Chapter 1: ch1
Chapter Text
You've never really considered your ability a superpower—especially not compared to some of the actual heroes you know, like Mac, who can access any computer system in the world, or Hector, who can get into any building through air vents, or Dasha, who's so strong she doesn't need to sneak around through air vents. You can just… read objects. It's almost like they're talking to you and telling you their stories themselves, though that would be crazy, of course. Mostly they just complain to you about their previous owners who left them, gave them away, or threw them out, or they complain to you about their current owners who ignore them, constantly talk about giving them away, or don't maintain them only to buy newer models, but never get around to doing anything with the original. It's rarely exciting stuff.
Still, anyone with an ability needs to report themselves to the Society for Uber-cool People with Extraordinary poweRs, or S.U.P.E.R. for short. So when your ability manifested on your 16th birthday, you spent the whole day filling out paperwork in a beige office with flickering overhead fluorescents, and then went out to dinner to celebrate the next day. It was a bit (very) awkward at first, but you've gotten the hang of blocking out everything so that you can only hear the objects when you want to. Not that that always lines up with the times when they want to talk to you—yelling "keys, where are you?" or "has anyone seen my missing sock?" gets you a groan at most, but your plants are great at telling you when they need to be watered, despite all being plastic, and you can always count on your mirror to adjust its view to show you exactly where your hair is sticking up in the back.
All this being said, it came as a total surprise when less than an hour after getting the keys to your new house in Coolsville, you heard a knock at the door and opened it to find a short, red-haired woman wearing a trench coat, even in the extreme heat, holding out an official-looking badge.
"Hello!" she says. "I'm Maggie, Coolsville's resident private investigator. You can talk to objects. Will you help me with a case?"
"Umm, hi," you say. "Nice to meet you?"
"Oh! Sorry! I'm just so excited to meet you!" she babbles. "I've been hoping someone with abilities like yours would move to Coolsville. It would make solving crimes sooooo much easier! Are you in?"
"How did you even find anything out about me? I thought the S.U.P.E.R. database kept your information private?"
Maggie grins expectantly.
"Oh," you realize.
"Private investigator," you and Maggie say together.
"Makes sense," you say. You're pretty sure at this point that almost all of your data's been stolen by one corporation or another—at least Maggie seems to be offering you a job and not sending you scam emails or selling your impulse purchase history to advertisers.
"Are you mad I went through your entire S.U.P.E.R. profile and read your preschool report cards and waited outside your house all day for you to arrive?"
"You read my preschool report cards? I didn't know they even gave you report cards in preschool. What did they say? Wait—never mind. I don't think I want to know."
"You had exceptionally bad hand-eye coordination," she says solemnly. "Most kids are pretty clumsy, but you were on another level."
You wince. "I mean, that's definitely gotten better. A bit. I think."
"That's good," Maggie says. You can tell she's humoring you. "Anyways…"
"Right," you say. "Solving cases with you. Is this like one particular case you're working on, or a full-time job, or…"
"One case! But it's a really big case, so probably full-time, like for the rest of your life," Maggie grins. "The dastardly Lord Valdivian is Coolsville's main villain and he's definitely up to no good. Plus, he kinda ran all of the other minor villains out of business so they're all working for him now, so pretty much every crime goes back to him in one way or another."
"But if this Lord Valdivian is behind all of the crimes, what's there to investigate? Don't you always know that he's the one responsible?"
"I forgot!" Maggie says. "You've never lived somewhere with villains before." You start to ask her how she knows that, then remember that she's read your preschool report cards—of course she knows everywhere you've lived. "We private investigators have an important role to play, just like the heroes and villains. The villains commit crimes, we investigate them, and the heroes swoop in to save the day, making sure everyone's safe as the villains make a dramatic escape to hide away until it's time to do it all again. At least, that's how it used to go…" She frowns. "Now that Lord Valdivian has all of the villains working for him, there haven't been any crimes in months. At first everything was going normally, only he was telling the other villains what to do, but then even the petty crimes stopped. There haven't been any fights in Beverly's bar, Sophia's bank hasn't been robbed, and Florence doesn't even make Mayor Celia wait for her to check for bombs under her desk anymore!"
You have no idea who any of these people are.
"It's highly suspicious," Maggie says.
"So the crime we're investigating… is that there aren't any crimes?"
"Exactly!"
She waits for your response.
"Sure," you say. "I still don't really get it, but I'll help. I guess."
"Awesome!" Maggie hands you a piece of paper with an address written on it. "Meet me here at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning!" She grins and leaves.
You stand in your doorway for another minute, looking out at the street in front of you. Investigating the lack of crimes? It's definitely not the weirdest job you've ever had, so sure, why not? You shrug and head back inside.
The next morning you leave your house to walk to the location Maggie gave you—it's a coffee shop only a short walk from your house. Thank goodness for effective urban planning and walkable neighborhoods. You can't even imagine what kind of dystopian government wouldn't prioritize human-centric design. It's a truly terrifying thought.
A bell rings as you open the door to the coffee shop and the barista smiles at you.
"Hi, I'm Kopi," she says. "What can I get for you today?"
You smile back at her. "I'll have a latte, please."
"Coming right up!"
A few moments later, she hands you a cup with a beautiful foam pattern on the top. You thank her and look around to see Maggie sitting at a table towards the back of the coffee shop with another woman with big, round glasses and at least three pens sticking out of her curly hair. Maggie waves you over, and you take a seat across from them.
"You actually came!" Maggie says. "Penelope didn't think that you would!"
You assume that the other woman is Penelope.
"Of course," you say. "I promised I would."
"Oh!" Penelope says, blushing furiously. "It's not that I doubted you, in particular, since I didn't even know you, it's just that, well, you see…" She trails off.
"Well, I'm here," you say, smiling at Penelope and trying not to make this any more awkward than it already is. "It's nice to meet you, Penelope. Are you also a private investigator?"
Penelope laughs, then covers her mouth with her hand. "Me? An investigator? Oh no, I'm just Maggie's assistant. I do the paperwork and help where I can."
"Let's get down to business," Maggie says. "I'll fill you in on Lord Valdivian's backstory. The Valdivian family has always been villains. They used to rob stagecoaches on their way out of Coolsville, way back when the city was just a small mining town and the only traffic in or out was traders buying the ore from the mine to sell to people in the big city. Then, once Coolsville started making more money from the mines and became a larger city in its own right, the Valdivians switched to more subtle scams. Multi-level marketing schemes, fundraising campaigns for foreign princes, cryptocurrencies—all sorts of respectable highbrow villainous crimes. Coolsville still had its fair share of run-of-the-mill villains, stealing old ladies' purses, robbing cash registers, spray-painting genitals on the Hanks' team bus…"
"That one was pretty funny," Penelope says. "I mean, bad, obviously. Super illegal. I'm definitely against vandalism. Even when it's funny. It was pretty artistic, though. Impressive. In a bad way."
"Anyways," Maggie continues. "The current Lord Valdivian took over as head of the Valdivian family a few years ago. No one thought he was going to change how things were ran all that much, but then the other Valdivians started to leave Coolsville mysteriously. Pretty soon, he was the only Valdivian left, and then he started to make the other villains pledge themselves to him. They all started wearing Valdivian suits and leaving the Valdivian family crest at the scene of their crimes, like they wanted to make sure that Lord Valdivian got the credit for everything that happened. And then… it all stopped. There haven't been any crimes in months. None of the villains have been seen anywhere. Lord Valdivian never showed his face to begin with, but you could always feel his presence. Now that's gone."
"Maybe he left town too?" you suggest.
Maggie's face darkens. "Lord Valdivian would never leave Coolsville. I think he's plotting something, something big."
"Something bad," Penelope adds.
"Something so terrible I can't even imagine it," Maggie finishes. "So that's why we need your help. I've told the heroes that they need to prepare for whatever's coming, but none of them believe me. They keep asking for 'evidence,'" She does air quotes. "Right now, I just have a theory. But it's a really good theory!"
"That does sound suspicious," you concede. "But what can I do about it? I mean, most objects don't actually know all that much. They don't tend to be super helpful, if I'm being honest."
"It's better than nothing," Maggie says.
"Also, you're the only one who's agreed to help," Penelope says. "Kopi lets us use her coffee shop as a base of operations, but otherwise this has been a two-woman investigation, and I can't really say I do all that much investigating."
"Until now," you say, and grin at them. "Tell me everything."
After finishing your coffee, you say goodbye to Maggie, Penelope, and Kopi, and decide to go shopping for a few more things you need for your new house. You pick up plates and glasses, as somehow literally every single one of yours shattered despite your careful bubble-wrapping, and then head to the home improvement store to look at paint colors. It feels wrong to take fifty different paint chips without buying anything, so when a stern-looking man stops you on your way out, you half expect him to interrogate you for theft.
"I think you dropped this," he says instead, and hands you a paint chip. It's a hideous amalgamation of brown, green, and yellow that could best be described as "Hungover Greige," though the paint company has generously called it "Lukewarm Gravy" instead, which on their own are two fine-enough words, at least.
"This isn't—I don't think—Uhh—" but sometime during your stammering, the stranger disappeared.
You examine the paint chip, offended that anyone would think that you would choose a color that ugly. You're no style icon, but surely your outfit isn't so poorly put together that strangers would think you had no taste at all, right? Then you turn it over to hide the greige monstrosity, and the words written on the back chill you to your core:
DROP THE INVESTIGATION. OR ELSE.
Well, shit. Maybe Maggie is on to something.
"Umm, hey, paint chip?" you ask. You feel a humming coming from the paint chip. If you didn't have control over your powers, you would feel this all the time from everything you interacted with. It had been extremely overwhelming before you figured out how to tune in to certain objects while keeping everything else blocked out. "Who was that guy?"
The paint chip doesn't speak out loud, like some objects do, but it flashes a series of images in your mind: the man's generic looking face, his gloved hand holding a pen, the ceiling of the hardware store, your disgusted expression when you took it. You can feel the paint chip's annoyance.
"Sorry," you say. "You sure there was nothing else?"
The paint chip's annoyance heightens.
"Fine, that's okay. Thank you anyways."
You put it in your purse with the other paint chips. You can show it to Maggie tomorrow. Maybe she'll know what to make of it.
You don't get the chance.
When you arrive at Kopi's the next morning, the coffee shop has been completely trashed. The windows are smashed and the inside has been completely run through, coffee beans spilled all over the floor. Kopi is standing on the sidewalk crying, wrapped up in a hug from a large friendly-looking man with a cowboy hat.
You see Maggie and Penelope inside the building, talking with a man covered in flames. Not just flame tattoos or a flame-patterned shirt, he's actually on fire, small flames leaping up from his skin, but not setting anything else ablaze.
"Who would want to hurt Kopi?" Penelope asks.
"Couldn't tell you," the man says. "I don't see any signs of powers, or calling cards from any villains."
"Unless it's someone new to Coolsville," Maggie says. "Maybe this is their signature! Though broken glass and general destruction doesn't seem like a very unique calling card for a villain. They might just not be very good at it."
Then she turns and sees you, though her greeting isn't as enthusiastic as it has been in the past. "Oh! Hi!"
Someone new to Coolsville? She doesn't think that you did this, right? She read through all of your files—surely she knows that you don't have a villainous bone in your body.
"What happened?" you ask.
"What does it look like?" the man says sarcastically. "And who are you? This is an active crime scene."
"She just moved here," Penelope explains. "She's helping us investigate."
"Investigate a crime she didn't know occurred until thirty seconds ago. Right."
"Um, no," you try to make sense. "I was going to help with Maggie's… theory? I can speak to objects and read their history, so she thought I might be helpful…"
You trail off as it becomes clear that Maggie isn't going to jump in and clear up the situation. She's already off on the other side of the building, peering at a broken chair leg through a magnifying glass.
"Well," he says, much more friendly than before. "That does sound helpful. I'm Dante, by the way."
You shake his outstretched hand. It's warmer than a regular person's would be, but at least you won't be getting a third degree burn from him. "Nice to meet you."
"You sensing anything around here? We already checked the cash register, but Kopi said she never keeps more than a hundred dollars in the shop overnight, and if they were just after cash, it doesn't make sense for them to destroy everything else."
"Unless they were mad or wanted to hurt Kopi personally," Penelope says. "She put so much of herself into this place. She was so proud of it!" She starts crying.
You put an arm around her and let her sob into your shoulder for a bit, before she sniffles and dries her tears.
"Please, can you feel anything at all?" she asks.
You lower your defenses and are immediately overwhelmed by the hurt screams of the entire coffee shop.
"Agh!" you wince and cover your ears instinctively, even though you know that won't make the voices quieter.
"What do you hear?" Maggie asks. Your cry of pain must've gotten her attention and she's made her way back over to the three of you.
You shake your head with a grimace and try to pick out any individual voices from the cacophony.
"I'm here to help," you say. "Please, show me what happened. I'm here to help!"
The objects keep screaming, but they begin to show some images. The middle of the night, the moon half full. Glass shattering everywhere. Heavy boots on the floor. Bats smashing into the furniture. Black gloves grabbing the jars of coffee beans, turning them over and spilling them. Several masked figures systematically breaking everything in sight. Then, finally, as if an afterthought, one of them pulls open the cash register and grabs the bills, then they all leave.
