Amelia, Worm AU [Complete]

That was Colin addressing Taylia as Miss Hebert.

 

Best thing that never appeared in the story:

I like this story, such a happy ending filled with existential and cosmic horror. All of humanity is slowly being subsumed into eldritch abominations that hunt other eldritch abominations, and the main characters have all traded their souls away piece by piece to build a better world that will be a nest/hatchery for the world ending beasts we will all become.

Due to the efforts of Taylor and Amelia the entire human race are now the hosts or potential hosts for the larval stage of the "space sharks"

I'm a little teary at how heartwarming it all is.

Great story! 10/10!

EDIT: Everyone get to work on the TV Tropes page!

 

Thought that's been floating around in my head for a bit now...

The Entities, as a species as far as we know, used other species to develop/teach/whatever the shards for them because they were either completely incapable of it due to how they worked, or incapable because they never latched on to anything that gave them the ability to be innovative or imaginative. Or something like that.

But now there's some out there that can be. They've got a semi/mostly/somewhat human mind behind the wheel or spread throughout the shards themselves or just part of a handful of relevant shards that control everything.

There's two things that people, humans, are good at. The first is change. we're good at seeing a problem and figuring stuff out about it, at least compared to Entities. Maybe there's other species that can do it better, maybe there's not. It's irrelevant. We can, that's what matters here.

The other thing we're good at, somewhat paradoxically, is not changing. Making things suit our needs instead of the other way around. Like the environment.

Space sharks need food. What happens when the food starts running out?

 

Stars. One of the last chapters said that entities could live off stars for practically eternity but they didn't because they were searching for a way to outlive entropy, which sitting around a star doesn't help with.

 

Yah, already did my part. Half a dozen entries on the page. First half a dozen ever posted there.

Seriously, peeps, go and add some examples.

 

More added.

 

Got it indexed and linked up in the Recs page. Will see about adding more content to the page later.

 

1.

The first time they kiss, it's on impulse.

Taylor is gone, so many others are gone, and Rebecca only survived by chance and-- Lisa wants to.

The healers leave them alone, Rebecca's wounds gone. There's a single moment of hesitation. Lisa's teeth touch her lip, her eyes flick to Rebecca's mouth. Rebecca's eyebrows move upward a tiny amount, back downward after a half-second, then she nods just barely. Desire; surprise, acceptance, permission.

Lisa reaches forward for Rebecca's hand, closes fingers around her wrist as she leans in. Rebecca's pulse remains steady if slightly elevated, no signs of disgust or panic, and Lisa turns her power off after that last reassurance.

(God, her power comes with an off switch now. She'd have Taylor's lesbian babies if she hadn't sacrificed herself another goddamn time--)

It's nice. Rebecca's free hand comes up to cup her cheek, Lisa strokes a light thumb along the other woman's hand. There's nothing sexual about it - neither of them really have a sex drive - but it's another way to connect, a way that had been denied to them before. The kiss breaks, and they pull back, Lisa turning her power back on.

There's a slight flush to Rebecca's cheeks, her smile only evident enough for Lisa to read and read into. Lisa's own smile has no hint of smugness to it, no cruel anticipation before she sinks her fangs in.

The world outside will need guidance and support soon enough, but this moment is theirs.

2.

The second time they kiss, it's deliberate.

Things have settled down. Rebuilding efforts have started, building efforts have resumed, everyone who needed medical treatment has gotten it, the losses have been tallied as best they can be. Taylor's death still stings, the loss of so many heroes haunts Rebecca in unexpected moments, but they're bearable, now.

They mostly spend their time rebuilding, coordinating, negotiating. Rebecca with her new power - Lisa flinches the first time it touches her, remembering Brian and his insanity, but she adjusts, trusts Rebecca too much for it to affect her for long - and Lisa with all the certainty (and relief) of no longer having to manipulate the world.

Time alone is precious and jealously guarded. They often work together - Rebecca has a wealth of experience with a power close to Lisa's, and Lisa herself cuts through problems with a knife when she has access to Accord - but the times they spend out of costume and out of the public eye come few and far between.

