Of Sisters and Shadows – Chapter 1 (Patreon)

Disclaimer: So that this story fits inside of Patreon’s Community Guidelines, it’s been revised so that it occurs in an AU where all the characters are legal adults. This includes the characters not involved in sexual events. Everybody is an adult, without a single exception. Sorry about the inconvenience.

To no one’s surprise, Leet has been gruesomely killed by one of his own inventions.

To our enduring displeasure with the little gremlin, the bloody thing is still active, and randomly targeting any capes in the Bay it selects with a criteria no Thinker has yet guessed.

To my actual panic, terror, and horror, it looks like I am next.

“What’s the matter, Vicky? Not feeling so heroicright now?” The clone with glowing, amber eyes mocks me as I barely dodge a punch that would have totaled my shield instantly and painfully thrown me against the ground. Like the last two times I was too slow to dodge.

First rule of superheroics: never trust something with glowing eyes.

“Fuck off, evil Vicky. And that’s rich coming from someone who’s ripping off Alexandria’s costume!”

“Jealous? You are so proud when people call you Alexandria Junior, after all.” The… thing smirks at me, her hip cocked to the side as a finger coquettishly traces the jawline of her uncovered left side, the Triumvirate hero’s helmet cut in half and covering her right side.

If that was the only modification to my usual look, it wouldn’t piss me off half as much.

Her cape is ragged and drips blood with her every motion, her costume is bubblegum pink rather than white, her tiara made from razor wire, and the less said about her stripper heels, excessive cleavage, and the way her skirt makes it exceedingly clear she isn’t wearing my usual spats, the better.

Hate her. Hate her so fucking much.

“Why are you doing this? What do you get out of this?!”

“Haven’t I told you already, Vicky? I am a Shadow… the true self.” And she smirks once again, the twisted smile distorting her face into a manic, elated grimace.

“That’s not what a shadow is! Shadows are a part of the person, not the true person! There’s no such thing as a true self!” I get dragged into the argument much more than I intended, but I am still trying to take stock of my surroundings. We are in a twisted version of the Boardwalk, all of the tourist traps selling merchandise of me in wildly varying degrees of taste, but a thick fog surrounds the location, and I can’t make anything as far as even the Rig.

I am alone, and no help is coming.

“Oh, we do so enjoy bragging about what we know to others, about already taking college classes…” she throws her head back in the kind of laugh I can only imagine letting out after getting drunk for the first time. “You know why we do it, right, Vicky? Because we are so terrified of going back to being the—“

“Shut. Up!” I see red.

I fly in a zig-zagging pattern, picking up stones and assorted debris every time I stray close to the ground, but I don’t manage to lose her.

She’s as fast as me, as agile as me, as well-trained as I am.

And she’s precisely that. No more, nor less.

“Can you imagine if we were as fast as Crystal? What am I saying, of course you can! We do it every time we are just that little bit too late, every time we—“

I throw a rock at her with all of my strength, and her shield flickers long enough for me to maneuver and start laying on her, punch after punch racing the last one, our shields crashing against each other in flashes of something only I—and the fucking monster—can see.

“I told you to shut up!” Finally, finally! A wild uppercut manages to catch her chin just a fraction of a second after I knee her stomach in a flying tackle, and her head is thrown back as spittle flies out of her mouth.

I am out of breath, the rush of attacks as exhausting as any session with a heavy bag, but… I did it. I hurt her.

And I can do it again.

And then that shrill laugh comes back, and she locks eyes with me just before spitting blood into mine.

It’s only a moment. A distraction barely worth the name. My shield doesn’t let the blood stick to me, and it is quickly washed away.

It’s more than enough.

She sweeps my legs with enough strength to take away my flight for the time it takes me to crash to the ground, and when I blink my eyes open, the thing is sitting astride me in what can easily be recognized as the mounted position.

Carlos, I swear to God, if I get killed because you forced me to watch all of those MMA videos, I’m going to fucking haunt you!

