Agrippa
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Wake-up Call – Chapter 99
🕑 Added 2023-10-06 03:15:52 +0000 UTCSometimes, life just goes and decides to throw you a curveball.
It’s particularly aggravating when you can’t shake the feeling that you should’ve seen it coming.
“Hello, I’m Pamela Livsey,” Mom says as she offers a brittle smile and extends her hand toward the lightly dressed man lying on a bed.
Under her teenage daughter.
…
On the one hand, I’m pretty sure a part of her is relieved that she hasn’t missed out on this very important part of the motherhood experience just because her daughter is an out and not so proud (at the moment) lesbian. On the other, I’m also quite certain that she’s about to have an anxiety attack.
“This isn’t what it looks like!” I say. Because I’m either a moron or a sadist.
‘Why not both’ usually employed to—
Now look who has an obsession with meme culture.
“Of course it isn’t,” Colin adds, already making me dread the next words. “After all, assault on a recovering coma patient wouldn’t be a very heroic thing to do.”
“You just had to twist the knife, didn’t you?” I say, looking away from a very pale mother and to a very forcedly stoic… man.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Tattletale. I’m just bringing up the fact that heroines such as yourself are held up to exacting standards that very much forbid them from inflicting any kind of violence on people lying in hospital beds.”
“This is just you trying to stop me from the inevitable finger stab, isn’t it?”
“Ah, backstabbing. It seems there’s still some villain in you.”
“Keep pushing. See what happens.”
“Likely, an anatomically unlikely rant about how you’ve memorized each and every nerve ending in the human body so that you can inflict untold agony with a mere brush of your fingers.”
“You know me so well.”
“Of course I do.”
“Please, don’t kiss him,” Taylor says.
I freeze.
Then I slowly turn back to the rest of the room, where now not only my mother but Dragon, Hannah, Danny, and Tay are looking at me with a mix of emotions that would take too long to enumerate but can pragmatically be summarized as concerned fondness.
I think.
I may be a tad optimistic on the ‘fondness’ side of things.
“I’m as straight as a Moebius strip, honey,” I say, defending my honor.
“Not to mention that violating consent is very unheroic, no matter what LegendXJack Slash shippers may have told you,” Colin adds.
I… blink.
Colin Wallis’ browsing history—
I blink due to my utter, willful ignorance regarding certain subjects.
“I’m going to password-protect my laptop,” Dragon mutters.
“You are a laptop,” Hannah snipes.
“I don’t want to know who sits on whose lap,” I beg.
“It’s the curse of Thinkers. Too much knowledge,” Taylor comments while shooting a suspiciously resentful glare at my mother and her father—
Oh.
Cohabitation between sexually compatible—
“Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!” I calmly express my own reticence regarding the disclosure of certain subjects.
“I would thank you not to do that right next to my goddamn ear,” Colin comments.
And then he pushes me off him.
And the bed.
To be fair, the fall is quite short, and this room that I am paying for has a quite luxurious carpet, so nothing is bruised other than my pride. To be as unfair and petty as I feel like, because what’s the point otherwise, I shall have my vengeance.
“He said he’s my daddy,” I tell Mom.
The woman with the hand still proffered.
Who is now twitching.
Heh.
Lisa Wilbourn’s disproportionate sense of retribution—
Yeah. And somebody should keep that in mind the next time he feels like commenting on my impeccable naming sense.
… ‘Power’ used as both nomenclature and descriptor—
Is perfectly adequate, isn’t it?
“Father! I said—I indirectly stated that certain behaviors are expected between a girl and her father, which is not at all an admission of guilt and was uttered under emotional duress and while recovering from a brain injury—”
“And this was just after I tried to shift my role away from maternal to fraternal… Don’t you realize what you’re going to do to the poor girl’s psyche, Colin? She has enough issues already—”
“I know where the scalies lurk, Dragon. Go ahead. Keep pushing. See what happens.”
