No Need to Be a Stranger

Well, this is it. The last chapter. Hope you enjoyed, it's been like two years now (and holy crap, when did that happen?!), and I am feeling kind of drained so... here it is!

Oh, wait, one more thing: Apparently something weird happened with FFN's email notifications, so you may or may not have missed a chapter. It'd probably be a good idea to go back one (or possibly even two, I'm not entirely sure how long this has been going on) to make sure you don't get spoiled.

I'd been wrong, before. Walking to Piggot's office the first time hadn't been like being marched to the gallows—and I knew that because today it most certainly did. Weld was walking on my left side, but it was hard to be comforted by the familiar face when he looked almost as nervous as I did.

The door shut behind me with a very final-sounding click, with Weld still waiting outside. My right arm was shaking a bit—it finally had the freedom to move, now that I'd taken off the armor, but I was fervently wishing that I hadn't. Director Piggot was waiting behind her desk, her hands folded and her eyes glittering.

"Hello, Director," I managed. Then I closed my mouth and flushed, because that had sounded way too informal, and was it too late to ask for a few dozen thugs to fight instead?

"Aurora." Her tone was sharp and crisp, and I got the distinct impression that if Leviathan himself were to burst into her office, she'd give him that same stern glare. "You were right, I see."

Her words were encouraging. The way she said them was not. "Yes, ma'am," I replied meekly.

"I suppose that saves me the trouble of having to discipline you for wasting our time and resources, then." I waited with bated breath for the final shoe to drop. Piggot didn't make me wait long—or, depending on your point of view, she didn't let me wait long. "That just leaves your flagrant disregard for our tinkertech review system, your association with known villains, and the fact that you gave a criminal thinker information about a fight that was, and will remain, confidential."

I shifted uncomfortably, and nodded. It wasn't like there was any point denying it—that ship had sailed a long time ago.

"It was tempting to simply withdraw your funding, remove you from Armsmaster's lab, and put you on the console until you turned eighteen. In fact, the only reason I haven't already done that is the fact that you did, regardless of your questionable judgment, allow us to free Panacea from the Teeth. We could not have done that without Tattletale's help." Her lips pursed, as though she'd just bit down on a lemon.

"Now. What exactly was going through your head when you decided to make such a reckless gamble with Protectorate secrets?"

My right hand twitched. "I didn't—" I started, then cut myself off. My palms were sweating, and I had to wipe them off on my jeans. "I never said anything I thought might give Tattletale any insight into the Protectorate."

"Really?" Piggot raised a single eyebrow. "Are you a thinker, Miss Herbert?"

"Hebert," I corrected.

"Answer the question."

"No, ma'am."

"Exactly. Whether or not you were aware of some means by which she might have manipulated the knowledge is irrelevant. With her powers, any insight, no matter how small, can easily lead her to classified information."

"I had to!" I protested. "And I only ever told her what the Butcher did!"

"And she made no connections involving the Protectorate or our movements?" Piggot asked dryly. I flushed and looked at the floor. She'd figured out that Miss Militia had nearly become the Butcher, though I had no idea what she'd possibly be able to do with that information. I wasn't going to defend myself that way, though. Not when I'd just proved the point Piggot was trying to make.

"I apologize," I said stiffly. "It won't happen again."

Piggot sighed explosively. "And I'm sure it will, if your sense of justice is threatened. I'm well aware of how heroes like you behave, Aurora. You never seem to understand that the red tape is here for a purpose, and for some reason always end up under the impression that the rules don't apply to you."

They don't apply to the Teeth, either, I thought but did not say aloud. There was no point baiting her.

Finally, the Director leaned back and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Well. For this monumental breach of protocol and basic common sense, I'll be putting you on the console for the next two weeks. You'll be on probation until I say otherwise—no patrolling alone, not that you'd been here long enough anyway, no using the lab without supervision, and no clandestine rendezvous with enemy capes. Is that understood?"

