives you a moment before you have to actually address her.
“Tallflawes uses a coded system to designate transportation points.” You explain, “based, for some unfathomable reason, on primarily Gothic literature.”
You come to a stop in front of Tallflawes herself, and incline your head in a regal acknowledgment of the host for the evening.
“I’m surprised you didn’t tell them before you arrived.” She responds with a smirk.
Though Tallflawes has to look up at you to do it, she’s long since mastered the art of meeting your eyes through your helmet. Though she will occasionally wear masks in the field, here at her home, she hasn’t bothered. And though you know she’s worn a variety of ‘costumes’ over the years… she’s chosen a white pantsuit to host, marked with the shoulder-and-lapel accents of her particular technology.
You can’t help but smile, “What fun is there in explaining everything?”
You leave the question rhetorical, gesturing behind you, “Menace, my protégé, and Naiad. I take responsibility for their actions and damages, for the duration of our meeting.”
“So you have spoken,” Tallflawes replies smoothly, “So you must live. Welcome to my home, Menace, Naiad. I will not promise you peace, only a place at my table.”
It’s still strange, to hear someone else speak the ritual words. To be the visitor, instead of the host.
You feel more than see Menace and Naiad watching you - but now is not the time to respond.
“Formalities aside, Tallflawes, you never did explain the purpose of this meeting.”
She gestures for you to follow, and you fall into step beside her as she leads the way through a selection of hallways and adjoining rooms. “Why, Synovus, darling, it’s you of course.”
You’re fairly certain both of your hangers-on tense, but you are unperturbed. “Doubtful.”
“Would I lie to you, my dearest?”
“Only as much as I lie to you, dear heart.” Your tone is sardonic. Hers is not. There was a time your positions were reversed. But regardless of the tone, you know you both understand each other.
“Well, that’s only fair.” Tallflawes agrees, shrugging. “But I’d rather only go through everything once.”
You tip your head in recognition, and change the topic accordingly. “Your sense in decor hasn’t changed.”
Indeed, from the white walls of the room you’d arrived in, to the pale gray of the furniture, everything you’d passed so far had been remarkably monochromatic, with only the dark lines of supporting furniture to accentuate the lack of color.
“All the better to show the bloodstains.” Tallflawes replies serenely, as you reach a door. “Take your seat, Synovus. We’ll begin shortly.”
You know that’s not why she decorates in white, of course. Tallflawes would never spill blood in her living quarters - at least, not without having it immediately cleaned and the victimized furniture replaced.
No, Tallflawes decorates in white because it makes every guest uncomfortable. It leaves everyone who walks her halls checking surreptitiously for shoe prints in the carpet, smudges on glass, feeling as though they are an embarrassing stain in a spotless world.
And you, in your dark costume, had always been like a walking blot of ink on a white page, slinking from one part of the building to the next. You had recognized the power play for what it was, and in defiance, had actively stained something every time you visited. Spilled drinks, actual ink blots from pens. Sometimes you’d had to get creative.
But now, all of the seats for her guests, spread out in this room in a rough circle, are black.
You settle into the chair that is yours (it’s complicated to explain why you know it is yours - a combination of view of entrance and exits and decor patterns and who else is sitting where) with a practiced grace, tossing your cape over one arm of the chair and leaning against the other, legs crossing comfortably.
Menace and Naiad shuffle for a moment, before finding their places at your shoulders - likely modeling it on how Gray Gangster, across from you, has two of his enforcers at the ready.
Everyone else is alone - bar Unwritten, who this time has a small dragon in her lap, gnawing ferociously on the upholstery - except for Ibis, who sits a few seats over from you with Vulture directly beside her. It throws off the symmetry of the circle to have their chairs so close together. Tallflawes has solved this by putting herself opposite the pair, with you and Gangster on the other quarter-axis. You approve.
On your left is Dr. Wraith, the immortal with a penchant for robbing museums. You’re not sure how old she actually is, and you do know for certain that not every artifact she’s stolen under the pretense of ‘reclaiming’ has actually belonged to her at some point, but you can account firsthand for how hard she is to kill. She gives you a wintry smile.
On your right sits Unwritten, now enticing her dragon to gnaw on the tie of her robes instead of Tallflawes’ furniture. “Hello, Syn.” She calls merrily. Her clothing changes color as you watch, but she doesn’t seem to be aware of it. Perils of being a chaos mage.
Ibis, in an excess of golden jewelry, sits with her consort on Unwritten’s other side. She bares her teeth at you in what you understand as a favorable greeting, and ruffles her wings in lieu of a wave. Supposedly, she and Vulture are the most recent vessels of long dead gods. You’re not sure if that’s objectively true, but you’re hardly one to throw stones for a bit of self-aggrandizement. Or a God complex either, really.
Past Vulture, and flanking Gray Gangster, is Chanter. He raises a brow at your two guests, but nods solemnly. Where Unwritten is chaos ever-roiling, Chanter is tightly constrained. His posture is perfect, his clothing neat. The only sign of his abilities are the swirling colors in the gemstones of his necklace, and in the small pocketwatch-shaped device he keeps on a chain wrapped around one hand.
Gray Gangster themselves is as unreadable as always. They won’t speak at this meeting - you’ve only ever heard them speak once - but their enforcers will translate what they want. A traditional pin suit and fedora marks the crime boss of the North. They do not offer you a greeting.
“Heya Jim.” You call to one of the enforcers you recognize.
“Synovus,” he replies respectfully, dipping his head.
Seated on Gangster’s right, between him and Tallflawes, is a bouncing bundle of energy you know as G.P. - Galactic Prodigy.
Lanky, blue skinned, and with several tendrils that he continues to insist cannot be described as ‘tentacles’ in place of hair, Prodigy never had a chance at blending in among humans. Lucky for him, he’d never intended to.
Prodigy had been an instant splash with the hero scene - though, as one of only.. (five? Yeah you were pretty sure the number was still five, unless Astrae had had her kid) five aliens on Earth, he would’ve stood out regardless. You remembered the first time you saw an advertisement for his themed cereal.
But then the kid had realized he wanted to go home, maybe, at some point, and he’d wound up in some trouble that you’d had to haul him out of, and some people who wanted nothing more than to lock him up somewhere and study him had taken that as opportunity to brand him a traitor. And Prodigy had decided that crime was more fun anyway.
He mostly pissed off governments by stealing classified files - making sure no one else wound up where they’d wanted to put him.
And that left Tallflawes, reigning queen of the circle and host of this tenuous peace. Her chair was slightly raised on a small dais. She had a small table on which to set a champagne glass, which you knew actually held a non-alcoholic sparkling cider. As she took her seat, she did not look at anyone in particular, instead checking something on a summoned view screen.
That technology was not public access - hell, even you had only figured out a few basic components to some of what Tallflawes did. It wasn’t that she was a genius - though she was, undoubtedly - it was that she was a woman out of time.
Some indeterminate amount of time in the future (she refused to tell anyone when, exactly) Tallflawes had been grappling with a hero for different reasons. During the fight, they had both been knocked into a contraption she’d been working on with the aim of deciphering time travel. It had worked - but she hadn’t planned on it being activated yet, and certainly not as a round-trip.
