Amelia, Worm AU [Complete]

Amelia, Ch 288- Lisa


Huh, why's Lily calling back so soon? I activated the phone. "How long did you know?" Her voice was angry and miserable all at once.


Upset. Recent, personal. Suspects I knew ahead of time. "Oh," I muttered. "I'm sorry."


"You're not going to convince me you didn't already know," Lily growled. "Don't fucking try. How. Long. Have. You. Known?"


"Which part?" I responded, tapping on my power to find my way through this minefield. Happened earlier than anticipated. Catalyst. Not from Lily, would have noticed during earlier conversation. Lily went to see Sabah after. Lily blames me and sees this as something I should have known a while ago. Knows my power wouldn't pick up on information I couldn't access. Knows I don't talk to Sabah often, if at all. Sabah too timid to take any drastic action. Lily initiated breakup. I had to consciously avoid a sigh of relief. I knew how to approach this, now.


"That the two of you weren't going to last?" I offered. Her reaction, or guarded avoidence of a reaction, confirmed it for me. "If we're being honest? Before you even got together in the first place. You two just don't want the same things out of life, it was never going to work out." It was also never going to be emotionally healthy in any kind of way. Two people as fucked in the head as you and Sabah only stand a chance in the very rare situation where you have compatible neurosis like Amelia and Taylor. But terrified of commitment and emotionally needy do not belong in a relationship together.


"And you said nothing," she accused.


"Would you have believed me?" I countered. "Name one moment, any moment before this call, that I could have told you. When I was still Tattletale? I like my organs unperforated, thanks. Before you signed up and you were being fed the Protectorate's propoganda about us?"


"To be fair to Piggot," Lily cut in. "Everything she said about you turned out to be true. Class S threat, going to conquer the city, if we don't stop them now we'll never get another chance. If anything, she underestimated you."


"Well, I never accused her of being stupid," I replied. "But let's continue. Could I have told you after you started dating her and still didn't know me beyond 'that bitch formerly known as Tattletale'? What about after I warned you about your impending reassignment out of Brockton Bay?" Please don't catch how you might not have stayed if I did convince you to think twice about Sabah. "The first time I might have had a chance was when you came up with that marriage plan. Then fucking Khonsu happened."


She flinched. Fuck, overdid it. "I... my powers aren't all that cracked up to be," can't believe I'm opening up to Lily of all people. I slumped in my chair. "In a way, they're a lot like yours or Victoria's. I know how to spot weakpoints, how to tear people down and ruin them in all kinds of ways. But every time I thought that maybe, just once, I could save someone? Actually help instead of hurt? It's been nothing but disaster after disaster. Asking me to help someone is like asking you to use your power to repair something. It almost sounds possible, but it's not."


"That's fucked up," Lily responded.


"I hoped that Rapture could do better than I could have," I told her. Not a lie, I really did hope, but I knew that would fail as well. Rapture wasn't willing to harness her powers to their fullest, for reasons she was capable of hiding from my power. If I dipped into my postcognition, then maybe I could have figured it out, but she'd know, and I doubted that would go over well. "Maybe she thought the same thing I did, that it was better for it to happen naturally than with us meddling in your personal lives."


"She didn't have a lot of chances," Lily admitted. "Heartbreaker's kids are pretty scary."


I nodded in agreement to that. If it weren't for the anti-master drug, they wouldn't have even been given a chance. Too dangerous, too fucked up in the head. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry. I really do wish there was something I could have done. Or something I might be able to do."


"Yeah, dial it back," she muttered. "Just because I get where you're coming from doesn't mean I agree with it. Or that I'm gonna forgive you that easy. Or that we're going to be friends. I don't like what you did. I don't like a lot of the shit you do. I talked to Rapture about what happens if I go public this way. I didn't like the answers. You were looking at starting a war, Lisa."


"That's pushing it," I insisted. "I ran it by Dinah's numbers, less than a five percent and easy enough to manipulate in our favor over time. There was almost no chance of us not being able to at least delay it."


"Delay it how?" her eyes narrowed.


"Vague promises, delays, negotiations, there's all kinds of ways for politicians to push things off and force the next candidate to deal with the mess they left behind," I responded. "Only in this case it wouldn't matter because Scion's going to happen. Once that happens, the CUI will have more important things to worry about, and so will we." Impatient, waiting for rest of the statement. Fuck, Rapture really did figure it all out. "The risk of civil conflict is still there, but that's going to happen almost any way we do things. Your marriage idea was our best chance. If it means getting more people onto Avalon where we can actually protect them, then that's what saves the most lives."


