Amy: Monster

You stared at your hands as you did your task, boring, monotonous and routine. The vile, familiar scent of the hospital flaring within your senses as you laid hands upon yet another person for the day, the horrid rote of it all burning into your senses like madness at your fingertips.

Again you suppressed the urges which wash over you, the push away the knowledge that you could do more.

You hated this.

You hated it all, you hated your power, you hated the hospital, you hated your patients, you hated the smell, you hated the routine, you hated your family... so distant from you, isolating you from everything that world could offer. You hated being so dammed alone, even when She would wrap her arms around you and hold your close. You hated how even the friendly closeness you enjoyed with HER was never enough, could never be enough. You hated the way your mind ruminated over all of these things, the distance between you and everyone whom you knew you were supposed to love. You hated Mark, you hated Carol... because you loved them but they couldn’t seem to ever love you.

But you could never hate Victoria. You just knew that her love for you would never last in the face of the way you wanted her. You hated your fear of her knowing about your desires.

Hating her would have made everything far easier for everyone involved.

After all, these same powers which you hated... you remembered your trigger, had learned enough over the time about triggers to classify and contextualize just why this one was born.

You’d thought over it, ruminated on it, and turned it over and over and over again in your head.

You’d triggered the night you found out that Victoria was having sex with her boyfriend.

You’d triggered in a fit of anxiety, desire, and fear.

You’d triggered…

You’d...

You just wanted to make her love you. You just wanted to make her safe.

... you’d just wanted to make her Yours.

You understood the next morning, after that hellish night that she’d told you in a moment of ‘girl talk’, where she revealed to you her first time. You touched her once, and in an instant, you knew her more intimately than you’d ever hoped to know anything at all. Every curve, every inch of her which you admired, you found yourself realizing that you knew every bit of her beautiful insides.

What did, and didn’t belong.

You never told her that she’d been pregnant that morning.

You were a monster after all.

It was an accident... it was an accident and not a choice.

It was.

It was.

And it didn’t count. Shouldn’t count. After all it wasn’t you controlling her, playing with the who whom you loved and desired; not like every fibre of your being remembered wanting to.

You ruminated even as you’d almost finished healing the meat before you, a small boy you remembered, beaming up at you as you removed the riddling instances of cancer and malformed gene sequences from his body, reformatting him from the ground up as you did, careful however not to touch any major neural tissues. The tumor in his brain would have to stay for the normal professionals to deal with... though you cheated your rules just a tiny bit and guided the diseased tissue upward where it would be easier to operate on.

You were careful to only move it via what looked like dental tissue. After all you had to stick to your rules, they kept you from being a monster.

You had to.

You had to...

...you weren’t so sure anymore.

You eased the tumor along, knowing that you could remove it completely if you wished, if you let yourself go a little. Just let yourself be a monster, but you couldn’t you had to cling to it, had to.

Last night... last night had been a doozy.

A quick patrol, is what Victoria said, it’ll just be a quick patrol. You were intimately familiar with her ‘quick patrols’ miniature crusades for the latest cause which she’d picked up to champion for the week. A different crime which she’d heard of though your hospital duties made into her latest drive to make someone pay.
This time it had been a run on a merchant position, the young girl who’d ODed on their poison had been someone whom your fickle, but friendly sister had known, possibly in passing. You hadn’t been ‘able’ to save her from the brain damage which the drugs had done. Especially not this particular flavor of foolishness which had already permeated her system.

There was something distinctly tinkerish in the mix. Something which you guessed the Merchant’s newest recruit, a chemical Tinker by the name of ‘Smack’, had cooked up. It had damaged the girl, practically destroyed her ability to inhibit herself... a dangerous combination with drugs which made you crave more, creating a death-spiral mixture that saw the girl dip deeper and deeper into every hit that she could find, downing alcohol, and even drain cleaners from what her parents could tell.

You’d gone with Victoria to raid and possibly pull out this sore tooth of a parahuman as quickly as one could. You could tell that she’d been especially angry, the trail of broken bones which you’d needed to heal before putting the ‘informants’ to sleep had been extensive.

Finding him apparently had been easy. The Merchants weren’t hiding, instead advertising their ‘awesome’ new product where ever they could get a small audience of those willing to try it.

