Chapter Text
“I don’t know exactly what you were thinking.” A grey, soulless office for a grey soulless woman. “Or if you were thinking at all.”
It was time to take my licks. And that meant standing in front of Director Piggot’s desk, hands behind my back as I stared at the far wall instead of the bleached-blonde tyrant in front of me. The Director wasn’t a pretty woman at the best of times, and right now her jowls were wobbling with anger at me and Missy. Which was, of course, mostly unjustified.
The lights flickered overhead. I didn’t think it was me, but she only intensified her glare. “And control yourself,” she snapped.
“I am controlled,” I retorted, which I probably shouldn’t have.
“Hrmm. You haven’t answered me.”
“It’s not like I went looking for trouble!” I inhaled. “I was at the mall with a friend! I didn’t have my costume with me! It’s not like I planned to wind up like this! I was just on the scene and had to do something! I saved some girls from Tinkertech creatures, then helped evacuate the mall - and then, like I told you already, I tracked Half-A back to the facility where they were creating those things! And we nearly caught Uber and Leet, too! They only got away because they pulled a teleport escape out of nowhere!”
She clicked her tongue. “You’re acting like your initial actions justify everything you did.”
Yes. They did. I bit back what I wanted to say because that would get me shouted at. “I… I am sorry for getting caught up in the moment and forgetting to call things in after I got out of the jamming signal that meant I couldn’t do it at the mall,” I offered.
Of course she didn’t accept it. “You knew exactly what you were doing. You chose to not call this in so you could chase them down with the aid of Radiant. Who isn’t even a Ward. And more than that, you chose to disobey an order from Portent. That’s why I don’t believe you forgot to call things in. If you had simply forgotten, you would have held back when he contacted you.” She glanced over at the door, where Missy was waiting outside. “And then you dragged a thirteen-year old into your insubordination.”
That statement was a trap, and we both knew it. Anything I said - denial or defence - would get me further into trouble. I kept my mouth shut, staring straight ahead with my arms rigid at my sides and my back ramrod stiff, as Piggot went over things. At length.
“I suppose you think I’m talking down to you like you’re a child,” she said, in something of a conclusion. “That you cannot wait to graduate to the Protectorate and get to do your own thing.”
She wasn’t wrong. Right now I just wanted her to get out of my face. “No, director.”
Piggot let out a short chuckle. “Things won’t change. If Armsmaster or Velocity had done the same, I would be shouting at them. They’re adult members of the Protectorate and I would be furious at them too if they pulled a stunt like you just did. Because we have these rules for a reason. If you encounter a villain at a crime scene, you call it in as soon as you can. If you are trailing a villain, you call it in. If you identify a villain’s lair, you call it in. And you are not a stupid girl, Starlight. You know exactly why we have those rules.” She paused. “Go ahead. Tell me why.”
My face felt warm. “So that the PRT has this information,” I said, trying not to look away.
“And?”
“... so that you know where your capes are.”
“Yes. But it’s not because I’m a ‘control freak’, like I know some of you call me. It’s for your safety too, because you capes need proper support from professionals. What if we knew for a fact that the Half-A hideout had a lethal grid of Tinkertech sonics, but because Miss Starlight the fifteen-year old felt she was above the rules, she didn’t call it in and all three of you had wound up dead?” She folded her hands over each other. “You are not some law-breaking vigilante who’s little different from the criminals out there. You are a teenage girl who is under the protection of the Wards. And you will act like that.”
I blinked heavily. I… I wasn’t upset. I just didn’t like being shouted at. “I understand.”
Piggot paused, looking at my face, and narrowed her eyes. Her voice softened fractionally. “Part of the reason that I am angry with you right now is that I wish I didn’t have to be. You started off well and let yourself down.
“What you did in the mall was good. The BBPD says you helped a lot by providing an evacuation point, and you thinned out the Tinkertech creatures. And you drove off Half-A, and avoided heavy civilian casualties or collateral damage.” She chopped her hand into her open palm. “We can’t allow the proliferation of bio-Tinker weapons. Ever. Even if they were short-lived sterile ones like these ones turned out to be, we have to act. And so if you had simply got out of the jammed area and called us in then I would be giving you nothing but praise. I would have sent backup to support you while you trailed them to their base.
“But I have to punish you because you took such a significant risk here. I believe you, Miss Starlight, have to be punished because if I do not punish you for your actions here, you will think you can pull a stunt like this again. Because you have some talent at getting people to do what you say, and you got lucky this time. You haven’t ever seen an operation go south in a major way, and you don’t understand how easily things could have gone wrong. You are young and overconfident and think you are invincible. You are not. And neither are the people with you.