"Hey, hey! Are you with us?" Maggie's voice pulls you back to reality. You look up at her. You must've collapsed and fallen to your knees during the visions.
"Are you okay?" Dante asks. "You looked like you were in pain."
"I'm fine," you say, standing up even though your legs are still shaking. "It's just… I'm fine."
Dante looks at you doubtfully.
"I didn't see much," you say. "There were multiple people, but they were all masked and dressed in black. No faces, no fingerprints left anywhere. It could be anyone."
Maggie's expression falls. "Darn, I was hoping for a clue."
"Wait!" you remember. You pull out the paint chip from your bag. "Someone gave this to me yesterday while I was shopping. He was wearing boots and gloves similar to the people who did this. Do you recognize the handwriting or have any idea who would've given this to me?"
Maggie takes the paint chip and examines it. "No idea," she says. "Pen? Dante?"
They both lean in to look, then shake their heads. Maggie sighs.
"Well, I'll hold on to this anyways. It's still a clue! Also, now we know that someone doesn't want you investigating them, so that means you probably have the ability to stop them. But on the other hand, it does sound pretty ominous, like you might be in danger." She doesn't sound all that concerned at first, but then seems to remember herself and scrunches up her face in worry. "That'd be bad, actually. Do you want to keep investigating?"
"Of course!" you say. Yeah, you seem to have pissed off someone powerful and dangerous on your first day in town, and maybe they destroyed Kopi's coffee shop as a result of you poking your nose into their business, but now you have to keep investigating to get justice for Kopi! Even if you might be the reason she needs justice.
Maggie beams at you, and you smile back.
"Let's check outside," Dante suggests. "It looks like Abel's taken Kopi home, so she'll be safe and with a friend while we see if there's anything to find outside the shop."
You all head outside and walk a slow lap around the building. You're still exhausted from hearing the pain of everything inside the coffee shop, so you try to keep your mental shields up. The more tired you are, the harder it is to keep everything out, and then you'll be completely overwhelmed by the sound of the whole world trying to talk to you at once. You don't want any of the others to know just how affected you are, so you hang back and hope that none of them will ask you to try and listen to the whole street at once.
"Ahh!" Penelope squeals. "Look, footprints!"
"Good find! That's brilliant, Pen!"
She blushes bright red at Maggie's compliment, but Maggie's already moved past her to look at the footprints in the dust behind the building and doesn't notice the effect she has on Penelope. You try to catch Penelope's eye—are the two of them together, or is Maggie just oblivious?—but she avoids your gaze. Maggie's probably oblivious, then, you decide.
Dante follows the footprints as far as they go, which isn't very. They lead to the alley behind the coffee shop and the other businesses on the street, then stop at the pavement where the delivery vehicles drive through.
"That's, what, six sets of footprints?" he observes. "Then they all got in a car and drove away. I don't suppose you can ask the road where they went, can you?"
You shake your head. Even if you were fully refreshed, you still wouldn't be able to. "Anything that considers itself 'infrastructure' instead of an 'object' I can't talk to. Nature doesn't work either, so the trees aren't an option."
"That's too bad," Dante says.
"Yeah, it's like as soon as something would be useful, I can't do it," you sigh. "Though…"
You lower your shields a bit to let the dumpster behind Kopi's coffee shop show you anything it can.
"It's a van," you say. Maggie and Penelope turn to look at you and Dante. "Large, black… I can't make out the license plate. The driver was in the van and drove through just in time to pick them up. They went that way," you point east down the alley.
"Impressive," Maggie says. "Do any of the other street signs have anything to say?"
You make your way over, moving slower than usual, but you know you owe it to Kopi to find out anything you can. Your exhaustion is nothing compared to the loss of her beloved coffee shop.
"It's…" you try to show the sign the image of the van in your mind, but it isn't very responsive. Frustrated, you reach out to more and more of the objects on the street near the alley, but they're all either too faint to hear or dismissive of your request. The fire hydrant tells you that dozens of black vans drive through every day, so there's no way you'll be able to find the specific one you're looking for. "I'm getting nothing!"
"That was worth a shot," Maggie says. "It doesn't matter though. This is a one-way street and there's not much past here at the edge of town. My guess is they were heading towards the abandoned factory at the end of this road."
You try not to groan that all of your effort was for nothing.
"Ooh, we could do a stakeout!" Penelope says. "I've always wanted to do a stakeout!"
"No, you're not doing a stakeout," Dante holds a hand out to calm her down. "You saw what those guys did to Kopi's place. You really want to confront them on their own turf?"
"I guess not," she says, deflated.
"I agree, it's too dangerous, but that's disappointing. It was our last lead. I'll keep looking into the paint chip though and ask around to see if anyone recognizes the handwriting. We'll find something!" Maggie grins.
"Yeah," you smile back. Abandoned factory at the end of the road…
Obviously you're checking out the abandoned factory. Are you kidding? That's the perfect place to put a villainous lair. It practically writes itself. After eating dinner, changing into your best stakeout clothes (a black sweatshirt—you've never been on a stakeout before but you're guessing that's probably your best bet), and packing a flashlight, video camera, and baseball bat for self defense, you get in your car and drive down the road that Maggie pointed out earlier.
You drive slowly once you reach the street with Kopi's coffee shop. You're not sure how much further the factory is from there, but you definitely don't want to miss it. Should you turn your headlights off so you can't be seen? You figure the tradeoff probably isn't worth driving off the road and turtling into a ditch, so the headlights stay on. You still debate turning them off every thirty seconds or so.
You keep driving five minutes, then ten, then fifteen. Maggie wasn't joking about this being the edge of town. How far is this place?
Then you see a beam of light shoot up maybe half a mile in front of you, illuminating a large, square building. At first you thought it might be lightning, but then it strikes again, and again, and again, all from the same building.
Yeah. Definitely time to turn the headlights off.
You move the car forwards at a crawl, placing the video camera on the dashboard and pressing record to capture as much as you can. Which, right now, isn't much, just the silhouette of the building and the flashes of bright white light. You've never seen lightning without hearing the roll of thunder and the pounding of rain and the howling of the wind—the silence is eerie and you shiver from the tension of seeing something so clearly unnatural, and so clearly powerful.
This is probably enough, right? You've never heard of anyone with lightning or electricity abilities before, and definitely nothing this powerful, so surely you can turn around and tell Maggie and she'll know exactly who this is. Mystery solved.
But… why would the lightning wielder be using their power? All they're doing is drawing attention to their location. You might not know much about evil villainous plans, but giving away the location of their hidden lair doesn't seem like something even the most cartoonish of villains would do. What's really going on?
A scream echoes through the night.
You freeze.
A bolt of lightning strikes within the building and the scream cuts off sharply.
Holy shit. They're fighting, and the lightning wielder is completely destroying everyone within that factory. But is the lightning wielder one of the people who destroyed Kopi's coffee shop, or are they fighting back against them? And how are any of them connected to Lord Valdivian?
It isn't your best decision—in fact, it might go down in history as one of your worst decisions—but you drive closer.
You still can't see much, even when your car is practically right in front of the main entrance. Now that you're as close as you can get while staying within the car, you can tell that they're on the third and final floor of the factory. The flashes of light are getting less frequent, but you don't know whether that's because the lightning wielder is losing to whoever they're fighting, or because there aren't many people left for them to fight against. Both scenarios make you shiver. You're not sure which is worse.
In another contender for your top ten list of bad decisions, you get out of the car, flashlight in one hand and baseball bat in the other. (A third bad decision? Leaving the camera in the car. This really isn't your best night, is it?)
The double doors in front of the factory are wide open. One of them is falling off its hinges. Both are covered in vines growing up the concrete walls of the factory. You aim your flashlight above the doors and see faded paint spelling out VALDIVIAN INC. Still no clue what they manufactured here, but there's your connection to Lord Valdivian. Though given the history of this town, it's not surprising that the Valdivian family would've owned a factory. It's possible a completely unrelated group of people moved in… but it doesn't seem likely.
You creep in, moving past what looks like offices on the first floor, before reaching the staircase. It's a tight spiral made of rusty metal grates that look like they're about to fall apart completely under your feet. You climb up it anyways.
You're hyperaware of the sound of your sneakers hitting the steps and your breath coming faster and faster as you move closer to the fight. Now that you're on the second floor, approaching the third, you can hear the grunts of the people fighting.
"Please!" one of them begs. "Anything, please, please, I'll do anything!"
A dry laugh. "Why should I let you live?"
The deep voice pierces through your body, rattling your bones and pinning you in place. You feel hypnotized. Like you wouldn't mind dying, if that voice was the last thing you heard. Like you'd reach out and touch the lightning just to feel the heat of it coursing through your veins.
"I'll— I'll take you to Lord Valdivian! I promise! Just don't hurt me, please."
"As if someone as lowly as you would know where he's hiding."
You take a few more steps up to see the identity of the mysterious lightning wielder, peering your head up above the floor, and you see—
He's beautiful. It's your first thought, and then—oh god, he's terrifying, but you can't look away. His long hair floats away from his face, white-hot and electrified, setting the air itself alight around him. And his face—you've never seen someone so intense. His dark brows furrow over eyes as glowing and electric as his hair, and his mouth snarls at the man cowering in front of him, revealing sharp teeth. You can't tell if his chest is really that broad, or if it's just the shoulder pads of his blue-gray jacket making him appear so imposing. When he lifts a hand to grab the chin of the man kneeling before him, you see a flash of bronze on his wrist.
"Tell me," he says, his voice silky but laced with danger. "And maybe I'll spare you."
The man babbles something that you can't make out. You take another step, leaning forward to try and hear what he's saying, when the stair creaks underneath you.
The lightning wielder's eyes shoot up to look directly at you.
You let out a small gasp. You can't move. You can only stare back at him.
He narrows his eyes and before you can react, he shoots a blast of pure energy directly at you.
Only a moment ago you were content to die if you died at his hands, but now you want nothing more than to live, to live and feel the heat of his gaze upon you again. You squeeze your eyes shut and wait to die.
The acrid scent of burnt hair fills your nose, but it's not coming from you. You slowly open your eyes and turn to see a charred figure collapsed on the stairs behind you. Did he just… save you? You look back up at the lightning wielder and see his hand still extended in your direction, his eyes still wide open with what you might've called fear if you saw the expression on someone less fear-inducing themselves.
But then something moves out of the corner of your eye, and you start to call out—
You're too late. The lightning wielder collapses and the man who was previously cowering in fear rises up, pulling his knife out from where he stabbed it into the lightning wielder's side.
"No!" you cry, and climb the last few steps to run at the man with your baseball bat raised. He turns to face you, his knife dripping with blood, and you beg to anyone and anything that's listening, "Please, please, don't let it end like this!" and then your arms are raised and your flashlight's fallen on the ground, spinning around casting light wildly, and you're swinging the baseball bat and you feel it make contact, sinking into his skull and sending him crashing to the ground where you hear it thud, once, twice, and then everything's still and quiet except for your own heavy breathing and the rush of blood in your ears.
You… you… did you just kill someone?
The lightning wielder groans and every thought leaves your brain. You rush to his side, his hair still glowing faintly to cast the two of you in light.
"Eddie?" he mutters, his eyes trying to focus on your face.
"No— I'm—" you stammer, trying to see just how bad his wound is. "I'm not Eddie, but I'm here, I got you, I—"
"Eddie," he moans again.
You push your panic to the side and try to find where he's hurt. You've always been good in stressful situations when other people need help, and right now, the lightning wielder desperately needs any help you can give him. His hands are folded over his left side and you gingerly pull them aside to see where the other man stabbed him. You take in a sharp breath. He's bleeding even more than you initially thought. You allow yourself one deep breath, in, out, then pull your sweatshirt over your head and use your teeth to tear it into strips and wrap his wound tightly. It's not great, but it should hold long enough to get him into your car and drive to the hospital.
"Come on," you say, wrapping your arm underneath his and around his back to try and get him up. Even in your single-minded focus on getting him to safety, you can't help but notice that he really is as muscular as you first thought underneath his coat. But now he's gone limp, the light gone from his eyes and hair, leaving them pale blue and white. It's almost impossible to reconcile the image of the monstrous lightning wielder with the helpless man leaning on you now.
"That's it, come on, you can do this," you say, more to convince yourself than him as you pull him to his feet. He falls onto you and you groan under his weight, but the two of you stay standing.
You maneuver him to the stairs and then you half-stagger, half-fall down them to the front of the factory, where you muscle him into the passenger seat of your car.
"Eddie… Need Eddie…" His voice is still hoarse and delirious.
"I'm gonna get you to the hospital and then we'll find Eddie, alright?"
You look over at him worriedly as you pull out onto the road and head back into town, one way road be damned.
"Hospital?" he mutters, then sits bolt upright. "No hospital! I need…"
"You need professional medical care," you say. "Just hold on a bit longer, okay?"
"No!" he says again. It's the strongest you've heard his voice since he was stabbed. "Eddie…Need…"
"You need Eddie, I got it. But he wouldn't want you to bleed out because no one took you to the hospital, right? So I'm taking you to the hospital and then we'll call Eddie, yeah?" You have no idea who Eddie is, but you figure using his name might get the lightning wielder to stop fighting you about going to the hospital.