So she and the hero known as ‘Blue Prophet’ were stuck in the now.
Tallflawes, disinclined to give her technology to anyone else anyway, had immediately found ways to set up shop again, and now hand-crafted most of her tech in a foundry/workshop downstairs. Prophet, she’d told you once, had nowhere near the amount of knowledge needed to do the same - so he only had what he’d brought with him.
She was rather smug about that.
You realize Menace has leaned over towards you when she murmurs, “What’s the significance of Pemberley?”
“Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen. The estate the protagonist moves to once she’s married, and proof of her suitor’s good heart and business sense.” You reply, gesturing vaguely to the area around you. “Also, in this case, definitely bugged.”
“Noted. What’s our island called, then?”
You sigh, “Thornfield. From Jane Eyre, by Emily Brontë.”
Naiad gives you an incredulous side-eye.
“What does that represent?”
“You know, Menace, I believe I have a copy at home. You can borrow it and find out yourself.”
“That doesn’t help me know what it means now, though.”
“Naiad seems to recognize it. Why doesn’t she explain?”
Naiad exhales in a near-imperceptible sigh. You realize she probably has a lot of practice at this - keeping her mouth and jaw still, if not the rest of her face. “I support you broadening your literary horizons and coming to your own conclusions.”
Menace leans further forward, “Wait, you agree with Synovus?”
“That is not what I said.”
“It is what she meant though.” You confide to one side, not quiet enough that Naiad can’t hear you.
You might’ve continued - or Menace might’ve found something else to ask about, there were certainly plenty of conversation starters in the room - except Tallflawes looked up from her screen. Recognizing the sign, you raised a hand, gently nudging Menace back into place.
“Before we begin with this meeting’s purpose.” Tallflawes calls, and her voice is clear and commanding, “Are there any relevant challenges that must be settled?”
“Nope.” Replies Prodigy. At a look from Tallflawes (and Wraith and Chanter) he sighs, and recites, “I hold no grudges with anyone here.”
One of the enforcers - Not-Jim - speaks for Gangster. Chanter gives his affirmation solemnly. Ibis uses the plural as Vulture simply nods. Unwritten mostly sticks to the script.
You go to give your oath, and pause. Athena, your rival, is standing at your shoulder. In a different name, in a different costume. Someone who hurt her child, accidentally or no, and was working to change.
The question was - did you still hold a grudge?
“Whether I hold a grudge against anyone present remains to be seen.” You settle for that, “though I give my oath that any potential grudges will not see consequence until well after this meeting’s conclusion.”
Tallflawes watches you for much too long. She nods, and turns to Dr. Wraith, who gives the standard answer.
“Aw come on,” Prodigy complains, “Why does Synovus get to give a different answer?”
“Because Synovus is retired.” You drawl, “And only here to find out what you all could possibly want.”
“The oath given was sufficient.” Tallflawes says, as though you hadn’t spoken. “Though Synovus is why we are here. We don’t have many rules - and I don’t intend to ask anyone to follow any more than we already do. But I think we all need to know a few things about your plans for retirement.”
She taps the arms of her chair, looking at you expectantly.
“I’m retiring.” You reiterate, “if you want specifics, ask for them.”
“A point of clarification before we devolve-“ Chanter puts in, leaning forward, “- Synovus, are you aware of what’s been happening in your territory since you announced your retirement?”
Awful question. Admit to ignorance, or pretend you know everything. You do neither, “Again, you’ll have to be more specific before I can answer that question.”
“He refers,” Dr. Wraith says softly, “To the small scale war breaking out between upstarts. The kind you normally put down, or intimidated too much for them to start.”
You sigh, “That is to be expected. I covered a lot of ground with several large scale cities - and it isn’t as though I had a no-interference policy.”
“And if you want to watch those cities burn, that’s your business.” Unwritten says cheerfully, “I just want to know if you’re backing anyone, so I know who to bet on.”
“What.”
Jim shrugs, “You do have a student, after all. Maybe you wanted to have them take over?” He looks towards Menace, and several others do as well.
“Though we haven’t seen her out and about - or heard much at all about her yet.” Unwritten agrees, peering closer.
“An apprentice succeeding the master is only natural.” Chanter points out.
“Menace is under my tutelage - but she is not my pawn.” You say coldly, straightening from your lounged position. “If she wishes to take my place, that will be her affair.”
“Do you?” Asks Tallflawes, and she is no longer looking at you.
Menace, to her immense credit, doesn’t fidget under the gaze of so many monsters from her bedtime stories. “I have no plans to do so at this time.”
Dr. Wraith laughs, in a sign of approval. “Inherited Synovus’s tongue, if nothing else.”
You give her a sharp glance that she has no way of knowing occurred, picking up on the word choice. You haven’t addressed allegations she’s your actual child, and you don’t intend to be baited into discussing it now either.
“I choose my words for myself, Dr. Wraith. My teachers deserve their credit where it is due - but do not presume I am only their creation.”
Dr. Wraith gives another cold smile, and you’d swear you can feel Naiad’s blood pressure rising.
“A warning aptly given.” Tallflawes says coolly, “And not one we are likely to forget, child. The question remains. Clarified - Synovus, do you name a successor to your territory?”
“I do not.”
“What about your rivals?” Prodigy asks, having folded his legs up underneath him.
You are still.
“Athena and her Legionnaire.” Ibis hums, “I do not believe she is like us… but I would like to find out.”
“Bit difficult, given Legionnaire’s dropped off the map.” Not-Jim says.
Unwritten shrugs, balancing her dragon on one hand as it tried to climb on top of her head, “It never made sense to me that they were your rivals anyway, Synovus, so you know I’m in favor.”
“Dazzler or White Shadow would’ve been more thematic.” That’s Chanter, and you’re reminded why you’ve never liked him.
“This is an old conversation.” Dr. Wraith puts in, “the point is, if Synovus is retired, they may no longer claim the Right of Rivalry against the heroes Athena and Legionnaire.”
“Point of clarification.” Asks a voice from over your shoulder, and you tense as Naiad continues, “Define the Right of Rivalry?”
Chanter, again, “Your patron is the one who penned the Right. You do not know?”
Tallflawes’ eyes do not narrow, but you do feel them weighing on you.
Prodigy speaks before she can, “Hey, it took me forever to learn these things, no harm in wanting to know for sure.”
He looks at Naiad, and you wonder if they have met before. If he will know her, beneath the mask. You should have asked. You didn’t.
“Basically, no one is supposed to kill someone else’s rival, or go out of their way to fuck them over. There’s a whole lot of wiggle room if one of them comes after you or someone changes territories, or something happens, but it’s our way of calling dibs.”
Chanter remarks disdainfully, “Synovus has broken the Right before, of course.”
You force yourself to relax back into your chair. “Point of contention.” You say, as though bored, “The case of death of Igneous was ruled valid, and I have settled the debt with Heathen.”
Unwritten snorts, and you hear her mutter, “flying submarine.”
“Point - both of them - acknowledged.” Tallflawes cuts in. “Synovus, do you acknowledge that you may no longer claim the Right of Rivalry?”