“Do you understand? I am being hard on you here because I am disappointed in you. Because I thought you could be better. Because I know you can be better.”
I swallowed. “I… I understand,” I repeated. It hurt.
“I’m going to schedule a disciplinary review for you, and don’t expect it to be easy. I want to catch this behaviour early. There may be additional punishments, and until that review is carried out, you’re removed from all patrol schedules.” Piggot nodded to me. “You’re dismissed. Clean yourself up, get back into costume, and for God’s sake change out of that stupid toy Alexandria helmet. Oh, and send in Vista.”
My pen squeaked against the whiteboard. My cup of mushroom instant soup steamed.
“Leet said something about Boston,” I muttered to myself, adding the city’s name to my mind-map. “It was to do with the cloning vat-tank-thing. Did he say anything more?” I couldn’t remember. “Okay, okay, okay. Something for them to investigate. And-”
The mask-up alarm sounded, and I jammed my helmet back on my head. My helmet. The toy one was sitting - signed as promised - on the table.
“What are you doing in here?” Portent asked as the door unsealed.
“Jotting down everything I can remember. On Uber, Leet, Dox, their tech, what they said… everything.” I clenched my teeth. “Of course, because of you I’m not going to be able to help. Odds are, neither will Missy. We’re probably going to be banned from patrols until spring. At least.”
“You can’t get away with blaming this on me.”
I whirled on the tall black guy approaching my mindmap whiteboards with his gym bag thrown over one shoulder. He was in casuals, as he almost always was at base; grey domino mask, comfortable loose pants, a - tight - blue t-shirt. It was one of the things I’d noticed about Portent. He didn’t like his costume very much, and only wore it when he had to. “I don’t see why not,” I retorted.
He ran one hand through his cornrows. “I ordered you back. And you should thank me that I told Piggot that you got caught in a jamming field. Things would have gone bad for you if I hadn’t.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do.” He stepped in, and I had to tilt my head back slightly. He knew what he was doing. Portent was a foot taller than me, and I was already five-and-a-half feet at fifteen. He loomed. “You need to stop pulling the ‘oh no my battery failed I’m out of communications’ trick.”
“But I didn’t.” I paused. “And even if I did, why would you cover for me?”
“‘Cause you’re on thin ice. You know Piggot is going to have you in front of a full-on disciplinary board if you push it and PR won’t save you.”
“Yeah? I know.” What did he think I was, a child? “What, have you come to warn me about the awful, terrible future that’s going to come because of that?”
He leaned against the wall, working his wrist. “You’re being an asshole, Taylor. Why?”
“Why?” I crossed my arms. “Because I was having a nice day today with my friend and then those gamer losers decided to fuck everything up. And then Piggot decided that the fact that I tracked those shitheads back to their lair and wrecked the clone-Lung-dragon thing they were growing for God-knows-what kind of dumbass stunt probably involving a castle and a princess or something… the fact that Piggot decided all of that wasn’t worth anything and just spent twenty minutes chewing me out and putting me in for review? Gee, I wonder if that’s why I’m pissed off!” I probably sounded like I was whining and I didn’t care. I’d had a bad day.
His lantern-jaw tightened. “I saw you die. Missy too.”
“That doesn’t…” I bit back what I was about to say.
“Do you want to die?”
“What was the chance of that happening, huh? Give me a percentage.”
“You know I don’t do probability like that. What I saw was you torn apart by something big. Bleeding out on the ground. So, yes. I went to Piggot. Because I see bad outcomes for you more than I do any of the others.” He paused, lips twisting. “You’re welcome. If you took fewer risks, I wouldn’t have to see you die so much.”
God! This was why it was such a pain in the ass trying to argue with a precognitive, and doubly so when his power always seemed to tell him about the absolute worst-case outcomes. Because even if he had a stick so far up his ass it was triggering his gag reflex, it must really suck to have his power. I huffed, shoulders slumping. “It was only Uber and Leet,” I tried, but I’d lost the argument and I knew it. And so did he.
“If ‘only Uber’ had grabbed a pistol, what would you have done?” He stepped up to the board, tapping by the man’s name. “Uber is a loser. A loser can still shoot you dead. Especially when he could suddenly be a master with a handgun. And you didn’t have your armour on.”
