Chapter Text
FRI FEB 25
After thinking on it for the rest of the school day, I decided that what I liked about Cassie was probably the same things I'd liked about Emma, when we'd first started hanging out. Outgoing, confident, opinionated... Cass felt like she knew who she was, as a more whole and complete person than I felt like, a lot of the time. I'd looked up to Emma for the same reason.
That left me feeling conflicted, but also had me re-evaluating my various relationships through this new lens. I think I was... envious, at least a little. I had days when I didn't feel like a person. When I didn't feel real. It was better lately, especially with how my life has been looking up since I left Winslow behind... but it was pretty clear I'd been depressed. Might still be depressed.
I shook my head. Those were thoughts for later, whenever I got around to looking up therapists. The point was, I was surrounding myself with people who felt like people, because I wanted to feel like they did. Or at least, how I'd imagined they did. I could feel their emotions, but I couldn't tell if they felt... valid, the way I didn't right now.
I was heading to the gym, going through the motions to get me where I said I'd be. I wasn't sure what'd set off my mood. Maybe yesterday was finally sinking in, or maybe the latest Emma realization sent me into a funk. It could be both, or neither for all I knew. Yeah, therapy was starting to sound pretty nice, if moods like this were the alternative.
While my melancholic gait was functional, it was slow. I found Kara and Amy waiting for me, when I got there. They led me around the balcony above the courts, instead of to the stairs. Apparently, now that we'd shown the teachers we really were going to be a weekly meeting, we warranted having one of the free rooms lining the gym to ourselves. The other girls- and a couple of boys- were setting out mats when we got there. It wasn't the full number we'd had last week though, and Cass wasn't here yet. I could tell she hadn't left the school, though.
It was getting easier to keep my attention on people, even when I didn't have to. I didn't lose track of what I was doing, or what I was thinking, the information just... there, since I hadn't really let go of it like I used to do instinctively. Tracy was downstairs, talking to one of the coaches. Vicky looked like she'd just shown up, talking to a boy I thought was probably Dean. I'd tagged a few people specifically while I'd been in class with them, and I'd just known what they were up to, until they left the block or two around the school. I'd have to experiment next week, during class.
"So," I broke the quiet chatter in the room as everyone's attention drew itself to me. "I don't think everyone's here yet?" Amy shrugged and Kara shook her head. "I think we can wait a bit, then." I mostly just wanted to give Cassie time to show up before I was busy teaching. "How has everyone been?"
And like that, the floodgates opened. I'd said it more to be polite and invite others to fill a silence I didn't feel motivated to fix on my own, than out of any real curiosity. So I waited, listening to them talk about their weeks. A few of them had overlapping stories, and cut in playfully. My chest ached slightly at the easy friendships on display, despite having two of my own best friends right here with me. Emotions were stupid, I decided.
Susan's week was fairly boring, aside from cheer practice, she was the studyholic sort. She was reading some new fantasy book though, despite seeming more like a sci-fi girl. I wound up actually talking to her the most while we waited, swapping book recommendations instead of just listening and occasionally chiming in like I'd been doing.
Girls I recognized continued trickling in; Erika, Abby, Millie... I also saw someone I hadn't been expecting, at this point. I kept the surprise off my face until Vicky tapped at the door frame and cheerfully called, "Knock knock!"
"Vicky?" I asked, turning back to her and the three others following after. Dean wasn't a surprise with his girlfriend involved, but Carlos was, and I didn't recognize the younger girl with them. "I didn't think you were coming?"
She floated over, coming in for one of those neck-hugs busty girls seemed to default to. "Oh, it just took a bit, waiting for people to catch up." She motioned back to the others. "You know Dean, and this is Carlos, and Missy." She seemed to hesitate, though she was still floating, so I couldn't sense her emotions. "Dean knows her from somewhere." She finished lamely.
The girl glared at Vicky, while Dean chuckled. "Yeah, somewhere." He supplied. Carlos looked very much like he wanted to sigh or palm his face, but forced himself not to.
