REFUGEES
[1.1]

"Just—Just hold on. I've got you."

There was a whimper from below the wreckage, muffled under the wet steel and concrete. The noise was weak, even weaker than it had been a minute ago. As much of a reply as he was going to get.

He bit his lip, eyes running over the largest chunk of concrete laying atop this pile: a corner from the building that had just collapsed, finally succumbing to the damage from the flood and fight. There was an opening along the side of where the chunk laid atop the rubble, but it was impossible to see anything inside through the dark.

He scanned around for someone else, squinting through the night for another person who might have left the shelter to check on the noise, who could help him lift the rubble. It wasn't that far away from the shelter's perimeter; he could still see the lights they had just gotten up with the generator. If the building collapse had woken him up, surely others would have heard it too.

But no one else was there. It was just him.

… Alright.

He slipped his shaking hands under the concrete. He squeezed his eyes shut and sucked in a shuddering breath, then another, and then he heaved. Every fiber in his body burnt like they were being ripped apart, every feeble ounce of muscle pushed to the limit as he threw his entire weight against the rubble. Everything he had against the rubble, but it stubbornly resisted, not budging a single inch no matter how much he tried—

The rubble shifted under his feet, and he felt a sharp drop in his gut.

His arms slipped free of the concrete as his footing slipped, eyes flying open to a star-filled sky tumbling over as he fell—

—

—

—down the enormous mound of debris, world snapping back into focus just in time to glimpse the fall before him.

The wreckage pounded into him as he tumbled through broken concrete and wood. His new "suit" of stolen hockey gear wasn't enough to protect him from the sharp edges and pointed ends he rolled through, or to shield him from the gravel and mud that flew in through the helmet grill to splatter across the ski mask underneath. Spinning and spinning, the sun falling and rising before his eyes as he tried desperately to remember what had happened—

He plunged into the water filling the street below, crashing hard on his shoulder, pain striking through so hot he thought for a moment that something had pierced through and struck bone. Yet despite that, he didn't have time to do more than gasp—he had to get up, fast, scrambling to his feet even as his body protested.

He wasn't alone.

"What—Who the fuck are you?!"

His eyes snapped up to them: three men in the washed-out husk of a building. All of them with shaved heads, tattoos he knew all too well: Norse runes and iron crosses, and one with a full swastika burning bright on his arm, an arm holding out a dagger with a blade straight and long and sharp.

Empire.

Theo went very still.

This was the fight he had been trying to avoid. He had worked as far out in Empire territory as he could to avoid such a confrontation with them. A fight with Empire meant a chance of catching the eye of one of their capes, a chance of being recognized by them no matter how much he tried to disguise his appearance or voice, and a fight that… he didn't know what he would do in. Better to avoid it if he could.

So what was going on? He didn't even know why he was here in the first place; all he knew was that he was caught in a stand-off with Empire goons with nowhere to go. Rubble surrounded what had once been a busy intersection filled with shops and stores. One giant mound of wreckage laid at his back, trapping him in the flooded ruins of a street sunken and splintered into pieces, filled with debris and water that nearly came up to his knees. He could already feel the cold spreading through the hockey pads of his armor and the clothes underneath as the water soaked through, weighing him down and making him even slower while the three men stood atop the drier foundation of one of the buildings. It was the worst possible situation for him, so why was he in it?

He had been… on a patrol, his first real patrol: looking around for injured, or people seeking shelter. Then he had heard something. Yelling, on the other side of a mound of rubble. He had climbed up to check it out, and he saw these three surrounding—

A girl. There had been a girl.

"Where is she?" he asked, his voice pitched low and muffled through the ski mask. "Where is the girl?"

The man with the knife and the swastika, the one who had spoken before, scrunched his eyebrows together. It was almost grotesque on his face full of sharp bones and muscles that strained against the skin. "Girl? What… The girl!"

Theo's heart leapt into his throat. He had forgotten?

"Find her!" the man shouted, swinging around to his companions. "The thief bitch! Prob'ly scurrying around here, the fucking monkey. Go get her!"

"Stop!"

They stopped, the three turning to look at him. The knife gleamed in the harsh sunlight.

Theo clenched his hands into fists to stop them from shaking. He was here for a reason. A black girl surrounded by Empire goons. He had to do this.

"Leave her alone," he said. He spoke slowly, his throat straining at the effort to keep his voice from wavering. "Just… leave, and there won't be any trouble."