“I still don’t know what a scalie is,” Taylor comments while, for reasons known only to Master-slash-Thinkers who have seen too much, rubs both closed eyes with the tips of her fingers.
“And that’s just one of the many, many reasons that I love you,” I reassuringly tell her. “Now, if you could pull me up from the floor and give a practical demonstration of how you being tall and fit are also on that list—”
“Hello, my name is Daniel Hebert, the future father-in-law of your daughter,” a tall, not that fit man says, extending his own hand from the side of the bed that is not occupied by my limp, lifeless body.
“My condolences,” Colin says as he shakes on it. “Also, she’s not my—”
“Do you want me to call Tagg? Do you want me to have him tell everybody present who’s now nominating himself as Deadbeatmaster?” I say with a saccharine smile so full of beaming energy that it should be able to leap over the border of the bed.
Maybe it does, given that Colin leans over to take a brief look at me before closing his eyes and muttering something that likely has to do with hostile workplaces.
“I apologize. I’m still waiting for the DNA results,” he amends, turning back toward Danny.
Which is when I stab his side with my fingers.
The yelp he lets out is about as melodic as I dreamed it would be.
“The rumors about her redemption may have been exaggerated,” Taylor points out, still rubbing her eyes, which points at either her having taken a rather good guess about what just happened or at me having paid for a now swarm-infested room.
I’m gonna ask for a refund. My parental unit is clearly defective.
“Are you going to stay down there any longer?” Mom asks, offering me her hand now that it’s been made clear that Colin is somewhat unable to return an offered handshake that never got within arm’s reach of the intended target.
So I do clasp her hand, and…
And pull her down.
“Hey!” she yelps, briefly struggling to remain upright just before I switch the angle of applied force and her center of gravity goes irrevocably past any semblance of stability.
So my mother falls down on top of me.
And I hug her as tightly as I can.
“I’m sorry,” I say into blonde ringlets that are no longer as carefully styled as when she first walked back into my life, whispering past a cloud of perfume that is so much subtler now that it isn’t spread over too much make-up for a woman being casual and living her life rather than being put on display.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” she immediately says.
“I do. I… pushed you away. Kept you at a distance. Just because I was hurting—”
“Shush.” Her fingers are on my lips, and her eyes on mine, looking down at me with all the sage understanding of somebody who once taught me the magic of chamomile. “I’m the parent, Lisa. Let me be responsible for your messes once in a while.”
And she smiles.
A… a smile I have missed.
A smile that wasn’t there long before I had to leave the home that wasn’t.
So, surrounded by people I love, or love me, or love one another, I hug my mother as tightly as I can and finally allow myself to shudder with the last remnants of the things I’ve been carrying since the sirens sounded, and I watched people I love leave me behind to fight a killer of heroes.
“Does this mean I’m a grandmother now?” a woman who should still be struggling with her regained memories and her new place in a changed world rather than ruining my emotional moments says.
And that’s when the room explodes in a renewed bout of banter.
***
“I don’t know how I feel about this,” I say into the headset hidden inside my helmet.
“Scaroused, if my experience is anything to go by,” Taylor’s voice distractedly replies.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
I cock my eyebrow futilely, as we’re both facing forward on top of my baby, so facial expressions and most other forms of non-verbal language are kind of a non-starter.
And then… I just tighten my hold on her waist, lean on her tall back, and sigh as she drives me through streets that I couldn’t care less for now that she’s the one driving, and I can just rest against her.
She drives slowly, carefully, and I barely feel any hints of a pothole being driven around.
“Tay?” I mumble in a dreamy voice.
“Yes?” she answers, as focused as ever.
“You drive like a grandma,” I tell her as she stops at an orangetraffic light.
“I don’t have a license, and you’ve barely let me practice at all,” she protests.
“Since when do I let you do anything at all?” I comment, attacking the most obviously flawed part of her argument.
“Since the first time I tied you up, only to end between your thighs with your hands tugging at my hair,” she comments.
