by wildbow
Okay, so he wasn’t going crazy.
“They landed on the edge, and they’re mine. From the terrariums upstairs. They’re in as sterile an environment as you’ll get.”
“Okay. Just saying.”
“I can’t hear you through my bugs, by the way. It’s not the first time you’ve done that.”
“Right. Wasn’t sure, because Tattletale said you were working on it.”
I shook my head, “No progress.”
“And I’m getting used to talking to empty rooms. Sometimes catch Aisha off guard. Breakfast? Sit down, I’ll put the kettle on. Didn’t want to fill it while you were in the shower.”
“Thank you.”
Through some unspoken agreement, we didn’t talk about ‘work’. We didn’t discuss Coil, Dinah, the Travelers, Dragon or the Nine. Instead, our discussions turned to favorite movies and shows, my favorite books and memories from our childhoods. Shows we’d watched and nearly forgotten, moments from school.
Emma came up a lot, as I thought back on it. My parents too. The three of them had been the focus of my world, with everything else taking a distant second place. Emma had turned on me, my mom had left me, and my dad… I had to admit I’d left him.
I didn’t raise any of the heavier stuff, but I mentioned that Emma had turned out to be one of the bullies that plagued me throughout my stay in high school.
Brian, in turn, talked about his life growing up. That did touch on the heavier stuff, and as much as I liked learning a bit more about the details of his life, I was glad when we detoured into a discussion of martial arts. As he explained it, he was more interested in the broader strokes and philosophy of a given style than on the particulars. Once he had a sense of how a given adherent of the style might approach a fight and enough basic techniques to see how they put it into practice, he tended to lose interest.
All around us, I could see people hard at work. My people were deferring to any legitimate construction crew that set to work, shifting their focus to nearby areas. I could see people moving supplies out of a nearby building so the crews could bulldoze it, others helping to unload a truck of building supplies. When I got back to this and started to give orders, I’d have to find work for them that wouldn’t put them in the way. I couldn’t quite track how many people were working for me in my territory, but it was far more than before.
I felt like I should be losing people each time I got pulled into a fight against a major threat. I had, when Mannequin and Burnscar had attacked, but I’d walked away from the first Mannequin fight with something of a following, and I’d expected to see my people leaving in droves after Dragon made her move. Except it wasn’t happening, and I wasn’t entirely sure why.
Our walk took us on a circuit, with us turning back to my lair, and I left to go back to my dad’s while Brian headed back to my place to use the shower.
I felt weird about that. Parting ways so casually after spending the night together. Oddly enough, I felt weird about letting him in my lair while I wasn’t there. He’d be passing through my room, seeing my stuff. I knew it was paradoxical to be bashful, covering myself with a sheet and feeling guarded about my privacy, all things considered, but that didn’t change the fact that I felt that way. I wouldn’t refuse to let him use my bathroom because of it, but yeah.
In a way, we’d sort of done everything backward. We’d started with the long-running partnership. With the ‘family’, if I wanted to think about managing the others in that sense. In the course of that, we’d been through hell and back, we’d backed each other up, helped each other. All hurdles one might face in a marriage. Then there were the more recent cases of actually talking about the relationship happening, there was last night, then the more casual date and getting to know each other better this morning. If it wasn’t a hundred percent backwards, it was at least pretty jumbled up.
Or maybe I was looking at it in an immature way, expecting some simplistic, formulaic, storybook notion of how a relationship was supposed to proceed.
I made my way to my dad’s, thinking about a thousand things at once, not wanting to think about anything in particular.
There were cars parked out front. There was a strange car in the garage with the door open, two others in the driveway, my dad’s at the end. With a few stray houseflies, I casually noted a dozen people inside the house. My dad was there, too.
I immediately thought of Coil. Had he divined what I had planned today? Planned some counterattack?