He grabs your arm, his grip surprisingly tight given the amount of blood he's lost. You yelp and swerve, but stay on the road.
"No. Hospital."
"Fine, no hospital, got it. Where should I take you then?" Not that you have any plan of taking him anywhere else, but maybe if you agree to whatever he wants, he won't notice you aren't driving there until you're already at the E.R.
"Eddie—"
"I don't know who that is, I'm sorry."
"Eddie—" he breaks himself off. "Breaker Box. Eddie. Please."
It's the please that does it for you. You sigh and stop the car in the middle of the road. No one else is out here and road safety is definitely not your highest priority at the moment. You search "Breaker Box" in your phone's GPS and find that it's a bar only a few blocks from the hospital, so worst case you can drive him over there afterwards.
"Okay," you say, "The Breaker Box."
He sighs and collapses into the seat. His outburst clearly took a lot out of him. If his condition was worrying before, it's worse now. You push the pedal down further and speed back into the city.
Chapter Text
The Breaker Box turns out to be a slightly dingy bar in the rougher part of town. The neon sign above the door flickers in shades of blue, red, and yellow. As you slow your car to a stop, you can hear glasses clinking and a jazz singer crooning.
"Eds?" the lightning wielder murmurs. He's barely awake now, his head lulled to the side.
"We're here," you say. "This Eddie's in the Breaker Box?"
He grunts and you take that as an affirmation, though you're not entirely sure he even understood what you just said.
"I'll be right back," you promise. You hate to leave him alone like this, but you figure that you can run in, ask for Eddie quickly, then hopefully he'll know what to do with the hurt man in your car.
At first no one looks at you when you push open the door to the bar, but then the singer sees you from his stage on the opposite end of the bar and cuts off mid-note, his mouth open in horror as he points a shaking hand at you. Slowly the pianist on stage beside him and the other patrons of the bar turn to see what he's looking at. You look down at yourself and realize that you must seem horrific, completely covered in blood with your hair a mess and your expression haunted from everything you've experienced tonight.
"Is—" you croak, then cough and try to start again. "Is Eddie here?"
"Who's asking?"
The bartender steps out from behind the counter, a glass and cleaning cloth still in his hands. He seems unfazed by the state of your appearance, but his dark hair covers his eyes so that you can't really make out his expression.
"Are you—?" you ask, but he cuts you off, moving to look behind you at the car parked outside of the bar.
"Everyone out!" he yells. "Now!"
They all scramble to their feet.
"What about my tab?" someone asks.
"Forget it," the man says. "Just get out!"
You've never heard someone so angry. He sounds dangerous. If you hadn't already been through so much tonight, and if the man in your car wasn't about to bleed to death without your help, you'd probably be running out the door too.
"Volt," the man breathes, then pushes past you to go outside towards your car. You follow only a few steps behind him, hot on his feet.
"You're Eddie?" you ask. You don't really want to get in his way or slow him down on his single-minded path to your car—you're a bit scared of him, to be honest. He has the same sort of intensity to his face that the lightning wielder (Volt? Is that his name?) had while he was fighting the Valdivian thugs.
"Yes," he says brusquely, not turning back to look at you, not that you really thought he would. When he—Eddie—reaches your car, he pulls open the passenger door and lets out a strangled cry. You watch him cup the other man's face in his hand and look at him with such tenderness on his face that you feel almost voyeuristic seeing both Eddie's vulnerability and the connection between the two of them.
At Eddie's touch, Volt seems to come back to life a bit, shifting closer to him and muttering Eddie's name again.
"I'm here," Eddie whispers. "Stay with me, spark."
He scoops Volt up easily in his arms and carries him past you into the bar. You don't want to intrude on them any further, but you also can't let Volt die because he didn't get medical attention. Especially after he saved your life.
You take a deep breath, then make up your mind and follow Eddie inside.
"You can leave now," Eddie says. He lays Volt's body down across the bar, not seeming to care about the blood seeping into the wood.
"He needs to go to the hospital," you insist. "He was stabbed, in his left side. I tried to stop the bleeding as best as I could, but without a doctor he'll bleed out. I only brought him here because he kept asking for you, but…" you trail off.
"Then you did the right thing. He needs to be here."
You stay exactly where you are. Why on Earth would Volt beg you with his dying breaths to be brought to this asshole who doesn't seem to care whether he bleeds to death on the counter of his bar? You're not leaving until you're convinced that he's safe.
"Why are you still here?" Eddie asks. "I thought I told you to leave."
"I'm not going anywhere," you say.
"Who even are you?" he spits out, finally turning to face you when it becomes clear that you're even more stubborn than he first thought.
"I could ask you the same thing! I'm here because he saved my life. He didn't even know me, and he saved my life, and that's how he got stabbed, and I'm not letting him die for me! I—" your voice catches in your throat and your next words come out as a whimper. "I can't let him die for me."
Eddie looks at you pitifully. "He won't die," he says. "But I can't have you in here."
"But—!" you protest.
Eddie strides over and gets right up in your space. His gaze is steely and relentless. "Well, good job. He saved your life, and now you've saved his. That is the only reason I haven't thrown you out of my bar yet. Now get. Out."
He's deadly serious. You take one last look at Volt's limp body, the glow almost entirely gone from his hair, and leave.
"Urghhh," you groan and roll over in bed, pulling your pillow over your head. Why is someone knocking on your door at this ungodly hour? Maybe if you ignore them, they'll just go away. You squeeze your eyes shut and try to drift back into sleep…
The knocking continues, of course. If anything, it gets louder.
You give in and open your eyes, wincing against the light, and check the clock on your bedside table.
"Noon?!?" you screech out loud. You can feel your clock's disdain. If it had eyes, it'd be rolling them. If it had arms, it'd be crossing them. Thank goodness you bought a digital clock that doesn't have hands, or they'd probably be flipping you off.
As you stumble out of bed, you trip over your shoes from last night and it all comes back to you.
After dropping off Volt at the Breaker Box and leaving him unconscious with Eddie, you drove home in a daze. It's a good thing the roads were empty, because you definitely didn't have the presence of mind needed to drive safely. Once you got home, you climbed the stairs, took off your shoes, and faceplanted into your bed without so much as washing the blood and grime off of your face.
Outside, you can hear Maggie calling your name as someone else, Penelope presumably, keeps knocking on your door.
"Open up or I'll break in!" Maggie yells. You don't think she'd actually break the door down, but you head downstairs and open the door anyways, one hand raised to your face rubbing your eyes.
"Ahh!" Penelope jumps back.
Right. You're still a mess.
"Give me twenty minutes?" you ask. You don't wait for an answer before closing the door on her and Maggie and heading up to finally take a much needed shower and put on clothes that are least ostensibly clean.
"Come on in," you say, leading Maggie and Penelope into your living room. You were able to take the couch from your last home so there's someplace to sit, but a cardboard box is serving as your coffee table and piles of books, blankets, and miscellaneous holiday decorations are piled around the room.
"What happened?" Maggie asks as she slouches back into your sofa.
"I just moved," you say, even though you know that's not what she's asking about. "I— Look, I know it was a bad idea, but I went to the abandoned factory last night."
"Did you find anything?"
Penelope shoots Maggie a glare. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," you say. "Sorry for the scare earlier. It wasn't my blood."
Wait. Should you tell them you think you killed one of the Valdivian thugs? Should you tell them about Volt?
Should you tell them about Eddie?
For some reason, you decide to keep part of your night to yourself. Well, not really "for some reason" when it comes to the possible murder (though it was really more like self defense, right? even though you were defending Volt? but you only needed to defend him because he was defending you… this is getting complicated) but you couldn't put into words why you didn't want to tell them about Volt and Eddie.
Why didn't Volt want to go to the hospital? Why did he only seem to trust Eddie? And why was Eddie so hostile once you brought Volt to the Breaker Box? It didn't seem like just concern for Volt, though that was definitely part of it, but like he needed absolute secrecy in order to help Volt.
If only you had the answers to any of these questions, you feel certain that you'd know how to handle your conversation with Maggie and Penelope now.
"I drove out to the abandoned factory," you say, deciding how you want to frame your story. "I heard people fighting inside, so I snuck in to investigate. There were the guys who destroyed Kopi's shop, or at least people dressed exactly like them, and they were fighting… someone. I couldn't make out anything about them." It doesn't feel great to lie, but you somehow think it would feel worse to tell the complete truth. "One of the guys they were fighting was begging for mercy and said he'd tell the stranger where Lord Valdivian was, so they were definitely working for Lord Valdivian, but the… stranger knocked him out before he could actually say anything."
"And the blood?" Penelope asks.
"Oh! I, uh, the stranger had killed one of them, or knocked them out, or something, so there was a puddle of blood on the ground and I slipped and fell in it. No one saw me though. So it's fine."
You don't sound convincing even to yourself. Maggie raises an eyebrow and peers at you suspiciously, but she doesn't say anything.
"Sorry guys," you say, trying to cover your tracks and make your story seem less like a total lie—which it pretty much is, of course. "I'm exhausted. It was terrifying. I don't ever want to do that again. Maybe stakeouts aren't for me."
"That wasn't a real stakeout," Maggie says. "Going into the action like that? Dangerous move for an investigator. Next time, we'll all go together… and not run right into a fight."
She smiles at you. Crisis averted—for now.
"So, what's the next move?" you ask.
"Well, I compared the handwriting on the paint chip to everyone recorded in the S.U.P.E.R. database and nothing came up. So either it's from someone without abilities, or they just used different handwriting so it wouldn't look like they wrote it."
"Could be both," Penelope adds.
"I sent the chip to a chemical analysis lab to see if they can find anything about the ink, so I'll let you know if that comes back with anything." Privately you think that it'll only tell you that they wrote it using a regular black pen, but maybe there's some secret evil ingredient added to all of Lord Valdivian's pens. You aren't writing that possibility off entirely. Not yet, at least.
"Reconvene back here tomorrow?" Maggie suggests.
"Sure," you agree. Not that your living room is exactly a great place to host an investigation, but it's not like you have many other options. You show Maggie and Penelope to the door and collapse against it once they're out of sight, wondering what you've gotten yourself into—and what you should do next.
Have we established well enough by this point that your decision making skills are, to put it nicely, total shit?
You're worried about Volt, which is understandable, given that he was practically dying in your arms less than 24 hours ago, so it's not that surprising that you'd want to make sure that he was safe and getting the help that he needed. But you did your job! You delivered him in one piece to Eddie, who, although you're sure he's a competent bartender (probably?), hardly seems like an E.R. doctor capable of stitching up Volt's wound, but who also yelled at you to leave last night and didn't exactly sound like he'd be thrilled to see you back, in the understatement of the century.
On the one hand, you're also not an E.R. doctor so you couldn't do anything for Volt at this point, and getting beat up by a grumpy-verging-on-mean (but undeniably handsome) bartender wasn't on your to-do list for tonight.
But on the other hand… You really want to make sure that Volt's alright, and maybe thank him for saving your life, and also maybe ask him what the hell was going on fighting the Valdivian thugs at the abandoned factory last night. You're hoping that he or Eddie will be able to tell you something, anything, that will either justify your decision to hide it from Maggie or make you feel comfortable telling her everything.
Volt seems so secretive. Eddie too. You have this insatiable urge to tear them apart to learn everything about them. Part of the feeling is that you almost died last night, but part of it is harder for you to figure out. You're just—
Intrigued.
Maybe going back to the Breaker Box is one of your better decisions, after all.
Notes:
shorter chapter bc I had to work today :( how dare my boss expect me to fill out spreadsheets and send emails etc when I could be writing about fictional men instead! yay for grumpy overprotective Eddie entering the chat though <3
also thank you to everyone who read/commented on the first part appreciate you so much!! xx
Chapter Text
When you arrive at the Breaker Box, it looks completely abandoned. The sign above the door, which was flickering last night, has now gone out completely. The windows aren't actually any grimier than they were before, but they make the place feel like it's been empty for years, not mere hours. There's a light blue sticky note with the word CLOSED scrawled across it stuck to the window in the door from the inside.
You press your hand to the glass where the sticky note is, intending to just take a moment to pretend you're in a sad music video and then move on, but the door pushes open into the bar. It's unlocked.
If Eddie finds you breaking and entering, you can't even imagine what he'll do to you. The thought of those steely eyes turned on you in anger is enough to make you pause at the threshold.
It's enough time for someone to come up behind you and tap you on the shoulder.
"Ahh!" you shriek and nearly jump out of your skin, turning around to see who it is.
Is it bad that you feel almost… disappointed that the head of dark hair belongs to Dante, his flames too yellow to be confused for bright white?
"Hey there," he says, grinning at you. "I thought I recognized you over there. What are you doing at this dump?"
You blush. "I, uhh, wanted to get out. Meet people. I don't really know anyone in town yet, so I figured a bar would be the place to go."
"You're not wrong, but you can do a lot better than this particular bar. Looks like it's closed, anyways."
"Oh. I must have missed the sign. Or something." You're such a bad liar.
Dante either doesn't notice, or he doesn't care. "How about I take you to my favorite spot to hang out? Introduce you to some folks?"
"That'd be great," you say, and follow him down the street away from the Breaker Box.