My face was red, a mixed blush of embarrassment and anger making itself known. “You’re doing it right now,” I mumbled. “Using your power on me to win this argument. So you don’t say anything that’s bad for you.”
“The important thing here is that we learn from this,” he said, not denying it. Asshole.
“You mean ‘I’ learn from this.”
“No, we. The PRT - and the Wards.” He nodded to the boards. “Getting down all the info you can remember about Half-A, that’s good. When they show back up again, we’re going to need to be ready.”
“If they show back up again.” I pointed at Leet’s bubble, tracing a line up to the ‘New Tech’ section and the ‘Teleporter - based off Oni Lee?’ thoughts. “It was… pretty gory how they teleported out.”
“I think we will.”
“Is that your power?” I demanded. “Or just your natural downer-ness?”
“We plan for them showing up again, and if they don’t, well, that’s two less villains in this town,” he said, not answering the question. “But there’s still one of them left. This ‘Dox’ girl - you have a lot less on her.”
“I only saw a little bit of her - one short talk when she was sending her image down a TV, and an overheard conversation.” I gritted my teeth. “She is probably the most annoying person I have ever talked to.”
“Even more annoying than me?” Oh goddamnit, now he was smiling and he was handsome when he smiled. It made a change from his normal neutral-to-frown face he had when looking at me. This was unfair.
“Yes, actually.” I searched for words to try to explain to him. “Imagine a Tinker sat down and decided to try to create the most annoying lifeform possible. Like, put a lot of effort into it. That’s Dox.”
Portent flashed that unfair smile of his at me. “Well, I guess I got to work harder if I’m not the most annoying being in existence to you anymore. I want to get everything written down that you can remember from those talks. And I’m going to go talk to Missy - and Radiant, too, if New Wave will let me. Please don’t talk to them about what you remember until I’ve done that. We need to work out what she can do. I have a feeling she’s more dangerous than the other two.”
“I get you,” I agreed. I didn’t mean to smile back. It just happened. It was good to move away from people going on about what I’d done wrong and onto this talk of powers and tactics. “Uber and Leet have got more dangerous with a smart girl on their team. I don’t think Uber likes her at all but he still listens to her.”
“You think they don’t get along?”
“Oh yeah, not at all.”
“And why would that be…”
We had a productive half-hour, and I really felt we’d got things cleared up more about Half-A by the end. Portent liked nice clear intel and to know what he was getting into, and he certainly wasn’t wrong. Everything was cleaner this way.
It was only after he left that I realised he’d left me embarrassed and humiliated, and then swiftly guided me away from that to a tactical discussion on Half-A. My knuckles whitened around the marker pen and I hurled it at the wall. Urgh! He made me so mad! Fucking Thinkers! And stupid handsome smiles! My hormones needed to sit down, shut up, and leave me alone. I was trying to be a professional superhero here!
I’d already been told that Mom was coming to pick me up. Just wonderful. She was probably going to shout at me more.
The drive back with Mom was quiet. I think it was because both of us suspected that there was going to be shouting, and neither of us wanted to do it in the car where people might hear us. It was pitch black outside, with the eyes of cars cutting sharp lines through the misty night. I raised the temperature in the car so it wasn’t so bitingly cold. Mom had to have noticed it, but she didn’t say a thing.
I should call Emma. I’d texted her to say I was fine, but I needed to talk to her. I just didn’t feel up to it. Our day out had been ruined and she’d been brought closer to my cape life than I ever wanted her. The carefree happiness that I’d had this morning had been replaced with a brooding cocktail of anger at how callously Half-A had terrorised people, soured triumph at how they’d spoilt our victory, and shame. I’d been having fun with her. Or I’d been trying to. In the moments when my work mindset hadn’t been intruding into my free time, it had been like being transported back to better, happier days. Emma had been doing her best to help me relax, had forgiven my slips, and... it had been fun. Simple, happy fun.
My PRT phone buzzed. My nostrils flared as I checked it. Was it some more bullshit from Portent? No, it was a text from Vicky. Well, that wasn’t quite as bad as it could have been, but I knew for a fact that I was about to experience a horror.
I winced. Great. Now Vicky was mad with me again. My thumbs danced over the screen as I answered, and her response was almost immediate. I didn’t need it so quickly. Maybe, just maybe, she could have used the time to clean up her spelling and grammar. Add some punctuation. Small things like that. But that was an old subject of argument - okay, bickering - between us. She claimed I texted like an old granny.
I am sorry we didn’t think to
I trailed off. No. This was my PRT phone, and that meant privacy was a myth. I deleted that line, and started again.