I start thrashing around, trying to use my hips to throw her off, but her weight is resting over my chest, and she’s using her flight to negate any momentary loss of balance. Each time I even think of using my flight to maybe drag myself out, she casually punches my face so hard my head bounces back against the ground, a wet, warm patch already spreading from where my scalp’s been split open.

We have the same strength, the same training, the same ideas. But she has leverage.

I have already lost.

“Ah, that’s the look I wanted to see.” There’s glee there, the same kind of glee I try not to show whenever I rough up one of the fucking Nazis who murdered aunt Fleur.

She doesn’t bother hiding anything.

“Why?” I can’t help asking. The answer is that Leet was a moron, of course, but… But seeing myself enjoying taking me apart… Some part of me needs an answer.

“I told you, Vicky: I am a Shadow, the true self.”

I—fuck.

“You are going to substitute me.”

“Maybe,” she replies as her impeccably manicured fingernails drag down my cheek in a mockery of tenderness.

“But why? You hate me, you are taking everything I worked so hard for,” my eyes stray to the half-helmet before I can restrain myself, “and throwing it in my face. You don’t like me, so why would you want to be me?!”

“If the true self doesn’t like you, what does that say about you, Victoria Dallon?” Her voice is a low purr, her delight at my weakness a sensual thing to this … being.

“Is that how you want to play it?” I look into her eyes, and I would like to say that I do it with defiance. So I will say it. No one is going to rob me of that, not when it’s the last thing I may be able to call mine.

“You never liked to play, why start now?” And I gasp at that.

Because it’s true. Because I hated every second of playing basketball with a passion. But nobody should know that.

This is too much.

“Struck a nerve, didn’t I? Oh, I am so very sorry, Vicky,” she says, as her hands start clenching against my neck hard enough I could count down the seconds until my shield fails. “Such a painful memory, being there just for the sake of your dysfunctional family, just to give them something to focus on.” She wants me to answer, to cry out. Which is precisely why I don’t do it.

“For the sake of a mother who doesn’t know how to love.” Her hips grind over my chest, and she moans while I try not to shudder.

“Of a father who cares, but can no longer show it.” I grit my teeth. I can still breathe, her hands still that so very thin yet vital distance away from my neck.

“Of a sister who—“ I strike her back with my knees, and both our shields flicker, her hands quickly and painfully clenching around my throat just as I hit her under her armpits with the first knuckle of each fist, crushing the nerve clusters against her ribs. She cries out in pain as she loses her grip, and I could scream in joy at the sound.

Her distraction is enough for me to drag her down by her elbows, and my shield kicks back just as she’s trying to regain her leverage. I have a fraction of a second of flight before she does, and it’s barely enough for me to turn both of us over and frantically scrabble up to mirror our previous position.

I bury my fist right beside her head.

“I have never killed anyone,” I spit at her.

“Not for lack of trying. If it wasn’t for Amy—“

“No. You don’t bring my sister into whatever this is. This messed up duel against the dark side is between you and me.”

“Between me and me, you mean.” And there’s that glint of amusement again, as if nearly killing me, mocking everything I hold—

No.

No. I know what this is.

“The Shadow. That which isn’t under the light of consciousness. That which I am not aware of, or which I refuse to acknowledge.”

“Oh? Putting that college education to work, Vicky?”

I grab her helmet and pull it off, looking at it. It’s split down the middle, but the edge isn’t machined. It’s cracked, burned in places.

“People call me Alexandria Junior. They don’t know what they are talking about. Alexandria has tanked Endbringers and kept going. Me? If I am hit by Leviathan, his echo will tear me in half, if I approach Behemoth, my internal organs will cook, and there’s nothing stopping the Simurgh from making Dallon Brains’ slurry. I am not the next Alexandria. I will never be. I accept this. And I let go of a childish dream.”

The helmet dissolves in my hand, motes of light drifting into the fog before they are swallowed. And I feel lighter than I have since I first wore my tiara.