One of the other goons guffawed, looking disbelievingly between his friends. "Trouble?" he jeered. "She stole from us! We not allowed to punish her 'cause she's black?"

"That's how they all are," the leader sneered. He took a step forward and raised his knife, Theo's eyes locking on to it. "Well, that's not how it is here in Brockton Bay. The Empire saved this city. It's ours now. Why don't you fuck off before we give you trouble?"

They didn't save it. Just look around, he thought. Their very stand-off was in the middle of a flooded intersection surrounded by the washed-out husks of stores, walls and roofs ripped away by the flood. Similar skeletons loomed above them, making up a giant graveyard that stretched across the coast for miles. Nobody could have saved it, not against that… thing.

But Empire had tried. They had fought, and suffered for it. Lars and Melody were among those they had lost, but it didn't stop there. Johanna was alive, but in a coma that she might never wake up from, and that was only because Alvin had given his own his life to protect her. Justin was gone too, and James as well. Even Nessa, left to be buried by her sister. More than half of the Empire's capes, just… gone.

Theo knew that these three here weren't alone in thinking the city owed the Empire now because of it. He knew better than them how much the Empire was hurting.

He also knew that didn't give them the right to do whatever they were planning to do to that girl—what they did every day. Nothing could.

"I won't let you hurt her," he swore.

The man with the knife smiled, lips stretching wide across his face. "Kid, you should be worrying about you."

The man jerked his head to the side, and his two friends jumped down into the water, walking to opposite sides between him and Theo. Getting closer, surrounding Theo with the wall of rubble at his back.

"Stop," he said, whatever traces of confidence from a moment ago quickly slipping as his eyes darted back and forth, trying to keep everyone in his vision at once. Cocky grins lined their faces as they stared down at him, predators around a gazelle. "I don't want to fight you."

"I wouldn't want to fight us neither," the man laughed. "Don't know who the fuck you think you are, bringing your bullshit into our territory. We're Empire. Think dressing up will make us scared of you? You're nothing."

The men walked closer. One grabbed a small board of wood off the ground and twirled it in his hand.

Theo took a step back, just out of the deeper water, foot sliding on the wet rubble and gravel. Nowhere to go. No solid ground.

"I don't want to do this," he said.

"Yeah, and that's one thing you should've realized by now. What you want? Doesn't matter."

There was movement from the side. Theo twisted his head just in time to see the board of wood hurtling directly at his face.

He wasn't quick enough—

The board crashed into his helmet, slamming him back and knocking him onto the pile of rubble, and before his eyes had time to water up they were on him, the two goons jumping on him, kicking him, pummeling him, grabbing the wood off the ground again and slamming it against his arms raised up around his head until the wood cracked and split apart, his armor's padding not enough, not enough, not to stop the pain—

—

—

The rubble settled. He lied there at the base of the pile, flat on his back, eyes slowly cracking open to stare up at the dark skies.

Every inch of his body hurt. It was all he could do to gasp in air through the pain and the blood pounding in his ears, the stinging and sense of his back being wrong somehow, muscles ground up against one another in ways they weren't meant to. He could feel tears in the back of his shirt and the accompanying cuts and scrapes across his back from the sharp edges and corners. He tried to roll over and only barely moved before pain erupted, needles stinging through his back, his neck, his head. Too much. Too much.

He could still move, at least. He hadn't broken a bone or somehow injured his spine. He hadn't messed up that much.

Maybe it would have been fitting. The first time he tried to do something with his life, only to end up lying alone, broken in a pile of rubble. A failure to the end.

There was a whimper. Not from him—he had yet to reach that level of self-pity. It was from the pile of the rubble, from beneath the block of concrete. Almost inaudible through the steady dripping and sloshing of water.

They needed help.

Gritting his teeth, he stretched an arm out and pushed himself over on to his stomach as the pain somehow worsened, splintering further through his back and shoulders. He began to push himself to his feet, wincing as a sharp edge of rock dug into his hands.

His hands.

He froze.

Of course. He had powers now. He was a parahuman now. He was a—

Idiot. Idiot.

"Just hold on, okay?" he called back to the whimpering rubble, forcing himself to his feet. "I'm going to get you out!"