I leaned my head against the cold window as the Christmas lights streamed by. The lesser part of my mind was, as usual, wondering how a girl who was so smart could put no effort at all into making her texts readable. Because it wasn’t like Vicky was dumb. She just texted like she could barely string two words together. But the main part of my brain was wrapped up in running through the events of today again and again. Playing them before my eyes as we drove down streets lined with fat plastic Santas where every house was decked in gaudy lights.
Our place was a merciful island of darkness in our street. Mom didn’t believe in the commercialised corporate Christmas. Or indeed in any Christmas. Dad had been the religious one in our family, but Mom took a certain twisted delight in refusing to engage in the tasteless neighbourhood display of lights and garish colours. A delight which I did, incidentally, share. I was her daughter, after all.
We pulled into the garage and I trailed in after Mom. She went straight through the kitchen, beelined for the armchair by the living room window, and sat down in it. I hovered next to the kitchen island, fidgeting under her gaze.
After a long, oppressive moment, she closed her eyes tiredly and dropped her head into her hands.
Guilt unfurled its sickly-sweet petals in my stomach and throat, choking me with regrets. She wasn’t yelling or scolding or lecturing me. She was just sitting there, looking exhausted. Disappointed. Hurt.
“I-” I started, and then stopped. What could I say? “I... just wanted a day out with my friend.”
“I know, Taylor.” Mom’s voice was tired. Defeated. “You always just want a day out with your friend, or to help the fire department out a little, or take an easy patrol for one of your friends. And then something like this comes up, and you leap for it with both hands.”
I hated it when she got like this. When I got her like this. Because it always seemed to be me who pushed her past quiet disapproval into exhausted inability to cope. I didn’t think about it much, but Mom worried about me all the time. Every time I got caught near the edge of a firefight or wound up Mastered in an apartment block fire or had to fight a dragon, it wore on her. She was only forty one, but there were grey streaks in her hair that I didn’t remember being there before... before Dad had died. Before I’d triggered. Before she’d had to be a single mother to a young hero.
I edged closer, remorseful words curdling on my tongue, and settled gingerly on the edge of the couch. She had her eyes screwed shut and was breathing deeply, holding back tears. I hated it even more when she cried. It was rare, but it was always awful when it happened, and worse still when I was the cause.
After a few moments, she got up and walked jerkily back into the kitchen. I stayed on the couch as she clattered around making tea, running through things I could say in my head.
She came back with two mugs and set the Woodstock one down in front of me on the coffee table, then settled back into the armchair and took a long sip from her own. I picked mine up and sniffed. Camomile and orange. Not my favourite, but Mom liked it when she wanted to destress after a long day.
“What happened?” she said softly to her mug.
I took a deep breath, and began.
Explaining everything I was allowed to explain took us through two mugs of herbal tea each, and necessitated a few pauses as I worked out exactly where the lines were drawn for what I needed to explain, what I shouldn’t explain, and what the PRT probably wouldn’t want me to explain but which I was going to tell Mom anyway because she deserved to know what her daughter was doing without getting stonewalled behind a giant collage of CLASSIFIED stamps. I left out where Half-A’s base had been, obviously, and “Lung-lizard hybrid dragon mutant” became “big monster”. It had only been two weeks since I’d promised her I wouldn’t fight him, and I didn’t particularly want to see whether she’d take this as breaking my word on that score. Which it shouldn’t, because it wasn’t like I knew they had the thing when I tailed them there, and I couldn’t leave them alone to move it once we’d got there and found them getting ready to leave, and anyway Amy had been the one who fought it, but... well, it was just easier to leave that part out.
I didn’t tell her about Amy’s ‘refuelling’ from the mascots, either. Nobody knew about that except me and Vicky, not even the rest of New Wave. The lie that she could turn back before running out her clock and retain enough charge for a second transformation the same day was a well-practiced one, and I told it with a straight face and nothing to prove otherwise. After all, she usually clung to every second of Radiant-time she could; it wasn’t like she ever let go of her Breaker state early if she could help it. The rare occasions when she had to refuel for a second bout had only ever happened when she was with me or Vicky or both - and neither of us were going to rat her out.
Mom sat silently as I stuttered my way through the later bits, looking up at me between sips of tea and emanating quiet disapproval. I tailed off at Uber and Leet’s escape, mumbling that it had been an experimental teleport that had ‘looked nasty’ and not going into any more detail.
After a while, she sighed again.