Other Vicky looks at me, her amber eyes glinting in something I don’t care to recognize. Not yet.

I tear off her bloody cape.

“I am angry. I am angry all of the time. I could be cuddling next to Dean, saluting a cheerful civilian while I patrol, or trying to set up Amy with a date, and yet I will still be angry. Because the world is not fair, because bad things happen to good people, because my aunt was murdered for trying to do the right thing and it looks like everyone just stopped trying ever since. I am angry, and I try to take out that anger on the people I think deserve it. I accept this. I acknowledge my anger, and know that it’s a part of me. And I don’t let go of it, because it’s mine.”

The fabric liquefies, and the blood oozes up my arms, soaking into my skin, the warmth of the anger beneath rushing up to meet the heat without.

I take off her tiara, looking at the mangled circlet between my fingers, and this… I think I know what it is, because twisting the razor wire only brings me memories of hazel eyes surrounded by a smatter of freckles.

“I hurt those who are near me. I am careless, I don’t realize how my actions—“ And my voice breaks.

This is too much. I need to acknowledge each and everything about me that I hate enough I don’t recognize it in the mirror? To acknowledge everything I have been too careless to even notice? No wonder Leet died. No wonder Skidmark died. No wonder Dean died.

No wonder I am going to die.

And then warm, slender arms hold me close, and a voice that I only recognize as mine because it’s softer than my mother’s, yet equally mature, whispers in my ear.

“Shh. It’s all right. You pass, Vicky. You pass.”

And she kisses me.

I barely notice the softness of her lips, the warmth of her body, the scent of her skin, because each movement of my Shadow brings another image to my mind.

Being ignored by parents with a far too important job.

Consoling a sister who didn’t know what she had done wrong. What she had always done wrong.

Standing in the middle of a stadium. A spectacle, a mockery as everything I had worked so hard for crashed around me. And not being noticed even then.

And… Dean’s body. Mangled, his eyes missing, and not being able to even cradle him as heroes kept me apart from my dead boyfriend as they carried him away.

But there’s more.

There are two beings, so vast I don’t have the vocabulary to describe them, so beautiful their sight is enough to hurt, so beyond human that their mere existence is—

And my eyes shoot open.

I am alone, kneeling on the cratered ground, my arms encircling someone that is no longer there. Because she no longer is. Because I am.

I am not the Shadow. I am the true self.

***

The fogs twist around me, my surroundings melding in a way that has little to do with distance and a lot with meaning. I am beginning to understand this place, the rules of its navigation, how it draws people in…

It’s… not a trap. Not really. But deadly all the same.

And then I hear a familiar voice sobbing.

I let my anger flood my shield and it cuts through the fog, opening a passage straight to what I feared most.

Amy. Killing Amy.

I fly, faster than I ever have, because that’s what Leet’s botched, incredible invention does: it grants a second trigger.

Or obliterates you.

In an instant, Amy is in my arms as I drag her out of the claws that were piercing her stomach. Her eyes are wide, far too scared of me, and for a second I wonder if my aura is affecting her, but that’s no longer a concern and will never be.

“How romantic. Isn’t this wonderful, Amy? Now you can die in your love’s arms.”

No.

I freeze, Amy’s horror at her Shadow’s words only confirming this isn’t some kind of cruel joke.

And I need to get past this. Quickly.

Because Amy is bleeding out, and the only one who could save her is herself… if she were to overcome her Manton limit.

“Shadow, this is an unfair trial. She was unarmed.”

The other Amy tilts her head, amber light glowing out of the slits of her bone mask, her robes torn apart so she can move with ease, claws dripping with the blood of my sister, broken chains of bone and sinew dangling off her wrists.

“That was her choice, wasn’t it, Vicky? Nothing stopped her from growing out gauntlets like these,” she says, wagging blood-drenched fingers covered in a dark, glistening, serrated material. “If she hadn’t been so reticent to even—“

“Shut up, bitch. I am not that tacky,” Amy bites off, and Shadow giggles.