You are silent, for a beat. You knew this was a possibility, but to bring it up here is forcing the issue. Is someone else eager to hunt them? It would have to be someone here, powerful enough to be willing to risk your wrath -
“I claim inheritance of Synovus’s rivals.” Menace says.
Tallflawes tilts her head, “On what grounds? No more than that they were your patron’s rivals?”
You do not speak. You cannot. To do so would be seen for what it would be - a desperate attempt at a cover up.
But Menace, your menace, continues on with her own gamble. She says simply, “They are my parents.”
There is silence in the room. In that silence, you can hear Naiad’s sharp intake of breath, and the creak of Menace’s gloves as she tightens her grip, hands clasped behind her back. You know how far it is to the nearest window and how everyone here will begin if it turns to violence. Shadows begin to knot, unseen, under your palms.
And then Gray Gangster laughs. Chuckles, really. It’s rough, and unsettling, and sounds like something from a graveyard had dragged its way up to sit in this room and mock you. He claps, slowly, exactly three times, as his enforcers watch him intently.
Not-Jim looks up, at you. “He congratulates you, Synovus.” They say neutrally, “On going above and beyond his expectations for your agreement. He will support Menace’s claim.”
With that declaration, the spell of silence is broken. Ibis and Vulture mutter to each other, speculative, while Chanter slowly nods. Dr. Wraith is staring at Menace, calculative, and tsks in a way that might indicate sympathy. Tallflawes cuts a glance towards Prodigy. Prodigy gives a bewildered shrug.
“We acknowledge Menace’s claim to the Right of Rivalry with Athena and Legionnaire. Are there any other matters of business we must address?”
The meeting continues - but no one in your party speaks again.
—-
It’s only after you teleport all three of you back to the island (crushing the rose blossom in your palm with a terse ‘Thornfield’) that you expect the dam to break.
You are braced for it, prepared, waiting for the accusations and demands and questions. You stand on your balcony, letting the warm wind whip past you, and you wait for them to begin.
But Menace leaves first, stepping off the balcony railing and into the air to soar straight up, far away from both you and her mother. She leaves without a word.
Naiad - Athena, Minerva - is almost worse. She pulls off her mask, as the two of you watch Menace’s outline grow smaller. She watches her daughter fly away, and says softly, “Well. You did warn me you were a liar, Synovus.”
She leaves her mask on the railing, right where the ring and rose were earlier, and turns to leave. It is her parting shot that hurts more;
“More the fool, I.”
And you can only stand and stare at the starlight, alone.
[Do not fear! There will be a (at least slightly) happier conclusion - but this does mean instead of a two-parter, you all will be waiting on a part three. See you then!]
[As requested, an addition to the first story about Synovus and Menace - this is a followup that should be readable on it's own, but you can check out the first installment here! If you'd prefer to read on Ao3, you can also check out this story there.
This installment was inspired by the prompt: "You’re a retired villain. You’ve been enjoying your peaceful life, but now a bunch of new villains are terrorizing your land, and the heroes seem powerless against them. So you take up the mantle once again. After all, if you want someone properly killed, do it yourself."
Due to length, this one has been cut into two parts. This portion alone is about even with the first installation, so it's still chunky.]
There are sirens wailing, somewhere. The few who have not been cut off already, cut silent as the screams of the living have been, one by one and in waves. The hush that should follow is denied by the high pitched whining of machinery and the sound of burning things. There are sparks, and pops. Something like words worn smooth in the background, run over so many times that they're part of these floorboards that are now cracking and failing, released again at the moment of unmaking.
You focus on the sounds, because you cannot see the devastation. You focus on the sounds, because you cannot smell the burning. You focus on the sounds, because if something does not force you to confront it, you do not know how fast or far away you would be running.
You are 90% sure this is not what was advertised, when you first said you were planning on retiring.
---
You honestly hadn't been sure whether your quasi-apprentice would be disappointed or thrilled that you were stepping back from the Villain scene.
On the one hand, Menace had only just made her debut as your shadow. Some of the jokes suggested that was literal, given your abilities and the equally dark all-covering clothing you both wore. (Hers was probably more fashionable, but yours had a cape.)
Anyway, the point was, you'd only taken her to a few meetings and negotiations with other villains so far.
But on the other hand, when not under her (custom designed and hand made, thank you) helmet, Alexandria was still a hero's daughter. Just the one, these days, since Legionnaire had disappeared from the super-map, and admittedly you and Athena had a weird ceasefire agreement ever since you'd more or less adopted her daughter, but you'd gone 'round the carousel of morality too many times to expect either of them to suddenly become accepting of things like mass casualty events.
So you hadn't done any for a while. And you'd realized that it was... kind of nice?
"It's up to you, boss." Oflok (Our Fair Lady Of the Kitchen) had told you, shrugging as she cooked a single serving's worth of rice for you at three in the morning.
"I had been thinking about asking for a vacation." Doll had admitted, even as the two of you scraped barnacles off the underwater docking bay doors.
"So long as you don't kick me out!" Rosie had laughed, as though you could afford to lose your head gardener and only source of self-sustained food supply in the event of an apocalypse.
You wound up telling Alexandria while she was in the middle of some exercises you'd designed for her - which is why you weren't surprised when a heavy weight clattered to the floor from an unreasonable height.
"Wait, what?" She demanded, floating approximately three times her height off the floor.
You looked up from your Rubik's cube, half-solved. "Retirement." You said casually, letting your helmet handle keeping the thread of unease private. Flight and super strength were recent arrivals, but super hearing hadn't made an appearance in Alexandria's arsenal. Yet.
"Can you even do that?" Alexandria asked, floating down a little to hover closer to eye level with you. Given you were propped at the top of a climbing wall, that still left her airborne.
You nodded your approval at her increasing level of control, and held up a hand, flat with the palm down, to wiggle as answer to the question. "Sort of. We do communicate, even if we don't have an overarching governance. Retiring is just... putting up a 'do not disturb' sign. Setting your status to offline forever."
The past few months had been a constant education in villain politics and etiquette - namely, the lack of organization in either - so your student caught on pretty quick.
"So.. you get a free pass to attack anyone who shows up, and they know they can come talk to you or ask you for things at their own risk?"
"Correct." You spun the cube, promptly undoing all of your progress. "So long as no one asks me for another fucking submarine, I'll probably let them visit."
A grin showed that Alexandria remembered her field debut very well. After the debacle with a fire-villain named Igneous (he ordered a submarine from you, then tried to kill you, and wound up dead instead) there'd been a mini-bidding war over who would actually buy the damn thing. Igneous's official rival, another villain named Heathen, had tried to demand it for free as 'retribution' for your unsanctioned murder of Igneous.
So, once Alexandria's super strength had manifested, you'd had an idea.
Heathen had his submarine. It was just lodged on top of his mountain fortress, where it would be just as useful to him as it had been to Igneous.
Idiot.
"It could be cool." Alexandria shrugged, "You do you. Whatever you want."
You had nodded solemnly, as though those words were sacred. And then you'd left, to deliver your retirement notices by hand to the villains that mattered.
The rest could read it on your Twitter feed like any other civilian.
---
"You retired?" The skeptical question, half a demand, came from Athena when she landed on your balcony, having launched herself out of the ocean. "Via Twitter?"
