Ch 220
TanaNari
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Amelia, Ch 220
"Hey, Ames," Vicky spoke as she walked into my brand new office. Yes, I have an office now, instead of just remodeling my bedroom. Once upon a time, that bedroom had been an office that I just created a bed in when I chose not to go home to sleep. At this point, it had been months since I even set foot in that house. Time to give up and simply admit I live at my job. "Your birthday's in May. So why are you celebrating it in the middle of November? Are you in that big a hurry to turn eighteen? Because we can have a perfectly ordinary party, if you're bored."
I hesitated for a moment. She's not going to like this one, I thought to myself. Sorry, Vicky, but I promised myself this when I took my birth name. "It's my real birthday," I told her. "Or my real birth month, at least. Apparently finding out who my birth mother was still isn't an option. And it's looking more and more like my father renamed me after getting me, so nuts to having an identifiable birth certificate."
"And what's wrong with you being Amy Dallon?" Vicky argued, staring me down. "I get that you were pissed at mom. I even get why. But this is like you're saying you don't want to be my sister."
Ouch. "That's not..." I sighed. "That's not what it's about. It's about being me, instead of what other people try to force me to be. I stopped pretending to be Amy Dallon because I wasn't happy. I've found who I am now, who I want to be."
"So you don't want to be my sister," she pressed.
"No!" I repled. "I do. I just... honestly, I want to be your sister now more than I did... before." I looked away.
"Oh, right," she muttered. "I kinda try not to think about that."
I cringed. "I spent the last three and a half years of my life trying not to think about it." At least it's comforting how I don't really find her attractive anymore. Lisa said it was because her aura warped my memory of her. What she really looks like is really very different than what my mind saw. Rose colored glasses, superpowers edition. "You can understand why I'd like to put that part of my life behind me."
"So you'd rather be Marquis' daughter than Mom's?" she asked.
"If you asked me that a few months ago, I would have said 'fuck yes'," I told her. "Now? Yes, as a matter of fact, I think I would have. I still have some memories of what my life was like. Before. They're happy memories. Whatever Marquis might have been, he was a caring father. I'd like to think that, maybe, we'd have a relationship a little like Taylor and her dad. Fuck, even now Danny treats me more like a daughter than either of them did for the whole ten years of my life I spent with them."
"Except the part where he was a supervillain," she argued. "Probably would have turned out more like Eric or Theo and their fathers. Is that the kind of parental relationship you'd rather have?"
"Maybe," I shrugged. "But at least there's a chance. Maybe he would have cared about me. Maybe I wouldn't have been treated like a ticking time bomb or completely ignored or... everything else. You can't blame me for choosing 'maybe okay' over 'guaranteed suck', can you?"
"Was it really all bad?" she asked. I almost backed out then. SupportLove. I drew on my link with Taylor. This was a long time coming, and I'm not going to chicken out of it yet again just to spare Vicky's feelings.
"Other than you?" I replied. "It really kinda was. Sure, it was all first world problems. I wasn't starved or sold into slavery or beaten or molested, so there are plenty of people who've lived through a lot fucking worse. But I was raised to by a father who couldn't love me and a mother that didn't even pretend not to hate me. Parents I desperately tried to earn some kind of approval from for years and at best got indifference. Yeah, I know they're both trying to make up for it now, and I'm even trying to let them. You should thank Taylor for that, by the way, because she's the only reason I didn't tell Mom to get fucked by Behemoth."
"I... that mindlink between the two of you?" she asked. "You're using it right now, aren't you?"
"Yes," I admitted.
"Is that healthy?" she asked.
I paused for a second, thinking back to what I was like before the link. What Taylor was like. What we were like when we went without it. What happened to Taylor, especially. ConcernInsecurityLoss. I focused back on the link. Don't worry, Taylor, never again. She probably got something closer to comfort and certainty. It was still hard for us to communicate more than the simplest ideas through the link.
"Is it healthy for Eric to be Eric instead of Arianna?" I asked. It may have been a deflection, but it was an analogy I could work with as well. "I'm sure there are people out there with really good arguments why it's not. And ones with equally good arguments why it is. He's happy how he is, and he'd be miserable if I, for whatever reason, decided that what he was asking for was wrong. He gets to live the life he wants, now. So do Taylor and I." AgreementCertaintyLove.
