Worm: Imago 21.2

“I guess I should say I’m sorry it’s been so long, mom,” I said, still scratching Radley.

The headstone, naturally, didn’t respond.  There were only the words:

	Annette Rose Hebert
	1969-2008
	She taught something precious to each of us.

“It’s… it’s sort of humiliating, to think about everything in context.  I get this knot in my chest, right up near my collarbone, when I think about getting into everything, about filling you in and catching you up on the past few months.  It’s almost harder than it’d be to explain to dad, and I never even managed to do that.”

Silence lingered.  We were remote enough that there weren’t even the sounds of the city.  Oblivion, as clean as it might be in Grue’s darkness.

“I guess things have kind of turned upside down.  That whole superhero thing I told you about, before?  It… really didn’t work out.”

I laughed a little, a small sound, humorless.

Radley climbed into my lap and turned around until he was nestled in place.

“And it’s like… if I even started to tell you everything that went on, all of the stuff that dad’s probably finding out about?  Stuff maybe worse than what I was saying to intimidate Dragon and Defiant, on the cell phone videos that made it to the news?  I don’t think I could manage it.  It’s- how did I even get to this point?  I did horrible things, stuff that makes me feel three feet tall when I just imagine telling you or dad about it, and the stupid thing is I’m not sure what I would’ve done different if I had to do it all over again.

“So where do I begin?  How do I even frame it all?  Everything’s flipped around.  I’m not alone anymore.  I have maybe a hundred and fifty people working for me, some people who trust me with their lives, others who owe me their lives.  I’ve got Lisa and Brian.  Rachel.  There’s Alec and Aisha too, but I’m not as close to them.  We’ve, uh, we’ve been through a lot.  Life and death stuff.  On television, in the movies and in books, you sort of get the impression that you make it past the one big hurdle, and you’re bound together by circumstance.  It happened a lot in the books you read to me at night.  Not so much in reality.

“Except getting through the crisis doesn’t mean we’re all together forever, without our issues.  We’re close.  We’re closer, in the aftermath of it all, but I’m not sure where Brian and I stand.  Right now, when I’m maybe feeling lower than I have in forever, I don’t even feel like I can talk to them.”

My swarm detected someone traveling the grounds.  I glanced over in that direction, saw the dim glow of a flashlight.  It didn’t turn my way, and in a minute, he was gone.  A caretaker of the grounds.  Groundskeeper?  Whichever.

“Brian wants to address the problem, Lisa wants to understand it.  I’d go to Rachel, will probably go to Rachel, but I don’t know that I can really talk about any of this with her.  I don’t know if she has any real conception of what I lost, today.  I don’t want to suggest you’re the last person I’d turn to, but I think the real reason I came here was because I wasn’t sure where else to go, to have someone to listen.”

I sighed.  Radley echoed me, doing the same, supine in my lap, eyes closed.

“Um.  I’ve gone from an insignificant nobody to someone that’s being talked about all over the world.  I didn’t even really mean to, but I kind of wound up taking over a city.  It needed doing, so I did it, and we can’t give up the job because others would step in to take over, and they wouldn’t be as fair to the locals, I don’t think.  Tattle- Lisa was saying she thinks the authorities are holding back because they need us here.  They don’t like us, they don’t like me, but we’re a fixture, now.  So here I am, and governments on the other side of the planet are probably discussing contingency scenarios and the possibility of bad guys taking over their towns.  I’m on the news, and I’m all over the internet, and I guess even your name’s come up.  Dad’s too.”

I pulled my mask from where I’d tucked it into my belt and turned it over.  I held it up so it was facing the headstone.

“I guess I should get around to saying it outright.  I’m a supervillain.  Crime lord of Brockton Bay.  It’s not as bad as it sounds.  Or maybe it’s worse.  I’ve saved lives.  Fought Leviathan, fought the Slaughterhouse Nine and Echidna.  I’ve also taken a life.  Fought the heroes, and hurt people who probably didn’t deserve it, just to make a point.”

I had to stop there.  I sighed, then turned to stare out over the unlit graveyard and the city beyond the short walls.