You thought that the arc of water she made when she did that was very pretty, and so you made sure to be there every time she came to visit. You pretended it was because you are protective of your island. Anyone who pointed out those things are not mutually exclusive would've just gotten ignored.
"Shockingly, there was no pension plan." You shook your head in mock disappointment. "I might have to go rummaging through my old friends' accounts."
Athena gave a pointed glance at the rest of your private island, then sighed. "If you find a spare retirement package while you're... rummaging." She said dryly, "Toss it over to our side of the fence, would you?"
At first, you had cackled. Then you'd noticed the tightness around her mouth, and checked to see how far off Alexandria was. Still missing - you were fairly sure she was still talking to Rosie about some flower she wanted to try and grow.
And yes, you and Athena had tried to kill each other before this weird co-parenting schtick. But she'd come to you, since Alexandria had started living here. Quietly, to ask what signs she had missed, and how to do better.
You still didn't like each other, but you did respect that.
So you'd sighed, and leaned against the railing. "I did send off that last work crew." You'd said idly. "So I suppose we are currently below capacity."
Athena raised a brow at you - at least, you were pretty sure, hard to tell with her mask covering everything from her cheekbones up - and gave you a wary look. "Is something wrong with Alexandria?"
Once, there'd been a hitch between the syllables of that name. Now, it was fluid. Habitual. You felt a funny warm feeling at that and promptly ignored it.
"She's a transgender teenager with superpowers." You said instead, flicking your hands for emphasis. "What the hell does that have to do with anything."
Athena exhaled, and lifted a hand in a silent half-apology. "I just assumed - if you were inviting me to live here, perhaps it was because..."
She fell silent, staring longingly through the glass doors into what is alternatively called 'the brunch room' and 'the dungeon' depending on who you ask. You've never actually kept captives there, but your minions like to play different board games. The name is supposed to be related.
One of the board games must have been left out, because Athena's gaze found it, and softened. "Really?" She asked you, amused. "Monopoly?"
You realized, belatedly, that Athena had probably wanted to know if Alexandria missed her.
"Obviously." You snarked in return, lifting your chin. "It instills anti-capitalist values, destroys friendships, and encourages subterfuge and cheating. Clearly the best game for a villain to play."
"Retired." Athena corrected you.
"Yeah." You sighed again. "Retired villain."
---
You'd insisted that Alexandria still spend some time on the mainland. She didn't have many friends, but you knew what life was like when you were cooped up somewhere, regardless of how high speed the internet connection was or how good the private Oflok.
Sometimes, you'd even gone with her. In your civilian guise, of course. At least, one of them.
"That's - wow." She'd said, when you came out of the changing area of the 'lair' you kept on the mainland.
(You refused to call it a closet. There were too many closet jokes in your past, present, or future for you to willing walk into any of them. Or out of them. Damn it.)
You'd shrugged, looking down, and twirled as though that would have much of an effect in what was effectively nondescript clothing. Pants. A shirt. Blazer. Scarf. Hair actually brushed instead of in whatever shape it had gotten half-stuck in while in your helmet.
"No, really, you - I don't know how you go from... from that to just. A normal person." Alexandria had studied you as though she were taking notes. It made you vaguely uncomfortable.
"I'm always a person." You'd corrected her. "And never 'normal,' so your analysis is flawed. Also, today I am Henry."
"Alright Henry." Alexandria had laughed, recognizing the name as one of the main characters in the last movie you'd been to see together - and this, too, had easily become a ritual, since you have only ever been Synovus. "Let's go see another shitty movie."
Later, she'd suggested that, for her birthday, you should go out to eat on the mainland. Maybe she could invite a guest?
Intrigued, you had agreed.
---
The guest turned out to be Athena.
Of course, neither of you were aware of that until you met up outside the restaurant. You'd pestered Alexandria about her 'friend' in all the ways you knew to be good-naturedly teasing, and she'd continued to play coy in a way that made you hope she was growing more confident. For all you knew, Athena had done the same.
But, staring at each other between some freshly-misted hedges, you had found you weren't sure why you were balking.
Neither of you were in costume. She was in a nice, simple sheath dress with light adornment. Her hair was loose - and even, which meant it had finally grown back out after you'd given her an unasked-for haircut a while back. You were pretty sure those sandals were the same as the ones she wore while fighting though.
"Even here." Athena had muttered, staring at you, "You have to have a cape."
You'd put your nose up on reflex, half curtseying, half bowing to her in your own dress for the evening. It had a capelet you'd liked the feel of, and if its dark material reminded her of your costume, well. So be it.
"All the better to sweep your daughter away in." You'd said with a smile that showed your teeth, lifting the loose cloth as though to hide your face, Dracula-style.
"Oh look." Alexandria said, holding up the reservation box. "It's vibrating. I think that means our table is ready."
-
You had picked your way through an appetizer that was awkwardly shared. If there was a possibility you and Athena would reach for the same portion, you both refused to even attempt it. Alexandria, at least, had no such compunctions, and devoured anything you two didn't lay claim to fast enough.
"So...." Athena had eventually offered, as a lead-in that immediately died. She frowned at you. "I don't know what to call you."
A number of responses had come to mind. Most were not appropriate for the setting, including your actual name. "Sy-bil." You picked at random. "Or just Sy, or Syn."
"I am not calling you Sin." Athena had said flatly, as Alexandria choked and coughed. "Sybil will work. And..." She hesitated, twirling her fork idly in her salad, "Shall I take that to mean I should use the... feminine forms of address for the evening?"
You wanted to respond flippantly, you really did. But Alexandria was beaming. "That would be appropriate." You said diplomatically. "And in return?"
Athena's eyes narrowed, just a fraction, before they widened again. "Ah. Feminine forms of address for me as well, which you may assume for the foreseeable future."
You weren't wearing your helmet, so the whole damn restaurant could probably see your blush and terrible attempt at hiding a smile. Stupid helmet. Always covering your facial expressions so you never learned how to actually hide them.
Alexandria sniffed. You passed her a packet of tissues from your bag.
"I actually meant your name," You responded casually, "Though I am grateful for the clarification, and will endeavor to remember it."
At this, Athena had actually stiffened. "Athena will be fine." She'd said, punctuating the sentence with a bite of salad so she couldn't be expected to continue.
Next to you, after clearing her nose, Alexandria had groaned, "Aw, mom, and we were doing so well."
"Athena it is." You had agreed, inclining your head, because it was Alexandria's birthday, and you understood wanting to keep a part of yourself away from the world. Or even just your unexpected dinner partner.
You were fairly certain neither of them could tell that it had actually hurt.
-
To both of your credit, you made it all the way to the dessert course before the violence broke out.
The violence wasn't even at your table. It was further down the long row of booths, a mild commotion. Still, Athena's eyes narrowed at you, and she placed one hand on her bag.
"What did you do?" She demanded, and for once, her gaze traded off between you and Alexandria.
"Nothing!" Alexandria had protested immediately.
"Ordered a brownie." You had replied, leaning over to see what was going on. "Perhaps it was too 'sinfully succulent' for the wait staff-"
(Yes. You had ordered it because of the pun. Alexandria had snickered.)