Trying to come across as dry and sarcastic.
And failing spectacularly.
“You’re blushing,” I say with a hint of laughter that I don’t bother hiding as we keep waiting for some pedestrians with ninja training to unexpectedly flip over the traffic light and start crossing the street.
“You can prove nothing,” she says.
And so I slide my right hand down her toned belly and over her lap as my left rises to just below a bust that the leather riding jacket turns into sculpted elegance.
“Maybe. But I can make damn sure I’m right,” I say with a throaty whisper that makes me blush.
“You’re a terrible backseat driver,” she says as she carefully sets off only after the van behind us has honked for a third time.
“I can be as terrible as you want me to be,” I say as she takes a hard left that may be slightly more abrupt than any turn she has taken since we left the hospital and its chaotic mess of familial entanglements behind.
“Can that be zero? I’d appreciate it if it was zero,” her rattled voice comments, going just an enticingly tad higher when the length of my thumb brushes along the underside of her breasts.
“No,” I say with the kind of voice I’d use if I was nibbling on her ear. “No, you wouldn’t.”
At that moment, I have the ineffable pleasure of hearing Taylor Hebert, biblical plague incarnate, scourge of the underworld, destroyer of Coils, whimper.
And I remember just how wet she can get me.
So it’s no surprise at all that I don’t realize where her altered route is taking us until she climbs atop the sidewalk and brakes as hard as she dares, only to turn over my baby as she takes her helmet off in that hair-rippling way of hers before she aggressively tugs on the strap of my own helmet, impeding me rather than helping until I manage to get it off and…
And she kisses me.
Aggressively. Almost angry.
Conquering.
I melt under her, under the assault of demanding lips and a tongue that soon joins in, disorienting me with the sheer intensity of the assault, of Taylor probing and tasting everything of me that she can reach as a hand holding two dangling helmets tries to go around my back to hold me against her as if I wasn’t already throwing myself at her with all that I have in me.
She… she finally lets go when the inside of my chest burns, and my heart hammers against my ribs. When the edges of my vision seem to shimmer. When my whole world revolves around Taylor like I haven’t allowed it to since too long ago.
And then the other hand cups my cheek, and emerald eyes stare down at me.
“Welcome home, Liz,” she says.
And, with a dopey smile, I realize that she has brought us to my apartment.
Our apartment.
Of course, that’s when I tilt slightly too far back to look up at a building that no longer bears any traces of a sniper attack, a bit caught up in the moment, and without realizing that Tay has forgotten to set the kickstand in place.
Needless to say, two girls shrieking in panic as they scramble to avoid having a motorbike topple to the ground is not the way I envisioned our triumphant return to our home.
But it’s still perfect.
… Even if I now realize I’ll have to maim Piggot to make up for her piercing the mudguard of my baby with one of her stupid steel bearings.
***
Colin Wallis
Objectively, there’s no reason for me to remain in my hospital room.
Subjectively, it’s still somewhat disorienting that both Hannah and Dragon agree with my assessment.
“I… where is my mother going to stay—” I start to say.
“Apparently, my doting granddaughter has bought me my own apartment and a male nurse to help me acclimate to the current era,” Mom says as two women who won’t take no for an answer unnecessarily get me on a wheelchair.
“You just had to specify it was a male nurse, didn’t you?” I comment as Hannah looks down at me in displeasure until I comply and sit on the ridiculous contraption.
It doesn’t even have an engine. I would settle for one with an engine.
“What can I say; you’re not the only one in this family with needs,” Mom comments with an eyebrow waggle that I haven’t seen since the last time she joked about helping me convince my English teacher to bump up my grades.
… I must admit that I never studied as hard for the damn subject as I did after that joke.
Also, Hannah is blushing.
So is Dragon.
… Cute.
“Mom, can you please not?” I say, only realizing the high register of my voice after the words have left my lips and…
And she hugs me.