"Well, now I'm single again and Sabah's opinion no longer means shit to me," Lily spat. "So get in touch with the royal family, and talk negotiations. The marriage is back on the table if that's what it takes to do this without bloodshed."


I nodded, careful to not smile. "Okay, I'll see what I can do. But it might not be enough in the long run. And of course you'll be disqualified from status in Avalon's nobility."


"I wasn't planning on that anyway," she responded dismissively. "I was thinking we delay the negotiations and unmasking for a little while, though. I have a plan."


....


"Lisa, isn't the point of going to a restaurant to eat things we can't make ourselves?" Taylor asked, looking at the building. It was one of the first restaurants built on Avalon. And more interestingly, it was to be the first example of Avalon specific cuisine. A couple of Crystal's college friends were in the culinary arts program, and started playing around with the samples she'd brought them. I didn't know the story beyond that, but apparently they were quite good at it.


"Oh, we don't make it like this," I smiled. "Besides, it's good to be seen like this. And you need to do something other than cuddle with Amelia all day. You two already share a planet on multiple levels, you need to stop there before you wind up sharing the same circulatory system."


Missy laughed a little. She and Theo were coming along, costumed of course. Riley and Amelia were having their time together, and everyone else had various projects of their own. Dinah's parents had chosen to monopolize all of her time before they made their move back to Bet. I ignored the twinge of envy. So few of us had parents that cared about us at all, and I sure as hell wasn't on the list.


"Lisa, I'm pretty much everywhere on the planet all at once," Taylor muttered. "I can do everything and still cuddle with Amelia all day."


"At least you're not arguing about the cuddling at all," I quipped back. "If you can't accept it as a chance to have fun, then look at it this way. This is the first business on this planet that's actually trying to be something new and unique. Everything else is 'new wherever' or made by us. And by 'us' I mostly mean Dragon." Not an exaggeration, Dragon accounted for over ninety nine percent of this planet's economy right now. In many ways, it made me worry that she was going to do to us what we did in Brockton Bay with the sewers, and the rest of the US with the M7s.


"Okay, I guess," she agreed reluctantly.


I led the way into the restaurant, and people turned to stare immediately. "Remember to smile," I instructed. The smiles would show because our armor would open for the lower part of our faces, now. Useful for public events like this. Avalon hadn't established newspapers yet, and it would be far longer before we had our own variant on the internet, but people already had their cameras and their cell phones. News would spread.


"Uh... wow," a man stuttered as we stepped in. He was older than any of us by at least a few years. College aged. "I wasn't expecting. Please, come in, I'll get you a private room right away."


I smiled. "If you please, we'd prefer to eat in the public area," I responded. What was the point in being seen if you weren't seen? "A pair of booths, not a table. The young couple is here on a date. Khepri and I are just chaperoning and catching up on business. I've heard good things about what you've been doing and we had to see what the fuss was about."


"Really? You've heard about us?" he asked. "We just started a couple weeks ago."


"Yes, we have," I responded, even though I was the only one of us that did. "We really appreciate what you're trying to do here. If Avalon's going to distinguish itself as a culture, we need more people like you."


He stuttered a little. "Th-thank you. Here's your table." I took my seat and Taylor joined on the other side of the booth. Theo and Missy were led a couple booths away to take their own seats.


"You had way too much fun with that," Taylor accused me.


"You did, too," I responded. "You know we just made that guy's week at the very least."


"And then some," she replied. "We're walking advertisements. We start coming here, and pretty soon everyone will."


I smiled and opened my menu. "Hmm, I think the grilled applesquash sounds good," I changed the subject just a little.


"Grilled?" Taylor opened the menu. "Wow. They got everything in here, don't they?"


"Pretty much," I replied. "Lots of styles, too. Right now it seems like they're just trying stuff and seeing what people like. In five years there will be all kinds of places like this, people who want to be Avalon citizens, create their own unique culture instead of just import their home culture over. And in fifty years, people will stop remembering that it used to not be like this. All these strange names will be morphed into their own words, and no one will remember that there was a time when this was new."


"Wow," Taylor just stared at the menu. "I never really thought of that. That's pretty huge."


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A/N- Well, Lisa chapter. See, it's not all work and bitchiness. Just mostly work and bitchiness.

Also: I wish grilled applesquash existed. That sounds delicious.