"Yes." I wasn't happy, and part of me was already trying to think of ways to get around that second rule, but I did know what the words meant.

"I highly doubt that." I gritted my teeth—the sarcasm was getting a bit old. "And now, we've arrived at the problem of your tinkertech."

I tried very hard not to shrink away from her, but didn't quite manage it. My cybernetics seemed to tingle from where they nestled under my skin, as though Piggot could examine them as she sat behind her desk.

"I can't take it out," I said quickly. "I wouldn't even know how." That was a bit of a lie—I could, just not without a healer and a lot of surgery, and Panacea wasn't interested.

"Why on earth would I want you to do that?" Piggot steepled her fingers, and the gesture was so stereotypically villainous that I couldn't help but imagine Coil doing the same thing. Probably in front of a mirror every morning, to practice.

"What do you want me to do, then?" I asked, fingers drumming against my hip.

"I will, reluctantly, allow you some leeway with your cybernetics." Piggot scowled. "If nothing else, you've proved that they work. You will not be installing them in filthy alleyways and inevitably contracting some sort of disease that will then manifest itself as an avalanche of paperwork that I have to deal with. In point of fact, I'm quite tempted to put the matter off until Panacea is willing to supervise you. If that takes too long, I will find another healer that can."

Grimacing, I bit my lip to keep myself from protesting. I was fairly sure it would do more harm than good, and it was, at least, more than they'd been willing to give me from the beginning.

How much was some leeway, though? I'd been trying to think of ways to try using the synthetic bone my power let me make, but had never really been able to come up with anything reasonably safe. With a healer standing by, I could use my tech in ways I'd never manage in an alleyway.

Piggot soon answered the question I hadn't asked. "You will go through the proper channels from now on, do you understand?" I nodded. "That means nothing gets built without permission, and if the PRT tells you no, you will listen." My head kept bobbing up and down.

"Don't nod at me," she snapped. I stopped, staring. "I know full well you'll do anything and everything within your power to circumvent or outright ignore every regulation I try to throw at you. Kid Win has done exactly the same thing, and he is rather a lot better at it." I winced. Maybe I should have denied it, but that would have been a fairly blatant and obvious lie.

"So. I will be assigning someone to your lab, to supervise while you work. Whenever you work. They will be given a keycard, and will let you in."

My jaw dropped. "You can't do that!" I started to protest, but Piggot was unmoved.

"I can, and I will. You're a danger to yourself."

"That's bullshit!" I froze, chest heaving, as I mentally rewound what I'd just said. Then I clapped a hand over my own mouth—far too late.

Piggot's eyes narrowed. "You yourself told us something went wrong while you were installing the cybernetics in your legs. You tell me—what would have happened if you hadn't been able to contact Tattletale?"

"Well, maybe if I hadn't had to hide it, I wouldn't have been installing them in an alleyway!" I half-shouted. "I'm not going to ignore my power, and it's not exactly regulation friendly!"

At that, Piggot actually laughed. "No," she said, voice heavily laced with irony. "It isn't. In fact, I believe I had to spend nearly an hour of my valuable time, which has become increasingly scarce lately, trying to explain to my superiors why one of my Wards seems dead-set on maiming herself. God only knows what our PR department is going to have to do to make you even remotely palatable to the public."

My eye twitched. "I don't care if it's not media-friendly. It's mine, and I'm going to use it."

"Miss Hebert." Piggot was livid now, I could see a vein standing out against her forehead. "You have flaunted our rules repeatedly, and if you are only going to continue to do so, I see no reason why I shouldn't confine you to the console indefinitely."

I took a deep breath, squeezing my eyes shut. "I think I do," I replied, still not looking at her.

"Really?" The question was sardonic, and deeply patronizing. I gritted my teeth and raised my head defiantly. I am done with people talking to me like that.

"Yeah. I don't need to be here." Piggot folded her arms and raised an eyebrow.

"I believe I saw a form involving your tinker budget for this month. You used, what, ninety percent of it? You need funding."