You and Vicky were not the first to find them.

You’d managed to stumble right into an Empire EightyEight ambush of the peddlers, as they tried to pin down the merchants and force a fight.

Victoria of course, ever focused as she could be, saw it as an opportunity to swoop in, and bring the Tinker to justice. You didn’t worry too much about that plan if it kept people alive, and while you were worried, you figured the Tinker would be at least smart enough to let you and Vicky take him away, especially if the alternative was a fight with one of the two most powerful gangs in the city.

That plan went sour almost immediately.

Within minutes of finding the shivering fool with bags under his eyes so deep that they seemed almost dark trenches, separated from the rest of his crew, Victora had given him the offer of asylum and transit. He threw a packet of something powdered in her face almost immediately, forcing you to move forward and try to grab him by the wrist, just in case you needed him.

You should have known that he’d have something prepared for you too.

You took him down quickly enough, then got to Vicky and made sure that she was alright, clearing out the awful mixture of drugs from her system, while practically ignoring the profusion which had coated your own. Again you said nothing to your sister as you both grabbed the fool and high tailed it out of there.

You heard earlier today that the other merchants had gotten away, practically sacrificing their newest pawn in order to escape, and only the fact that you and Victoria had been there had saved his life.

And now.

Now you couldn’t stop thinking about it, about her, about what you wanted, about how much everything sucked, about your own power to change that, to make that different. The very power which you refrained from using.

And somehow even a you did things the hard way, easing that cancerous blob from within the young boy’s brain, the meat machine before you which smiled with wonder as you made it feel better... you couldn’t help but think maybe you should just do it the easy way.

Maybe you should just let yourself be the monster which you knew you were.

Maybe you should just... let it go.

You never even noticed when you’d stopped moving the tumor and instead simply unmade it, reshaped it, and rendered it down into additional, healthy brain tissue for the youth you were healing. Never even noticed when you tapped into his wonder, his admiration, and began to redirect it, target it towards yourself.

And then... couldn’t help but wonder as you stared at his excited, hero worshiping smile...

... why you’d never just let yourself do it before?

It was easy. So very easy.

To be a monster.

You didn’t make yourself stop there.

It was strange, almost surreal as you pushed onward, ensuring the boy would not just be healthy, but instead testing your limits, healing his body in ways which pushed the boundaries of ‘healing’ making him more than healthy, pushing and molding his instincts and reactions, improving him and signaling his body to continue on the trends of improvement which would lead to someone beyond an Olympic athlete, even as you improved his nerves, toughened and tuned his heart and eyes.

Made him all but super human... on a whim.

It took almost an hour.

You almost didn’t stop.

“Amy... Amy?” You heard, a sweet voice shaking you from your reverie as fingers touched your skin almost instantly identifying it as Victoria. You knew the ‘taste’ of her almost by heart. You flinched away from it almost immediately. “Amy you ok? You’ve been healing this kid up for a while now, was he really that bad?”

You allowed yourself to disconnect, to slip away even as the youth stared reverently at you.

You were a religious experience.

“Ah... I... yeah. He had tumors all over the place, and in a lot of sensitive spots. I had a lot more cleanup to do for him than usual.” You lied with the truth, forcing yourself to keep from visible panic at what you’d been doing, what you’d done.

At what you now wanted to do.

What you’d always wanted to do.

“Well, ok. I’m going to leave now, just wanted to catch up with you and see how you were. That stuff we got hit with last night... well dammed glad you got it out of me so fast. I was a little worried...” You could feel her aura, the admiration which was so very natural to you as she lit it almost subconsciously.

You didn’t need it to feel this way.

But you were a monster.

“Yeah. I’m good Vic. I guess it’s the same as how I don’t catch colds or anything like that, I’m feeling good.” You smiled at her, running your fingers though the wild tangle of dark-brown which adorned your head. “Don’t worry about it.”

Only practice kept you from swooning as her smile radiated upon you, smile pasted thin against your lips until finally she pulled out towards the door, leaving it all to come crashing right back down. But that was alright.

You didn’t deserve her.

You were a monster after all.

“Hey kid.” You spoke, biting your lip as the awestruck youth looked up.

“