Dante takes you to a nightclub called the Windbreaker. The outside is immaculately painted in shades of teal and hot pink and the windows are plastered with posters for various shows and performances. When Dante opens the door for you, you're immediately blasted with synthpop blaring through the speakers.
"Wow," you say, taking it all in. There's a dance floor full of people, as you'd expect, but also a line of retro arcade cabinets along one wall and tables to sit at along the opposite side. The 80s nostalgic vibe is definitely present in some of the people there, with the amount of shoulderpads and massive hair-sprayed updos, but most people are dressed like they belong to this decade, so you don't feel too out of place or underdressed.
You also notice an unusually large amount of people with visible abilities: some seem to be made of elements, like Dante, only with water, air, or even one woman who looks like a geode come to life, but others are less immediately obvious, like a pair of men dancing together who move with more speed and flexibility than any ordinary person.
"Pretty great, huh?" Dante says.
"Yeah," you agree. "It's… a lot. In a good way. I think."
He laughs. "Dance with me?"
You let him guide you onto the dance floor, protesting that you can't dance, but not really putting up a fight. The upbeat music is infectious and you can't help but throw your arms up and dance. It certainly doesn't hurt that while Dante's not the most graceful dancer you've ever seen, his enthusiasm more than makes up for it, and you end up grinning ear to ear as he pulls out some of the cheesiest moves known to humankind.
Eventually you both tire of dancing and head off of the dance floor. Dante scans the tables until he evidently sees someone that he knows, or, as it turns out, multiple someones.
"Meet my friends," Dante says. "This is Winnifred, River, and Bodhi, the owner of this fine establishment." He winks at Bodhi, who may or may not wink back—his curly black hair completely covers his eyes.
"Nice to meet you all," you say, introducing yourself as you and Dante sit down.
"Welcome to the Windbreaker! What do you think?" Bodhi asks.
"It's incredible," you answer honestly. "I love how it's nostalgic, but, like, only the fun parts and nothing feels dated. It's so cool."
"Hey, come by anytime you like, drinks on me," he says. "Any friend of Dante's a friend of mine. I gotta go tell the DJ to play more than just Wham! on repeat, but it was great to meet you! Will I see you back here again?"
"Absolutely!" you tell him. He claps your shoulder as he stands up to leave for the DJ booth.
"So," River says dryly, ironically given that she appears to be made entirely of water. "How'd you and Dante meet?"
"You know how Maggie has her whole 'Lord Valdivian isn't actually gone, he's just in hiding working on some master plan' deal?" Dante asks rhetorically as Winnifred and River nod their heads, clearly very aware of Maggie and her outlandish theories.
"Don't remind me," Winnifred rolls her eyes, one blue and one orange matching the currents that wrap around her body. "Maggie's an absolute sweetheart, but she can never let an idea go! It's good of you to keep humoring her, Dante."
"About that," he scratches the back of his head. "It might not actually be all in her head, at least not anymore." He explains what's been going on, and your role in everything.
"Wait," River interrupts. "Sorry, I know this is all crazy and this is literally the least important detail, but you're telling me that you can communicate with inanimate objects and S.U.P.E.R. just… let you live your life? They didn't immediately snatch you up and make you work your life away for them?"
"Uhh, no?" you say, scrunching up your face. "I had to do, like, summer camp for a month to learn how to control my ability and then at the end, S.U.P.E.R. said they'd send job offers to everyone with actually useful abilities once they turned eighteen, but I was most definitely not on that list."
You remember that summer fondly. It was where you met Dasha, Hector, and Mac. The four of you were the only ones from your town to manifest abilities that year and even though none of you had known each other previously, you became fast friends from spending every day together in the local community center, learning breathing exercises that were supposed to help your self control from an older woman named Stella who had been working for S.U.P.E.R. for years, and testing your newfound abilities on each other. At the end of the summer, all three of them received envelopes with invitations to work for S.U.P.E.R. in a few years, but your envelope was empty.
"It was lovely to meet you, dearie," Stella had said, patting you on the shoulder. "I'm sure you'll find something wonderful to do with your life. Your ability… we're just not all meant to be heroes. And that's okay."
You had smiled back at her and said, "That's alright Stella, I understand," but deep down it had hurt at least a little bit to know that your friends were destined to do great things and you—
Well, you have a degree in customer service, to put things bluntly.
"I think you're selling yourself a bit short," Winnifred pulls you out of your reminiscing.
"I mean, be glad," River says. "Growing up only ever knowing S.U.P.E.R. is nothing to be jealous of. I would have thought that they would've been all over you, but good for you they weren't."
"Wait, only ever knowing S.U.P.E.R.?" you ask. You thought that you heard her right. "Like, from childhood?"
River sighs, but she doesn't seem mad at you for asking. "Yeah," she says. "I was born like this. Apparently my parents had no idea what to do with me, so S.U.P.E.R. took me straight from the hospital where I was born. They trained me my whole life to be the perfect 'hero.'"
You can hear the air quotes as she speaks.
"That's horrible," you say.
"It wasn't all bad," she says, looking at Winnifred fondly.
"My abilities didn't come in until I was a teenager," she explains in her lovely drawl. "But once S.U.P.E.R. found out I could both heat up and cool the area around me, they brought me to the same compound where River was. I guess they thought our powers would mesh well together."
River blushes. "They weren't entirely wrong."
"Once we were old enough to be sent into the field, we convinced them to keep us together and we've been in Coolsville ever since," Winnifred finishes the story.
"I was sent to a few different towns before S.U.P.E.R. told me I was being moved here," Dante says. "But this is by far my favorite place I've ever lived."
"They haven't sent any of us communications in almost a full year," River says. "I'm hoping they've forgotten about us, but if Lord Valdivian's rearing his head again, they might have to take notice." She shudders at the thought.
"It'd be best for everyone if we were able to stop whatever he's doing without involving S.U.P.E.R. I may not have paid Maggie as much attention as I should have when she first came to us with her concerns, but anything you need, we're here," Winnifred says. "Not just me and River, but all of the heroes in Coolsville. We all benefit from S.U.P.E.R. staying out of our business, so just say the word."
You smile back at her. "Thank you. I can't believe S.U.P.E.R. treated you all like that—I always thought they didn't do much, I guess, just maintained that database of theirs. But that's terrible. I can't imagine an organization having that much control over your life. Anything it takes to keep them away, I'm on board."
Then you think of something. "Wait, do you guys know all of the people with abilities in Coolsville?"
"Most of them," Dante says. "Why?"
"No reason in particular," you lie. "I just used to hear rumors about people with lightning powers, or, like, electricity, you know? And I always wondered if those were true because I've never actually met anyone who could do that, but, like, it sounds cool? So have any of you ever met someone who could, like, control lightning? Or anything like that?"
One of these days you'll get better at lying. Maybe. Hopefully.
"I don't think that's possible," Winnifred says. "I always thought electricity was like mind control or time travel—one of those abilities that you'd think would exist, but something in the laws of physics stops them from ever actually manifesting. Do you know, River? You've seen more abilities than either of us."
"Nope," River confirms. "The way they taught it to me, energy and matter can only be manipulated to a certain degree. Winnifred can't heat or cool beyond a certain temperature range and she's limited to only her immediate surroundings. Dante has his flames, but he can't maintain them beyond a certain point." She purses her lips, as if running calculations in her head. "I suppose someone could generate enough electric power to create a static shock, or maybe power a lightbulb or something small, but definitely not enough for lightning."
Huh. There's no way you mistook what you saw at the abandoned factory, right? That was definitely electricity, and it was definitely coming from Volt. You'll have to check the camera footage when you get home.
The camera footage.
Evidence.
You left your flashlight and baseball bat at the factory in your rush to get Volt to safety. Could those be traced back to you? Someone else with your abilities certainly could, but even if there's no one else who can speak with objects, could someone else find you based on them?
"Guess that was just a rumor," you say to River, your thoughts racing and your mind elsewhere. "Like the bogeyman or nightmares come to life."
She says something in response, but you don't hear it.
"I, um, I have to go," you say. You stand up suddenly. "It was nice to meet you both. I'll see you around?"
"Want me to walk you home?" Dante asks. He sounds concerned. You haven't had anything to drink tonight, but he knows you well enough by now to tell that something's off in your behavior.
"Nope!" you say, a little too upbeat. "I mean, thanks, I appreciate it, but I'm fine. It's close." You smile brightly, hoping that he won't push it.
"Alright," he says, still not sounding fully convinced. "I'll see you later."
You replay the footage on your camera over and over as you try to scrub all of the bloodstains out of your car. Part of you wants to leave them there, just so that you have some reminder that it was real, but the rest of you knows better than to get caught looking like you have a crime scene in your passenger seat.
The camera doesn't show you anything different than what you remember. The silhouette of the factory, lit up from the massive bolts of lightning shooting across the sky. You pause, rewind, replay at the slowest speed your camera is capable of: the lightning definitely originates from within the building, and it's definitely lightning, not any other form of energy.
You see yourself leaving the car, heading into the entrance, then the video only shows the front of the building for several minutes. The lighting changes from what you assume was Volt's shot at the person behind you—Volt's shot that saved your life—and then it cuts out entirely. Your best guess is that something happened when Volt was stabbed that caused the electronics in the camera to short out and stop recording. But if that was the case, why does the camera still work now? You didn't even have to recharge the camera battery in order to be able to play back the video now. All of the other functions seem to work.
What is going on?
On the one hand, Eddie's reaction to you bringing Volt to the Breaker Box makes a lot more sense now. If no one knows that Volt exists—if no one knows that Volt's existence is even possible—then of course Eddie would want to keep his secret and maintain his privacy at any cost.
But on the other hand, if that's the case, then why would he let you go? You've had multiple opportunities to spill Volt's secret. Eddie doesn't know you. He has no reason to trust you. He didn't even make you promise not to say anything! So either he didn't care whether you told anyone about Volt, or… He somehow knew that you wouldn't.
You watch the video again, despite having every frame seared into your memory, and sigh, putting your head in your hands. What on Earth are you going to do?
Who are you even kidding? You know exactly what you're going to do.
But first, Maggie, Penelope, Kopi, and Abel meet in your living room the next morning to solve the much more reasonable mystery of where Kopi should reopen her coffee shop. You've even showered and made yourself presentable before they arrive! You're getting pretty good at this whole hosting business. And, as it turns out, there's a bookstore only a few blocks away from Kopi's previous location. When Kopi calls them, all five of you huddled around the phone on speaker mode, the owner Lyric says that he's always loved cafes in bookstores and that Kopi's welcome to set up a coffee bar immediately. His only request is that she sells tea as well, which she is more than happy to oblige. When she hangs up, she's grinning ear to ear. You cheer and pull her into a hug.
They help you unpack your moving boxes, which have sat neglected while everything else has been going on, and Abel mentions that he's a carpenter and would be more than happy to make you a coffee table so that you aren't stuck with the cardboard box forever. You smile and thank him. Even after they all leave, you still feel the warmth of friendship and begin to think that, villains and mysteries aside, Coolsville could become a real home for you.
You're still smiling as you put on your second-best black sweatshirt and get into your newly blood-free car. If this detective thing doesn't work out, you could try your hand at professional cleaning. The car might smell more strongly of bleach than a nineties boy band's tour bus after touching up their frosted tips, but at least it looks spotless.
Your smile only starts to fade to be replaced by the seriousness of the situation once you're on the road to the abandoned factory. It's not actually too late to turn around, but you know you won't be able to sleep tonight knowing that your flashlight and baseball bat are still at the factory. Odds are, someone working for Lord Valdivian has already gone there to see what happened to the group that Volt was fighting and already found any evidence, but…
There's no 'but.' You can either twist your head into knots coming up with reasons why driving directly into enemy territory isn't incredibly dangerous, or you can try to prepare yourself to survive said incredibly dangerous situation. A tiny voice in the back of your head whispers that the third option—turning around, going to bed, and forgetting about the whole thing—is still a choice, but you ignore that voice.
When you came here for the first time, the air felt unnaturally still and quiet, as if Volt's power was holding the very molecules in place. Like the whole world was holding its breath. Now, you can hear crickets chirping and a slight breeze ruffling through the leaves of the ivy covering the building. There's no sign of any human presence anywhere as you park your car and walk up to the entrance, though you know that looks can be deceiving. You feel a tad silly for being so scared, then scold yourself for letting your guard down even a little bit. It may not feel as dangerous as that night, but you're still very aware of what may be lurking in the shadows.
Your cell phone's flashlight isn't as strong as the larger one that you brought with you last time, but it'll do the job. You already checked and you don't have service this far out of town, so it's not like you'll need to conserve battery power to call anyone, which is a little terrifying in and of itself, since it means that you'll be completely on your own if something does happen to you. You try and remember where you were when you pulled up directions to the Breaker Box, but in your recollections it was several minutes of driving way above the speed limit (you don't know what the speed limit is here exactly, but you were definitely going faster) before you stopped to look it up.
Great. That's a comforting thought.
You aim the light around the entrance and first floor hallway to see if there's any clues that you missed the first time around, since you were more than a little distracted by the fight. It still seems fully abandoned, except for the multiple tracks of footprints in the dust on the floor. You stop to take a photo of the treads. Maybe you'll be able to match them up with the boots that all of the Valdivians seem to wear.