"Yeah, I do," I admitted. "But I don't need it from you. I'm here because I like the Wards, but I'm not doing this again." My mind flashed back to my notebook, probably still buried underground, if it hadn't been destroyed when Leviathan came. It had been bursting with ideas, borne from the constant boredom of lounging around in my room. My cell. And I'd never worked on any of them.

Piggot was sitting up straighter. Her eyes were sharp, calculating. Now, she was taking me seriously. "And where, exactly, would you be getting the money for your work?" Her mouth tightened. "Would you join the Undersiders, perhaps?"

"No!" I snarled. "I don't need to be a criminal to support myself. I can make super powered painkillers, there are plenty of thinkers who'd pay me for it."

At that, there was another shift in her demeanor. Her mouth thinned as she pressed her lips together, and I got the distinct impression that I was being scanned, evaluated. "I see," she said finally. "And when one of these thinkers doesn't want to pay? When a gang comes knocking on your door? What will you do then?"

My fingernails bit into my palm, and I felt a sudden stinging in my left hand and had to stifle the urge to curse. Of course they'd broken skin, I was strong on that side but no tougher. The memory was still as sharp as ever—a van, idling in the street, mercenaries jumping out of it and pointing guns at me.

Fuck that, I thought. And fuck her.

"I quit," I decided.

"What?" her eyes went wide, obviously surprised. She'd really expected that to work.

"Coil's dead," I snapped. "I'm not going to hide from him. And fuck you, for using that to scare me. I'm done."

And with that, I stormed out of her office. Her door might have been locked—it was hard to tell, since I'd yanked it open as hard as I could with my left hand and I didn't think your average lock would stand up to that kind of abuse.

Weld was waiting for me outside. I stopped, feeling a sudden wave of dizziness as I realized that I'd actually said all of that out loud, to the Director.

"Taylor," he called out, obviously anxious. He must have heard some of it, though I had no idea how much. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," I managed. At least, I would be. My fingers drummed against my thigh as I thought. Whatever I said in there, this will make my life harder. I'd have to stop tinkering until I could get a hold of some money to start with, since I'd given all of Tattletale's initial donation to Regent. And I owed her one of the painkillers, so I couldn't even start selling them right away. I might have to borrow money from a criminal.

"Yeah, I think I'm okay." Maybe Coil had some kind of bounty on him that I could collect, or... well, I might actually be able to raid his old base for tech. The PRT had probably already gone down there to make sure there weren't any other city-breaking monsters locked up, but there was always the chance they'd left something of value.

"What happened?" Weld was still peering at my face, as though he could read my mind if he just focused hard enough.

"I quit," I replied. A weak smile was all I could really manage, since at least half of my mind was still puzzling over the problem of funding. And it would be a problem, at least until I got to the point where I could start selling. It was something I could solve, though, in whatever way I pleased. Sure, some things were illegal and I didn't want to do them for obvious moral reasons, but that was my choice. Mine.

Weld, who obviously couldn't tell what I was thinking, was gaping like a goldfish. "What? Why?" he managed. "I thought you liked it here."

"I do!" I said quickly, wincing at the hurt in his voice. "I'm not going to stop being a hero or anything. I just can't really deal with the constraints they put on tinkers, here."

He frowned. "Look, Taylor, I get it, I really do..." I sort of doubted that, since he was pretty much as far from being a tinker as possible, considering the wires would stick to him if he ever tried to build something.

"But?"

"But, where are you going to get funding?"

"I'll sell my tech." I grinned, realizing suddenly that I did have one of the painkillers—granted, it was the one I'd been using, but I could probably manage without it for a couple of weeks. Then there were all the components in both suits of armor, just begging to be cannibalized.

"It's dangerous, Taylor!" Weld groaned. "I know you can be sort of impulsive sometimes, but you really need to think before you do something like this."

"I know it's dangerous." I scowled at him, putting my hands on my hips. "Trust me, I am more than aware of the risks of being an unaffiliated tinker." He flinched back, as if I'd slapped him. Though, without the painkiller that would definitely hurt me more than him.