"Well, aside the Endbringers and Despotisms and Space Whales," I added. "But we're kinda stuck with those."
She stood there, chewing over my answer. Or, more likely, trying to find an argument against it. "I kinda hate how much smarter you are than me, sometimes," she finally answered. "This philosophy shit isn't my thing, so I can't really say anything without looking stupid or like a complete bitch."
"Yeah, well, Lisa's tried her best to talk us out of it, too," I smirked. "She finally gave up." After Taylor's death and her own Second Trigger. "If it makes you feel any better, we don't leave the link on constantly. It basically turns off when one of us falls asleep. We also have cutoffs that we can can use to deactivate it temporarily. Like when we're going to the bathroom. We don't have a lot of privacy between us, but there are limits."
"Yeah, I get the idea," Vicky scrunched her face in what I had to assume was exaggerated disgust. "So... yeah... you'd rather be Amelia."
"That doesn't mean I don't want you to be my sister!" I exclaimed. "You have to believe that."
"I know. Lie detector, remember?" she tapped the side of your head. "Sure, your link messes with the emotion part of the bioscan some, but I'm pretty sure you can't actually get a lie through."
"Umm, I've always kinda wondered, what does that look like?" I started. "You know... Taylia... how our emotions look to an outsider. Call it my birthday present."
"Well, okay," she sighed. "The first thing is that the two of you don't get angry. Or, not as angry as you should. Whenever anything really starts to get to you, it's quickly replaced by a sort of... intensity... kinda like when my power starts running and telling me what to do to kill something."
"That one's mostly Taylor," I replied. "She's really big on taking action when something looks bad. Kinda like you, honestly. Whenever you get mad, you turn it toward something productive. Like punching Nazis." I wonder if that's part of why I was attracted to her in the first place. That and the legs. Oh, yes, the legs.
"Well, I do love punching me some Nazis," she agreed with a smile. "You also never stay sad for very long. Like, at all. I get the feeling that if I stormed out of here in anger and swore never to talk to you again, you'd be over it in, like, a day or two. And that might be my ego refusing to let me admit you could get over it sooner."
"You're my sister and I love you." I insisted. " I couldn't just forget about you like that. We put so much time and effort into saving you in the first place."
"Believe me, I'm glad you did," she replied. "But it's... fuck, after Behemoth was destroyed, you and Taylor retreated to your bedroom and by morning you were fine. Not even pretending to be fine. You were both honestly over the whole thing."
"We're not over it," I insisted. DisgustDetermination. "We're still going to make them pay for what they've done."
"I know," she replied. "But then look at everyone else. Missy spent some time crying on Theo's shoulder. Lily and Sabah went straight to one of their bedrooms, and I'm pretty sure they skipped their usual nightly routine of wild sex followed by one or the other stumbling back to their apartment next door because for whatever reason they refuse to actually move in together." Yeah, I still wasn't sure what the story was with that, myself.
Victoria continued running down her list. "Zach and Emma both got themselves banned from PHO. Granted, that happens like once every other week anyway, but they really went all out this time. Eric decided to go after the punching bag until his hands bled."
I remembered that, of course. "He said he just needed to work out some frustration and went overboard," I told her.
"Yeah, doesn't surprise me, he's really hung up on that whole 'real men don't show weakness' shit," she replied. "And I got to lay in bed all night cuddling Riley while she whimpered in her sleep. And the next three nights I spent sparring with Zach and Emma and Crystal and Eric while Riley stayed with you. The only person who didn't seem bothered by all this is Lisa. I'm pretty sure she's decided there's exactly one person on this planet that she actually cares about, and it's not the eight or nine million Chinese who died."
ConcernSurprise. "Wow... I didn't realize... are we really that oblivious?"
"Kinda," Vicky answered. "You two get so caught up in the grand mission and each other that there's not a lot of space in those noggins of yours to notice everything else going on around you." RealizationWorryFailure.
"Pot calling the kettle black here, sis," I retorted.
"Hey, I'd be doing the same thing if I could," she argued. "But there aren't any more Nazis left to punch, and there aren't any heterosexual life partners for me to cuddle with in our underwear. Don't say Lisa, because there's literally no one worse."
"What? You prefer Riley?" I teased.
"Okay, I was wrong."
==============
A/N- Yeah, I know the formatting got borked in the last bit. Fixed now.