Bent over my chair, a woman who looks precisely like she did when I left her to go to college, like she did the last time before I got a call from the hospital. Like…
Like Mom.
My eyes sting yet again, yet another time of so many through the afternoon that’s already an evening.
I hug her.
Yet another time.
Of so many. And not enough.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” I ask with a pathetic, needful voice that I haven’t used in years. That I haven’t shared with anybody else. That I doubt anybody at all remembers except for her.
Except for her, now that she can remember.
“Maybe. But not today, okay, sweetie? I want to give you and your girlfriends room to talk,” she says without letting go of me, her words said by my side, over my shoulder.
I don’t want room to talk.
I want to never let go.
To forget that there ever was that gap torn inside my chest. That I struggled so much to keep up my scholarship and regularly visit, taking as many jobs as I could to pay for whatever medical care she would need, even as she insisted that she could still work, that I didn’t have to force myself.
To forget how I had to make each and every second count. How I tried to do more and more every single day, berating myself whenever I got so much as room to breathe, feeling guilty and wretched for every pause, every minute of sleep beyond the strictly necessary.
To forget about my trigger, when things finally aligned and started making sense, even if a sense I’d never envisioned.
A sense that didn’t help me other than by giving me a new set of responsibilities, Mom’s bills finally taken care of, yes, but she still was away from me, losing a bit more of the woman who had brought me up on her own with every minute we spent apart.
And now she’s back.
Because of Lisa.
“I don’t want to let you go,” I say.
Mulish, childish.
And she giggles, even if it comes out as wet and interspersed with hiccups.
She pulls back, her eyes looking at me with a warmth that sparkles through half-shed tears as she brushes my hair back.
“That’s what I told you. When you left,” she says, stabbing me with the pure joy in her tone.
So I answer her. Both the tears and smile.
And, for too short a moment, I don’t let go.
“Take care of him, all right?” she says, almost whispering, looking over my shoulder at the two women behind my chair.
I don’t hear their answer.
And then I say goodbye to my mother like I did years ago, but… but not at all like then. The pang of separation both sharp and dull. The bitterness of parting just… just…
Something.
Something that tugs at the gap torn in my chest.
So I’m not good company on the ride back to Hannah’s apartment while sitting in the back of the ambulance that Dragon has somehow sequestered.
But they don’t deserve this. Not after staying by my side through however long it took me to wake up after a brush with death slightly closer than usual. After a past me that I only half remember rode against the Hero Killer and its lightning.
They deserve me making an effort, and talking to them, and engaging despite whatever is going on inside of me that has yet to fully mend now that something I never thought could happen has. Now that my mother is back here.
With me.
Whole.
So I lick my lips and steady myself when they wheel me out of the ambulance and into the underground garage, gathering as much of my courage as I can while we ride the elevator in silence, only two warm hands on my shoulders letting me know that they are still waiting for me.
Then Dragon pushes me out of the elevator, past the double sliding doors, and toward Hannah already waiting for us with her keys in hand, and I know I need to say something when I meet her smiling eyes, no matter how fragile it is what I see in them, or especially because of how fragile it is.
She opens her door, inviting us in, to her home. To the place I didn’t visit often enough while we started dating and before I decided to die for her.
And inside of it, past the small entranceway, in the middle of the living room…
There’s a woman bent over with her back toward us, wearing grey sports attire that may as well be underwear, effortlessly grasping the tip of her feet with both hands as her well-defined legs make me blink in both surprise and appreciation—
“Hey! What’s the big idea? We were supposed to watch Ever After an hour ago. Jeeze, talk about rude. Seriously, Hannah, I always thought you’d be the responsible roomie—”
Mouse Protector turns around.
Blinks at me.
I blink back.
And, halfway through the blink, because Movers are bullshit, I end up with a squeeing lapful of enthusiastic, underdressed, ridiculously athletic woman.
…
Let’s just say I’m now a bit happier that Mom isn’t here.