When it's just them, alone and off-duty in Lisa's apartment, the powers stay off. They play a game, watch television, read the newspaper or internet articles; in moments such as those, it's hard to tell them apart from any other well-established couple.

Lisa dozes from her spot in Rebecca's lap, back pressed against her chest and body wedged between her legs. There's some Aleph movie on, something about zombies and strippers that no one is sure how it made it into their collection, but neither is paying much attention. Lisa drifts in and out of consciousness, Rebecca quietly enjoys their moment while getting close to napping herself, and then... it just feels like time.

Light fingers stroking her wrist bring Lisa closer to consciousness. She stirs, opens her eyes to find Rebecca looking down at her. Rebecca's free hand lifts to rest against her cheek, her gaze drifts down to Lisa's lips, and the younger woman knows her intent in an instant.

A small smile from Lisa, and lips meet.

Like before, it's intimate rather than sexual, exploring and sharing for the sake of knowledge and closeness. Unlike before, there's... something. A spark.

This time, when they break, it's because they're both mildly confused. Lisa has gotten used to asexuality as a side-effect of her powers overloading her with unwanted details about everyone, Rebecca as a necessary component of making sure no one could manipulate her or Alexandria. Now that Lisa can stop the flow of information, now that Director Costa-Brown and Alexandria are far lower down the list of people most desirable to have in your pocket... there's potential.

The movie reclaims their nominal attention, but below the facade, the minds of two of the brightest whir.

3.

The first time they have sex, it's unexpected.

One of the newly-discovered worlds - Oasis - has a socio-political Thinker in charge of their equivalent of the West. He'd only rate a 5 or 6 on Bet, as best they can tell, but on a world where there are only a handful of other parahumans, most Brutes or Strikers, he's carved out an empire for himself.

It's really not his fault that Avalon and Bet send Alexandria, Crow, and Taylia as their representatives, and he is therefore badly outclassed.

Taylia lets Alexandria and Crow take the lead, only occasionally dipping into the conversation with Avalon's input, and the whole set of negotiations is a slaughter. Bet gets everything they want, Avalon gets everything they want, and every little trap or concession Oasis tries to trick them into fails.

Toward the end, Rebecca can't help but notice Lisa's restlessness. She shuts down the Oasis Thinker more harshly as things come to a close, and the small twitches of her body language scream that she wants to leave. Rebecca can tell by the slight dilation of her pupil and miniscule flush to her cheeks - both signs she's allowed herself, and too subtle for the other two to notice - that she wants something, but she hasn't told Rebecca what just yet.

The two of them retire to their hotel room - expensive and provided entirely at cost to Oasis - and the second the door shuts, Lisa moves.

She slides out of her armor in a twisting motion, careless of where the pieces drop, and turns to her partner. Her pupils are now blown, her breathing faster and heavier, and the twitching of her gut shows she'd rush forward if Rebecca weren't still in her armor.

The second set of armor falls to the floor, and Rebecca tilts her head in a silent question.

Beginnings of arousal in response to yours, starting to find you physically attractive as former self-imposed sexual restrictions wear away. Would enjoy taking control in future encounters, will be extremely aroused if-- Lisa shuts off her power before she can start getting information that would ruin the mood, and lunges.

4.

They figure it out.

If there are words for their orientations, they neither find them nor care to cobble them together out of Latin. Even a few decades of being free of sexual restrictions doesn't leave either of them with normal libidos, but they find ways to spark the mood, on the rare occasions where one or both want that form of intimacy.

When the fifth dead entity appears in the sky, ready for more pairbonds to ascend, it feels like time. They make love one last time, slow and deliberate, branding physical details onto minds that will shortly change beyond recognition.

Then, they leave their bodies behind, riding their deaths into the sky, exulting in the joy of becoming one in the most absolute way.

 

'Cos, y'know, that's just routine these days.

 

The first one was a holy shit moment. The second one was startling. By the time the fourth rolled around, I feel like people went, "oh, we're gonna lose some people. Guess we better have them train their replacements and update their wills.".