"Hey, Ames," Vicky spoke as she walked into my brand new office. Yes, I have an office now, instead of just remodeling my bedroom. Once upon a time, that bedroom had been an office that I just created a bed in when I chose not to go home to sleep. At this point, it had been months since I even set foot in that house. Time to give up and simply admit I live at my job. "Your birthday's in May. So why are you celebrating it in the middle of November? Are you in that big a hurry to turn eighteen? Because we can have a perfectly ordinary party, if you're bored."
I hesitated for a moment. She's not going to like this one, I thought to myself. Sorry, Vicky, but I promised myself this when I took my birth name. "It's my real birthday," I told her. "Or my real birth month, at least. Apparently finding out who my birth mother was still isn't an option. And it's looking more and more like my father renamed me after getting me, so nuts to having an identifiable birth certificate."
"And what's wrong with you being Amy Dallon?" Vicky argued, staring me down. "I get that you were pissed at mom. I even get why. But this is like you're saying you don't want to be my sister."
Ouch. "That's not..." I sighed. "That's not what it's about. It's about being me, instead of what other people try to force me to be. I stopped pretending to be Amy Dallon because I wasn't happy. I've found who I am now, who I want to be."
"So you don't want to be my sister," she pressed.
"No!" I repled. "I do. I just... honestly, I want to be your sister now more than I did... before." I looked away.
"Oh, right," she muttered. "I kinda try not to think about that."
I cringed. "I spent the last three and a half years of my life trying not to think about it." At least it's comforting how I don't really find her attractive anymore. Lisa said it was because her aura warped my memory of her. What she really looks like is really very different than what my mind saw. Rose colored glasses, superpowers edition. "You can understand why I'd like to put that part of my life behind me."
"So you'd rather be Marquis' daughter than Mom's?" she asked.
"If you asked me that a few months ago, I would have said 'fuck yes'," I told her. "Now? Yes, as a matter of fact, I think I would have. I still have some memories of what my life was like. Before. They're happy memories. Whatever Marquis might have been, he was a caring father. I'd like to think that, maybe, we'd have a relationship a little like Taylor and her dad. Fuck, even now Danny treats me more like a daughter than either of them did for the whole ten years of my life I spent with them."
"Except the part where he was a supervillain," she argued. "Probably would have turned out more like Eric or Theo and their fathers. Is that the kind of parental relationship you'd rather have?"
"Maybe," I shrugged. "But at least there's a chance. Maybe he would have cared about me. Maybe I wouldn't have been treated like a ticking time bomb or completely ignored or... everything else. You can't blame me for choosing 'maybe okay' over 'guaranteed suck', can you?"
"Was it really all bad?" she asked. I almost backed out then. SupportLove. I drew on my link with Taylor. This was a long time coming, and I'm not going to chicken out of it yet again just to spare Vicky's feelings.
"Other than you?" I replied. "It really kinda was. Sure, it was all first world problems. I wasn't starved or sold into slavery or beaten or molested, so there are plenty of people who've lived through a lot fucking worse. But I was raised to by a father who couldn't love me and a mother that didn't even pretend not to hate me. Parents I desperately tried to earn some kind of approval from for years and at best got indifference. Yeah, I know they're both trying to make up for it now, and I'm even trying to let them. You should thank Taylor for that, by the way, because she's the only reason I didn't tell Mom to get fucked by Behemoth."
"I... that mindlink between the two of you?" she asked. "You're using it right now, aren't you?"
"Yes," I admitted.
"Is that healthy?" she asked.
I paused for a second, thinking back to what I was like before the link. What Taylor was like. What we were like when we went without it. What happened to Taylor, especially. ConcernInsecurityLoss. I focused back on the link. Don't worry, Taylor, never again. She probably got something closer to comfort and certainty. It was still hard for us to communicate more than the simplest ideas through the link.
"Is it healthy for Eric to be Eric instead of Arianna?" I asked. It may have been a deflection, but it was an analogy I could work with as well. "I'm sure there are people out there with really good arguments why it's not. And ones with equally good arguments why it is. He's happy how he is, and he'd be miserable if I, for whatever reason, decided that what he was asking for was wrong. He gets to live the life he wants, now. So do Taylor and I." AgreementCertaintyLove.