The first floor is set up as two concentric rings of offices with a hallway in between, moving in a square around the building. You walk a lap of the entire floor, but the office doors are all covered in a thick layer of dust and look to be rusted shut. If there were ever names or other words printed on the doors, they've long since faded. As you complete your lap, you notice that your footprints are the only ones left on the far sides of the building. The Valdivian boots, and any other footprints lost amongst them, only move between the front door and the staircase, which is in the corner of the building on the same side as the entrance.
Mostly satisfied that you haven't missed anything, you climb to the second floor, pausing every now and then when you reach a creaky step, waiting for someone or something to jump out of the shadows and attack you. Nothing happens, but you're still on edge.
You stay in the stairwell once you reach the second floor. You didn't look around this floor at all when you were here a few nights ago, but it's obvious even from your vantage point that no one else has stepped foot here in years, if not decades. Sheets cover what you assume are some sort of manufacturing machines and inches of dust cover the sheets and floor. You already regret leaving your footprints all over the first floor, so you don't spend more than a few minutes on the second floor, only stopping to take a few pictures of what can be seen from the stairwell.
You're halfway up the stairs to the third floor when a new sense of unease permeates your body. You haven't exactly felt comfortable, but now something feels more off than before. You stop moving and turn off your phone's flashlight.
You still don't hear anything but the crickets and the breeze, and after letting your eyes adjust to the near-complete darkness, you don't see any other lights in the building. It's probably nothing.
Or, not nothing, but something that only exists in your memory. This is where you were standing when Volt shot his energy blast at you, killing the person behind you. You're just remembering the past fear that you felt here. You shrug off the sensation and turn your phone's flashlight back on.
Something is wrong. Where there was ash and char coating the wall in a disturbingly humanoid shape, now there's nothing but blank concrete. You scan up and down the entire stairwell—maybe you're misremembering the exact spot—but there's no sign of the fight. You debate taking a picture of the wall, but without evidence of what it looked like last time, a dark photo of an uncharred wall doesn't prove anything.
You take a deep breath and step onto the third floor of the factory, mentally preparing yourself to see the carnage that Volt left behind him.
There's nothing.
Maybe this shouldn't come as a surprise—whoever or whatever removed the body on the stairwell likely would've cleaned up here as well. Still…
You open your phone camera to take pictures of this floor for posterity, although it looks much like the second floor with machinery covered with sheets, but as you tap the button, you notice a glint on the screen, like there's something metallic in the background. You lower your phone and—
"Eddie?"
You barely have time to process the shock before he's crossed the room and pinned your arms behind your back with one hand and pressed the other firmly over your mouth. You couldn't cry out for help even if you tried.
"Shhhh," he croons in your ear, like the hissing of a snake before it strikes its prey. You don't struggle and let your body go limp in his arms, hoping that he'll release you if you cooperate.
"Are you going to be quiet for me?" he whispers. You nod your head, almost imperceptibly. "Good. I'm going to let go of you and we're going to leave the building. Understand?"
You really don't have time right now to process the way that your body reacted to him calling you 'good.' Luckily, he takes your silence for agreement, and you move your body almost robotically across the floor, down the stairs, and out the door.
Eddie lets out a low chuckle when he sees your car parked right outside the front entrance.
"You didn't even pull around to the back? Were you trying to get caught?"
"N—no," you stutter. "I didn't—"
"Get in the car," he cuts you off, uninterested in whatever excuse you have. "I assume you remember the way to the Breaker Box."
You nod.
When you don't make a move after that, he raises an eyebrow at you, and you take that as a sign to shut up, get in the car, and drive the two of you to the bar.
Once you're far enough away from the abandoned factory that you start to feel safer, you ask him, "Is Volt okay?"
The look on his face lets you know that while you may be away from the factory, you're not out of danger yet.
"Yes," he says. He may be technically responsive to your question, but his gruff tone is enough to keep you quiet for the rest of the car ride.
"Turn here," Eddie says, gesturing to the alley behind the Breaker Box. You obey and park your car.
He gets out and pulls a key ring from the inside pocket of his vest, unlocking the back door of the bar. When he notices that you're still inside the car, not following him, he turns around and sighs.
"Are you coming or what?"
You don't have to be told twice.
"Drink?" Eddie asks. You notice the way the tension leaves his body once he's inside and has locked the door behind the two of you.
"Sure," you say. "I'll have whatever you're having."
"Whiskey sour it is then."
You take a seat at the empty bar and watch him make the drinks. Now that it seems like he definitely isn't going to kill you, you find yourself noticing things about him that you hadn't paid attention to before. His hands, for one.
"So," he says, snapping you out of your reverie. He places the drinks down on the bar and pulls out a stool that must've been hidden under the counter so that he's sitting directly across from you. "Do you want to start by asking your questions, or do you just want me to tell you everything I'm comfortable with you knowing?"
"I didn't think you'd be comfortable with me knowing anything," you say honestly.
He laughs. "Huh. That makes sense, I guess. I'm sorry I wasn't exactly… forthcoming when we met. I had more important matters on my mind than being a good host."
You blanch, remembering how bad Volt's condition was and how terrified Eddie seemed. "Is he—?" you struggle to find the right words. "Where's Volt?"
"He's fine," Eddie says. "He's asleep. Like you should be."
Oh. It is nearly three in the morning, isn't it?
"How?" you ask. "You aren't also secretly a doctor, are you?"
Eddie raises an eyebrow at you and you look pointedly back at him.
"It's a fair question!" you say. "Is it so surprising to you that I'd be worried about him?"
"It is a fair question, but I'm not answering it. Ask another."
You glare at him. "Fine. What were you doing at the factory, then?"
"Cleaning up Volt's mess. What were you doing?"
He's being purposely obtuse and you can't stand it.
"I don't think I like this game," you say, taking a sip of your drink. It's excellent. "How about you go ahead and tell me whatever you will share, and I'll ask my questions from there."
Eddie takes a long sip from his glass. His eyes don't leave yours. It's a real struggle not to stare at his lips instead, but you manage. He sets down his glass and puts his elbows on the bar, tilting his head and moving closer to examine you. You feel your breath quicken as he enters your space, but you don't let it show on your face.
He must approve of whatever he sees because he leans back and picks up his drink again, swirling it around. You can't help but let out a small sigh of relief, even as you wish he'd lean back in.
"We don't like Lord Valdivian," he says, mostly talking to his glass but he looks over at you briefly to see your reaction. "Or your little superhero organization."
You figured as much, given that Volt seems to exist off of and operate outside of S.U.P.E.R.'s jurisdiction, but it does surprise you a little to hear Eddie so easily and naturally refer to himself and Volt as 'we.' Not for the first time since meeting the two of them, you wonder what exactly their relationship is.
"You haven't told anyone about us, have you?" Eddie must already know the answer, but you respond anyway.
"No," you say, and before he can ask, "and I won't."
He looks you up and down, a glint of approval in his eyes. "Good. Come back tomorrow morning. Volt will be up. There are things I won't say without him present."
"I can't," you say without thinking. "I'm meeting with friends. Can we—?"
He doesn't even have to say a word to stop you mid-sentence.
"I'll be there," you agree quickly before he can change his mind about inviting you back.
Eddie doesn't say anything else, but you think you see a faint hint of a smile flash across his face as you leave.
Notes:
eddie my love! more volt next chapter I promise :)
also we're all okay with lore infodumps as long as they're from beautiful women, right? bc I can't promise this'll be the last time that happens lol
thank you as always to everyone who's reading/commenting/bookmarking, I'm so glad other people are liking this AU as much as I am <3
Chapter Text
When you walk up to the Breaker Box the next morning, the CLOSED sticky note is still stuck to the door, but you can see Eddie's silhouette inside through the window. He starts to move to the door when he notices you, but then pauses and does a half turn to face the bar, before looking back at the door.
At you.
You push open the door and enter the Breaker Box.
"Hi," you say, when it becomes obvious that Eddie isn't going to make the first move.
"Wasn't sure you were going to come back," he says, leaning against the bar and pushing his hands into his pockets. His head is tilted down but he looks up at you through his dark hair. The early morning light filters through the windows to gleam off of the silver streaks running through it. It softens him. Makes him seem more… real. Like you could run into him reaching for a book at Lyric's bookstore, or dancing—well, maybe not dancing—but sitting at a table in the Windbreaker, or passing Penelope the creamer to add to her coffee as you all sit around your living room talking…
You flush at the thought. Better not to imagine what you know you can't have.
"I wasn't sure myself," you say, then quickly continue when you see the way his body tenses at your words. "I know I told you that I wouldn't say a word to anyone, and I haven't, but…"
You pause to consider your words carefully. With all the lying you've been doing recently, you almost consider just saying whatever you think Eddie wants to hear. But you have no idea what he wants or expects from you, and you can't help but feel like you need to take the first step in… whatever this is—whatever it will become—by being open and honest with him.
"I think we're on the same side," you say eventually. "I think we want the same things. I think I understand why you and Volt are so closed off, or at least part of why. But what I can't figure out is why you've let me in even this far, or why it seems like you're willing to let me in further. I don't understand it."
You want to say, 'I don't understand you,' but you don't.
"You've put a lot of trust in me, and I won't betray that," you continue. "This all just seems like it's a lot too important for you to trust with an absolute stranger like me. So why?"
Eddie considers your words. You appreciate that he's given you time to think carefully to make sure that you're saying exactly what you mean, and you appreciate even more that he's treating your words as carefully as you are.
"It's simple," he says. He looks directly into your eyes, as if to underscore the importance of his next statement. "If Volt trusts you, I trust you."
"Does Volt trust me?" you ask, surprised. Your interactions with the man were extremely brief, and he was delirious most of the time. You didn't think he was coherent for long enough to make that call.
"You're alive, aren't you?" You gasp at the voice and turn around to see Volt leaning against the door frame separating the main bar from the backstage area and office.
"You're— You're alright!"
"Of course I am." Volt flashes you a dazzling smile. He looks fine—better than fine, actually. His hair and eyes aren't glowing, but they seem bright and full of life, not burned out. He wears a blue waistcoat over a white shirt and fantastically tight dress pants. You notice large metal cuffs like coiled bronze wires on both of his wrists, and the same jacket that he was wearing at the factory draped over his shoulders. It's completely clean, as if that night never happened.
As he walks towards you and Eddie, you don't notice any stiffness or evidence of his wound. He's graceful like a predator and you feel pinned in place as he takes your hand and presses the back of it to his lips.
"Thank you, live wire," he says. A shock runs through your body as he holds your hand to his mouth and looks at you from under hooded eyes. "I do so appreciate your assistance the other night."
Your breath catches in your throat and you swallow hard. You're still flustered even as he drops your hand.
"I couldn't leave you," you say, and then, "Wait—I'm alive? You were going to kill me?!"
You hear Eddie mutter, "Oh boy," under his breath, but you don't take your eyes from Volt, suddenly furious.
"You were dying!" you yell. "You couldn't have killed me even if you tried! You were— you were—"
Volt's eyes flare as you stammer over your words, blue heat and bright white electricity sparking from them.
"You have no idea how dangerous I can be, live wire."
"That's enough, Volt," Eddie says, and the unnatural light dies out from Volt's eyes immediately, but the afterimage remains. "Don't go scaring her away now."
"I'm not scared," you say, but neither of them dignifies your lie with a response.
"My apologies," Volt says, back to his charming, if not entirely unintimidating, self. "I can get a little carried away."
"Yeah, well, that's what I'm here for." Eddie and Volt share a long look before turning back to you.
"So," Volt says. "What has Eddie told you about us?"
"Besides your names and that you hate pretty much everyone besides the two of you? Not much."
Volt looks at Eddie inquisitively, as if to ask why he's been so secretive, to which Eddie just shrugs.
"And so we're all here," Volt muses, concluding some aspect of his nonverbal conversation with Eddie that you've completely missed. He delivers the line like he's an actor onstage performing a soliloquy. Like he refers to himself, the sky, and the stars, rather than encompassing you and Eddie in his 'we.' You've never experienced such whiplash as the difference between Volt, alone, like he's on another plane entirely and you are barely a mite to his galaxy, and Volt, observing you, like he exists only as his gaze and you exist only through his gaze, like you are everything, but only because he is only looking at you. It's a heady wine. You wonder how Eddie can survive it.
Volt opens his mouth to speak again, but Eddie cuts him off before he can begin.
"Don't run," he says quickly, like the words are a bandage he needs to rip off quickly, that will hurt either way. "Please."
You get the sense that he isn't very accustomed to begging.
"I won't," you say, holding his gaze. "You're stuck with me now."
You're aiming for lighthearted, but you don't think that you've succeeded. Eddie nods solemnly, then gestures for Volt to continue.
"The world is stranger than you know," Volt begins. You settle in for a long monologue.
"Get on with it," Eddie interrupts again. You didn't expect him to be quite so impatient. "Or I will."
"Have it your way then," Volt reaches out and takes Eddie's hand.
"I used to work for S.U.P.E.R.," Eddie says, looking down at where his fingers are intertwined with Volt's. "I was a researcher studying xenobiolectric impulses. The energy that gives people powers."
"Eddie's brilliant," Volt says admiringly.
"Was brilliant," Eddie corrects. "Not that I ever did much good with that."
Volt looks put out beyond what you'd expect for someone hearing their partner downplay their strengths, but you don't interrupt to ask him why.