“No, of course not. You are so concerned with appearances. That is why you have a supermodel sister, and you dress as if you want to hide your actual gender. Or is that because maybe you wish you could—“

“Shut the fuck up! I am dying; I will run out of blood in seconds. At least let me have them in silence.” And I could be relieved at Amy bitching out like usual, if she wasn’t refusing to meet my eyes. She’s not advancing , not solving the puzzle. Not fast enough.

But at least I can give her some time.

Flexing muscles I am still not used to having , I elongate a sharp fingernail made of shield and puncture an artery in my arm. Blood starts flowing down my skin in a reversal of what I went through before with my Shadow’s cape, and the fast-flowing rivulet is enough to shock Amy into looking at me.

“Vicky, what the He—“

“Where do I cut you?”

“What?”

“Where do I cut you to make a transfusion?”

“Wha—no! That won’t work, I’m still bleeding out, you will just drain alongside me, don’t be so stupidly heroic that—“

“Use my flesh to seal the wound. I can afford some spare change.” Smile, Vicky, don’t let her even suspect you… Damn it all, Ames, couldn’t your darkest secrets be any easier to deal with? I only needed to rethink my whole outlook on life, nothing like this!

She looks like she’s about to refuse, but I push my bare hand against her wound and hold her gaze after the flinch of pain passes. Before I realize what’s happening, the wound on my arm has closed, and thin tendrils are sprouting from my palms, unerringly guided by Amy’s power to meet her ruptured flesh.

“Boooring,” Shadow drones, and I am suddenly dodging thorny whips that seem to move by themselves as I carry Amy’s huddled form. I fly up, out of the reach of her weapons, and I finally take a look at my surroundings.

Flesh. A cave made out of dripping, pulsating, dark flesh. And Shadow’s feet are bare.

We are so screwed.

“You finally see it, don’t you, my dearest sister? How much the wretch in your arms has been holding back, how much more she could have done if she wasn’t so pathetically afraid…” she pauses, and I think she was waiting for Amy to interrupt her, but she’s still staring at the wound where our bodies mingle. Shadow shrugs and continues her tirade. “Afraid of what you will think about her. About the daughter of a villain,” and Amy flinches at that, “that made her way into your family like a cuckoo into your nest. Why do you think mommy dearest hates her so much, Vicky? Because she knows. Because she understands—“

“My mother desperately needs psychological help that she refuses to get, and her opinions about Amy are completely irrelevant.” Come on, Ames, take the hint. This isn’t something we win by punching harder.

“Maybe. Hell, I’ll give you that, because damsel in distress over there looks like she halfway agrees, but that’s not the point, is it?”

“And what is?” Keep talking. Keep talking so I know how to help.

“That as fearful as Amy is of how you will react, as much as she stays awake at night in terror of what you will do once her secret is finally out—and you should thank me for actually ripping that particular bandaid off, Amy—as much as she obsesses about what you’ll end up thinking about her… It doesn’t fucking matter.”

What does that—and the Shadow grins and points at where Amy is touching my hand.

“It doesn’t matter, because she can literally change your mind. Just like this.” And she snaps her fingers, and enormous globs of flesh start raining down, forcing me to use all of my newfound maneuverability to keep us from being slapped down or something worse, but I can’t help looking down at Amy.

And I meet her eyes, her frozen, terrified eyes that show far too much white. Hazel surrounded by a smatter of freckles.

I know what her Shadow is telling us. I know what Amy’s real temptation is, and a trickle of horror is fed to her through our connection, Amy noticing it when my heart rate spikes, when my adrenaline surges, and I can see her heart break in those hazel pools.

So I lean down, and kiss her.

I layer my shield in ten planes over my back, each one crushed as another colossal dripping of half-melted flesh crashes against us, but I focus on the trembling woman I am holding.

I focus on soft lips that could belong to anyone.

I focus on still not fully developed curves that could be from any classmate who wanted to get extra-playful during a game of truth or dare.