"- or, ah, no. Wrong direction. Something out of the windows?" You'd straightened in your seat, indicating the window side of your table where you'd all left the blinds down to keep out the setting sun.
Athena had moved towards the cover on the blinds.
She never quite reached them.
--
When you woke up, you hadn't been sure how much time had passed. The ringing in your ears had suggested a few minutes. The fatigue pressing down on you had suggested much longer.
Or maybe that wasn't fatigue. Something solid, and heavy. Blocks of some kind...? Ah, concrete, your old nemesis, must be. Except it was on your skin, and something about that wasn't right. Above you was cracked, exposed scaffolding, a roof about to fold inwards -
Below you, something had squirmed.
"Menace," You gasped, suddenly aware again of your surroundings. Dinner. Alexandria. Athena. You twisted around, and were relieved to see that Alexandria's eyes were open and alert.
"Synovus? What - Mom!"
You had experience being thrown by people with super strength, which was probably all that had saved you from worse injuries when Alexandria had panicked and shoved you. Nothing broke, but you were pretty sure that shoulder was going to be purple for a while.
And honestly, you didn't blame her. All you could see of Athena, at the moment, was an arm coated in gray dust.
As soon as your breathing had returned, you had moved back to help your panicked protégé move rubble. But this wasn't the first destroyed room you'd ever been in, and Athena wasn't your mother, so you had noticed a few things Alexandria had missed.
For one - no one else was moving yet. All three of you had super-something, and you'd reflexively shoved Alexandria behind you. Potential outcomes: that blast had been enough to kill everyone else, or you three had just recovered first.
Two - no sirens yet. You'd heard Alexandria, so your hearing wasn't shot entirely. That meant either the response force wasn't on its way, or it wasn't coming. Or it was already here.
Three - the wall was now open to the street, and the street was occupied. Three individuals, standing upright. One of them was pointing at you.
You had been a villain much too long not to know what that meant.
At this distance, with the lighting being what it was, you couldn't tell if they were costumed. Admittedly, that didn't mean as much as it once had, the costume was more of a thing than a requirement. But you were without yours, and so was Athena, and so was Alexandria. If you were lucky, they hadn't seen your faces.
"Get her to Oflok." You told Alexandria quietly, ducking so that you were blocking her from view.
Alexandria had looked up, too shocked to cry, and between you and her parents she also knew what this scenario meant. "You don't have a costume." She whispered.
You smiled, but it wasn't the reassuring warmth of a hero's smile. It was your coldest, when the shadows were already beginning to fill your eyes. "I do not need one."
When you stood, and turned, the shadows fled the rubble to coalesce around you. They coated your limbs, formed the familiar shape of your helmet over your head. You were still exposed - this took a lot of energy, and you didn't have any of the padding or armoring you usually did - but not visible in the sense of identifiable as a civilian.
You were both very visible and very identifiable to the three individuals you were stalking towards.
"Lord Synovus." One of the three called, and it was a little jarring, to be identified by that moniker when you were in the other, but it didn't matter much right this moment. "Having a lovely evening?"
You briefly considered tearing them to pieces where they stood. "I'm about to." You called cheerily, letting the implication of an unhinged threat carry.
These three were either too stupid or disrespectful to heed that warning.
"You are welcome to join us, of course." A different one spoke. This one had white hair. You immediately ignored everything else about them, and mentally designated them White. "We are happy to indulge our elders."
"Is that your family?" The first speaker asked, sounding vaguely delighted. They were in a costume, one that was mostly blue. Okay, Blue it was. "Oh my, is that why you retired? Going domestic?"
This was going to be all over the fucking villain gossip vine. But that was a problem for future Synovus. Current Synovus needed to make sure those individuals weren't identified as Athena and Mercury/Menace.
You weren't above using silences to prove your points for you, but you could tell these three would just build off of each other if you didn't intervene.
"If you believe retirement has softened me." You said softly, ominous as the shadows stirred at your feet. "I invite you to test that assumption."
Something finally broke through to them about that. The third one spoke, the one who had been pointing. There was something about their eyes that you didn't like. "By your own admission, Synovus, this is not your territory anymore. We are within our rights."
You immediately pegged that one as the ringleader. "Oh, I've no intention of stopping a pack of puppies from romping." You said, the false cheer filling your voice again. "You can and will do as you like - but as you have so assiduously pointed out, I am retired. And you, aware or not, have attacked my person."
You are still deciding how to begin when the Ringleader steps back. "Time to go."
"There are three of us and one of him." Blue protested. "We can-"
"Time. To go." Ringleader says pointedly, moving rapidly away. "Synovus is stalling. I can't see the reason. We're leaving."
On a hunch, you throw a spike of shadow at them. You are unsurprised when Ringleader dodges neatly. "A clairvoyant." You identify with disdain. "And you two? Ice or Lightning?"
"Come and find out." Blue hissed, though White was the one who tried to swing at you - only to find Ringleader clutching their wrist.
"Now." You hear Ringleader say, before they raise their voice. “Is there anything I can say to make you leave?”
Blue hadn’t taken their eyes off of you. Now, they cracked their knuckles, and spread their hands as fire sparked to life and curled around them. "I'm no coward." They growled.
“So be it.” Ringleader said.
In the next heartbeat, Ringleader and White were gone. Teleportation? Ugh. But you’d deal with that later.
You smiled again, spreading your footing. "I would hate to disappoint."
---
When you finally get back to your island, you are exhausted. The dress you had liked so much before is smoke-soaked and starting to feel wrong, you'd lost one of your shoes, and despite all of the evening's violence there's still a feeling itching in your veins that wants more.
Still, the days when you could've just gone straight to your bedroom and forbidden anyone from disturbing you for a few hours are gone.
"Menace?" You call in a smoke-raspy voice, as you enter the small medical facility buried deep in the island's bunker. There are several beds here, in case more than one minion or work crew member gets injured on the job. Rosie and Oflok trade shifts when you don't have other medical staff on call.
Both of them are here now, and it's Oflok who holds up a hand to stop you while she inspects you. "Asleep for now." She answers, all business, prodding experimentally at your bruises.
Rosie is preparing a selection of pills for you, "She's in bed three. Athena is awake though. She only agreed to sit still until you got here, so -"
"I'll talk to her." You say tiredly, taking the small handful of pills and offered bottle of water. You down all of it before moving to the back corner, where they'd stashed Athena.
You find her sitting up, with her leg in a cast, and mad as hell.
"This is your fault." She hisses, turning the tablet one of your staff must've given her to show news reports. There's a nice, slow pan across the crater you'd left Blue in. They won't show Blue themselves - they were too injured for this particular news site, which you knew had some strict guidelines against gore - but they do give their name: Cobalt. "Because of you, those people are dead. And you killed that girl-"
You have a hand raised and your mouth open before you can catch yourself. The thunder of the fight still roars, and the pulse of it feels like something begging to be let out. It would be easy to hit her. A transfer of energy at its most basic. It would be easy to yell at her. Expulsion of these emotions as air into the space between you, to drown her out, to invite her to escalate or capitulate.
You bite your own hand instead and turn away. Surprised, Athena falls silent.
