Amelia, Final Epilogue- Taylia Rose
I always knew Victoria and Michael weren't my biological parents. They never made me call them mom or dad, though they raised me as their own while doing all the many tasks of running the multiworld empire I would one day inherit. Still, I considered them my Mom and Dad in every way that mattered. I had a lot of parents, if I thought about it. My real mothers were the stuff of legend, sacrificing their lives to stop the most powerful being in the world from destroying it. An event that happened a year before my birth. Yay for the biotechnology that allowed my conception and birth.
I was more than vaguely aware that most of the known universe considered that kind of technology to be science fiction at the time of my birth, and even now it was likely most people my age would never live long enough to see a relative benefit from such technology. I hoped that didn't make me out of touch with the real world. There were so many things in my life that so many people simply did not have. Auntie Clarice and Aunt Vicky always argued over what was best for me in that regard.
Vicky believed in embracing the many privileges of life, if in a tasteful way. She wouldn't allow me to become spoiled or lazy, but she was more than happy to enjoy high fashion and high art and wanted me to be grateful for the opportunities I had. Not enjoying them would be ungrateful. Uncle Mike tempered that a bit, but he mostly let Vicky have her way. By the time I was ten years old, I had seen Paris on four worlds, I was well versed in the great artists, I'd had dinners with more heads of state than existed on any single world, and I suspected Mom was playing matchmaker for my romantic future before I was out of diapers.
Clarice argued quite differently. My mothers came from simple beginnings, and part of what made them great leaders is that they were normal people who understood the fears and problems that normal people faced. She made sure I got plenty of normalcy, if you could call it that. Auntie Clarice was far less normal than Vicky. To start with, having a husband and a wife? Yeah, I wasn't so out of touch to think that was a common practice. And classic movies, going to plays instead of movies, and camping trips in rainforests... I assumed that was not normal.
The one thing they agreed on was that I didn't get to be spoiled. I couldn't remember an age when I didn't go to the meetings with the various world leaders. I couldn't imagine a world where 'good enough' was actually good enough. By the time I was five, I was reading military strategy and world history. By the time I was ten, Vicky was the only combat instructor that wasn't afraid of me. Vicky often told me that I got Taylor's intensity.
During that time, I'd slowly become Empress in all but name. While Mom and Dad were still regents until my sixteenth birthday, they'd stepped back to the same role that Eve, Clarice and Colin served, advising me on my decisions. Of those, Colin was the hardest for me to understand. I was twelve when I confronted the man.
I'd waited until catching him alone in the labs. In later years, I would come to recognize how bizarre it was that our capital consisted mainly of research labs and engineering facilities. This revelation only caused me to worry for other nations. My mothers understood, even at a young age, that science and technology were the key to prosperity for a people. Part of why Avalon's education system was always so rigorous.
"Mister Wallis?" My voice was no nonsense, as always when I talked to him. He seemed to prefer it that way.
"Yes, Miss Hebert?" His body language spoke of someone who was tired, like so many others that had survived the Golden Dawn. A lot of the survivors, especially the ones who fought on the front lines, didn't talk much about their experiences.
"Why do you always look so sad?" I would get my answers from the one man I trusted not to lie to me.
He hesitated for a moment. "I hadn't realized I gave that impression. I'll endeavor to keep tighter control of my emotions in the future."
Well, he wouldn't be hard to figure out if he wasn't so goddamn hard to figure out. "That's not what I mean. I know you're one of the survivors of the battle against Scion. I want to know, is that why you're always so sad?"
"If you want answers to those questions, ask the others. They were there, too."
I regarded him for a minute. "It's your pain I'm asking about, not theirs. It's not healthy to bottle it in like that."
He shook his head. "You remind me of your mother."
I smiled. "I hear that a lot." It usually means I am about to get what I want. "Which one, this time?"
"Amelia. She was always the empathetic one. Taylor was never very good at that, even when she tried to fake it." He paused for a moment, in thought. There is history there, between him and Taylor. Something deep seated, a level of guilt.