 

By about the sixth or seventh, there'd be a roster. "Okay, you two will be on the eighth one ... and you two on the ninth ... "

 

Then Taylia's namesake returns for their/her/its daughter, see's the signup sheet, manifests an avatar of Moe Howard and slaps whoever thought that was a good idea (i guess that'd be Accord. he would try to schedule spaceshark births)

Edit: for your viewing pleasure

 

They opted for dying naturally long before their particular shards were plugged into whales.

Each whale gets to be broken down into nine or ten sharks... so...

 

"Good thing we have all these ascended pairbond clones lying around."

 

Huh. Re-reading epilogue two, I managed to completely miss the line where it says Lisa, Rebecca, Lily and Sabah chose to die of natural causes. Damn, and it was almost canon-possible.

 

I just assumed you were fixing the fix-fic.

 

Wouldn't work. It's the shards that needs the imprinting, if you recall. Taylia made some tweaks to improve and strengthen the process, mind, but they can't replicate without damaging the imprints.

You could always make minor edits.

Also, you need to name this thing so I can add it to the omake list.

 

Just as I mentioned before, Lisa and Rebecca have a very good reason to not being a space whale since both Victory and Zack are up there.

Lily and Sabah on the other hand would definitely chose to have lesbian sex until the end, hell, I can't even imagine them dying naturally rather than mutual legalized suicide.

 

Great omake, particularly on the slow buildup and uncertainty on both sides.

 

They likely chose to die because of the serial on-again-off-again nature of their relationship. You can't exactly break up with the other half of your brain after all - well, not without Bad Things, and given that space sharks are rather more dangerous than people...

 

So I finally got caught up with Amelia, literally taking all of today, and wow, just as awesome as the first half .

I've read more fan fiction than is probably healthy and this one takes its place among the very top tier*. Well written, good characters to love and love to hate, complex and engaging plot (only slightly weakened for using a similar time skip device as the original Worm), and thought provoking. I'll be watching for any further works you undertake.

*As in top ten out of over a thousand, not counting single post snippets.

 

I'm actually a little saddened by the way Sabah and Lily went from stable happy couple (as in canon) to make up/break up cautionary tale.

 

*Raises eyebrow*

You consider the creepy emotional dependency where Sabah was basically using Lily as a tool to be stable and happy?

 

I think you might be viewing their relationship with rose tinted glasses. Lily essentially renounced control of her own life to deal with Sabah's issues.

... You have read some of his fics, right?

 

You know, it was stable, and they were happy.

Was it a healthy relationship? Probably not. But by your chosen criteria, sure, I'll consider it a stable and happy relationship. Considering the people they were, the lives they led, it was probably the best relationship they were going to get.

 

Given that they were still together two years later, and they had a comfortable and playful relationship, yes, Stable and happy.

Sabah had her issues. Lily had hers. They each accepted that. Their relationship worked - in canon.

 

Worked in canon, but what about the possible sequel of Worm, remember bieng in love last like what 2 1/2 years then problems began to show.

If a Thinker wants to destroy Sabah and/or Lily it could use the relationship as a bullet.

 

Its also worth pointing out that total power exchange style relationships are not innately unhealthy. They can be easily abused by either partner, but there is nothing wrong with it in and of it's self.

 

Rereading some of the earlier chapters and came across something of that didn't make sense to me. So at the end Dinah basically tells them that GU has about a 5% chance of convincing Scion to kill himself/not destroy the earth, and that this moment is their best chance, as any attempts further in the future have less of a chance of succeeding, right? Well, what was stopping them from abusing the heck out of Coil's power to create alternate timelines where GU (or any other parahuman) attempts to convince Scion to kill himself, while in the other they do nothing? Why did they wait until THAT moment to try and convince Scion? Even if they only had a .01% chance from the beginning of the fic to the end, that means that if they tried 10000 times they 'should' get it once. So why not use Coil's power in their downtime when they aren't dealing with threats like the Yangban?

 

Especially given that in canon they were portrayed as both putting effort toward it.

Because even if you roll dice with one in a thousand chances of getting it right ten thousand times, there's nothing to say that the correct combination will ever come up. Also, GU may or may not take well to criticism