I’d foregone my costume, so I wouldn’t feel compelled to use it in a pinch, and I’d removed my knife holster from the costume and had it clipped to the back of my waistband, so it was in the midst of the folds, blanketed by various wasps and spiders. The setup might have been awkward for anyone else, but spending the past few weeks and months while using my bugs to help guide my hand left me fairly confident that I could slip my hand through the folds and draw it at a moment’s notice if I had to.
Then a man opened the door. I let myself relax.
“No shit,” he said. “Taylor?”
“Hi, Kurt,” I greeted my dad’s coworker and longtime friend.
“Been a long time. Barely recognize you, kid.”
I shrugged. “How’re you doing?”
He cracked a wide grin. “Working. Getting by. Better than we were doing. Now, you coming inside or are you going to stand in the driveway for the next five minutes?”
I followed him into the house.
My dad was in the living room, surrounded by familiar faces. People I’d seen around when I’d gone to his workplace or when they’d dropped by the house. I could only put a name to the people who my dad called friends: Kurt, Kurt’s wife Lacey, and Alexander. Even Lacey was burlier than my dad, with a build like Rachel’s, muscle added onto that. The other three were familiar, but I didn’t know them well. My dad and myself excepted, every person in the house had spent their lives doing manual labor. Just looking at him, he looked like the odd one out in every way, in clothes and body type and demeanor, but he was relaxed in a way I hadn’t seen in years, surrounded by friends with a beer in hand.
My dad saw me, mouthed the word ‘sorry’.
Kurt saw it. “Don’t blame your old man. Alexander brought a truckload of beer in from out of town, we got to drinking. We thought we’d include Danny, drag him along, invited ourselves. Didn’t know he had plans.”
“It’s fine,” I said. Nobody that could be a threat, none of Coil’s people. I let myself relax. What had I been thinking? That he’d strongarm my dad?
“Heya Taylor,” Lacey said. “Haven’t seen you since the funeral.”
Nearly two years after the fact, it still hit me like a punch in the gut.
“Hell, Lacey,” Kurt said. “Give the girl a second to get used to having people in her house before you drop that on her.”
I glanced at my dad, elbows on his knees, a 24 ounce beer clasped in both hands. He’d lowered his head to stare at the can. He didn’t look devastated, or even unhappy. It hadn’t caught him off guard like it had hit me. Knowing these guys, I could guess it came up with enough regularity that he was used to it.
“Ah, baby,” Lacey said. She raised a beer in my direction. “Just a little drunk. Wanted to say, your mom was good peoples. She hasn’t been forgotten. Sorry if that came out a little direct.”
“S’okay,” I replied. I shifted my feet restlessly. I’d never felt more a stranger in my own house. Didn’t know where to go, where I wouldn’t be drawing attention, have people asking me questions. It was hard enough with my dad and I having this distance between us, but there were other people in the equation now.
Kurt spoke up, “We’re leaving in a few minutes. It’s hard to get around, so they’re scheduling events together so we don’t need to make two trips. The last debate is this afternoon, then mayoral vote right after. You catch the debate the other night?”
I shook my head. “Didn’t even know it happened.”
“Well, if that’s any i
ndication, this one’s bound to be a pisser. So we’re drinking to mellow out. And I’d feel a hell of a lot better if your dad had more than the one beer, so he can relax some and hold back from choking one of the smarmy bastards.”
“Not about to do that,” my dad said.
“Wish you could. But it wouldn’t be worth it in the end if you wound up in jail and left that daughter of yours alone. It’s all good. We’ll go in stinking of beer, offer some drunken commentary from the sidelines, punctuated by a few off-color words,” Kurt smiled.
“Please don’t,” my dad said. He hadn’t raised his eyes from the beer in his hands, but he was smiling, too.
“You want to sit and let ’em say what sounds good for them?” Kurt asked.
“I was thinking it’d be better to ask the hard questions, if we get a chance. A big part of the crowd’s going to be people from the north end. Good few of them are going to be from the Docks. So why don’t we ask him what’s happening with the ferry?”