"Hey, Dean. Hello again, Carlos." I forced a pleasant smile to my face to greet them. Then I turned to the girl. "And it's nice to meet you, Missy. This is supposed to mostly be self-defense for girls, so it's good to have you here." I looked around, focused more on my senses than the room. "Just waiting for another couple people who said they'd be here, then we'll get started."
Tracy came up from downstairs and folded herself into the group with fake smiles and chipper greetings. Then the person I'd really been waiting on showed up.
"What's she doing here?" Vicky sniped from across the room. Amy was silent, but her eyes were hard, seeming to agree with her sister. Kara's gaze was more calculating, but certainly wasn't a warm one.
I sighed, hoping everyone would pretend not to notice was too much to ask, it seemed. "I invited her."
"But…" Vicky sputtered, confused. A ripple of disapproval and agitation flowed through most of those already gathered at my assertion. "She's…" She clammed up, not quite to the point of shouting 'Empire' at Arcadia, where it seemed to be a faux-pas. Instead, I felt her aura start leaking out. Cass winced, her emotions smothered under a wave of terror. "You shouldn't be here."
"Vicky, aura." I said, firmly. I could feel the awe trying to press into my mind, but I ignored it. She turned to me, the awe briefly shifting to fear. All that did was turn my stern look into a glare, as I kept ignoring it. She grimaced as the aura faded, seeming to realize all flaring it would do was turn me against her. "I know you don't like her, and have reasons for that." This time Cass flinched a little, looking my way and hiding the flash of indignation and betrayal she was feeling. "But she's changing. Right?" I turned to Carlos, who was looking on sternly. His emotions were muted, the effect familiar, but not my current focus. He glanced away without agreeing. I turned to the crowd, where I spotted Serei looking on, outwardly ambivalent and inwardly conflicted. "Right?" She glanced to the side, but nodded. I turned back to Vicky, who was still angry, but the intensity of it had died down. "You're my friend, but so is she. I don't want to spark off fights just because I wanted to spend time with my friends." I could tell she wasn't convinced. "Look at her." I indicated my hand toward Cassie's face, head, and hair. "She's trying." I had told her she could come, and that I'd vouch for her. I still felt a little leery about our friendship, but if she did want to prove it, earn my trust, then I couldn't just push her away whenever it felt convenient. I had to put in some effort, too. Vicky still didn't seem convinced, biting her lip and deep in thought. Amy was still watching, just as disapproving as she'd felt when Cass had come in, but wasn't speaking up against her. We'd already had an argument about Cassie, I assumed this was an extension of that. Amy either trusting me to be right, or to make my own mistakes.
Kara sighed. "Are you sure?" She asked me, and I nodded. She shook her head. "Vicky." When she turned, Kara flicked her head off to the side, out the door. Vicky felt confused, but nodded and followed her out. It wasn't exactly private, but with the sounds from the court below, a hushed conversation was still pretty hard to overhear.
"Sorry about this," I said to the group. "We'll be starting soon. Anyone not here last week who hasn't had some sort of training or practice fighting before?" It seemed only a couple girls counted there, and I gave a short summary of what we'd worked on last week while watching my friends argue quietly outside. About a minute after they left, they came back in.
"Okay, we're good." Kara said, nodding to me, and then her girls. They seemed confused, but tension started flowing out of them with their nominal leader's acceptance of the situation.
"Thank you." With that solved, I turned to the crowd. "Alright, sorry about that. We're going to start now. Amy?" I called her up, and she came over to join me. Kara and Vicky joined the small crowd, near the center. Cass moved over to the edge, part of, but still apart from, the group. She got a few wary glances, but no one spoke up about her presence. "This is going to be very similar to last week. We're going to go over falls, then strikes, to make sure everyone knows how to not hurt themselves. Then we'll spend most of the time working on common grapples and how to get out of them." I couldn't help but notice a small ripple of disappointment through the group, especially prevalent in young Missy. Most were quick to shift to acceptance, though. "Amy?" We moved back into the old dance, where she'd throw me in various ways, and I'd demonstrate falls.