"S.U.P.E.R. thought that if they understood the xenobiolectric impulses better, then they'd be able to amplify them, or even create new impulses in people where none had existed before. I…" he trails off, closing his eyes for a second and taking a deep breath before opening them and continuing. You almost feel bad seeing how difficult this is for him, but you need to hear more. "I was so wrapped up in the science of it all, trying to solve the problem. Trying to understand more, and more, and more."
"That's where we met," Volt says, looking at Eddie softly.
"Volt and I worked in the same lab," Eddie explains. Volt narrows his eyes as if that's not the whole story, but if he's not pressing the issue, then neither will you. Yet. "Together we discovered how to manipulate the xenobiolectric impulses. S.U.P.E.R. seized our research immediately, of course, but at least part of it got out and into the hands of Lord Valdivian."
"Maggie's theory is right, at least partially," Volt picks up the thread of the story. "Lord Valdivian has all that he needs in order to harness the xenobiolectric impulses, and as soon as he figures that out, there will be nothing that can stand in his way. We've been trying to stop him before it reaches that point, which is where you come in, live wire."
"Me?" you ask redundantly. Your head is reeling from everything they've told you.
"Not exactly," Eddie says. He at least sounds a little apologetic for what's coming next. "Your power."
"How does everyone in this town know my entire life story without me telling them?"
"Bartenders are great listeners," Eddie says. "And your friend Penelope is a real lightweight."
You try to imagine Penelope—scatterbrained, bookish Penelope—at the Breaker Box, but the image refuses to come together in your mind. You'll have to take Eddie's word for it.
"Okay," you say. "Sure. Why do you need my power?"
Volt and Eddie make eye contact, then Volt says, "Because we have something of Lord Valdivian's."
Notes:
'if Volt trusts you, I trust you' > 'does Volt trust me?' > 'you're alive, aren't you?' has been living RENT FREE in my mind ever since coming up with this idea
also sorry for another short chapter that's only one scene but like it is an important one and I had to figure out banter and lore which took a whole lot of braincells! moving into more investigation/action next chapter hehehe
thank you as always for all the support!! <3
Chapter Text
Eddie hands you a plastic bag containing some sort of black fabric.
Some sort of wet fabric, based on how the bag squelches when you take it from him. You wince in disgust.
"What is it?" you ask, not sure that you want to know the answer.
"Clothes from the man you killed," Eddie says nonchalantly. "The body's disposed of, don't worry. I brought your flashlight and baseball bat too if you want them."
You stare at him in wide eyed horror.
"Did you leave anything else at the factory?" he asks, as if the only reason why his words would leave you too stunned to speak would be if he hadn't fully cleaned up all of the evidence.
"You took the clothes off a—" your words catch in your throat, but you force yourself to finish the sentence. "Off of a dead man's body?"
"Volt usually turns everything to ash. Thought this was a good chance to get a disguise."
"A disguise?" Your voice rises yet another octave, something you didn't think was even possible. "You're planning on wearing these?"
"I'd wash them first," Eddie says. "I didn't know if that would interfere with your ability though."
Okay. Well. So he's a lot more insane than you initially thought. Maybe Volt is the sane one of the pair, after all.
More sane, at least.
"Let me sit down," you say, intending to move towards one of the tables near the stage, but Volt reaches out an arm to grab your wrist. His grip isn't tight—you could pull out of it easily—but you freeze still.
"The office will be more comfortable," Volt murmurs. "If you'll follow me?"
You nod mutely and let him lead you into a room at the back of the bar, Eddie following behind.
The office is something approaching cozy, even if it isn't fully there yet. There's a worn office chair behind the desk, which is covered with folders and notebooks stacked into careful piles. A large calendar is hung on one wall, with the names of performers and events scheduled for each night. Two mismatched armchairs sit opposite the desk. The only personal touch that you can see is a framed Polaroid photo on the edge of the desk—it's Eddie and Volt at the Breaker Box standing behind the bar counter, with a "Grand Opening" banner hung up in the background. Volt has his arms wrapped loosely around Eddie's waist and his mouth is pressed to Eddie's forehead in a kiss. Eddie looks up at him with a tenderness that he seems to keep reserved only for Volt.
The men in the photo are almost unrecognizable as the men standing before you now.
You sit in one of the armchairs and look up at the two of them, the reality of what you're about to put yourself through sinking in.
"I might be—" you rephrase your sentence. "If it looks like I'm in pain, don't stop me."
Volt's eyes widen. "Are you sure?" he asks.
"She knows her boundaries," Eddie says. You don't know whether to be grateful or concerned that he has that level of faith in your control over your abilities without ever even seeing you use them before. "But… don't burn yourself out."
You nod at him and take a deep breath to prepare yourself. Even before you open the plastic bag to touch the clothes for the physical contact that increases your ability's strength, you can feel the pain emanating from them.
You steel yourself and press your fingers to the fabric.
At first you can't see anything at all, only a physical darkness that pushes in on you, throbbing with the heartbeat of who you assume is the man you killed. It's frantic, desperate, increasingly intense until it feels like the heartbeats are overlapping to amplify a resonant frequency that will tear your very atoms apart.
Is this what it feels like to die?
The darkness beats in on you erratically from all directions. You can't predict where the next hit will come from and it catches you off guard every time, leaving you paranoid and flinching at every sensation. The clothes feel almost gleeful torturing you with their memories of their owner's death at your hands.
"Please!" you beg. "I'm sorry! I was— I was scared— I was—"
The terror doesn't stop, but you weren't really expecting your cries to do anything, were you?
You'll need to try a different tactic.
"Show me," you ask. "Show me what I destroyed."
You hold your breath, hoping that this will work, hoping at least that the pain will let up.
The heartbeats increase in volume to a deafening rush, and then everything goes silent.
A rush of images flood in, and you describe what you're seeing out loud, hoping that Volt and Eddie can hear you.
"We're running up the stairs, boots stomping in unison, they're burning, they're all burning, it's all white and I can't see anything, it's all burning burning burning around me—the van is silent, bumps on the road, shoulders jostling, breathing in unison, bracing muscles against the brakes and then moving out—we're pulled from the barracks, orders coming in on the intercom, standing in unison, plastic floors, plastic walls, plastic windows round and dark, tunnel packed with vans—water everywhere, drowning, drowning, spinning in unison, drowning, drowning, drowning—"
Something pulls you out of your trance and you fall back into your own body, heaving and gasping for air.
Words filter in slowly, as if you're underwater, gradually becoming more clear.
"—good, that's it, breathe for me, in, out, there you go—"
A hand rubs circles on your back as you follow the voice's instructions, forcing your lungs to follow their rhythm. You feel your heartbeat gradually slow—your heartbeat, not anyone else's—and your senses fill in with reality.
"There she is," Volt says. His voice is a comforting deep rumble that cuts through the fog still clouding your mind.
You take a shaky breath and your eyes focus on Eddie kneeling in front of you, his hands resting on your knees and his mouth moving.
"In… out… focus on me… just breathe," he's saying. You focus on his words and the comforting pressure of his hands.
"Was—" you stutter. Your mouth feels dry and you struggle to get the words out. "Was that good?" you ask.
"Oh, darling," Volt says. It's his hand on your back, you realize, warm and solid.
Eddie looks at you like he's never seen anything like you before.
"You're incredible," he says, as if nothing could ever be more obvious.
"Oh, good," you say, barely hearing the words, feeling more exhausted and worn out than you have in years.
"I'll go get you water," Volt says. You let out an involuntary moan when his hand leaves your back and you blush, embarrassed, but then you feel a weight settle over your shoulders and you realize that he's draped his jacket over you.
You pull it tighter around you as you hear his footsteps leaving the room. After your senses were fully overwhelmed, you wouldn't be able to block out Volt's jacket if you tried, but it just hums softly. Somehow, this makes you trust Volt more. His power is still a little terrifying, and you still don't fully understand everything about him and Eddie, but you can't imagine that his jacket would be so comforting if the man it belonged to wasn't safe as well.
"Here you go," Volt presses a glass of water into your hands. You drink it gratefully, then give it back to him.
"Was that helpful?" you ask, now that your voice is back. "Did you get what you needed?"
Eddie and Volt share a look. You don't even try to decipher what's running through their minds.
"Yup," Eddie says. He examines your face. You raise an eyebrow quizzically, but he seems to find whatever he's looking for. He squeezes your knees then stands up. "I should be back in time for opening, Volt."
"You aren't leaving now," Volt says. You can't tell whether it's a question or a command.
Eddie sighs. "What's the point of waiting?"
Another look passes between them. You're getting a bit tired of being caught in the middle of this.
"Go where?" you ask.
Eddie's gaze snaps to yours.
"The old Valdivian academy," he says. "Thanks to you, I know where the men at the factory came from. So I'll be taking these," he grabs the bag with the clothes in it and you flinch. "And sneaking in."
"Don't you need to wash them?" you ask, and then immediately feel a little stupid.
"She makes a good point," Volt says. "You can wait an hour. Surely the facility won't up and disappear in that time."
"Fine," Eddie huffs. He leaves the office and you can hear his footsteps heading upstairs above the bar.
Once he's gone, Volt turns back to you.
"How are you?" he asks.
"Fine," you say instinctively.
"You sound like Eddie."
"What's his deal?" you ask. "I can't figure him out."
You want to add, "I can't figure you out."
Volt sighs. "Eddie is… very protective. Lord Valdivian hurt someone he cares about. It wasn't his fault, but he feels responsible. You've given us the first piece of information that he can use. Of course he would be eager to act upon it."
"So eager that he'd run in wearing a uniform covered in blood?"
You don't even bother asking Volt to fill in the other blanks of his explanation.
"I'm afraid that sometimes his single-mindedness overrules his common sense," Volt looks off into the distance, as if seeing some memory. "It's as though he thinks that he can reshape the very fabric of reality through his willpower alone." He seems to snap back to the present moment. "I've yet to see him unable to make his way out of any situation, though. You don't need to worry."
"But you're worried about him."
Volt's eyes flash briefly with blue light and then return to normal. "It's my duty to protect him," he says. "It doesn't need to be yours."
You sit on the office armchair for the next hour or so. Volt moves in and out of the office, bringing you tea and pretzels from the bar as you come back to yourself. Even Eddie pokes his head in every now and then to check on you, nodding his head in response to your weak smiles at him. You're beginning to see why it seems like most of his communication with Volt is nonverbal.
"Alright," Eddie says as he reenters the office where Volt has joined you in the opposing armchair. He cuts an imposing figure in the black pants, jacket, and boots of the Valdivian thugs and he carries a black backpack filled with who-knows-what. "I'll be in and out."
"Darling," Volt reproaches.
Eddie sighs and leans over to plant a kiss on Volt's cheek.
"Thank you, love," Volt says. "But what I meant was that I'm coming with you."
"With your hair? You're too conspicuous."
"What if you need me?"
They have yet another of their silent conversations. Normally you try to be polite and not interrupt people, but you're not sure what the etiquette is when neither of the people you're interrupting is saying a word.
"If Volt's coming, I'm coming," you say.
"Absolutely not," Eddie says.
"I'm less conspicuous than him," you argue.
"Yeah, well, you're not coming. I won't let you."
"You won't let me?" you emphasize the word 'let' in disgust. "Would you ever not let Volt do something?"
"I couldn't stop Volt from anything even if I tried," Eddie says. "But I can certainly lock you in this office where you can't throw yourself into danger right after you nearly passed out."
"You wouldn't," you say.
"Try me."
You stare him down and come to the unfortunate conclusion that he's serious. He's right, of course—you're in no condition right now to run headfirst into a building full of Valdivians, but it still stings.
"How are you getting there?" you ask. "I'm not a half bad getaway driver."
Volt laughs suddenly. The sound cuts sharply through the room after he's stayed silent during your argument with Eddie.
"She has a point," he says. "If you're worried about your cover, we'll stay in the van and wait for you, then we'll be ready to make a fast escape."
Eddie turns his stare on Volt. You wonder if he'll keep pushing back against him too, or if Volt's voice added to your cause will be enough to sway him.
"Fine," Eddie says, turning back to you. "But you stay in the van. I don't care what you see or hear, you do not leave the van. Understood?"
"Understood," you say, and grin at him.
You're surprised that Eddie and Volt don't have a problem with you driving the Breaker Box's delivery van, but you suppose that maybe their protective natures only extend to each other. You're not mad about it. While you drive, Eddie fills you in on this academy that you're driving towards.
"It was built a couple decades ago," Eddie says. "Back when architects were all about finding weird new materials to make buildings out of. The Valdivian family sponsored the construction of a boarding school to host students with abilities. It wasn't officially stated anywhere, but their goal was clearly to groom the next generation of villains. They had it made entirely of this new kind of plastic that was supposedly ten times stronger than concrete, or something like that, and had it molded into organic shapes with curved windows and hallways to emphasize the 'dichotomy between the natural and unnatural' and how using both makes you stronger," he uses air quotes—unnecessary, you think, given the disdain dripping off of his every word.
"The academy shut down almost ten years ago due to mold growing in the walls. When I heard, I wrote it off as the consequences of trying to build entirely out of a material not meant for it, so I never considered that it'd still be in use. It makes sense, though. There's plenty of room in the dorms to house villains, or soldiers, or whoever, and no one would think to look at a school that's been condemned for years."
