Battle Vixens! - 115

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Episode 115: Trauma

"He just...asked what my opinion was. Like—uh—of you?" After getting a text from Amory that the coast was clear, Emma had made her way to his apartment. In a way, it was kind of good to have Blake here, too, if only as a passive observer with a laptop between him and the rest of the world. He was..still catching up on homework, apparently. "I uh..wh-what I answered with was kinda embarrassing, and I can't remember it exactly anyway. But it was good! Um, very—very positive."
"And after that?" Amory asked.
"He got...he was really...quiet for a minute. And then he said something about how...he's been trying to trust you more, and it's really hard to be a parent, and...uh, s-something about not wanting to pass down his own trauma."

"That's uh..different."
"He left off after um, basically wishing us the best?"

"Yeah..he told me, 'you be good to Emma. She's a keeper.' Just before getting in his car and driving back home," Amory said. "Sooo...I guess that's a success!"

"Still a little weird," Blake interjected. "He basically interrogated me for like two hours and then nodded and said, 'you're okay'. And we've barely talked since."

"Maybe he's just...trying not to be as suspicious in the first place?" Emma said. "Or...um, he could be saving the interrogation for later."
"Yeah, like if you two get any more serious." He shook his head, resuming his work.

"What um...do you know what he meant about 'trauma', though? I mean—I know you lost your mom or something..."
Amory nodded. "Yeah. I guess I should tell Blake about this too, huh. You remember the other night, when you asked if we'd ever suddenly understood something about someone that caused a total change in how we saw them?"

"Oh, y-yeah. You said you had..with him," she nodded.
"Uh-huh. Pretty much, it's like this...

"All my life, I felt like he was hovering over me, watching me every single second. Telling me to be careful about every tiny little thing, wouldn't let me do anything or hang out with anyone he thought was even slightly 'risky'. So my senior year in high school, all I wanted to do was get out from under him. I was gonna go to a college way out on the other side of the country, or out in Europe somewhere, where he'd have to take a plane to get to me. He wanted me to go to a college like five minutes' drive away, and get on the fast track to a medical license. I felt like he was just trying to control me, like I was supposed to be his little puppet.

"We got into this huge fight. I dunno if I've ever been so angry in my entire life. I can't remember half of what I yelled, and I don't think I really even meant half of it. But then, there was something I said—I think it was about mom—and he just…broke. Right in front of me, my dad, who I've known my whole life to be this cheerful, strong, super stubborn man, just like…cracked and fell apart. I remember what he said when it happened, it was...'I just want to keep you safe.' And it was quiet, like a whisper I could only hear because I'd shut up completely too when I saw that. He broke out into tears, and when he'd stopped sobbing enough to talk, that's when he told me what really happened to my mom. He didn't really stop crying the whole time, and neither did I. In the end, I wound up here because we compromised. We both liked this school, it's not too close and not too far, you know..more, normal stuff."

"So, you didn't know what happened to her until then?"

Amory shrugged. "I mean..I knew she'd..died, once I was smart enough to know what death was. But he always avoided the subject when I asked about her. What she was like, or what had really happened. I felt like he didn't think I was 'ready'."

---

Ning parked her car and got out, walking up to the school to pick up her little girl. It was so much easier now to literally pick Nadia up and spin her around laughing, then pull her into a brief, tight hug before setting her down again to walk alongside her, back to the car to go home.

While they walked, holding hands, Ning had a brief realization of the obvious. Her body, as it was now, came with super strength. She was more than strong enough to crush a normal human adult with a hug, much less a young girl like her granddaughter. And yet—it was so easy to not do that; she had such fine control over her own strength that it was effortless. It was a good thing, for sure, and a stark contrast to her initial level of control when it came to lightning. Even now, with her powers 'rebalanced' and her body shifted to what she considered a more ideal look, she could occasionally feel small sparks flying off of herself when she was stressed or worried. Nothing more than the equivalent of a little static from rubbing one's feet on across a carpet, but plenty to show that she still wasn't one hundred percent in control of that part of her powers, and perhaps she never would be.

On the drive home, she considered: She had the benefit of experience now, but raising a child the first time around had been much easier because she hadn't had to do it alone. There were all kinds of new concerns when it came to raising Nadia now, especially with her own position as a well-known "superhero". She would have no choice to be protective at times...but that was true of any parent. If she could just manage a level of self-control when it came to that urge to protect her little girl that rivaled the control she felt over her own strength...or honestly, even just the level of 'not fatally electrocuting people by accident with her powers'...that would be enough.