After the demonstration, we split up again. Kara took a third group, and we all took the girls through it, one at a time. I paid careful attention to the newcomers with my senses, despite also devoting my full attention to whoever I was working with. It was actually starting to scare me a little bit, that I didn't understand what was going on with that. The hardest part was convincing Vicky to stop flying, so she'd learn the skill in case she ever couldn't for some reason. Speaking of, it seemed the three she'd brought were doing fairly well. They obviously had training, and I was impressed by how well Missy handled herself, despite her size and apparent age. She honestly just felt bored and underwhelmed, to my senses.
When we switched to strikes, I decided to try and do something about it. "Hey, Missy. Come up here?" The girl was confused, and didn't like being singled out. She felt out of place, but she also seemed to know these skills better than most of the group. If my guess was right, she was one of those girls who felt driven because she'd been left out, and wound up worse off for having passed everyone up. Like Sue'd said about me, the runt trying extra hard because she had to. Now to test the theory... I knelt down in front of her, balancing on the balls of my feet, to put her height above mine. Her irritation flared, fury and indignation sparking to life as her face tensed to prevent herself from sneering at me. I didn't have to fake my satisfied grin. "Okay, now I want you to punch me."
She reminded me of myself, when I was going through that phase. I think I was eight or nine, always insisting I was big now, and grown up. Mom put a stop to it, when we were driving home one day. We'd taken a trip to Boston, and were on the highway back to Brockton. I honestly couldn't remember what I'd said to set her off, but she just smiled and told me that if I was such a big girl, I should start doing big girl things. So she'd sat me in her lap and started the car driving again, before letting me have control of the wheel. To this day, I was still a little scared of driving, after feeling terrified I was going to cause a crash. In hindsight, there was probably very little danger. The highway was pretty clear even for a weekday, she still had control over the gas and brakes, and her hands probably never strayed far from the wheel. Her goal was pretty obvious, either I'd start learning an important skill early, or I'd shut up about wanting to do things I was well too young or small for, for a while. Mom was great, but she was intense sometimes.
Missy blinked, surprised. I just kept kneeling, resting my arms on my thighs and smiling at her. Her frustration flared again, and if I hadn't been waiting for it, I might've missed the punch she threw. It was a good one; brought up, cocked in the same motion, and slung toward my jaw in less than a second. To her surprise, I caught her fist in my hand anyway, grinning harder.
"That was very good form." I said honestly, dropping her hand and stretching to my full height again. I took the time to theatrically dust my pants, before I turned my smile back on her. "You know, my mom used to say that the best way to learn, was to teach. She was a professor at the university." I shook my head and gave a wistful sigh. "Anyway, what do you say? Want to give it a try?"
She still seemed shocked, glancing around a little while she processed the question. Then a giddy feeling started bubbling up from inside her, and she smiled. "Sure!"
I shooed her off to Amy and Kara, turning to catch Carlos' oddly intense stare. His emotions were still hard to read, and if my guess was right... the effect felt familiar because he was Aegis. It didn't seem that strange that a teen hero would feel protective of the youngest person in the room. I flicked my head up a little to acknowledge him, then brought my hand to my face while Missy was still turned away. I pointed at my eyes, then at Missy's back with both fingers, nodding to him.
He seemed surprised, then determined. He nodded back. He'd help me keep an eye on her, then. I gave the demonstration for how to- and not to- throw a punch, then the group split up again, into quarters this time. We made sure the smallest of the girls went to Missy, just so the height difference from teacher to student would be mitigated, and she didn't seem to mind that reasoning. Strikes didn't take long to go over, so we moved on.
Grapples were the important part of the lesson. We demonstrated the most common ways someone might grab someone else, assuming attackers with both no skill or limited training. I didn't want to go into well trained attackers at this point, mostly to avoid demoralizing anyone. We split up again, and I ran Missy through the exercises first to make sure she had them down. She didn't get her own group to teach this time, but after proving she knew her stuff, I promised she'd help teach later. We spent a good half an hour after letting the group pair off just making sure everyone had a chance to practice properly. Then I made good on my promise and had Missy take the students who still wanted to practice strikes off to the side. This included Carlos, which I assumed was to make keeping an eye on her easier. Kara took falls practice this week, while Amy helped me with the large number of grapplers.