“This whole thing, I didn’t really ask for any of it.  I made myself into this… entity, just to get by.  I’ll probably have to keep doing it.  I tried to avoid hurting people out of anger, but that sounds pretty feeble when I look at what I’ve done.  A little while back, there was this guy who was dying.  One of the Merchants.  The man had taken a boy away from his sister and did some shitty stuff in general.  Hurt people.  I left him there to die, and part of the reason I did it was because I knew I needed to be harder, to reassure myself that I could kill another man when the time came.  Which I did.

“I told myself I was doing that to save a little girl.  I don’t even know why I made it as big a deal as I did.  Saving Dinah.  Some of it might have been because I was trying to do what was right, and because I wasn’t sure anyone else would be able to do anything about it.  But the more I think on it, the more I think I was trying to make up for the bad stuff I’d already done.”

There were a fresh set of flowers in the small, narrow vase at the base of the headstone.  I picked it up and studied it.  Had my dad paid a visit earlier in the evening?

“She turned on me, you know,” I said.  “The girl I saved.  And I think I sort of know why she did it.  I understand the rationale.  I don’t even blame her.”

I fished the two little notes from my belt.  I’d crumpled and flattened them out so many times they were little better than tissue paper.  I hadn’t wanted to read them, but I hadn’t been able to throw them away, either.

“Shit,” I muttered.  “What gets me, more than anything, is the injustice of it all.  There’s no karmic retribution, no reward for good deeds or punishments for the bad.  It’s almost the opposite.  It might explain why the Protectorate’s in such rough shape.

“I do horrible things, kill a man, and I can’t even bring myself to feel bad about it.  I scared innocents, did property damage, attacked good heroes who were trying to protect the city and the shitty heroes who were doing the job for selfish reasons, and I get rewarded.  Power, prestige, respect.”

I straightened out the notes so they were each flat, being careful not to tear them.

“And I save a girl from the clutches of an evil, scheming crime lord, and this is my reward.”

I held out the papers for the tombstone.  Two squares of paper.  Each had a number in the upper left corner, circled, to indicate the order the notes should be read in.  Two words for the first note, two and a half for the second.

	1.  Cut ties.

	2.  I’m sorry.

“Let me tell you, mom.  If there are two and a half words you don’t want to hear from a person who can see the future, those words are ‘I’m sorry’.  It’s terrifying.  She gave me instructions, and I didn’t follow them.  I knew, I almost did it, several times over, but I didn’t make the call.  I didn’t leave dad.  So maybe that’s why she forced my hand by going to the authorities and telling them to out me.”

I took my time folding up the notes, tucking them into my belt.

“I guess this next bit must be important, if she was willing to do this to me after everything I did for her.  Maybe it’s for the greater good.  Maybe it gives me the greatest chance at surviving what comes next.”

I tensed as the groundskeeper with the flashlight appeared again.  The flashlight turned my way, but he didn’t seem to notice me.

“She says she’s sorry, and it’s like… I’m not mad at her.  I don’t blame her, because she’s just one piece of a bigger picture, and she’s a pawn in it all, just like me.  It’s everything that’s fucked up, isn’t it?  The whole dynamic where wrongs get rewarded and right gets punished, some of the good guys turning out to be worse than the worst of the bad, the sheer lack of cooperation, when there’s not just one apocalypse coming, but two.  The Endbringers and this thing with Jack Slash.”

I sighed.

“I’ve spent far too much time looking at these notes, wondering why she wrote them, interpreting them, and considering the worst case scenarios.  I’ve thought about it until I started thinking in circles.  I keep coming back to different facets of the same idea.”

I could imagine her there.  My mom, standing in front of me, a physical presence.  All of her gentleness and warmth.  Her silent, quiet disapproval.  Her brilliance, which she couldn’t share with me right now.

I felt a sort of relief.  Being able to talk it out, it helped clarify my thoughts where I’d felt so lost, before.  I was feeling more direction, now.  I could see a goal, something to aim for.  I didn’t like it, but I’d known from the moment I read Dinah’s notes that I wouldn’t like the outcome.

“I’ve got to be heartless, I think,” I said, and my voice was barely above a whisper.  I was aware of the groundskeeper approaching, but I didn’t move.  “I know you and dad won’t approve of this, but Dinah seems to think I have a bigger role to play in what comes next, and maybe I won’t be in the right position, in the right place at the right time, if I don’t do it.”