It was encouraging to know that, for her age, Nadia was already quite a smart and capable girl. She'd be all right.

---

Amory continued, "He said that my mom was the one and only love of his life, and she ruined romance with anyone else for him—which is why he never even dated anyone when I was growing up. She was smart, kind, capable...he said, 'she was my heart, and when I lost her, I had to spend a long time growing myself a new one.' Or..something like that. And what she'd died of, well, it was just cancer.

"I mean—not that fatal cancer is ever just cancer, but...you know. Lots of people, die from that. I was...maybe one or two years old when she got it. Or, well—that's when they found it. Maybe she had it before I was even born. Anyway, he's a surgeon, and he'd saved people in a situation just like hers dozens of times. He cut it out of her himself—the main mass, at least. And they did chemo, they did everything they could. They fought it together, tooth and nail, for over a year. But it just wasn't enough. The caught it too late, or maybe it was just so bad that it wouldn't have even mattered how early they caught it. Somewhere near the end, she made him promise that he'd take good care of me.

"So, that was why. He'd never wanted to control me in the first place. But he'd loved her, and he loved me, and he'd made a promise. He'd just..misunderstood what it was he'd promised to do. I think he realized that, then. He promised he'd try to trust me more. So, I guess he's still..trying to make good on that promise."

He took a deep breath and let it out before continuing. "I thought about the look he used to make, when I asked him about my mom all those times before. I'd thought it was—I dunno, like he was annoyed or frustrated or even angry at me for bringing her up. But right then, when he told me what had really happened, I finally got what that look meant. He was just...sad. It hurt him too much to even bring it up, to talk about it."

Emma couldn't really think of anything to say to all of that; in fact her brain was mostly busy processing all of it against the way Emmett had behaved once he'd been alone with her for a few minutes. It did make slightly more sense, she thought...except for, maybe, the part where he hadn't called her out on lying to him.

"Uh..hey," Amory said, finally breaking the silence. "This is, kinda a change of subject, but you know...last night, the big meeting thing..there were some people who wanted to meet 'Gemma' if possible. Like, show you their powers and stuff?"
"Hmn?" she tilted her head slightly, then quickly nodded. "Oh, I knew about that."
"Prism 'thought about it' while we were her," Blake added.

---

After returning to the VI headquarters, Simon started toward the PR office to start doing the job he was largely being paid for. But he happened to glance inside one of the lounges on his way and see something that immediately drew him inside: Cynthia was in there, alone. She was sitting on one of the couches with his gift, busily scribbling away at a sketch. He just had to know what she was drawing, so he sneaked quietly in to get a glance over her shoulder. It wasn't a very successful attempt at stealth, of course—fox ears and all. But she didn't stop working at it as he approached, which he considered a win.

The picture seemed to be mostly complete; it was a somber, moody sort of piece. There was a dark cave with only the faintest flicker of light coming in, and a clearly present but slightly blurry and indistinct human figure crouching terrified in its darkest corner. There were broken-off bones and patches of torn clothes and fur scattered around in some of the places the light reached. It was like the cave belonged to some great monster, but the monster was away just now—and yet its victim, huddling in the corner of the cave, was still too terrified to flee, or knew full well they would be tracked down even if they tried.

After he'd watched her continue to fill in the edges of the picture with pencil for a minute or so, she turned her head back. "Whad'you think, huh?"
"I knew you were talented," he said with a big grin. "You only just drew that today, and look at the shading, the perspective, the figure...all the emotion it conveys! It's not perfect, of course, but I could easily see a painted version, or maybe a little digital refinement, resulting in a piece worthy of collectors."

"Mmh. This ain't really all that original...I'm just copyin' it from memory."
"Oh? From where?"
"My old sketchbook."

"What happened to..." Simon trailed off, remembering her background slightly too late to stop his mouth moving. He knew what had happened—it had burned down, along with the rest of her house.

Or at least, he thought he knew. She said: "Last time I saw it, my dad found this sketch. He got angry. Real angry. Took a lighter to the whole thing, and laughed at me the whole time it was burnin' up.