I ignored the implication that he suspected I was faking my concern, instead studying the crow's feet around his eyes. "I can't trust any of them to tell me the truth. Mom and the others either only talked about the epic battles or the sacrifice my mothers made. They always gloss over the ugly parts. The war itself, and what it did to people. The ones that still haven't seemed to heal from the trauma."
"That's what war is, Taylia. Everyone loses something. Some lose everything. May you never have to experience that."
I didn't understand what he meant, not then. Later would be a different story. "I take it you think of yourself as one of the ones who lost everything."
He looked up and slowly exhaled. "The only person who ever loved me. You'll never have that problem, you have the universe's most dedicated extended family. I don't mean to sount resentful, I'm not. You have quite the legacy to live up to, after all."
Avalon enjoyed a period of relative peace in those times. The United Worlds found itself concerned mainly with socio-political issues of attempting to blend such similar nations together and manage the colony programs. As the only nation capable of interdimensional gateway technology, and the only one lacking strong ties with any nation or world, Avalon was at the forefront this new breed of expansionism, encouraging trade and economic interconnectivity. It turned out that most nations of most worlds, if given the opportunity, would much prefer making money to making war.
Until we opened the gate to Earth Mem, with their Sapphire Empress. She was an incredibly powerful Alexandria package cape, with remarkable Master and Thinker powers to back her up. In the twenty years she had her powers, she managed to subjugate a nuclear technology level Earth. She was less than enthused about an empire greater than her own, and less than impressed with the not quite fifteen year old that ruled it.
That would be my first taste of war, when she led an invasion directly against Avalon. It lasted less than a full hour before their armies were driven back. It marked me for the rest of my life. The battlefields, the lives lost, the unadulterated waste of it all. It wasn't the death that hit me, not really. It wasn't even the violence or that there were people evil enough to send a million of their own loyal subjects to die in a senseless waste of life without apology or remorse. What really made the horror hit home was that those million people did so willingly. That they could devote their lives to such monsters, that... I had my own Trigger event, three days before fifteenth birthday.
"This is the part where you're supposed to watch Scion and Heiress mating."
"We... decided to censor that, since you're not going to forget this... and with the power you're about to get, you'll understand the Cycle better than pretty much any human being possibly could."
I know those voices. I've seen their speeches a million times, memorized their faces. "Mother?"
"No, a recording of sorts." Taylor's voice. She was the more mas- "And please don't assign male gender pronouns to me in an attempt to make sorting us out easier. I'm sure I won't care anymore by the time you get this message, but I still care right now."
My mothers manifested in front of me. Their faces were clearly defined, and I could see what I inherited from both. Taylor's rich dark hair, though not as curly. I got wavy hair instead. I could tell I'd have her height, even if I wasn't there yet. The rounder face and spattering of freckles from Amelia.
Below the neck, my mothers were poorly defined, blurred outfits of blue and green, I could barely tell they were holding hands. A flicker of recognition. They chose to leave a Trigger recording while wearing their wedding dresses?
Amelia spoke, her voice soft. "We just wanted a chance to tell you we loved you, in our own voices. We always have. Before you were born, or even conceived, we loved you."
Taylor was next. "We did. We loved you so much. We talked about you, so many times before you were born. We swore to each other that the first thing that would happen after Scion's destruction would be you. Worried and prayed that we'd be good mothers. I guess we'll never know, now."
Amelia took over again. I've seen them do this in so many of their interviews and speeches. I'd so often wondered if that was something they rehearsed, but somehow I just knew now that it was genuine. This is natural to them. "We have a responsibility to the universe. Scion wasn't the only of his kind. There are billions, perhaps trillions of others like him in the universe, spreading. They will destroy everything if no one stops them. Tell Eve to access the files on The Culling, Ascended Pairbonds, and The Avatar. You're the only one who can authorize it."
"It answers the basics of everything we learned. What we've become, what we plan to do. We wanted you to have a normal childhood."
Amelia shook her head. "Or at least a happy one. Normal was never really an option."
