Super•Villainous

Interlude

He knew the answer now. Had known for a while, pieced together like a puzzle missing all the corners, just enough to capture the grand picture at hand.

Which was why, upon her recapture, he influenced the lock on her cell to break. Why he killed the Constable - his Guardian - with his own blood-soaked hands. Why he still wanted to protect someone only the deepest part of his sub-conscience knew..

"Please," she sobbed in the present, her whole body quaking so hard that if she was a machine she would be at risk of all the nuts and bolts wiggling undone. "Leigh, don't do this to me. I don't know how to live in a world without you."

I don't want to die, Charlie.

It was the difference between knowing and remembering, because, although he caught wisps of Lily in his memory like the smell of smoke on a breeze, that voice made Fate feel like a little bit of the world was crumbling away beneath his feet. He was at the precipice of a great cliff and at risk of falling should he make a single wrong move.

He approached slowly. Quietly. Deliberately coming in at her back due to his own dismay at the possibility of having to see the grief on her face as she held her friend, the sister she found to replace the brother she lost. The brother he could never be again.

She went quiet in the worst way, and Fate realized she was letting out a silent wail, incapable of even taking in enough air to make a noise.

He knelt by her side, somewhat startling her out of tears, if only for a second. She stared forward with a horrible blankness. Incomprehension.

"Sometimes," he murmured, and placed a hand over the lifeless, dark-haired girl's brow, and another over his sister's arm. He concentrated on channeling his power with a fervor he never before attempted, so much so that the palms of his hands tingled uncomfortably where it touched their skin, "all you need is a little luck, and life does the rest."

A sharp intake of breath in the direction of his sister's chosen villain told Fate that Nightshade had sobered, somewhat, from his numb, disconnected shock. "Get away from them," he whispered gutturally, out of a pained place rife deep in his throat.

Fate did no such thing. He felt his nine other active tethers snap from the strain of all his focus - every vestige of luck he had to offer - pouring into the dead girl. No one could bring people back from the dead, not even the most powerful thaumaturge, but miracles happened on occasion, and Fate specialized in miracles.

A little more effort and the extra rust accumulated around the chain of misfortune tying him to Lily for the past eight years shed away, the tenth and final bond severed, with two new ones forming in its place. Instead of the foreboding sensation his curses gave off, the twin Marks of Fortune were warm. Inviting. They called to the surface feelings of contentment, like a deep rooted conviction that everything would always be alright, that the world was inherently a kind and fair place.

He could see why the Constable might have gotten addicted to the sensation.

Abruptly, a sharp blow to his cheek forced his connection to sever, and Fate fell back on his elbows. Over him stood, not Nightshade, but Atticus Courten, another lost soul only just beginning to find his way in the world after having lost most everything there was to lose. Without the famed mask, Fate glimpsed raw pain, like every movement brought fresh agony and still Atticus had stumbled over to stand between them.

In a way, Fate saw himself in Atticus. They were each what the other could have been.

Atticus's clothes were nothing short of ragged. Blood was smudged and splattered over his cheeks, from his own healed wounds or from others Fate could not say. His cloak did not sway anymore in the breeze, gone stiff with dried blood.

"I won't let you hurt them," Atticus said, although anyone could tell he was barely keeping together, his sanity resting on a razor's edge. It was in the rapid puffs of his breath, the pinpricks of his pupils, and the way he hugged one arm around his middle, as though to physically hold himself in one piece. "I won't let anyone-"

A sputtering cough cut him off, and, just like that, they forgot all about the workings of Fate.

"Leigh?" his sister cried out, and Fate breathed a quiet sigh of relief. It worked. He hadn't known whether luck would be enough to restart a frozen heart. "Hospital! We need to get her to the hospital right now!"

Even so, a beating heart was not enough to save Leigh Courten, not after such extreme blood loss and open wounds. Fate's efforts bought her minutes, if she was lucky, and it would mean nothing if no help was immediately forthcoming, which it didn't seem to be. All he'd managed was to set them back a few moments on a predetermined track, one that had already run its course once before.

Perhaps it would have been kinder to let Leigh Courten go in peace rather than prolong her suffering and give Lily a false hope that ultimately came to nothing. After a kernel of hope, loss always struck twice as hard.

Then, his miracle begot another miracle and Leigh lived. Without the burden of his curse holding Lily back, her power progressed down its natural growth path, fueled in large part by her desperation, he had no doubt.

Not all their problems were so neatly resolved, unfortunately. Fate saw Ren pondering the matter, too, and reading his own mind in turn.

Nightshade was a problem, a dark cloud over what would otherwise be clear skies for both Lily's and the Guild's future.

He saw that she would have followed the villain anywhere and allowed herself to be hunted by all the Supers of the world for his sake, but that was no life.

Nightshade had to go.

Permanently.