(AV) A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

Taylor let out a long, shuddering breath as the last traces of the Undersiders slipped from her awareness, carried further and further away on the backs of their monstrous hounds. Her swarm tracked them on her command, antennae and legs brushing against bodies until the distance stretched too far. Only then, only when she was certain they were gone and not circling back—only when the city’s ceaseless din pressed in to fill the silence they left behind—did the knot in her chest loosen.

Relief came soon after, but it was bitter and fleeting. Still, she almost collapsed under the weight of it, her knees buckling until she caught balance. 

Her head snapped back toward Shielder, heartbeat racing. He had finally managed to push himself upright, though he leaned heavily against a roof vent, chin lifted and his fists up in front of him. The boxer’s stance was shaky—he swayed slightly, his knees were bent too much, and his shoulders sagged—but there was no mistaking the intent. Even exhausted, he could still knock her flat if she gave him a reason.

“Stay back,” he warned. She could hear the effort it took for him to sound normal in his state.

Taylor raised her hands slowly, palms open, forcing calm into her posture. “I’m not—”

But he cut her off before she could finish, confusion thinning his lips as he parroted her earlier words: “What do you mean by, ‘If you want him, you’ll have to go through me’?”

The blood drained from her face.

Hearing it spoken aloud… God, it sounded terrible. Possessive, territorial, and downright, villainous too. It sounded as if she’d just declared he was hers to keep and toy with, the way villains staked claims on territory or people.

That wasn’t what she meant at all.

She’d meant protection. She’d meant don’t touch him because I’ll stand in the way. But what came out of her mouth was not what she carried in her heart. And in this city, as she had realized, what people thought you meant mattered more than what you intended. Hell, maybe that was why the Undersiders had left so quickly. Maybe they thought she was posturing, warning them off the hero in front of them. Warning them off her ‘prize’.

Taylor’s knees gave way this time, and she sank to the rooftop with a dull thud. Her breath also left her in a sharp exhale as she stared at the gravel, too drained to care about Shielder’s bewildered look.

She felt sick. But more importantly, she felt so tired of everything: tired of the fear she instinctively instilled in people; tired of fearing what she was capable of; tired of seeing Lung’s desperate, terrified face every night in her dreams; and tired of clawing her way through every misunderstanding, only to watch them pile higher and higher until they threatened to bury her alive. 

Was it really so hard to believe she wanted to be a hero?

Her lips trembled. The thought she hated—the one that was slowly raising its voice in the back of her mind—slid even closer now, whispering: Wouldn’t it be easier just to give in? To stop fighting the label, to stop trying to change everyone’s perception of her? To just… be the villain they already thought she was?

Her thoughts spiraled downward, and she fell deeper and deeper into despair, until the light weight of a hand on her shoulder pulled her back.

She flinched despite herself, her head jerking up.

Shielder crouched in front of her. Even trembling with fatigue, even with his visor cracked, his expression still held something unmistakable: sympathy. Tinged with wariness, yes, but undoubtedly sympathy. 

For her.

“I don’t know if I’m making a mistake,” he said carefully. There was a faint hitch between breaths, the kind you only noticed if you were listening closely, and an almost imperceptible rasp betrayed the toll the fight had taken on him. “But… is everything alright?”

Taylor’s throat closed up, and her mind became numb.

He really is a hero. Even now—even when he thought she was his enemy, even when he had every right to arrest her—he still had enough compassion to ask. He still had enough compassion to look past the mask and the powers and see the person.

The realization only made the weight in her chest heavier, pressing down until it nearly crushed her.

But she couldn’t let him see her vulnerability. Couldn’t let him see how close she was to falling apart. So she coughed, forcing the insisting tremor out of her voice, and rose shakily to her feet. His hand gently slipped away from her shoulder as she straightened.

“Yeah,” she managed. 

It was just one word, the easy way out, and she almost left it there. A familiar instinct urged her to close herself off, to retreat into silence the way she always did, and lock it all away until she was back in her room, under her sheets, where she could fall apart without witnesses.

But wasn’t that the problem? Wasn’t that why she was labelled a villain in the first place? She never stopped to explain, never fought the assumptions, or spoke up in defence of herself online. She could have done that, yet she was content to let their perception of her calcify into something permanent, believing she could change their mind by doing good. 

She swallowed hard.

This wasn’t an authority figure she couldn’t trust. This wasn’t the PRT, or the police, or even the Undersiders. This was a boy her age, someone who’d been kind to her once, and who, even now, had shown her mercy.

It was a leap of faith. A dangerous one even, but if she couldn’t risk honesty here, with him, then when? Who? 

Taylor forced herself to meet his gaze through the crack in his visor. Her voice shook, but the words came out anyway.

“I’m not really a villain.”

The night seemed to quieten at that.