“He’s going to brush it off,” Lacey said. “Not in the budget, with everything that’s going on.”
“Then that’s a good time for some booing and drunken swearing,” my dad answered, smiling.
Kurt busted out a laugh. “You want to start a riot, Danny?”
“No. But might sway the undecideds to see just how unimpressed we are with the man.”
“Everyone’s unimpressed with Mayor Christner,” Alexander spoke up. He was a younger guy, heavily tattooed, with thick eyebrows that gave him a perpetual glower. Every time I saw him, he had his hair cut in a wild style. Today he had the left one-third of his head shaved, showing off a fresh tattoo of an old-school pinup girl in a bikini with her elbow appearing to rest on his ear.
“Disaster does that.” I spoke up. “We want someone to blame, and the guy in charge makes for an easy target.”
“He’s a deserving target,” Kurt said, seating himself on the arm of the chair Lacey was in. She wrapped one arm around his waist. He went on, “There was this thing in Washington. Talking about whether they should throw walls up around the edge of the city, blockade the streets and shut off services, get everyone out of here.”
“He said no, right?”
“He said no. Asshole. Probably earns more money this way. Take a few million for restoring and helping the city, help himself to a percentage.”
That surprised me. “You’re not happy the city was saved from being condemned? Did you want to be kicked out of the city? To leave your home?”
“It’d suck, but the way they were talking about it in the paper, there’s a big fund that’s set aside for covering the damages those Endbringer motherfuckers cause. Idea was that they’d dip into those funds, give everyone that they ousted a bit to cover the cost of their homes.”
“There’s no way that’s doable,” I said. “What about everyone who left when they were told to evacuate?”
“Don’t know,” Kurt said. “I’m just saying what the papers did.”
I felt an ugly feeling in my gut. “And they’d give us what the houses used to be worth?”
“They’d give us what the houses might be worth now,” he said.
“So not much.”
“It’s more than they’ll be worth a few years down the line, after the rot sets in and any mold problems get worse. Getting expensive to get supplies into the city, which means it’ll be costly to fix things up and renovate. Not necessarily worth it.”
“I saw construction crews at work.”
Kurt downed a swig of his beer and cleared his throat, “Sure. The companies that are buying up all the materials, purchasing land on the cheap, all in the hopes that this city gets its act together and the land turns out to be worth something.”
“It could.”
“Come on,” he made the words a groan, “We’re under the tyranny of supervillains. Heroes don’t have what it takes. Used to be they were outnumbered but they were trying, making a difference in little ways. Now they’re outnumbered and losing. What’s the point?”
“Just a hypothetical question,” I said, “but isn’t it better to be in a city that works, where villains rule the streets, instead of a failed city with the same villains in a less prominent position?”
Lacey groaned a little, “Sweetie, had a few too many to wrap my head around the question.”
“Might be time to stop then, Lacey,” my dad said. Turning to me, he said, “I suppose you’re asking the classic question, Taylor. Would you rather be a slave in heaven or a free man in hell?”
“Free man in hell,” Kurt responded. “Fuck. You think I’d be doing what I do, living here, if I was willing to make nice, suck up to the guys in charge and do what I was told?”
Some of the others were nodding, Lacey and Alexander included.
I looked at my dad.
“What’s your answer, Danny?” Kurt asked.
“I’d rather not be a slave or in hell,” my dad responded. “But sometimes I worry I’m both. Maybe we don’t get the choice?”
“You’re the most depressing asshole of a friend I’ve got,” Kurt said, but he said it with a smile.
“Why are you asking, Taylor?” Lacey asked.
I shrugged. How much could I say without giving them cause for suspicion? “Saw some of the stuff going on in the shelters. Some sick people, unhappy people. It was a long while before anything started getting better, and as I understand it, it was the villains who made the first move in getting things fixed up.”