"How'd you recognize it?" you ask, expecting him to tell you about his immense research into Valdivian architecture, but he practically growls at the question.
"At this point, she knows enough to hurt either one of us," Volt says. "You may as well let her in."
"I suppose you're right, as always," Eddie says, turning to look out of the window so that he doesn't have to meet your inquiring gaze. "I was one of the last graduating classes from Walton. I studied under the villains, thought that I was getting a job where I'd be working to stop all of the worst people that I grew up with, then realized that S.U.P.E.R. was just as bad, if not worse."
"And yet here you are," Volt says softly. "I rather think you turned out all right in the end."
"Yeah, well, of course you would say that."
You're grateful for Volt's presence. You don't know if you would have been able to diffuse the tension so easily.
Actually, you know that you wouldn't.
"Up here," Eddie points to a sideroad that you would have driven right past if not for his direction.
A hundred feet down the road, you see a sign reading 'Walton Academy' in a vintage font. As you continue, you see sports fields along either side of the road and Eddie indicates for you to turn and park behind a large shed that you assume contains sports equipment for the nearby fields.
"Wait here," he instructs you and Volt. "At the first sign of danger, leave. Volt?"
Volt nods his agreement. "Keep yourself safe, Eds."
"I always do."
He takes a mask out of his backpack and pulls it over his head to conceal his identity, then jumps out of the van, leaving you and Volt alone. Volt moves to take Eddie's place in the passenger seat.
"I'm sorry," you say.
"Whatever for?"
You appreciate how Volt doesn't immediately tell you not to be sorry and waits for you to explain.
"I keep saying the wrong thing," you say. "I don't mean to pry into Eddie's past. I just keep asking the exact wrong questions. I don't want to hurt him, I swear. I just—" you sigh. "I keep messing up."
"That's not your fault," Volt says. "Eddie can be… tough to get close to."
"Was he this closed-off when you first met him?"
"In a way."
You wait for him to continue, but he doesn't. You're beginning to realize that past his charming exterior, Volt is just as secretive as Eddie, if not more so.
"If I may ask a question—" Volt cuts through your thoughts. "What were you doing that night at the factory?"
"Investigating Lord Valdivian?" You're not entirely sure what he's confused about. "I thought Penelope told you all about Maggie's investigation and that I was helping them."
"No, that part's quite clear," he says. "What I want to know is why you were there, specifically, on your own."
"It's not often that I feel useful," you admit. "Even once my ability manifested, S.U.P.E.R. didn't want anything to do with me. I spent four years getting a degree in customer service just so that I could be as useful as possible, and then at my first job, the company replaced the entire customer service department with AI chatbots within hours of me signing the onboarding paperwork. Since then I've been doing odd jobs trying to make my way, but there's always someone more skilled than me, stronger than me, smarter than me… It felt good to be able to help in a way that no one else could. It felt like I could actually do something, myself, to make things better in a way that mattered."
You sigh. There's no way that Volt, with his lightning powers and electric hair, has ever felt ordinary or helpless.
"And so on your first night in a new town where you barely knew anyone or understood the danger you were putting yourself in, you set off on your own because you saw a way to help people that you had just met."
"It was stupid, okay? I know—"
"You're extraordinary," Volt cuts you off. He's giving you that look again, like you're the sun and he's been blinded from staring at you, but he can't look away. Like he doesn't want to look away.
You don't want to look away.
Volt lifts a hand to your face and cups your cheek. His hand feels oddly cool against your flushed skin, but you can still sense the electricity running through his veins.
He leans in closer and you part your lips, closing your eyes and waiting to feel his kiss and—
Something explodes.
Your eyes shoot open and you pull back from Volt. He looks just as shocked as you.
"Eddie," you both say in unison.
Another explosion.
Another.
"We weren't actually planning on leaving him, right?" you ask as you turn the ignition on and pull the van back on to the road towards the academy.
"Of course not," Volt scoffs.
"Good," you say, and gun it.
Notes:
do I plan on writing for a few more hours tonight? yes
do I want to leave you all on a cliffhanger? also yes :)
leave a comment! let me know if you think Eddie will make it out of this one! (spoilers: he will don't worry but like pretend there's some sort of tension about it lol)
also sorry if Eddie is a little out of character at parts - I needed to lore dump but that man does not like talking! and Volt's even worse! so bear with me for that please and thank you :)
Chapter Text
You can see the smoke rising before you get in view of the building. The thick plumes remind you of a volcano and you almost expect to feel the ground shaking and tearing itself up underneath you as you drive closer and closer. There's a flash of light next to you and you tear your gaze from the road long enough to see where this next explosion is, but it's just Volt—just Volt, as if the man next to you could ever be described as 'just' anything.
He looks feral.
He looks like a god.
His hair is alight, his eyes are burning, and you could swear that his body flickers in and out of existence like his very soul is caught up in a power surge strong enough to destroy worlds.
"Volt?" you ask, scared out of your mind, needing to know that the man who gave you his jacket and brought you tea is still inside of him somewhere.
"Drive," he commands.
You obey. He's unrecognizable like this.
Or rather, he's recognizable as he was the day you first saw him—what did you think of him then? Beautiful—terrifying—intense—like you'd reach out and touch the lightning just to feel the heat of it coursing through your veins.
A van drives past you, speeding the other way away from the academy.
"Ignore them," Volt says. As if there was anything that you could do to stop them leaving even if you tried.
More cars drive past you as they evacuate the burning facility, and then you turn a final corner and see it.
The building looks like a cloud of smoke itself. It sprawls across the land in shades of black, green, and yellow, bubbling up in domes like gas bubbles escaping a chemical reaction. You can't tell how much of its distorted shape is due to the damage from the explosions, and how much is due to the unusual architecture. Chunks of rubble lay everywhere, scattered like confetti across the grounds, and hundreds of people wearing the identity-less black suits are running from the buildings into the flotilla of vehicles waiting outside. Some of them have picked up fire extinguishers and are spraying streams of white chemicals into the destruction, adding to the chaos.
How are you ever going to find Eddie in all of this?
"There," Volt points suddenly at a group of four people jogging in unison.
You weave through the other drivers, who you see are all dressed in the same outfits as everyone else, and stop near them. One of them raises his arm and points for the others to follow him into the back of the van. Volt moves to open the door for them, and as soon as all four are inside and the back door is closed, he lights up. You keep driving even though the light blinds your eyes and hope that no one's pulled out in front of you. You blink your eyes rapidly, and by the time you're able to see properly again, the other three people have been completely vaporized and it's just Volt and Eddie, his mask off and blood running down his face, holding on to each other in the rearview mirror. Volt's still sizzling with electricity, but it doesn't seem to be burning Eddie at all as Volt holds his face and runs his hands over the rest of Eddie's body, checking for any other injuries. They're saying something to each other, but you can't hear a word over the cacophony outside.
The Breaker Box van looks similar enough to the others that you hope that you'll be able to blend in as you leave the campus, but of course your hopes are dashed when one of the figures on the ground points at you. His fellow turns to see what he's looking at, and then there are dozens, then maybe even hundreds of the enemy turning on you.
"Shit," you hiss. "Volt? Can you do something about that?"
He's already in motion before you even finish your question. Volt manhandles Eddie into the front passenger seat, where Eddie readjusts himself to face forwards, and then throws open the back doors of the van and launches himself out.
"Are you—?"
"I'm fine," Eddie says. He presses a cloth to his forehead to stop the bleeding. "Just get us out of here."
"Can do," you say, trying to sound more confident than you feel as you step on the gas and shoot the van forwards into the crowds.
The bodies of the people in front of you are washed in light, as if the sun has just come up over the horizon, but instead of warm gold, the light burns stark white and you know that Volt has let himself loose on the people who dared to spill a drop of Eddie's blood, and he isn't holding back. You feel the static charges in the air and the sudden burst of heat all around you. The smell of burnt flesh fills your nose and you feel nauseous, but you stay focused.
Some of the people in front of the van pull out large guns and you panic as they start shooting at you.
"Volt!" you cry out, hoping against all hope that he hears you when you can barely hear yourself.
Maybe he heard you—maybe he's just been keeping a close eye on the van with you and Eddie—either way, lightning flashes down and obliterates everything in front of you.
You don't know if you ever won't feel uneasy at the lack of thunder that follows Volt's lightning, but the feeling is definitely lessened with the knowledge that his power is protecting you.
A small voice in the back of your head tells you that Volt isn't protecting you, he's protecting Eddie, and he wouldn't hesitate to incinerate you if he thought that you posed a threat to him. You think about his lips on your hand, his jacket around your shoulders, his hand on your cheek and your almost-kiss—
And you know that none of it means a thing.
"On the right!" Eddie yells, snapping you out of your reverie. You swerve and avoid crashing into a large truck that was barreling right at you. Someone points a gun out of the passenger window and takes several shots at you. You think that they've all missed you, but you can't focus on that right now, as a line of cars are attempting to form a barricade across the road in front of you.
There's a thud on the roof, but you quickly realize that it's Volt, jumping from who-knows-where to land on top of your van. He blasts lightning at the barricade, but the metal of the cars doesn't evaporate and instead melts and remolds itself into an even more solid amorphous metal wall.
"Hold on!" you call out as you spot an opening where the wall is lower and shaped—well, not exactly like a ramp, but closer to that than anything else. Eddie grunts and closes his eyes as you try and line up the van, pushing even harder on the gas pedal.
The van bumps over the uneven metal, but it doesn't stop, and you feel the vehicle soar through the air for a moment before crashing back down onto the pavement on the other side.
You don't get a chance to breathe and check in on the state of the van before the Valdivians are hot on your trail, bullets whizzing through the air and trucks making their own way over the barricade. Ahead of you, the vehicles that were already evacuating turn around to face you. They're trying to surround and trap you, but you won't let them. Not if you have anything to say about it.
You spin the van around, hoping that Volt has a good grip, and take it off the road, tearing through grass and swerving this way and that as you head roughly perpendicularly to the main road through the fields. They aren't well maintained and the van jumps over the uneven ground. You really don't want to see how messed up the suspension is after this.
But your gambit seems to work, and the Valdivians abandon their trap to follow you. You're able to turn back around and head away from the academy without getting caught in their pincers.
You're still moving through grass and brush, but you can see a paved road ahead. You feel the van settle gratefully onto the smooth surface, but you're not out of the woods yet. The Valdivians are still following behind you despite the lead you've been able to carve out. You take a quick look to the side to see Eddie green with nausea. His wound must be worse than you initially thought. You need to lose your tail—and fast.
Up ahead the road enters a dense forest, and you can see a dirt access road splitting off to the left with logging equipment parked in front of it. There doesn't seem to be anyone around.
"Volt?" you ask.
"You need me, love?" he asks, still perched on the roof of the van. You wonder how he can flirt at a time like this.
"If you melt metal, like the cars back there, can you direct where it goes?"
You can hear the grin in his voice. "I think I see where you're going with this, live wire."
As you approach the access road, you turn the van on a dime to slide into the trees, and Volt summons lightning to melt the logging equipment into an impenetrable mass spanning tree to tree, completely blocking any of the Valdivian vehicles from following. If they want to get you, they'll have to go on foot.
You're forced to slow the van in order to navigate around the tree stumps and equipment left scattered across the access road (road being a very, very generous term) and you take a second to check in.
"Still with us, Eddie?" you ask.
He grunts in pain, but gives you a thumbs up. "Just get us out of here," he says.
"That's the plan," you say, not that you're entirely sure how to go about it. "Volt, can you see anything?"
"Besides trees and, oh, say, thirty people chasing us?"
"Not helpful!" Eddie yells up at him.
You keep following the access road through the woods as you hear Volt's energy crackle and know that he's shooting lightning back at the people still behind you.
You wonder if he'll set the entire forest on fire.
You wonder if he'll ever burn out.
And then—
"Get down!" you yell, slamming on the breaks and throwing yourself out of your seat and over Eddie. You feel pieces of something slamming into your back and you can only hope that nothing gets past your human shield to hit Eddie, already wounded as he is. Even through your closed eyes, you can see the light get brighter and brighter, and you feel the heat increase until you're soaked through with sweat, and then it all dissipates but you're still holding Eddie down, waiting for something to tell you that it's safe.
That something is Volt, hopping down from the top of the van and opening the passenger door.
"Are you hurt?" he asks.
"I'm fine," Eddie says.
You sigh in relief and lift yourself up off of him, moving back into the driver's seat. Volt easily lifts Eddie up to hold both of them in the passenger seat.
"Okay," you say, more to center yourself than anything. "Okay. Let's get out of here."
You ignore the pain in your back and side as you shift gears and drive the van away from the carnage that Volt has left in your wake.
The access road eventually passes through the entire forest and you find yourself driving down the highway back towards Coolsville. Somehow, it's only late afternoon, though you feel exhausted enough that you could sleep for a week if you let yourself stop moving.
"I don't think we're being followed," you say, checking the rearview mirror.
"You weren't kidding about being a good getaway driver, huh?" Eddie asks. He's looking much less ill now that you're traveling at a reasonable speed down a road actually built to be driven on.
You shrug.