He turned away and stumbled down the pile of debris to get to the bare street, gritting his teeth—in pain, yes, but also frustration. Three days. Three days he had had these powers and he still acted like they were a surprise. Now because of that—

His feet hit the sludge-covered road, and he quickly dropped to his knees despite his body's groans of pain. He barely registered the icy coldness of the sludge before he was shoving his bare hands into it, through the dirt and mud until he hit the asphalt. He felt it immediately: the connection. The sense in the back of his head he doubted he would ever be able to put into words.

He looked up to the pile of rubble that had gone silent.

"Just hold on," he muttered. Too quiet for them to hear, but he said it for his own ears nonetheless. "Just—"

—

—

"—hold on."

There was laughter above him, another kick at his curled-up form. "What's that? He crying for his mom?"

"Some fucking hero he is," the other said, punctuating it by spitting against the back of Theo's helmet. "Pussy. Does he even have powers, or is he just playing dress-up?"

Do something, he had to do something. He had to help the girl. He had to.

"… enough," he heard from further away, thought he heard through the ringing and pounding in his ears, the laughter above him. "Let's see if hero-boy's learned his lesson."

The kicks petered off, wet footsteps and sloshing water marking their return to the building and climbing back up. Not even close enough to react if Theo tried something. They weren't worried. They had had their fun, and now dismissed him. All that mattered to Theo was that he had room to breathe again.

"Get up," came the voice. "Unless you wanna get back to the beating."

Slowly, he uncurled from the ground. The pain was there, constant that it already was, with a new stiffness in his chest and sensitivity in his limbs from the beating each part of him had endured, with stinging that made him flinch with every bit of contact. To ignore it was impossible, but he had to shove it out of his mind as much as he could. He had to focus.

He tried to rise to his feet, but his legs just collapsed under him, and he fell forward to the muddy water with a splash. Water flooded his helmet and soaked his mask in an instant. He jerked his head back out to the sound of their laughter, coughing and sputtering, holding himself up as the water fell back out through the grill of his hockey helmet.

"Jesus, just look at him. What a fucking waste."

More laughter. He didn't look up. He was focused on peering through the mud and debris of the water, feeling around the gravel underneath as subtly as he could with his hands. He needed ground. Asphalt. Concrete. Something solid, big enough to work.

"Well? You gonna say anything?" the man with the knife demanded. "You deaf now? I'm giving you a chance to ask for mercy. You gonna just turn your nose up at us? You?"

The man was losing patience. They wouldn't just beat him again. They would kill him, slit his throat with that knife. His hands ran across the ground, faster, not caring about the subtlety. Had to find something.

"What the fuck are you doing? Look at me, bitch!"

Had to find something, had to find something—

"Fuck it. I'm done with this bullshit. Kill him."

There was a splash, one of the men jumping back into the deeper water, wading forward, closer.

No time. Had to find ground, find road, had to save her—

There.

The connection. A chunk of road that had survived. Unbroken. Solid.

He pushed—

—

—

—and his hands fell into the asphalt.

The wreckage rumbled before him, and two giant hands rose from beneath the rubble. Each loomed bigger than him, made of the black asphalt almost invisible in the night, but otherwise a perfect representation of his hands. He could feel them like they were his real hands instead of the flesh and bone that had vanished into the ground.

He didn't have time to think about it. He pushed his arms in deeper, and the black hands in front of him extended further. Debris fell aside as the giant limbs twisted over to the chunk of rubble covering the hole. Slowly, their shaking fingers wrapped around the broken piece of building. He lifted, and the debris rose away. Like it was a toy.

He could have cried. But he could feel the arms becoming stiffer, slower. He was taking too long. As quickly as he could, he lifted the rubble to the side and set it down upon the ground.

He did it. He actually did it.

He pulled his arms—his real arms—out of the road, scrambling to his feet, pushing through the water around his legs to run back up the pile of rubble as the arms slowly began to recede back to the earth.

He pulled himself to the top, and stopped.

A golden retriever lied in a shallow pool of water. Both its coat and the water were dark, coated with mud and… blood. It was still.

… It was dead. All that, and he couldn't…

He couldn't—

—

—

—save her. He had to save her.

Asphalt hands erupted from the water. The man reared back, but he wasn't fast enough; they slammed into his chest and sent him flying back into the water with a mighty splash. Theo drew his hands back out of the asphalt, the arms receding, then immediately shoved them back in, more arms coming from the asphalt closer to where the man was struggling to get up. These arms were bigger, palms wider than the man's body, the patches of asphalt there providing more surface area for his power to work with. Together, the hands scooped the man out of the water, holding him up high.