"So why are you doing it?" he asked softly.

"Agency." I looked up at him and mustered a grin. "I need to be able to make my own choices. The PRT keeps drowning me in regulations, and I know they're meant to keep me safe, but right now I can't deal with being constrained like that."

Weld stayed silent for a moment, apparently absorbing what I'd just said. Finally, he tuned to the wall and let his head rest against it with a clang.

"Are you okay?" I frowned, wondering whether 'Are you angry?' would have been a better question. Then, he groaned.

"I'm fine. It's just... you can be incredibly frustrating, sometimes."

I drew myself up, indignant. "Hey! It's not my problem if you won't want me to—"

"That's not what I meant, Taylor." He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, before lifting his head to meet my eyes. "I'm sorry. I want to help you, I want to keep you safe, and it drives me insane when those two goals keep contradicting one another."

I blinked. "You... what?"

He held out a hand. "Promise you'll keep in touch, okay? No jumping into impossible situations without some backup? There's precedent for unaffiliated tinkers, or any parahuman really, running joint patrols and fighting with the Protectorate. We wouldn't be around all the time, but if you got in over your head, we could help."

Slowly, I reached out and shook the offered arm. A smile spread across my face as I nodded.

"Good." Then, his eyes took on a slightly more mischievous glint, and he ruffled my hair. I yelped, slapping at his hand and bursting out laughing.

"Hey!" I tried to glare at him, but the corners of my mouth kept twitching upward.

Weld, still smirking, stepped back and nodded to me. It wasn't a goodbye, and I had the feeling he wouldn't give me one even if I asked. The point was clear—I will see you later.

"Thanks," I told him, and headed for the stairs. I wasn't really sure where I was going, but I figured I'd walk around outside for a while, then head back home. That plan didn't last long. In fact, I could practically hear it dying an ignoble death the minute I stepped out onto the ground floor landing.

There, standing together not far from the main entrance, were Glory Girl and Panacea. They were standing a good three feet apart, but seemed to be in a much better mood than the last time I'd seen either of them. Well, that was what I'd thought—until both of them turned toward me, and I found myself feeling unaccountably nervous.

Glancing around as if to check if there was someone behind me for them to be staring at—no such luck—I swallowed and walked over. Glory Girl was still hovering to keep her weight off her bad leg, but I didn't have the armored bodysuit with me, yet. I'd been about to head to the basement to pick it up, but the odds of getting there before she caught up to me were pretty much nil.

"Hello?" I asked instead, desperately wracking my brain for anything I might have done to upset them. I couldn't think of anything... in point of fact I'd done the exact opposite.

"Co—uh, Aurora," Glory Girl greeted me. I was moderately sure she'd been trying to be intimidating, but the mid-sentence slip had more or less ruined the effect. Her aura, on the other hand, was doing its best to make up for it. I grimaced, fists clenching as I studiously ignored the prickle of fear that was not my own.

"Yes?" I prompted. My spine had gone rigid, but I did my best not to let my body shake.

Glory Girl narrowed her eyes and folded her hands over her chest. She looked strangely nervous, and it occurred to me that she might not be using her aura on purpose at all. "We want to talk to you," she declared. I shrugged, doing my level best to hide the way my knees had nearly given out the second the words had left her mouth. I hated her powers.

"How did you know where Amy was?" I frowned, raising an eyebrow at the look on her face.

"The PRT didn't tell you?"

"They did." Glory Girl's eyes narrowed. "I want to hear it from you."

"I noticed something was off while we were fighting the Butcher," I explained, surreptitiously wiping the sweat from my palms on my jeans. "Then... I asked Tattletale about it. She figured it out."

A muscle jumped in Glory Girl's jaw as she nodded. "Yeah, they told us that. They didn't explain why you were talking to her in the first place."

Oh. I winced, realizing that this wasn't about the incident with the Butcher at all—it was about Tattletale. "She offered to let me use her apartment to install my tech," I explained. "Then, something went wrong when I was installing it and I didn't know where else to go... so I went there."