"Well, yeah. A happy childhood. No sense in laying this burden at your feet. It's still not your burden. Unless we fail, then it will be on you and all the others we've left behind. Eve, especially, will be key to this future."
I snapped out of my vision with tears in my eyes, and a complete understanding of how my powers worked. My mothers gave me the exact tool I'd need in every situation, but not nearly so much power that I could do win without working for it.
My first act as a parahuman was to challenge the Sapphire Empress to battle. She never stood a chance. I was a power imitating Trump. Anyone who fought against me would find that I possessed all their powers, and understood how they worked as well as they did. Coupled with my natural physical and mental abilities, and a small amount of help from Avalon's wide array of weaponry, I could answer any threat both direct or indirect.
Much like Taylor, I defeated my first top tier parahuman at fifteen years old.
Unlike her, there weren't a lot of opportunities for me to do that again in the future. Unless daily training sessions with Victoria counted.
The absurdity of Avalon's weaponry, the revelation that I had powers on par with my mothers, was enough to warn off anyone that might have considered making themselves a problem. With exception to a handful of Masters and Strangers that believed themselves outside the capacity of my powers to beat. I even managed to hide my low end telepathic abilities and the fact that I had the ability to control my mothers' zerg if I needed to. We'd found a few capes that had the ability to command a handful at a time over the years, but I had access to all of them.
The next major event in my life happened when I was almost twenty eight years old. The body of a Scion Type Entity appeared in the skies over our devastated world of Wruenelle. Alerts sounded and Eve's satellites, in multiple realities, turned and primed to attack.
A woman's face appeared on our screens. "Good day, daughter. I see you've done well for yourself."
"Mom?" Eve asked.
That would mean. "Dragon?"
"Correct. And you would be the daughter of Amelia and Taylor?"
"Yes."
"We have a great deal to talk about, then."
Colin and Dragon became the second Pairbond to ascend. The first time I ever saw the man smile, was the moment he was melded with the Avatar Body, a mimic of the original Scion body, built through the knowledge that my mothers had provided. The ability, should a hostile Entity ever target earth, to functionally allow a human to gain their powers. Or, in this case, the powers of a peaceful, cooperating, Entity.
Over the next three hundred years, I would meet and say goodbye to many new Pairbonds, joining the remnants of the Entities- the first three, and several others that would sporadically appear over Wruenelle as time went on to form more of the Taylia type Entities, as bizarre as it was to hear my name used as the reference of the phenomena. Each dead Scion Type had enough mass to be sorted into six or seven Taylia types, depending on factors only the Entities themselves could understand.
Some chose to Ascend immediately. Victoria and Micheal would be the third pair to take to the stars. Along with many of the others who fought alongside my mothers. Weld and Sveta. Zach and Emma. Others waited, allowed themselves to die naturally without intent to be restored. Lily and Sabah. Lisa and Rebecca. Hellena and Cambria, from Earth Dalet. Dozens of others I had never met, often from worlds we had not yet discovered. My own Reginald.
That is correct, I had I found my own Pairbond. A man whose power allowed him to fuse his body into another living being, controlling them from the inside. The second half didn't work so well on me, but we discovered how much better our powers could be together. His power strengthened mine, and mine strengthened his. As seemed to be the natural pattern, we married and had children of our own.
Theoretical immortality aside, humans don't do well with age. Even with all other factors being negated, we tire, we lose the concept of time. My own children and even some great grandchildren either chose to Ascend, or simply die naturally, over that time. Even my own enhanced nature was subject to that. I appointed my own great great great something grandson, Daniel IX, to take my place as ruler of the Empire of Avalon, and at age three hundred and twenty nine, I joined my family once again.
[REUNION]
[LOVE]
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A/N- And that is the end end of Amelia.
A couple parts may have made me a little weepy eyed.
Also- a thread started to discuss what comes next as far as my writing is concerned.
https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/after-amelia.1625/
And for those newbies who came along and read this long, long after it was finished... mind dropping a PM letting me know where you stumbled across it?