Theo rose his eyes to the others standing atop the foundation. The man with the knife stared back at him.

The hands reared back, then hurled the man straight at his friends.

His body collided hard with both of them, launching all three back into the ruins of the building. There was a crash, the sounds of something Theo couldn't see breaking apart further in.

He froze, waiting. Listening.

It was quiet. Not a sound. Not a whimper.

He hadn't… No.

He ran through the sludge, desperately reaching for the ledge of ground with shaking hands, panting and pulling himself up on to the concrete pavement, scanning the wreckage of the building for some sign of life. What had been a store was now a dripping, water-logged collection of broken bits of walls and ceiling, like the ruins of a maze filled with furniture and sports merchandise, of the city's wreckage washed-up by the flood, and with a hole through what had been one of the few standing walls. It wasn't brick—he wasn't sure what it was, just something thin and soaked with water, but something that had been standing until now. Theo's work.

He stepped through the hole, feet sinking into drenched office carpet, and picked his way forward, eyes darting around for any sign of what had happened to the three men. All around him, he could only find wreckage and the sounds of dripping water and buzzing flies.

He couldn't have… killed them. Right? That wasn't why he was here. That wasn't why he was doing this. He wanted to help people. He hadn't thrown that hard, had he?

Only hard enough to send them flying through walls.

Idiot. What kind of hero was he? Some moron killing people the first time he tried to save someone. And he still had no idea where the girl was. What if he had just thrown her pursuers into where she was hiding?

His hands clenched tight, and he dug deeper into the building. Everything broken as it was, he couldn't tell if there was some point of impact from where they had landed. He couldn't tell what was from him and what was from the past six days. There was wreckage everywhere, desks and sports displays tossed about by the flood, but no sign of the men. They had to be in here somewhere. He couldn't have thrown them that far. So where…

There was a shout behind him. A girl's shout.

He spun around—

The three men were standing there, emerging from behind one of the collapsed walls, but they were caught off-guard, caught mid-turn between the noise and him—

The man with the knife started towards Theo, blade outstretched—

Theo reared back, fell back, down, head colliding with the floor—

The man lunged forward—

The blade stabbed into the carpet next to Theo's head. He pulled back on it—

The blade didn't move. It was stuck.

The two locked eyes. Blood poured from the wreckage of the man's nose, and rage boiled in his eyes. Hate. Hate Theo had seen all too many times.

Theo's hands wrapped around the man's head and pulled, dragging both of them to the side, rolling them over and away from the knife embedded in the carpet. The man's hands pried at the grill of Theo's helmet, mud-crusted fingers digging through at Theo's face, nails tearing at his ski mask as they rolled over again, Theo gasping at the pain sparking from his arm as it collided against the ground, but desperately pushing the man off him, rolling over again, throwing each other against the ground again, again—

Two tattooed pairs of arms grabbed Theo and pulled, pulling him off, to his feet, and a fist pulled back and slammed forward into his stomach.

He keeled over in their grasp, the breath bursting out of his body all at once.

"You're fucking dead!" the man shouted, jumping to his feet as the others held Theo up. "I'm fucking sick of you, you fucking fatass wannabe! I'm gonna carve your fucking face off, you—Where the fuck is my knife?! Fucking—Fuck it, I just want you dead."

Theo felt them dragging him back, and he blinked rapidly, trying to get the tears out of his eyes, trying to focus through the ringing and—buzzing, flies swarming around. They were dragging him back to the street. To the—

Two pairs of arms raised him up high, and suddenly he was flying, over the pavement, crashing down into—

Darkness.

The water.

Theo jerked his head back out of the water, trying to get up, get out, but arms wrapped around his neck, pulling him back. The man's bloodied face grinned at him, a face of stark tendon and muscle and blood and hate.

"You're gonna wish I had slit your goddamn throat."

And Theo was shoved back down into the water. The dark.

Water flooded his mask, his senses. He couldn't hear anything, couldn't see through the mud and debris. His hands scrambled through the murky water, grabbing at gravel and broken asphalt, but there was nothing, no solid ground, just cracked and broken road.

The man pushed him deeper in the water, ground his helmet grill against the road, rubbing his face in every piece of rubble not good enough—not good enough—making sure he could see past the darkness, see how there was nothing.