“For their own benefit. You can’t rule a hole in the ground,” Alexander said.
“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe bad people can do good for the sake of doing good, at least once in a while. They’re taking charge, they’re keeping things more or less quiet and peaceful. It’s better than what we had.”
“The problem with that,” my dad said, “Is that we’d be setting humanity back by about three thousand years if we let that happen. It’d be falling back into an iron age mindset and leadership. The people with the numbers and the weaponry lay claim to an area through sheer military strength. They stay in charge as long as they can through family lines, merging families with whoever else has the military strength. That lasts until the family in power peters out or someone smarter, stronger or better armed comes in to seize control. Might not sound so bad, until you figure that sooner or later, the person who gets control is going to be someone like Kaiser.”
“Kaiser’s dead,” Kurt said.
“Yeah?” my dad raised an eyebrow. “Okay, but I was speaking in general terms. Could just as easily be Lung or Jack Slash, instead of the relatively benign villains that are in charge right now. Again, I stress, it’s just a matter of time.”
Just a matter of time until we lose—I lose—and someone else claims Brockton Bay for themselves, I thought.
“What would you rather have happen?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” he said. “But I don’t think complacency’s the answer.”
“Last debate,” Kurt said, “people kept bringing up the capes, moderator kept shutting them down, telling them that they were supposed to be talking economy and education. Today we’ll hear some talk on the crooks running the city. Hear what the candidates have to say on the subject.”
“We should go soon,” Lacey said. “If we want to get a seat instead of standing around at the sides.”
My dad looked up at me, “Can I get you any food, Taylor? I promised you something.”
“I’m alright. Had a late breakfast. Maybe when we get back?”
“I’d offer you a drink,” Kurt said, chuckling, “But that’d be against the law. How old are you, anyways?”
“Fifteen,” I said.
“Sixteen.”
I turned to look at my dad.
“It’s the nineteenth,” he said. “Your birthday was a week ago.”
“Oh.” I’d been a little distracted at the time. A week ago, that would have been around the time we were wrapping up our confrontation with the S
laughterhouse Nine. Lovely.
“That’s the saddest goddamn thing I ever heard,” Kurt said, getting off the chair’s armrest and helping Lacey to her feet. “Girl missing her birthday like that. I’m guessing you don’t have your license, then, huh?”
“No.”
“Damn. Was hoping you’d be our designated driver so your dad could have another.”
“I’ve only had half a tallboy,” my dad said, shaking his can lightly to let us hear the contents sloshing against the sides. “And we’ll be driving slow on these streets anyways. Who’s driving the other car?”
Alexander raised his hand. He only had a glass of water.
“Then we’re off. Out of my house,” he said. I could see him wincing in pain as he used the chair’s back to help himself to a standing position, but he recovered. He started shooing the burly dockworkers out the door. “Go. Into the cars.”
We began to file out. Kurt and Lacey climbed into the back seat of my dad’s car. The others got into Alexander’s truck.
“Should you be drinking with the kidney damage?” I asked, as the doors shut. “You had trouble standing.”
“I got cleared yesterday. I’m back on a regular diet. Any hurt is just the muscle and the stitches. Thanks for worrying about me.”
“Of course I’m going to worry about you,” I said, frowning.
“You have changed,” my dad commented, resting his elbows on the roof of the car.
“Hm?”
“Wasn’t so long ago that you would have walked into that situation and clammed up.”
“Feels like that was a year ago.”
“Anyways, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’d hoped this would be just you and me, having a chance to catch up. They invited themselves.”
“It’s okay. I’m glad that you’ve got friends like that.”
“They’re a bit overbearing,” my dad said.
“The window’s open a crack,” Kurt said, from inside the car. “We can hear you.”
“They’re overbearing,” my dad repeated himself, raising his voice a notch. At a normal volume, he finished by saying, “But they’re alright.”
Smiling a little, I climbed into the passenger seat.