About an hour later, we called it for the day. The teachers were showered with praise as people packed up the mats and their stuff to leave, either to hit the showers or head home. I got a few phone numbers as people left- or checks to see if their numbers were already in my phone thanks to Kara and Vicky- Carlos' among them. Eventually it was just a few of us left, and Cassie had to leave too.
"Apparently, I have an appointment." She'd said indignantly, after a few minutes checking her phone while the crowd thinned from the room. She waved, and headed out. I tried not to worry about her, since she'd been at this for a year or so already.
After that it was just the Dallons, Missy, Kara, and a few of Kara's girls, most notably her girlfriend Mandy. Missy was confused about what was going on with Cassie, but aside from that didn't seem to care about our drama. "I had a lot of fun. Way more than I expected." She said, brightly. Then she gave me her phone number. "This is every Friday, right?" When we answered affirmatively, she nodded and smiled again. "I think I'll drop by when I can."
That changed our departing sentiments to 'see you next week's rather than generic 'see you later's. With her gone, Vicky started wondering whether or not to try and drop in on a Wards patrol or something.
"Aaactually..." I muttered, catching everyone's attention. "I kinda'... have something to talk to you about." I glanced over to Kara and grimaced as apologetically as I could. "...with Amy."
Kara held up her hands and smiled. "Say no more." And led her cadre out.
Vicky was glancing in confusion between me and Amy. Then her eyes widened. "You know it's okay with me if you're gay, right?" She asked bluntly, causing Amy to blush cutely and grumble-cuss far less cutely.
From the roaring guffaws outside the door, Kara hadn't been quite out of earshot yet, when she asked that.
I glared at Vicky and she winced, smiling sheepishly. "I'm not gay." I muttered darkly, rubbing at my face. She opened her mouth to say something else, and I snapped a quick, "No." causing her mouth to click shut.
"Sooo... what's it about, then?" She asked, fidgeting a bit.
"I'm... uhh." I glanced around the room. No one would bother bugging a regular school gym room, right? I moved over to the door and shut it, before motioning them to follow me to the far end of the room. I had her lean in close, and whispered, "I'm a cape."
Vicky backed off half a foot back and into the air, watching me closely for a moment before glancing to Amy, who looked distinctly unsurprised. "You knew?" Her eyes darted between us a couple times, before they widened. "She's Terra." She whispered, and we gave small nods to confirm it.
"I... kinda' want to talk about it, but not here." I shook my head, thinking for a moment. "Maybe at home?"
Vicky nodded, then snorted. "That's why you weren't worried about me pulling your arm off, isn't it?" I smirked a little and nodded, to which she chuckled and shook her head. "Well, I've got the car today. Gotta take it home anyway." I had no problem with that, so we headed down to let one of the coaches know we were done with the room, then made our way out to the car.
---
The ride was pretty quiet, with Vicky thinking and focused on the road. Amy was checking her phone to distract herself from the worry I could tell she was feeling, while I was trying to push my own into a dark corner of my mind where I could ignore it. I still couldn't sense very well through all the jiggling and tires, so I was as surprised as they were when we found a fairly nice car that didn't look like Gram's driver in the driveway already.
We parked on the curb, and hopped out. The second my feet were on the ground, I could tell that Dad was in the kitchen, along with another man. They were talking, ignoring the coffee mugs on the table in favor of a pair of beer bottles. Both were agitated, worried, frustrated... but the other man was a mess of anxious sorrow and fear as well. After a moment, I shook myself. If I hadn't figured it out yet, I probably wouldn't before I just went in and asked.
I led the sisters into the house, and heard Dad say, "That'll be Taylor." and the other man seemed to sigh and sag with relief.
"Hey, Dad." I said as we rounded the corner. "What's wrong?"
It was then that I recognized the man sitting at the table with Dad as a rather anxious and unkempt Alan Barnes. Dad seemed oblivious to my sudden irrational spike of terror. "Honey, have you seen Emma, lately?"