"Well, aside the Endbringers and Despotisms and Space Whales," I added. "But we're kinda stuck with those."
She stood there, chewing over my answer. Or, more likely, trying to find an argument against it. "I kinda hate how much smarter you are than me, sometimes," she finally answered. "This philosophy shit isn't my thing, so I can't really say anything without looking stupid or like a complete bitch."
"Yeah, well, Lisa's tried her best to talk us out of it, too," I smirked. "She finally gave up." After Taylor's death and her own Second Trigger. "If it makes you feel any better, we don't leave the link on constantly. It basically turns off when one of us falls asleep. We also have cutoffs that we can can use to deactivate it temporarily. Like when we're going to the bathroom. We don't have a lot of privacy between us, but there are limits."
"Yeah, I get the idea," Vicky scrunched her face in what I had to assume was exaggerated disgust. "So... yeah... you'd rather be Amelia."
"That doesn't mean I don't want you to be my sister!" I exclaimed. "You have to believe that."
"I know. Lie detector, remember?" she tapped the side of your head. "Sure, your link messes with the emotion part of the bioscan some, but I'm pretty sure you can't actually get a lie through."
"Umm, I've always kinda wondered, what does that look like?" I started. "You know... Taylia... how our emotions look to an outsider. Call it my birthday present."
"Well, okay," she sighed. "The first thing is that the two of you don't get angry. Or, not as angry as you should. Whenever anything really starts to get to you, it's quickly replaced by a sort of... intensity... kinda like when my power starts running and telling me what to do to kill something."
"That one's mostly Taylor," I replied. "She's really big on taking action when something looks bad. Kinda like you, honestly. Whenever you get mad, you turn it toward something productive. Like punching Nazis." I wonder if that's part of why I was attracted to her in the first place. That and the legs. Oh, yes, the legs.
"Well, I do love punching me some Nazis," she agreed with a smile. "You also never stay sad for very long. Like, at all. I get the feeling that if I stormed out of here in anger and swore never to talk to you again, you'd be over it in, like, a day or two. And that might be my ego refusing to let me admit you could get over it sooner."
"You're my sister and I love you." I insisted. " I couldn't just forget about you like that. We put so much time and effort into saving you in the first place."
"Believe me, I'm glad you did," she replied. "But it's... fuck, after Behemoth was destroyed, you and Taylor retreated to your bedroom and by morning you were fine. Not even pretending to be fine. You were both honestly over the whole thing."
"We're not over it," I insisted. DisgustDetermination. "We're still going to make them pay for what they've done."
"I know," she replied. "But then look at everyone else. Missy spent some time crying on Theo's shoulder. Lily and Sabah went straight to one of their bedrooms, and I'm pretty sure they skipped their usual nightly routine of wild sex followed by one or the other stumbling back to their apartment next door because for whatever reason they refuse to actually move in together." Yeah, I still wasn't sure what the story was with that, myself.
Victoria continued running down her list. "Zach and Emma both got themselves banned from PHO. Granted, that happens like once every other week anyway, but they really went all out this time. Eric decided to go after the punching bag until his hands bled."
I remembered that, of course. "He said he just needed to work out some frustration and went overboard," I told her.
"Yeah, doesn't surprise me, he's really hung up on that whole 'real men don't show weakness' shit," she replied. "And I got to lay in bed all night cuddling Riley while she whimpered in her sleep. And the next three nights I spent sparring with Zach and Emma and Crystal and Eric while Riley stayed with you. The only person who didn't seem bothered by all this is Lisa. I'm pretty sure she's decided there's exactly one person on this planet that she actually cares about, and it's not the eight or nine million Chinese who died."
ConcernSurprise. "Wow... I didn't realize... are we really that oblivious?"
"Kinda," Vicky answered. "You two get so caught up in the grand mission and each other that there's not a lot of space in those noggins of yours to notice everything else going on around you." RealizationWorryFailure.
"Pot calling the kettle black here, sis," I retorted.
"Hey, I'd be doing the same thing if I could," she argued. "But there aren't any more Nazis left to punch, and there aren't any heterosexual life partners for me to cuddle with in our underwear. Don't say Lisa, because there's literally no one worse."
"What? You prefer Riley?" I teased.
"Okay, I was wrong."
==============
A/N- Yeah, I know the formatting got borked in the last bit. Fixed now.