“I’m proud of you for protecting people at the mall,” she said. “Taking charge, getting them out of there, helping everyone feel safe. You stepped up and acted like a real hero. But Taylor, why did you follow them, afterwards?”
I’d heard that refrain from half a dozen different people back at HQ. Piggot might have been more intimidating, but it hurt the most coming from Mom.
“They treated Emma like meat!” I screwed my hands into fists, glaring down at my feet - and there was the blush. Not of embarrassment, but of anger. “We were in the changing rooms at Venus when they showed up and-and-and I didn’t have my costume and they were going into the changing rooms, they had those monsters and those drones with cameras on and they thought it was funny and I heard someone scream and I had to help but that asshole Uber, he-he-he saw Emma over the feed and said things about her and then… and then when she was like ‘we’re fifteen’ he was just like ‘could’ve fooled me’ and laughed!”
I bit my lip, feeling so pathetic that now of all times I was getting weepy. “I wanted to blast that stupid drone so much but I couldn’t because I wasn’t in costume and the worst thing was… they kept on treating it all like it was a joke. That cat-thing clawed at me and it hurt - no, don’t worry, mom, I sucked down some electricity to fix it - but they were still making jokes and I couldn’t use my powers and I felt…
“... I felt helpless.”
Mom wrapped her long fingers around her mug, pursing that wide mouth of hers - so much like mine. It made her look… old. “Oh. Oh, Taylor.”
I blinked against the stinging in my eyes before it could turn into tears and sniffed. I didn’t want to cry. I wanted to scream and rant. “I couldn’t just do nothing,” I insisted. “I couldn’t. They didn’t deserve to get away with what they were doing. I was there and I forced them away from the mall, but they got away with everything they were there for. They needed to lose. To be shown that they can’t do that kind of sh- that kind of thing. That they couldn’t… that they couldn’t look at Emma like that and laugh like that and… and… and...”
“I understand.” She raised one finger. “I understand why. Trust me. I do. When the world seems unwilling to change, when people seem to get away with things because of a system that’s always rigged…”
“Exactly!”
“I hadn’t finished. Yes, that’s something that can be all so tempting, my dear. But violence has a habit of turning good intentions sour. I’m not saying that there’s never a place in the world for force, because when a game is set up so you’ll never win, sometimes it’s necessary to overturn the board. But it’s very easy to resort to violence, and it reinforces patterns of violent hegemony. Violence is a treacherous weapon, prone to turn in the hand of the wielder, and worse, it shapes patterns of thought.”
Mom seemed to be going off on a tangent, and I said as much.
“Maybe. Or maybe I want to ask you why you felt that attacking those two idiot boys was the only solution you had?”
“I wasn’t doing it just to attack them!” I protested. It... well, it wasn’t entirely a lie. “And I told you, they had monsters, they were cooking up something horrible! I had to follow up on the trail they were leaving, it was the only chance we had to tail them back to their base! It... it was about protecting people! Taking action!”
She pinned me with a sharp look. One of her ‘Professor Hebert’ looks, the one she used when she’d just found a crack in someone’s argument and was about to apply a chisel to it. “You just told me it was about them needing to lose,” she said, one eyebrow raised.
“It-” I struggled for words. “It was about... about not just rolling over for them! If everyone just rolled over for the gangs, they’d have free run of the city! What other way is there to stand up to them?”
“Didn’t you say that Director Piggot is angry at you for not informing the PRT?” She was just looking at me, with that disappointed air. She wasn’t raising her voice like I was. Every word was calm. “Doesn’t that suggest that something would have been done if you hadn’t decided to put yourself, Amy and Missy in danger? Missy who is, if I recall correctly, thirteen?”
“I... there wasn’t...” I squirmed. It wasn’t fair, how she could pin me in with words like this. “There wasn’t time, they’d have...” Cut me out of things? Not let me help? No, those wouldn’t go down well. What had I been thinking? What had my logic been? I tried to remember...
Mom sat there, watching me while I tried to find a response. A way to explain that yeah, Missy might be thirteen, but she was tough and smart and creative with her power and a better cape than half the parahumans in the city, and yeah, it’s not like I wanted to see her at risk, but she hadn’t been. Not when we’d had Radiant with us to take care of the dragon before it could wake up. And it wouldn’t have mattered if Velocity and Armsmaster had gone in and taken them down; that wouldn’t have taught them anything. Of course they’d lose to two adult heroes plus backup! But being beaten like that wouldn’t change their fucked-up capebro attitudes, they’d just make excuses and keep thinking the same way!