"But why?" Panacea demanded, speaking for the first time. "Why did she give you that address?"

"I can't talk about that." Technically Tattletale had never told me not to, but... well, I considered it personal information, and it was a long story I didn't particularly want to get into. I definitely didn't want to talk about why she had been so grateful.

That obviously wasn't what they'd wanted to hear, though. Glory Girl drew herself up, literally rising almost a foot into the air until she was glowering down at me. "You know who she is, right? She's a villain." I nodded wordlessly.

After a moment—one of the most deeply uncomfortable moments of my life—Panacea sighed and held out a hand. I shook it, noticing as I did so that she was wearing a pair of gloves. "I'm sorry about the interrogation."

I shrugged. "I mean, I'd like to know why, but it's fine."

"We weren't sure if... well, if Tattletale had something to do with how they found me."

"Why would she do that?" I asked, incredulous. I could still remember the look on Tattletale's face when she'd realized what it could mean if Noelle duplicated Panacea's powers—the idea of handing her over to another parahuman that might misuse them would be incomprehensibly stupid.

"I don't know," Panacea sighed. "I just... I don't trust her. At all. Not after what she did."

I frowned, opened my mouth to ask, but Glory Girl shook her head over her sister's shoulder. Instead I shrugged. "I don't know what she did, but I doubt she'd want to help the Teeth. She has no reason to make a rival gang stronger."

Panacea nodded. "Right." She swallowed, then glanced over my shoulder. I tried to follow her gaze, before realizing there was nothing behind me and her eyes had just been wandering.

"So... is that why you're here?" I asked, eager to get back to the lab where things made sense.

"No." She took a deep breath, and managed to make brief eye contact. Then her gaze flicked off to the side. "I'm sorry about... I just had to be sure all this wasn't kind of... I don't even know. I was worried, when I heard about Tattletale, that you might've had ulterior motives."

"Maybe I did." Panacea looked up, alarm showing in her face. "I guess... being able to help felt a bit like closure." My mind wandered even as I spoke, flashing back to the moment Coil had collapsed bonelessly to the ground. That should have felt like the end of it, but it really hadn't.

"Oh." There was guilt written all over the healer's face. Part of me wanted to tell her it was fine, that I didn't mind, but I didn't. Instead I waited for her to speak, still twitching slightly under the effects of her sister's aura.

"I'm sorry," she said eventually. "And... thank you for everything."

No need to thank me, ma'am, virtue is it's own reward! I grimaced, very carefully did not say that, and resolved to whack Dennis upside the head the next time I saw him, for being a terrible influence. I resolved never to leave him alone with Regent, coughed awkwardly, and shrugged.

"It helped me, too. So... it's fine."

Panacea apologized again, and then she and her sister left. I stayed standing in the lobby for a while, deep in thought. Then, finally, I shook myself out of my stupor and started down to the basement. I had gear to collect, after all.

Collecting my worldly possessions didn't take long. At least, the ones I was comfortable bringing. I left most of the components and materials I hadn't used. Even if I'd technically bought them with my tinker budget and they were, as far as I knew, mine, it felt oddly like stealing. I did pack up my tools, as well as a few more esoteric things that I'd need for the painkiller and wouldn't be able to get my hands on otherwise. And, as a strange sort of penance, I left my old armor. Maybe they'd have a use for it, and maybe not. In any case, between it and the new armor that had been stripped down to the bone and turned into a body suit, there'd be way too much to carry around. I wanted to keep my newer gear, so it would have to go.

That done, I emerged back into the Wards common room. I didn't have to, technically, but I wanted to talk to them before I left. There was a world of difference between wanting to and actually doing it, though, so when I actually got there I ended up standing awkwardly in the doorway, feeling lost.

Chris, the only one actually inside at the moment—or, at least, the only one out in the open room, and not in his cubicle—waved me over. After a moment's hesitation, I walked up to him and set my bag of tech on the floor. There was a moment of heavy silence while the pair of us fidgeted.