His lungs clawed and screamed in his chest, like they were trying to force their way out and to the surface, like anything was better than this, better than being back here, the dark shelter, the concrete falling from above and the screams, anything to get away.

The arms around his neck squeezed, taking more of whatever air he had.

He couldn't see. It was darker. Not just the water, the murkiness, it was getting… darker. Eyes were stinging.

The arms around his neck jerked, shuddered. Sound he couldn't hear.

He had to get up. He had to save the girl. He had to do it, had to do it, had to stop them, had to… had to… had to make it alright.

Had to…

...

The pressure stopped. The arms suddenly pulled back.

He didn't have anything left—no air, no energy, but he still pushed, pushed himself out of the water—

Into chaos.

A swirling, shifting mass of darkness filled the street, filling everything with its presence, with its… buzzing. Bugs. They were bugs, more than he had ever seen in his life.

Screams rang out behind him. The men.

They were covered in the insects, the swarm so dense around them he couldn't see their bodies anymore, just more and more of the insects. The two by the building were trying to run, trying to get away from the swarm, taking off into the city with screams and bugs following. The one in the water, the one who had had the knife, he clawed at his face, trying to tear the bugs away, but it was impossible. He screamed, and Theo saw the swarm suddenly move, shooting into his open mouth. The scream stopped like his voice had been ripped from him, and the man bent over, vomiting out bugs into the sludge again, and again.

It was… horrifying.

Theo took a slow step back, still feeling his lungs shudder in relief, still trying to stop his heart from pounding, still blinking the water from his eyes, but still staring dumbfounded at the sight before him.

He stared until the swarm slowly shrank, pulling out of the man's mouth and allowing him to suck in gasps of air, pulling away so Theo could see the bloodied skin underneath.

The man didn't look at him. As soon as he could breathe, he ran, pulling himself onto the shore and running away down the street, faster than he had ever moved in the fight.

Theo was left alone with the quieting swarm. More and more bugs started to peel away, the sky becoming clearer, the buzzing quieting until they were gone, and he was left with the same quiet sound of dripping water.

Someone turned around the street corner. Someone wearing dark, drab cloth over their whole body, around their whole head so there was no hint of skin or hair. The only accents were darkly speckled plates across their body and around their jaw, a belt around their waist, and two yellow orbs for eyes.

Theo… He had never heard of someone like this before.

But he did know they had saved him.

"T-Thank you," he said.

The figure stood there, still and inscrutable. There was no expression from which to glean what they were thinking, only those yellow orbs that bored into him.

Finally, they spoke. "Are you okay?"

A girl's voice. It was younger than he would have guessed, slightly thick, and… quiet. Hesitant.

He nodded slowly.

"Good. That's good." She kept her yellow eyes on him for a moment, then turned and looked about the area, the building. "What happened?"

Just like that, the relief faded, and anxiety set back in.

"I—I was looking for a girl," he explained, wading through the murk to the concrete shore and pulling himself up. "They—those Empire guys—they had been chasing a girl, so I… tried to stop them, but…" His words fell off there. He hadn't done anything, in the end. Just nearly gotten killed and nearly killed others. A disaster.

Yellow eyes turned back to him, and he lowered his gaze from their haunting stare. "Where is she now?"

"I don't know," he muttered. "I thought, maybe she was hiding around here, but I don't… Maybe she already got away."

But… No, there was… There had been something. Hadn't there? Suddenly he wasn't so sure. Something had made him turn around and see the men behind him in that building, but he… couldn't remember.

He frowned, focusing on the old sporting goods store. There must have been something that saved him from getting ambushed, but the more he tried to remember, the more he became convinced it must have just been some random noise, something falling over. Dumb luck.

"There's no one in there." He turned back to the bug girl, confused. She pointed at the building he had been looking at. "It's empty."

He opened his mouth, then thought better of it. She had sounded confident about that. Something to do with her powers?

But then where was the girl? Had she run off during the fight?

"Can you…" he began, then paused. "I'm sorry, but… can you tell if she's around here? I need to—want to make sure she's okay. If you can, I mean."

"I can. It's only a few blocks, but I'll see if I can find her."

"Thank you," he said quickly.

She paused. "You're welcome?"

He shut his mouth.

