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“Excuse me?” a man stopped her to ask. “Are you… Sundancer?”
Marissa smiled and shook her head at the man. “No. I get that a lot, but no.”
The man gave an ‘oh,’ apologized, and quickly left her be.
Marissa sighed as soon as he was out of earshot, the smile sliding off her face. It had been six years since she became famous for virtue of ‘coming back from the dead’ and being the first person to officially cross dimensions, and she still got those greetings sometimes. Not as often as she once had, but she would still be stopped at least once whenever she went through an airport. There were no paparazzi hounding her any more, no more questions about Earth Bet, and even the questions about Gold Morning and her had died off.
Now she was just another government-sponsored parahuman, a walking power plant with her sun.
Still, she reached inside her purse and put on her aviator sunglasses just in case. It was bad enough getting one reminder of those days on this trip. She didn’t think she would be able to handle another one. She already wanted a drink to wash away all the dredged-up memories.
At least it was only every so often now. She didn’t think she could handle going back to the state she had been in four years ago, Oliver having to stop her from getting a second or third bottle of wine every night. Oliver, the man she had never known to stand up to anything. Well, at least her foray into alcoholism had yielded that much.
Maybe it had brought them more. Would they have ever agreed to adopt Angela if Oliver hadn’t been looking for a reason to keep Marissa sober? God knows they never would have conceived a child; they were more brother and sister than any sort of lovers. Just the thought of kissing was enough to send them both gagging. But they were stuck together, and selfish as it was, they wanted to prove something to themselves by raising a child.
God, it was selfish. They knew they were being selfish. They wanted to prove that their parents hadn’t fucked them up that much, that they weren’t fucked up enough to be incapable, and after Gold Morning, there was no shortage of children in need of homes. Even Jess and Luke had adopted, and Luke was still out there as a superhero most days. It had been an eventuality for them with Jess being unable to carry, or so Marissa supposed, but sometimes she wondered if they were really ready for a relationship, much less a child.
Then again, were she and Oliver any better?
They weren’t perfect. None of them were. They never would be, not after everything they had seen. But it was like the therapist had told the three of them—Oliver, Noelle, and her—all those years ago: “It’s not about being perfect. There will always be room to be better for everyone and everything. It's about finding a way to happy with where you are—who you are—here and now.”
And here they were. Marissa and Oliver desperately trying to hold themselves together for their daughter, and Noelle dead, incinerated by Marissa. By her best friend.
Marissa turned abruptly, swinging her luggage around as her eyes locked onto her target. Three letters that would always haunt her, but which offered her refuge at that moment.
It had been six years since Marissa had returned to Earth Aleph, four years since Gold Morning, one year since the nightmares had finally quieted down, and the feeling of safety was still a temperamental thing for her, to come and go as it pleased. It shamed her to admit it, but the easiest way to find it was still in the bottom of a glass. There was a safety in itself in knowing that.
That safety collapsed around her the second she stepped into that bar and saw who was sitting there.
She couldn’t believe it at first. She didn’t, refused to. But there had been pictures Aleph had gotten before the separation, photos that Marissa had stared at for hours some nights before they had all vanished without a trace. Pictures of a face that Marissa had never seen in person, not uncovered by a mask.
A girl who could hold a hand out to help while it was soaked in blood and guts.
Skitter. Weaver. Khepri.
Taylor Hebert.
Sitting at an airport bar, absently sipping at her drink while she read a book laid open on the counter.
She was even taller than Marissa remembered, even sitting there. Her curls of dark hair had grown down to her waist, tied up in a loose ponytail. She was dressed in jeans, with a loose flannel-shirt tucked-in. Her glasses would occasionally slide down her nose, and she would always use the same hand to push them back up.
That motion, that repetitive handling of her glasses, was what stood out the most to Marissa. It was so… simple. Easy.
Here was the girl who had carved out Lung’s eyes, who had taken on the Slaughterhouse Nine and won, who had taken control of every single parahuman in existence and used them to kill Scion, to save the world, and she—
She looked at ease. Comfortable.
Marissa didn’t know what to do. Her body had frozen, her eyes locked on to her, and she felt incapable of doing anything at all.
She didn’t even know what to feel. Gratitude? Fear? Anger? Here was the girl the whole world thought was dead, who ripped Marissa out of her life and back into a war she had never wanted part of along with every other parahuman in the world, who was supposed to have sacrificed herself to kill the monster who was destroying more in seconds than the Endbringers ever had.
Nobody else even knew. There was a man sitting right next to her, and he was just finishing off his drink as normal. He pushed out of his chair, stumbled, and bumped against her.
Marissa couldn’t breathe.
Then she noticed her reaction. A mild frown, but she waved off his apology. Then she reached down with her hand, and picked up her other arm, the sleeve falling away.
A prosthetic. Her entire arm was gone.
She seemed so used to it, just laying it down in her lap and resuming her reading. A part of her life to be taken with everything else.
She looked so relaxed.
Marissa remembered what it had been like when they had all first returned to Earth Aleph; her, Oliver, Jess, and Luke. They had been famous beyond her mother’s wildest dreams, and the result was a feeling more like being back on stage under a spotlight than actually returning home. Constantly worried about what they were supposed to say or do, constantly being reminded of everything they had missed, constantly seeing how everyone had moved on from those gamer kids who had died way back when.
Going to the families had been the worst part. Chris’s, Krouse’s, Cody’s, even Noelle’s. The families who wouldn’t be getting their children back. That was what had hurt most of all: seeing their faces and having to tell them what happened, having to remember. Being put back in that place, back to the days of running and panic and never knowing whether they were going to live or die, or whether they even deserved to anymore.
They had all tried to move on since. She was sent over the world, single-handedly powering reactors. Jess and Luke were still in the superhero game. Oliver stayed home and took care of Angela. They tried to get on with their lives, but every once in a while they would be trapped back there by another reminder of the lives they’d do anything to forget.
Marissa wondered how the woman in front of her had moved on. She wondered if she was a teacher or librarian, if she was married, if she had kids.
She wondered who Taylor Hebert had become.
It hit Marissa suddenly what she was supposed to do. It was so obvious that she was surprised she hadn’t figured it out before. There was the legend from Gold Morning, sipping a drink in an airport bar. She wasn’t looking at Marissa, hadn’t even noticed her, too wrapped up in her book. She was just living her life.
Just like the rest of them.
Marissa turned and walked away. When her heart had stopped pounding, and she felt she could talk without breaking down, she took out her cellphone.
When her daughter’s voice came through, she smiled and forgot all about the woman she had seen in the bar.