You close your eyes, and very gently press your forehead against the coolness of the wall. You think of the waves against the shores of your island. You think of Rosie when she's telling everyone about how well the garden is doing. You think of the way the shadows can feel like silk in your hands and the time you tried to braid them into your hair.
When you no longer want to punch something and scream, you do not turn around, but you do speak.
"I didn't kill them." You say it quietly enough it shouldn't wake anyone, but loud enough that Athena will hear you. "I hurt them. Badly. But they are not dead. Neither are the other two who were there."
The silence hums with anger.
"If you want to blame me for the deaths at the restaurant," You straighten, and do finally turn around to meet Athena's eyes, "Then I cannot stop you. I imagine it feels better than blaming yourself."
Athena's jaw works for a moment. It can't feel comfortable, with the bruising and swelling up one side. Between you, the newsreel keeps going. It's a quiet buzz that keeps this silence from deepening.
Finally, Athena looks down. She squeezes her eyes closed. "Thank you." She says, voice reluctant and raw with unshed tears. "For saving my daughter's life. And for mine."
You are prepared to leave it at that - but she looks up at you again, and there is still determination in her eyes, but it's no longer blind anger. "My name-" She clears her throat, starts again, "-my name is Minerva."
You don't really know what to say to that. So you just nod, "You're welcome to stay here until you're recovered, Minerva."
Neither of you says anything else as you stumble off to find your own place to sleep.
---
Cobalt was known for running with two other villains - Dymania and the Jester. Dymania would've been the one you dubbed Ringleader, while Jester was the one you've been calling White. Their combined gimmicks of fire, teleportation, and clairvoyance have made them difficult opponents for the lower level heroes who usually wind up dealing with them.
They're the first group to show up to try and claim what used to be your turf, but they won't be the last.
Cobalt, at least, is out of the equation for a while. It's theorized that Jester has some degree of emotional influence mixed in with her powers, but you're not convinced - people thought that about you too for a while, and you're just annoying.
Dymania is the undoubtedly the real threat. You don't know what type of clairvoyant they are, and no one else seems to either.
You spend the next morning reading all you can find on them, while soaking your shoulder and fielding messages from other villains who’ve also seen the news. Some of them just want to laugh at you. Some of them have genuine questions. Some express disgust that someone was stupid enough to attack you, a supervillain of significant renown, less than a year after you’d retired.
You respond to the first group with clips you’ve saved of their own public disgraces, the second with answers that have so many meanings as to be functionally useless unless you like them personally, and the third are invited to do something about it.
You send your replies the same way you receive the messages - scrawling them onto the papers that appear in bursts of flames, tying them to a pigeon’s or owl’s leg, or mostly, over email. You don’t even check your Twitter, just open it long enough to send, “stay off my fucking property, I’m retired, not dead.”
Around noon, Alexandria comes in to see you. She knocks on the doorframe. You open the door with your shadows so that you don’t have to get out of bed.
“Menace,” you call in greeting, voice stronger than it had been. “Welcome, to the innermost layer of my defenses, the pinnacle of my most secure bunker, impenetrable defenses of-“
“The window is open.” Alexandria says wearily, coming over to flop onto the extra space of your bed. While you gasp and feign sputtering disgust at such a lapse in security, she stares blankly at some of the news screens.
“I heard you and Mom talking last night.” She says abruptly, and you stop your act. Desperately, you rewind what you remember of that conversation. Mostly you just recall biting your own hand and something about a name.
Alexandria shifts, looking up at you. “Do you think… is that why they were so mad, sometimes?” She asks in a small voice. “Was it.. did they blame me, because it hurt too much to blame themselves?”
You fiddle with the tablet in your hands for a moment. “I’m not trained for this, Alexandria.” You warn her, “but… it is easier, to make other people responsible for our mistakes. It doesn’t solve the guilt, but it does let us avoid it, for a while. Sometimes that means we yell at things that aren’t the reason we’re upset, or pick fights with people we love.”
She isn’t meeting your eyes, and you don’t force the issue. When she glances at your shoulder, you nod and make a ‘come here’ gesture.
With that encouragement, she shuffles up the bed to sit beside you, and leans her head on your shoulder. Too late, you recall your bruises.
“Are you hurt?” Alexandria asks. She sits up again, worriedly turning to look at you, and in the process catches the loose fabric of your robe sleeve. It’s pulled down, revealing the nebula of bruises across your shoulder.
Any hope you have of passing it off as a wound from the fight ends at the expression in her eyes.
“Alexandria.”
“I did this.” She whispers, horrified.
“Alexandria.”
“When I saw mom, I - I panicked, and-“
“Alex.”
“- you - you threw yourself in front of me, you protected me, and I -“
You finally reach over, grabbing her chin and forcing her to look you in the face. “No.” You tell her firmly.
Her face is ashen. There are no tears yet, only horror. “I’m just like them.”
You sigh, and try to find a way to stop the spiral. “Oh? If you’re my parent, I think we have a few other problems on our hands.”
Alexandria finally does look at you at that, but you’re not sure this is much of an improvement. She yanks out of your grip, “Don’t.” She warns you in a warbling voice, “don’t pretend it’s any different.”
“Menace, it is different.” You sound annoyed, and try to curb that. “You are a child. They were adults. You are not responsible for me and my well-being. You didn’t hurt me because you were angry or frustrated, you were scared.”
You can’t tell if she wants to believe you or not.
“And,” You point out, though it’s ashes in your mouth, “this has happened once. If the difference in our power is not enough to convince you this is not the same, if the difference in scenario is not enough I convince you this is not the same, let it be a single event, and let that be the end of it.”
“And if it happens again?” Alexandria asks quietly.
You shrug with your good shoulder, “We deal with it then. I knew the risks, little menace. I’ve been fighting your parents for a long time.”
After a moment, she moves to your other side, tucking against you while she stares unseeing into the middle distance. “I never asked you how that started.” She murmurs, leaning her head on your shoulder. “Will you tell me?”
“It’s not much of a story.” You remark, “And your mother probably remembers it differently. But, if you insist -“
—-
You had all been fairly early in your careers - this was, what, twenty years ago? Sheesh - but it wasn’t your debuts. Actually, the territories you normally covered didn’t overlap just yet, with you only starting to stake your claim on a county in California and their stakes generally being further north, more over in Washington state.
You had still been trying to make a single gender stick in those days, and you’d decided that “Lord Synovus” sounded more imposing, so that was what you were known by. You’d heard of Legionnaire, but never met him. Athena, though she’d made a few appearances by then, was new to you.
But you were getting ahead of yourself - it started at the bank.
This was back when you still did most of the legwork for your own crimes. You had chosen this particular bank because it was near a cliff, which you planned to leap off of with your stolen loot once you escaped.
The first part of your plan had gone brilliantly. You’d changed into your costume in the bank’s employee’s only bathroom, cut the lights, and thrown shadows over all of the windows and the doors.
When you’d seen someone reaching for a panic button, you’d laughed. “Go ahead!” You’d invited them. “Really. Do it.”
You meant it, but something about your demeanor scared them. They didn’t press the button. So you had walked over, taken their trembling hand, and pressed it together.
“Always better to commit, my friend.” You’d told them.
“Pretty sure that’s not your friend, pal.” Had come the bravado-infused rebuttal from somewhere behind you.