The girl's focus drifted away from him, and he slowly rose his gaze to the sky, looking around for some sign of what she was doing. He couldn't see anything, nothing obvious at least; there was no big swarm gathering up and then spreading throughout the streets. It must have been a subtler use of her power to scout out the area, like Justin with his ghost. It made sense, as Masters tended to be versatile, but he wasn't about to speculate any further on the details. He had no idea what she could do.

In some ways, he felt more out of depth standing next to her than he had in the fight. Here he was dressed in stolen hockey gear now soaked with water and mud while she was wearing what looked like professionally crafted cape gear. He had been on the verge of death against three random guys, and she had come in and ran them all off in a minute. Now that the adrenaline was running out, it was also becoming clear that he was beaten, exhausted, and… in a lot of pain; meanwhile, she was completely fine.

Who was she?

"What's, uh…" He stopped, worrying he might interrupt her, but when she simply turned to look at him, he quickly picked up, "What's your name? Your cape name, I mean."

She took a moment, then, "I haven't actually picked one yet."

Oh. "You're new?" That would explain why he hadn't heard of her before, but it certainly didn't help the feeling of inadequacy.

Another pause. "Yeah, I guess," she muttered with something in her tone he couldn't quite pick out. "What about you?"

"I'm new too," he answered. "I haven't picked out a name either. This is… my first day." His first day, and what would've been his last if not for her.

He looked to the flooded street where he had nearly been drowned. The muddy water was even dirtier than it had been before, newly polluted with the man's blood and vomit.

He wondered what would have happened had they succeeded. If he had died, and they had drug him out of the water and took off his mask. His face wasn't known to anyone outside of the Empire's inner circle of capes and some of his father's rich friends from when he hadn't been able to leave Theo out of some event, but… he wondered if they would have brought his body to the Empire. Brought him to one of the relief camps the Empire was setting up in their territory and show off the cape they had killed to one of the Empire capes. To Jessica, or Brad, Kayden, or his father. What would they have thought?

His father would just look on one last time with disdain. His son, a failure of a hero, dying in a fight against some random goons.

He breathed in deep, and tore his eyes from the still bed of water.

No, there was no need to wonder.

"Wait," the girl said suddenly, confused. "How did…"

"Did you find her?" he asked, quickly returning his attention to her.

"I think so, but…" she paused, and rose a hand to point, right at the broken sporting goods store beside them, "she's right here."

He looked, and finally felt that knot of tension in his stomach fade.

A girl was coming out of the shell of the building. She was young, maybe slightly younger than him, body dwarfed in a worn coat big enough to drag along the wet ground. The girl he had seen surrounded by the Empire goons, the girl who had screamed and yelled for help over their laughter until Theo came running. The girl he had been trying to help.

She was alright.

But the longer Theo looked, the more he realized that was wrong.

Her face was—beautiful, but also gaunt and covered in grime. And she was limping as she walked, blood slowly dripping from behind a makeshift cloth bandage tied around her right calf. She had to lean against one of the broken walls when she stopped at the threshold of the building, one hand holding on to the frame for support.

Brown, bloodshot eyes peered at them from behind a curtain of curly hair, dark except for one bleached section and a bright purple streak. Her gaze flicked back and forth between the two of them, trained hard on their masked faces. Like she was looking for something.

Theo swallowed thickly. He didn't know what to say, but… he had to do something.

He rose one gloved, muddied hand and waved. "H-Hey."

… It may have been the worst greeting possible. His voice was strained and cracked on the single word, and he dropped his hand in immediate embarrassment and regret.

But for just a moment, the girl's eyes—they lit up, in surprise, in relief, in… ways he couldn't put into words. He didn't know why, but for a moment he felt like he had given her the answer to that question in her eyes.

But the moment ended. The girl dropped her gaze and stood there sucking in deep breaths for a moment, centering herself. When she rose her head, her eyes were once again wary, her jaw set.

"You guys Wards?" she called out from the building.

Theo glanced at the bug girl shaking her head beside him and quickly followed suit. "No. But I—We're here to help," he called back.

"Figured. Wards don't dress like you two." She cocked her head slightly, frowning at them. "You know neither of you look like heroes, right?" She jutted her chin at the bug girl beside him. "She looks like an edgy praying mantis, and you look like a… fuck it, you just look like a fat hockey guy."

"A fat hockey guy?" the bug girl repeated, adding to the sting. She seemed more confused than offended.