"Weld told us what happened," he said finally. I nodded, fingers drumming against my hip.

"I'm sorry," I mumbled.

Chris smiled shyly. "Don't be. I mean, I've definitely been tempted to do the same thing, I just don't think I'd be able to sell my tech as well as you can."

"Don't sell yourself short." He frowned, cocking his head to the side.

"Was that a pun?"

I cracked up. "No," I managed, "But I guess that kills any chance I had of a serious goodbye."

"Good." Chris gestured vaguely at the Wards common room, with its welcoming half-circle of couches and the massive television we'd all played video games on. "How about you stay for a bit? I think Missy and Dennis are around, though Lily's on patrol. She'll be back in about an hour."

I hesitated. "I should probably go."

A rare smirk appeared on his face. "Nah, the worst they can do is kick you out. And anyway, I think you could probably hang around here even if you aren't part of the Wards. Victoria does. Well, did." There was a flash of sadness in his eyes, but it was replaced by an earnest smile a moment later. "No need to be a stranger."

I gaped at him a moment, touched. Then I grinned. "What do you want to do, then?"

In the end, we dragged Dennis out of a nap—grumbling and complaining the whole way, even though he adamantly refused to go back to sleep—and were joined by Missy halfway through the twelfth level of his game. I wasn't great at it—I'd never played much when I was younger, and obviously hadn't touched a video game outside of the Wards since Coil. But it was... nice.

During a lull when Dennis went off to hunt for snacks, I found myself brushing my hand against the ends of my hair. It had grown out a lot since Leviathan, and was starting to tumble down past my shoulders. Almost like things were going back to normal.

I frowned, running my fingers through it. It wasn't back to normal, though, and it probably never would be. Maybe I should get it cut—not like it had been underground, and not like I'd worn it what felt like centuries ago, at Winslow. Neither were attached to particularly good memories.

There's some irony in here somewhere, I mused. I'd been kidnapped and extorted, chased by a rampaging Lung, half-drowned by Leviathan and nearly eaten by Noelle. I'd been burned, battered, and beaten to a pulp, slapped out of the air and trapped several stories underground. And, after all that, I was actually better of than I had been in high school.

That was the whole problem, I supposed. Normal had sucked for so long I'd actually forgotten what it was like to look forward to the next day. But... I could be excited about this, about figuring out how to manage on my own and still keeping up the friendships I'd made in the Wards. I'd never go back to how I was—but I would keep moving forward, and that was enough.

So... yeah. Things aren't quite as tied-up as I'd like—the Butcher's still around, for one thing—and I could probably get another arc out of this story. In point of fact, I could probably keep writing it forever, since I went in with zero plan and only a vague idea of the timeline. The problem is that I... really don't want to. I have other ideas I want to work on, and this one has overstayed its welcome by at least an arc or so while I was trying (and sort of failing) to wrap it up nicely.

I like to think I learned a lot about writing from this (in two years, I seriously better have). But the number one thing is definitely that I am never, ever, EVER going to write anything ever again that's longer than a single chapter without planning it out first. Ever. Because if I had made a proper outline for this, from the beginning, it would probably only be about half as long as it is, and with a much tidier end. I see this a lot, actually, stories like this one that seem to have started as concepts that don't have a predetermined endpoint. They tend to go along for a while, being either atrocious or awesome depending on the story, until eventually they slow down and die. That is most definitely exactly what would happen to this if I kept going, so... it's ending. I'm definitely going to keep writing, though I may not be back with Worm anytime soon (or ever, who knows).

Whelp, I'm honestly pretty exhausted at this point because I got home literally like forty-five minutes ago and would very much like to curl up in a ball under the covers. Here's hoping but not particularly expecting that this ending felt like a gentle trundling deceleration, rather than someone slamming on the brakes in the middle of the highway because a goddamn deer forgot about the whole life preservation instinct thing.