(You learned later that he had given the building a new skylight, free of charge.)
“I’m not your pal, bro.” You’d responded fluidly, drawling as you released the citizen. “Pals know each other’s names, and I have no idea who you are.”
Sometimes you could get the heroes with that one, when they were puffed up on fame. Legionnaire - because yeah, you did know who he was, actually - didn’t take that bait.
“That’s a shame.” He’d said coolly, “How about I give you something to remember me by?”
And that had been the end of your lead-in banter. He’d thrown his shield at your head, you’d ducked and gone for a sucker punch. You focused on dodging and slipping around the furniture, while he used it as projectiles and occasionally cover.
When you’d worked your way back to where you had stashed a bag full of stolen credit, you’d said something about shadows and light - no, really, you didn’t remember, it wasn’t because it was cringey in hindsight, that would be ridiculous Alexandria - and dropped the window coverings to make good on your escape.
—
“Wait.” Alexandria says, back in the now, eyebrows furrowing, “I think I have heard this story, or at least part of it - didn’t you drop the bank on him?”
“Am I telling the story or not?” You asked, tugging a lock of her hair.
—
Okay, yes, you had dropped the bank on him. Part of it. You had weakened some of the structural integrity of the outer walls, and once you were through, you collapsed the way behind you.
You knew it wouldn’t stop Legionnaire, what with his super strength, but it would force him to choose between you or the civilians still inside, and nine times out of ten heroes chose the civilians. This time, Legionnaire didn’t prove to be an exception.
As for the civilians if he had chased you, well. They’d had the whole fight to crawl away while you were distracted, and if they hadn’t taken that opportunity, that was on them.
You had thought you were home free, as you made it to the cliff just like you planned. Then, a geyser of water, with water droplets that scattered and spun to a halt around a woman in a white chiton (luckily dry).
—-
“And then your mom punched me in the face.” You sigh.
Alexandria was losing the battle against her own grin. “Knocked you flat in one blow, as I’ve heard it.”
“Knocked me flat? Try broke my jaw. I couldn’t even banter as I scuttled away. It was humiliating.”
Alexandria giggles, “The way Dad told it, you were struck dumb by Mom’s beauty.”
“Since when has being dumb ever kept me from opening my mouth?” You ask her, quirking a brow. “Anyway, I thought you said you didn’t know how we’d all met.”
“They never said it was you.” She explained, shrugging. “Just a villain they encountered.”
You scoff, genuinely offended, but Alexandria pats your arm and says, “They were kinda distracted - they had come down that far south for their honeymoon.”
“Really?” You ask skeptically. “Weird place for a honeymoon.”
“I think they were still traveling.”
“Well, that would make more sense.” You concede.
“Mom says now that should’ve been an omen.” Alexandria remarks, watching an advertisement that’s come on while you’re talking. “You showing up like that. She’s said before that you have a habit of showing up around important events in her life - I wonder if she blames you for the divorce instead of me?”
You shift to stare down at her, “They got divorced?”
Self conscious, Alexandria gives you a tiny shrug. “A few months ago, from the sound of things. Dad’s not doing too well. Did you really give that villain a spiral fracture?”
The topic change comes as the news reel returns, this time with more updates on Cobalt’s condition, leaked by one of the surgeons, probably.
“Yeah.” You admit, frowning. “But some of those are bogus, or at least not from me. I only broke the left arm because they kept trying to choke me and shove fire in my face. If their right wrist is broken too, that’s on them.”
“How did you manage that?” She asks, sitting up and turning to look at you.
You shake a finger at her, scolding, “Don’t you deflect conversations about emotionally fraught topics into requests for physical violence demonstrations. I’ll have you know I’m immune to those.”
“Is that why it’s worked the past few times?” Your menace asks, wrinkling her nose.
“I may not have meant immune, I may have meant the other thing, but it doesn’t matter.” You declare, turning off the news. “Because we… have birthday celebrations unfinished. To the dungeon!”
—-
Your minions are just as fond of Alexandria at this point as they are of you. Ergo, of course they would’ve wanted to celebrate her birthday at home.
Jumping out from behind corners or blowing kazoos in the dark is generally a bad idea when dealing with super powered individuals though, so it wasn’t quite a surprise party in the most traditional sense. You were pretty sure Alexandria was okay with that.
Instead, most of the furniture in the dungeon/brunch room was cleared out of the way, so that everyone could fit inside without shuffling awkwardly along the walls or getting pushed out onto the balcony against their will (or over the balcony, but that had only happened the one time).
Oflok and Doll had made the cake, Rosie had filled the room with flowers and wove a crown of them into Alexandria's hair. Heather, your quartermaster, was hawking over a table full of presents in what you honestly thought might've been a draconic instinct. Theo, your usual tech guy, was already asleep on a lounger on the balcony, but you knew from personal experience he'd be awake whenever the cake was served.
And you'd made sure to have someone fetch Athena - Minerva - in her reluctantly-accepted wheelchair, to bring her down to the festivities too. You'd be lying if you said you weren't looking forward to showing her you were better at throwing a birthday party than she was.
After people had had time to do their rounds, and claim their favored chairs, you moved to the empty space at the center of the room, and pressed your hands together. The room grew quiet. Expectant.
"Menace." You address your protégé with a small flourish, indicating the space in front of you. "Alexandria. Stand before me."
Alexandria took the few steps without too much hesitancy, though she did seem a little nervous. You hoped that meant no one had told her about this particular tradition.
Drawing on all of your sense of gravitas, you spread your hands before you. "You have spent several months residing in my domain, and been welcome all throughout that time. While it makes my heart glad to extend such an invitation indefinitely, you have served me loyally, and such service deserves recognition. Therefore -"
You raised your voice a fraction, enough to draw in your crowd a little more. "- I offer you the chance to claim this house as your own. To make this no longer my sole realm, but one shared, as our time and goals have been."
Alexandria hitched in a breath, searching your face. "And the price?"
You were so proud of her it was ridiculous.
"There is but one cost." You said solemnly. "You must prove your skill. You must defeat me, here and now, and in so doing, make your claim unwavering."
Doubt flickers across her face, consternation, but you aren't finished. "I am inviting you, Alexandria, Menace, my student and my friend - to engage in a revolution."
You point past her, to where your minions have parted to reveal the screen and dance boards you'd sent Theo to set up earlier. As she turns, you declare, "A dance-dance revolution."
---
As per tradition, you do wind up winning.
While you are good at the game, you think this time you had a truly unfair advantage - Alexandria could hardly breathe to put up a fight because she was laughing so hard. Your minions heckled you mercilessly, you ignored all of your normal sense of grace or dignity, and after you had won, while you were crowing about an undefeated crown, someone pressed a pie tin filled with whipped cream into Alexandria's hands.
She got you square in the face.
"Ah," You'd remarked, doing your best to wipe the confection out of your eyes and only managing to smear it into your hair, "Like mother like daughter, I see. She's inherited your aim!" You call to Minerva, who looks aghast at the entire scene.
Rosie took it upon herself to console Alexandria after her 'loss' by explaining that this was a tradition, and that no one had beaten you yet - and then turned around to place a bet on who would win between Doll and Oflok, as they stepped up to the plates.