"I'm tired. Barely slept since the city went to shit. Been dodging Nazis all week."

The first words to jump to Theo's tongue were "I'm sorry," but he held those back. She wouldn't have known what the apology was for, and it wouldn't have been on her to listen to it if she did. "Are you alright?" he asked instead.

"Do I look alright?" she snapped, making Theo flinch back. "That thing jacked my leg up when it hit, and running from those fuckers sure as hell didn't help. It's gotta be infected with something by now. Plus, I've been stuck in Nazi territory all week, I've been kicked out of two shelters, I've barely eaten anything since the attack, and my—"

Her words ground to a halt there. She seemed to be holding back a sudden wave of tears, her body wracked with shuddering breaths. Finally, she shook her head. "Things just… fucking suck."

"Yeah," the bug girl quietly agreed.

There was a moment where none of them knew what to say.

She had been through a lot. Both her and the bug girl, probably; everybody in the city as a matter of fact. Everyone except him.

He still had a roof over his head. He had food and clothes. He even had electricity. Yes, he had lost family, like Nessa, but Aster had made it through okay. Kayden was injured, but still alive—recovering slower than if Johanna was conscious and able to heal, yes, but recovering nonetheless. Even his father had survived, for as much as it was worth. Compared to what others had lost, it was nothing.

And he had triggered. He had powers now. He could protect himself, protect Aster, help people, do something. He at least had the chance to try.

He had to try.

Theo took an uncertain step forward. "Do you need… Do you want help getting someplace safe? Out of Empire territory?"

Her eyes narrowed slightly, flickering between the two of them. Not… suspicious, but doubtful all the same. "You offering? You know I can barely walk, right?" she pointed out, nodding to her bleeding leg.

"It's no problem," he said quickly. "I can help while you walk."

"We both will," the bug girl interjected, surprising Theo and stepping up beside him. More quietly, she said to Theo, "You were just in a fight. You look like you're about to fall over yourself. I can help."

Theo hesitated. "Are you sure?" He hadn't meant to wrap her up in this, in saving him or in escorting this girl to safety. He didn't know her. He had never even heard of her before. It wasn't right to ask more of her than what she had already done for both of them.

But at the same time, he wasn't surprised when she nodded after only a second's pause.

"... Yeah. We can both help," he said, turning back to the girl. "If that's okay?"

She looked between the two of them for a moment, then dropped her gaze, curls falling forward to veil her eyes. Her free hand came up to grip the front of her coat, clutching the old leather tight.

"Screw it," she sighed. "Fine. Get me out of this hellhole."

—

—

He forced his feet to move. A hollowness filled his chest, but he forced himself to lean down and lift the dog from the pool of water. The dog he had tried to save, but had been too slow to. It was big, but thin, too thin; too easy to carry, cold and limp in his arms. He carried it close to his chest as he waded back down to the street.

He laid the dog down on a patch of sidewalk, dirty but… dry. He brushed away a few flecks of mud from its face. Even dirty as it was, it was still a beautiful dog.

He wanted to say something, but the words wouldn't come out. The hole in his chest dragged them away every time he tried.

He pushed himself to his feet, and began to walk back to the shelter.

The ruins of the city stared down from all around him, cracked-open shells of places he used to know, oozing everything they had been out into the gravelly sludge that filled the streets. Sirens and cries echoed in the distance, piercing through the constant ebb-and-flow of water that permeated the city.

Brockton Bay was… broken. Leviathan had broken it. It had torn through the city and brought a great flood in its wake, washing away everything the city was and killing everyone that stood in its path, heroes and villains and bystanders alike. Now this was all that remained.

He stopped, turning to look back. Through the dark, he could just barely make out the golden retriever lying there alone. The first thing he had tried to save. Even with these powers, he had failed.

He didn't know what to do. He didn't know whether the next attempt would end the same way. And if his family found out—about his powers, about trying to be a hero—he… he didn't know what would happen. What the consequences would be. What he would do.

But this city was suffering. It had been suffering for a long time. Because of Leviathan, but because of the gangs before that, because of the businesses and jobs fleeing, because of his family. It needed all the help it could get, no matter how small, no matter who it was from. Anything, anyone. Even someone like him.

How could he refuse?

Special thanks to BeaconHill from SpaceBattles/SufficientVelocity for beta reading.

Updates will be slow, but they will come eventually. I've spent a long time planning this story, and I'm committed to it.