I focus on the heat of a body next to mine that I have missed so much since Dean—

And I focus on Dean. On the stab of sadness and guilt each time I realize his face has lost a bit more detail, that I need to refresh my memory of him with the pictures saved on my phone, and computer, and PHO account.

And I push past that pain, past the thousand needles of agony that tear at me as I try to reach their cause. My love.

And I find it, buried under pain and remembrance and a thousand unsaid maybes.

So I flood my shield with it, and the girl who could be anyone (even my sister) held in my arms is now surrounded by the purest, more unconditional love I have ever felt.

She’s lied to me all these years; it’s only fair I return the favor.

I can feel Shadow’s eyes locked on me, the burst of something being released, and then I am no longer holding Amy.

I am looking from the outside, the fog almost invisible yet far too solid to travel across, and I see Amy staring into Shadow’s eyes in wonder as our shared blood soaks her clothes.

Yet she remains upright, strong. Far more than I ever remember.

“You… are me,” she says, voice full of wonder and a touch of wistfulness.

“Took you long enough, you dumb bitch,” Shadow replies, her smirk softened just enough to show what lies under her brashness.

Amy takes a step forward that her double mirrors in eerie symmetry.

“She… tricked me, didn’t she?” Amy says, almost trembling fingers trailing lips that are hers and no other’s.

“Of course she did. Things don’t get magically solved just because you are in a life or death situation, do they?”

“No, in my experience, that just means someone will have to mop up a lot of disgusting fluids. And change the sheets.” And they both snort at that, mirrored cynicism releasing something I am not yet aware of, even though how much I’m already intruding.

“So. I am the Shadow. The true self.”

“I am you. And you are I.”

And then there’s just one.

***

Amy’s new body makes me feel inadequate.

She’s taller than me, her hair falling in artful waves rather than the frizzy thing it tends to be by the end of the day. She isn’t busty or, as Dennis would put it, ‘thicc.’ Rather, she’s slender, her every motion a display of feline grace that is so clearly unnatural it makes the back of my neck tingle in awed apprehension.

I am looking at a Fairy Queen, and Glaistig Uaine can go fuck herself if she thinks she still has any claim to the title.

“You are going to make me blush,” she mutters as we walk through whorls of something that is most definitely not water.

“Only if you mean to.”

“It’s so obvious, is it?”

“Ames, don’t take this the wrong way, but if I ever find out you could have done for me what you currently are doing for yourself and you decided not to bother, I am going to be very upset. And you can forget about your Christmas gifts for the next ten years.”

She chuckles. So do I.

It’s nice.

“You never told me how you got here,” I say.

“How else? Chasing after my dumb sister,” her tone is playful, but not to anyone who doesn’t know her.

“I guess you’ve been doing a lot of that, uh?” Mine’s… pretty much the same, now that I think about it.

“Hey, you are the one who kissed her sister. You freak.”

“At least I wasn’t the one who tried to slip her sister some tongue. You degenerate.”

“No, just the one who wasn’t that shy about coping a feel. Pervert.”

“But I didn’t think about using my power to Tristan-und-Isolde her. You cad.”

“Scraping the bottom of the barrel, eh?”

“You giving up already?”

“When I can remind you that your power just date-raped me during my first kiss? Never. You nerd.”

“Nerd doesn’t count! It’s not even related!”

“Try not to use German operas as euphemisms, and maybe I won’t think nerd always counts.”

“You are a bitch, you know?”

“Of course. And you love me just like that.” She looks at me when she says what could very well be a question. My eyes don’t flee from her, answering in a way.

And she takes my hand, and I grasp her tight enough her new bones can feel the strain, afraid of something else trying to take her away from me.

And we take another step forward, and the fog fades around us as we walk into Brockton Bay.

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This story has been funded by QQ’s Xalgeon on my Patreon, who came up with the original premise of having Amy have the most intense psychodrama ever conceived, and for Vicky to violate patient/therapist confidentiality. And that’s with her mother being a lawyer…