Once you were satisfied that the tournament was in full swing, you stepped back to find an actual paper towel. You wound up standing next to Minerva.
"I cannot believe," She said slowly, watching the current bout while you scraped your eyelids raw, "That after all of these years fighting you, all I had to do to defeat you. Was win at an arcade game."
You look up long enough to flash her a grin, and drop into the chair next to her. "What a shame you can't compete now." You lament, indicating her leg. "Perhaps one day, Lady Athena, we will end our dance."
Minerva snorts. You're both quiet for a moment, watching the rest of the party. It brings you the closest thing you've ever managed to peace, watching this family of yours - not that you'd ever say that out loud - engaging in the age-old tradition of attempting to out-ridiculous each other.
"I actually started playing the game as a form of physical therapy." You admit. You're not sure why. "After that time I got crushed by that mound of a hero - what was his name?"
Minerva gives you a look, raising a brow. "Thunderhawk?"
You groan, "Yes, that was it - not sure how I managed to forget, with how often he liked to shout it."
"He did favor... self-advertisement."
You roll your eyes, "He didn't know the root of his name either. I tried to educate him. It went right over his head."
As you sigh, Minerva considers something. "You do - or did - that a lot." She remarked. "Tried to lecture while mid-fight. I never did learn why you were spouting all those vocabulary words at us that time in Reno, though."
"Ah, that - I'd been hiding in the library down the street waiting for a hero to show. I got bored, so I decided to ransack the shelves for forbidden knowledge."
"And wound up with a dictionary?"
"Thesaurus, actually. I was saving the dictionary."
"Well, I'm glad we could save you from such a dreary fate as education."
You're almost sure that's a smile, and that she's more amused than disdainful.
Then something changes. She blinks, rapidly, and her hands tighten on the arms of the chair she's in.
"Minerva?" You prompt her quietly, offering a hand. You don't feel anything out of order, but perhaps her senses reach further than yours, particularly tied to water - when was the last time you'd had someone check the alarm sensors?
"Don't." She says in warning, and you immediately withdraw your hand. "I can't - I can't be in this room right now."
You nod. "Balcony or hall?" You keep your voice soft, angled so that you're talking only to Minerva, your body forming a barrier between her and the rest of the room.
"Balcony." She whispers.
You gesture to the wheelchair's handles, "May I?"
Once she nods, you swiftly rise, sweeping your chair out of the way with one leg while you take up your self-appointed duty as chauffeur.
"Really, you're quite wrong." You say cheerfully, at a loud enough volume that you could be overheard as you begin to forge a path towards the balcony doors. "I promise you, we're at exactly the right point for the Orion constellation to pass overhead, and I can prove it-"
You continue your spiel as you reach the doors, for all appearances intent on proving yourself right in a nonexistent debate on constellation patterns. Once you've made sure no one else is out here to overhear you, you fall silent.
The air out here is balmy rather than cool, but the sea breeze is still pleasant. You lean on the railing, head tilted back, and watch the stars.
You pass a few moments in silence before Minerva breaks.
"I don't understand." She says, and it's more like a cry, though for what you don't know. "How can you do this?"
You shift, resting your weight on one arm to look at her more directly, "I'm afraid you're going to have to be more specific."
Minerva gestures at the party behind you, "All of it! Yesterday we were caught up in a terrorist attack, last year we were trying to kill each other, and now we're - we're what, sharing cake?!?"
Her voice breaks, and you lower yourself to sit on the balcony, legs poking out through the breaks in its railing to swing in the open air. You give her a chance to continue, and she does.
"I thought - I thought that all of these people, you were manipulating them. That you had hunted them, found them at their lowest, so that you could - could make them love you, be loyal to you, so that you could use them. I thought that was what you wanted with Alexandria, what you wanted with me. I thought that - that anyone who knew what you were and supported you must be-" She cuts herself off, making desperate motions as though the words can be drawn from the air.
You lean back until you're laying flat on the balcony, staring up at the stars. "Must be evil."
There's a silence.
"You know I'm a liar, Minerva." You say, "You know I have kept things from you. I am a killer, on scales small and large. I have kidnapped, extorted, tortured. There are holes in my moral foundation that would put the Grand Canyon to shame."
Absently, you pick out the patterns of constellations. "But that does not mean I cannot love. Nor does it mean I must forgo the lesser kindnesses. We, you and I, and all of our cohorts and enemies, live with a casual violence humans were never meant to. You couldn't have done anything to save those people yesterday. And you would still kill me, kill most of the people in that room if you had to."
You roll your head to look at her, "If you're asking me if that makes you evil, I can't help you find that answer."
While you watch the sky, she is watching the waves. "We're all someone's monster." She murmured.
You lift your hands briefly, then let them fall back to your chest. "And we're all someone's idea of happiness."
"I thought you would mock me." Minerva says suddenly.
"What?" You blink at her, "For having questions about morality? That's-"
"At the restaurant. If I told you my name then." You realize she's picking at the cloth of her borrowed shirt, and decidedly not looking at you.
You frown, "Well, I mean, it did answer a question I'd had for a while." When she glances at you warily, you explain, "I had always gotten the impression that you had modeled your persona after Legionnaire's. Given his preference for all things Roman, I assumed you would've taken the Roman aspect. But if 'Minerva' was your real name..." You shrug.
Minerva stares at you for a moment, pressing her lips into a line. "You're going to mock me." She says grimly.
"Is it that bad?"
She sighs, "Albion thought 'Athena' sounded sexier."
Earlier, you had told Alexandria that you'd never been struck dumb-silent. Now, you'd have to revise that answer. Because there are many layers to this that you have to mentally unpack, while your facial expression does heavens-knows-what, until you stuff your hand into your mouth to keep from spouting out something terrible.
"Albion?" You squeak, when you're sure you won't burst out laughing instead.
"Legionnaire."
You take a very deep breath. Then you let it out. "Oh. Oh that man never had a snowball's chance in hell, did he. And he-" You snort, and bite your lip to contain the fit of laughter, condemning it to silent shaking.
"I told you." Minerva muttered, resting her head in one hand.
You might be crying. It is Alexandria's birthday, but you have been given a gift.
"My dear Minerva." You say, once reason has returned to your vague area code, "Your ex-husband. Is one of the stupidest men I've ever met. And I have met a lot of stupid people."
You're fairly certain Minerva is blushing.
"Well," She says, after a pause, "I suppose I can't refute that."
"In particular," You comment as you get to your feet, brushing off any grime from laying on the ground, "He is incredibly wrong about your name."
Definitely blushing.
"I -" Whatever Minerva was going to say is lost, as Alexandria throws open one of the balcony doors.
"Synovus!" She calls, face flushed, "I want a rematch!"
---
[Part two of this installation in the Synoverse coming soon!]
Once you start thinking about humans as a species in a biome, it affects your entire way of looking at normal things.
The other day I referred to female morning joggers as an 'indicator species' in that if you see women jogging in the dark it means that the environment provides migration pathways (sidewalks, clear signs) and doesn't have any known predators of female morning joggers (guy with knife, bear, BigTruck, male morning joggers).
Though, I think that people consider framing humans as animals reacting to their environment as rude.