But if I said that, it would come out wrong and she wouldn’t get it like I did and then she’d find some way to pull it apart. I couldn’t verbalise what I knew to be true.
I gave up trying and hung my head, trembling with frustration.
Mom leaned over and wrapped her hands around mine, warm from her mug. “Taylor. You’re flailing. And you’re not being honest about your motives. Not with me, and perhaps worse, not with yourself. If you can’t be honest about why you’re doing something with yourself, then that risks leading you down a very dangerous path.” She gripped tighter. “Maybe, just maybe, you were angry and embarrassed because two petty man-children threatened you in a place you were meant to feel safe. You got mad.”
“But…”
“And it’s alright to be angry about things like that. Not just because you have every right to be, but because anger at male oppression and casual objectification can - and has - done great things.” I could feel the faint tremble in her hands. “But you have to be honest and accept that you’re angry - and channel that anger towards making things better. Rather than just wallow in it, denying that you’re even angry, and waving your claim of higher principles as your banner. When you really just wanted to kick them so hard in the balls they’d be hunched over for days.”
“Mom!” Missy swearing was something which didn’t sound right, but Mom talking like this was even more jarring.
“Stop trying to deflect. So. Mmm. Really, Taylor, why did you do it?”
I knew what she was talking about, behind the careful phrasing. But she was right; my temper was something that could get me in serious trouble if I let it run unchecked. I was a powerful flying Blaster, and if I started using that to solve my problems without thought of consequence... that would make me like her. Flinching at the thought, I hunched my shoulders, looked down at my empty mug and examined my actions again.
“I was angry,” I muttered. “I was humiliated. I hated them for perving on me and Emma even when they knew we were underage, and for scaring her and for hurting me. I wanted to shut them up and make them stop being such... such smug assholes.” I paused, warring with myself, but decided on honesty in the face of maternal disapproval. “And I... maybe I was a bit scared, too. Of what they might do if they got away with it - and of Dox. She’s not an idiot like them. She’s smart, Mom. Too smart. They’re way more dangerous with her helping them.”
Mom rolled her shoulders. “I don’t know what to do with you,” she said. “I… I don’t want you to just become a tool of the authorities. And given how often I hear about you pushing the rules, I don’t think you’re good at being a tool. But I worry about you, Taylor. I really do. You have Danny’s temper, and… well. I do understand where you’re coming from. But the Wards are meant to be keeping you safe, and I have issues with how well they’re doing that. And some of that lies on you. You,” she bit her lip, “you won’t let them keep you safe. And I got called up and they told me you’d gone off and gone after supervillains and…”
“Mom…”
“Taylor, I can’t lose you because of this.” Her words were ones I knew were coming, and they still hurt. “You’ve got every right to be angry but… but you can’t let the anger take over, and you can’t…” She swallowed thickly. “You just can’t.”
“Mom!” I threw myself forward, jostling the coffee table with my hip, and flung my arms around her waist in a tight hug. “It’s okay,” I said into her side. “It’s okay, please don’t get upset. I’m sorry. I’ll do better, I promise.”
I felt her breath hitch a little, and her arms came down and settled around me.
“Do you mean that, though, Taylor? Or will you just forget the next time you see an injustice and get frustrated?”
“I will.” I looked up at her, kneeling awkwardly by the armchair and leaning awkwardly across her lap. From this angle I could see the lines around her eyes, and the streaks of grey in her hair that losing Dad and worrying about me had put there. “I will, I promise, mom. I’ll take my Console duty and play by the rules and make friends with the new girl and do better from now on. I will. I don’t want you to lose me either.”
She brushed my hair back, judging my sincerity just like she had when I was a kid promising to go to bed after ‘just one more chapter’ instead of staying up reading all night. Whatever it was she looked for to tell whether I was being honest, she found it. A slight smile replaced the terse look of worry and disappointment.
“You’re still grounded for the next week,” she said. “No reading until all your homework is done - and you do it down here, not up in your room.”
... that was fair, I guessed. At least I’d be out for the winter break. I nodded without complaint, and she stroked my hair again before dislodging my awkward hug.
“And you can help me make dinner, too.”
I nodded again and got up. I wouldn’t complain, I wouldn’t object, and I’d be a perfectly behaved Ward and daughter for as long as my punishment lasted. I’d keep my temper in check and get to know Megumi and obey all the rules.
And the next time I ran into Half-A in the line of duty, I would follow all of the guidelines and all of my orders and be the model of professionalism as I wrecked their fucking faces.