"...Same man who kept my drawings from elementary school on the fridge, and used to brag 'bout how his little girl was gonna be a famous artist some day. He'd come home drunk or high, and real angry either way, and beat me with his fists until I started bleedin'. Then he'd finally notice I was hurt and just—stop, an' start cryin' his eyes out and sayin' how sorry he was. Tryin' to bandage up the wounds with his hands still clumsy from whatever he'd screwed himself up with, and then tuck me into bed like he used to, like he was still a good dad an' all."

"Er..." This sudden outpouring of distressing information had come out of her flatly, with very little emotion, which was even more worrying than if she'd been crying about it. This was a very rare case where Simon had no idea how to respond.
"Sorry, guess that's oversharing."

"Y..you know." He came around to sit on the far side of the couch from her. "I've always seen art as a playground. I've got loads of talent, and have built up a ton technical skill, but I always just want to make something unusual or interesting—or whatever I think will sell. But among my peers, I've met plenty who need it, for something else entirely. Whenever they go and tell me why, and it's something like what you just told me...I never really know what to say. I've tried saying 'well, at least you're past it now', and I either get glares, or silent head-shaking, or the most worrying laughter I've ever heard. Or I'll say, 'hey, at least you got good art out of it,' and that gets me the angriest glares. I'm certain giving expression to those kinds of memories is super important, but there are people trained to know what to say. Or when to say nothing at all, for that matter, and..I'm not one of 'em." He shrugged.

Cynthia fixed him with a look throughout this, and then for a moment afterward, then said: "'I'm sorry you went through that.'"
"Hmn?"

"That's all you gotta say. At least, far as I'm concerned."

"Huh." He nodded. "Well, then, I certainly am. Wish nobody did."

Simon had work to get to still, but didn't want to leave her off on an awkward note like this. After mentally grasping for a second or two, he said, "You know—well, you've probably noticed. I've been sort of trying 'Phoenix' on for you as a 'superhero name'. I didn't come up with it, but I liked it ever since I first heard it. But, I, haven't really asked you for your opinion about that. I can stop right away, if you don't like it."

"Hmm. Pheonix, huh? Big fiery bird that dies, and comes back brighter and stronger from the ashes," she recited in a faux-dramatic tone.

"Right."

"...Nah, I kinda like it. Just hope I can live up to that whole idea."

"I'm confident you can," Simon said, hopping up onto his feet. He nearly ran into Rowan on his way out of the room. "Ah—'scuze me, off to work!"

---

Clark started the car. "That went well overall, didn't it?"
"Yeah. Not bad. I think we could even stand to talk to each other again sometime," Rory said.

"He seemed friendlier and less intense than last time," Clark continued. "Honestly, I think he is a pretty good father."

"...I don't know about that. But then, I don't really remember."
"He wants the best for you, I think. It's just that he wasn't ready back then, maybe, to accept that you could know better than him what 'the best' is. Maybe you were both so used to butting heads that neither of you would ever be willing to admit the other one was right. But time heals all wounds, right?"

"Maybe. Time and memory loss."

They drove quietly for a few minutes. Then he said: "I can't help but think about Tobias."
"Who?"
"The puppeteer?"
"Oh." This single, short syllable was dripping with disgust.

"He turned out that way, at least partially, because he wanted...control. Control that his father would never relinquish to him. I suppose freedom, too. He was simultaneously spoiled rotten, and boxed in."
"So what?" she was, understandably, not particularly sympathetic to her murderer's former plight.

"I just..hope I turn out to be a better father than that."

"You think she's any less to blame? Just because of her upbringing?"
"No, no.." Clark shook his head slowly. "A person like that is always responsible for her own actions. But, perhaps he still deserves some blame for the way things turned out...and paid for it with the loss of his son."

Rory crossed her arms. "I'd say that's a pretty harsh punishment, but...I'm really not feeling like it was right now.

"Anyway—you've got nothing to worry about. If anything, I'm sure I'll be the one who winds up handling all the discipline. You'll be the nice, permissive one who bakes cookies for 'em and plays games with 'em."

"You don't think I'm capable of handing out punishment?" Clark said.

"Hahah, are you kidding? I bet you take one look in our little boy's or girl's eyes after saying 'no dessert for a week' and it starts raining brownies and ice cream!"

"Hmph."
"Hey, don't look so upset about it. You're kind," she said. "It's what I love about you."