"He's right, live wire," Volt says, his thumbs rubbing subconscious circles on Eddie's thighs and his electricity calmed down to a subtle glow. "Consider me thoroughly impressed."
"You weren't so bad yourself," you say, and Volt laughs softly. He's just brutally burned alive potentially hundreds of people, but the instant he's at all kind to you, you completely forget your morals and forget your fear to bask in the sound of his gentle laughter.
You were scared of him earlier. You were. Intellectually, you know that. You can remember thinking to yourself that he could kill you without a second thought, that you could never stand up to a force of nature and stay on your feet, but you can't remember the emotion, what it actually felt like to be scared of Volt. All you can feel now is the warmth of his praise and the comfort of his presence and that feeling has burned away any lingering traces of anything else to fill you up with…
You can't put a word to it, you won't put a word to it, not yet— but you know what you mean even if you won't say it.
It's a dangerous feeling.
Maybe you are still scared of him.
Maybe you're scared of Eddie, too.
"Do either of you want to hear what I found, or are we waiting until we get back to have serious conversations?" Eddie's voice breaks through your thoughts and you blush. Could he tell that you were thinking of him?
"If you feel up to it," Volt says.
"I just got knocked on the forehead. Barely a tap. Head wounds always look worse than they are, but you can patch it up as soon as we're home," Eddie tells Volt. "The motion sickness's gone too, mostly."
"Sorry about that," you cringe.
"It's better than the alternative," Eddie says. "Anyways. There's tons of them, all acting the same, like they're ants or something. As long as I stayed in line and followed what the others were doing, they didn't seem to notice that anything was off. No security checks or anything when I entered. It was strange. Almost like they were counting on any intruders immediately sticking out like a sore thumb so they didn't think they needed to take any other precautions.
"I followed a group deeper into the school, then split off to get into one of the offices. I figured that they were probably still using the administration offices to store information, and I managed to fill the backpack with anything I could find in there. Then one of them walked by the open door, and he must've raised the alarm because they all started swarming. He's the one who hit me, but I was able to knock him out and get back in formation with the others moving throughout the building. It was like they had predetermined evacuation paths down to the individual.
"I'm not sure what set off the explosions. I definitely didn't. My guess is some sort of self-destruct mechanism, but it doesn't make sense to destroy the entire building to catch one intruder, unless they didn't care about anything in the school, but that doesn't make sense either. There must've been easily a thousand people there based on how busy the parts were that I saw.
"The group I was with finally went outside, and that's when you two came barreling in," he says.
"Figured you could use a lift," you say. "I pride myself on door-to-door service."
Volt just hums quietly, considering Eddie's story.
When you park behind the Breaker Box, you feel lightheaded as the events of the day catch up to you all of a sudden.
"Hey," Eddie says, waving a hand in front of your face. When did he and Volt get out of the van and cross over to your door? "Are you with us?"
"Yeah," you say. "I'm fine."
Eddie raises his eyebrows. He clearly doesn't believe you.
You decide to prove him wrong. You push yourself upright…
And immediately collapse forwards to fall into Eddie. Your hands come up to rest on his chest and his arms instinctively reach around to hold your body close to his.
Oh.
This is nice, isn't it? You could get used to being held by him.
"She's bleeding," Volt gasps. "Oh, god, Eddie, she's bleeding everywhere."
There's no one else they could be talking about. You're bleeding?
"Shit," Eddie curses. "Let's get her upstairs."
You try to tilt your head up to look at him and tell him that you're fine, but he's already lifted you up, your arms draped around his neck. He carries you easily into the bar and up the stairs and you think that you might swoon if you weren't already limp in his hold.
You want to look around the apartment over the bar, but your vision refuses to focus. Eddie places you down gently on your stomach on what you assume is… the bed? You never thought that this would be the situation where you'd end up in Volt and Eddie's bed, not that you've thought about that. Definitely not.
"Look at me," Volt says, turning your head to the side so that you're looking into his worried eyes. "Eddie's going to take a look at your back, okay?"
You try to nod your consent, but movement is tough.
"Relax for me," Eddie says, running a hand underneath your shirt and pulling it away from your skin. You wince as it sticks to your back. It feels like Eddie's pulling away a layer of your skin along with your shirt. You focus on Volt's face and take a shaky breath.
"That's it, good," Eddie murmurs. "I need to take this all of the way off, okay?"
You nod and let him and Volt lift your arms and shoulders to pull your shirt fully off over your head. You let out a whimper when you see the remains of your shirt. It's unrecognizable as anything but a red rag covered in blood, torn apart in a million places.
Volt sucks in a sharp breath when he sees your back, his view now fully unimpaired.
"Why didn't you say anything?" he asks, and it sounds like his heart is breaking.
"I'm sorry," you try to say, but it comes out muffled.
"Don't apologize," Eddie says. "You have nothing to apologize for. You just— Just lay still and let us take care of you."
You can do that. Volt stays by your side, running a hand through your hair and whispering sweet nothings into your ear, telling you how good you're being and how brave you were. You hear Eddie step away, pull something out of a drawer, and then something wet touches your back and you flinch and hiss in pain.
"I need to clean the wounds," Eddie explains. He continues to wipe down your back and you try not to move too much, though sometimes the pain gets too intense and you can't help but jerk your body away.
Volt's hands on your shoulder and the back of your neck help you stay grounded, and soon enough Eddie finishes cleaning your back.
"I'm going to remove the glass now," he says. "This will hurt. Volt, hold her down so she doesn't hurt herself?"
Volt's grip on your shoulders tightens and you think that this heaviness must be what Atlas felt, holding the world on his shoulders.
Eddie braces one arm over your lower back to hold down your hips as he uses the other to hold a pair of tweezers to pull out the minute shards of glass littered in your back like a slab of terrazzo. He's right—it does hurt, and you're grateful that he and Volt are holding you immobile, or you would be writhing in agony, digging the shards even deeper into your flesh.
After an interminable amount of time, Eddie finally finishes. He cleans your back again, and this time the washcloth feels cool and comforting against your skin after the burning pain of the glass being pulled out. Volt's hand returns to stroking your hair as Eddie leaves to get bandages, which he lays carefully over your open wounds.
"Still with us, spark?" Eddie asks.
You mutter a reply, but your words are lost and the only sound that comes out is a moan as you feel yourself slipping into sleep.
"That's it darling, just rest," Volt says.
You give in and close your eyes, letting the gentle movement of his hand lull you towards sleep, but then you hear Eddie speak.
"This is why I should've forced her to stay here."
"She saved us," Volt says. "She took an entire shattered glass window to her back for you."
"She shouldn't have ever been in a situation where she could do that!" Eddie yells, then lowers his voice after his outburst. "I can't let anyone get hurt."
"Except for yourself," Volt says.
"Better me than her."
"You care about her."
Eddie sighs. "Yeah. How could I not? You do too. Don't even try to deny it."
"I'm not the one who deals with his emotions by pushing people away."
"What are we going to do about this, Volt?"
"One step at a time," Volt says. "Let her sleep here tonight. Face the morning together."
An unfamiliar voice filters upstairs. "Volt? Eddie? Are you in?"
"Keyes," Eddie says. "Fuck. The bar."
"Don't worry about the bar," Volt says. "Keyes needs no introduction; she can handle the entertaining and I'll pour the drinks. You stay up here and rest. She wasn't the only one hurt today."
"You sure you can handle the bar alone?"
"I learned from the best."
You hear them kiss, and then Volt walks to the stairs.
"I love you," Eddie says, his voice plaintive and quiet.
"I love you too," Volt says, and then he's downstairs in the bar, his voice nothing more than a muffled rumble traveling through the walls of the building like a distant rolling thunderstorm.
Notes:
this chapter is brought to you by Carlisle taking the glass out of Bella's arm in twilight new moon
thank you as always to everyone interacting w this fic - your comments give me the motivation to keep writing ilyyyy
Chapter Text
You wake up slowly, sensations gradually filtering in.
Warm air.
Cotton sheets.
Cars driving outside.
Freshly brewed coffee.
Birds chirping.
A hand holding yours, their thumb tracing circles over your knuckles.
You blink open your eyes blearily, see the soft morning light, then let your eyelids fall closed once more. You haven't felt this relaxed in a long time. There's always been something to worry about, something that needs your attention, but now… You feel content. It's enough to bask in the morning. To let the moments wash over you. Time lingers in between your breaths like dust motes in a sunbeam.
"Morning," Eddie says, his voice rough as if he also woke only a moment ago.
"Mmmm," you smile into the pillow. "Good morning."
His calloused thumb doesn't stop moving across your hand.
You turn your head to the side to look at him. He sits in a chair that's been pulled right next to the bed. His clothes—gray sweatpants and a loose green t-shirt—are wrinkled as if he's been sleeping there all night.
Your heart flutters at the thought.
"I thought I heard voices," Volt murmurs as he enters the room. "Good morning, loves."
You try to lift yourself up to sit up and see him, but pain shoots through you and your entire back feels as though it's on fire when you try to move.
Eddie reaches over to grab your shoulders and help you lower back down.
"Let me help you," he says.
You nod and blink back tears as he and Volt maneuver you into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. Your back screams and burns the whole time, but it's bearable once you're still again.
"How do you feel?" Volt asks once you're situated.
You groan and roll your eyes. "How does it look?"
"I made us coffee, if that will help?" Volt gestures to three mugs that he had placed on the nightstand when he first entered the bedroom. He passes one to each of you, then settles onto the bed next to you.
You cup the warm mug in your hands and breathe in the scent.
"I'm sorry for snapping at you," you say, looking down at the steam rising from your coffee. "It just—" your voice catches. "It hurts so much."
Volt places a comforting hand on your knee.
"Thank you," you look up at both of them. "For taking care of me last night."
"I should be thanking you," Eddie says. "Now you've saved both me and Volt. We're incredibly grateful."
You meet his eyes. This is the most sincere he's ever been with you, and you don't quite know how to respond. You open your mouth as if to respond, but the words don't come. Eddie smiles at you as if to say that's alright, and leans over to turn on the radio on the nightstand, flicking through the channels until he finds one playing old-school funk. He hums along softly whenever they play a track he knows, and the three of you sit in companionable silence drinking your coffee.
Once your coffee is empty, you sigh happily, and then wince when the small movement causes more pain in your back.
"Let me rebandage you," Eddie says. He stands up to leave the bedroom, bringing the empty mugs with him as he goes.
Volt moves to take his place in front of you as he returns with some sort of antimicrobial solution and fresh bandages.
"You really are a doctor, huh?" you say, trying to keep your mind off of the sting of Eddie removing last night's bandages.
"I used to get into my fair share of scrapes as a kid," Eddie says, his fingers brushing lightly over your raw skin. "Got pretty good at patching myself up."
"Guess that explains Volt," you say. "Was it the electricity that made you heal so fast? You couldn't use some of that on me, could you?"
Eddie's hands freeze so quickly you think that you might have imagined it, but then they continue his steady work.
"Something like that," Volt says. "I'm afraid it doesn't work too well on others."
His smile looks forced, as if he's not telling the truth, but then Eddie pulls off a bandage a little too quickly and you yelp in pain before you can ask him more.
"Sorry," Eddie mutters.
He continues working on your back, but the atmosphere isn't quite as relaxed as before.
Once he's done, you look around for your shirt before remembering that it was torn apart.
"Here," Volt hands you a clean t-shirt. You pull it over your head—it's too large on you, but you can't tell whether it belongs to him or Eddie.
"Thanks again," you say, feeling like words are incompetent. "I'll, um, I'll go now."
"Must you?" Volt asks.
Suddenly the rest of your life starts to feel a lot less important. You check your phone and see dozens of messages from your other friends, all freaking out and asking if you're alright.
"Yeah," you say, looking down at your phone mournfully. "I was supposed to meet with some friends yesterday, so they're all super worried that I didn't show."
"They were right to be worried," Eddie mutters. "At least let me walk you home?"
You nod and take his arm to let him help you. Before you actually leave, you turn to look at Volt, who places his hands on your shoulders and presses a kiss to your forehead.
"Stay safe, live wire," he murmurs into your hair. "Come back to us."
"I don't think I could stay away even if I tried," you whisper back.
Volt releases you, and you and Eddie leave the apartment.
It's a beautiful day outside—warm, sunny, and with Eddie's steady presence beside you, if you block out the pain in your back, you can almost pretend that the two of you are simply out for a walk, enjoying each other's company.
You hate to ruin the mood, but…
"What will it take for you and Volt to be honest with me?"
Eddie keeps walking. "What do you mean?"
You huff and pull at his arm to get him to stop and face you in the middle of the empty sidewalk.
"You know what I mean," you say. "You'll let me in halfway, then slam the door on my foot. You'll tell me some things, then suddenly shut down. I know you weren't telling the truth about how Volt healed so quickly, or why you were so prepared with medical supplies to take care of me last night."
"I already told you," Eddie says, as if it should be obvious. "We can't tell you everything. There are some things about Volt and I that cannot fall into the wrong hands."
"Like that you have a connection to Lord Valdivian?"
"Anyone could find that if they wanted to spend their time wading through yearbook archives."
"Or that you're on the run from S.U.P.E.R.?"
"Laying low, but close enough. Same as probably half the people with powers in this town. No one likes S.U.P.E.R."
"Or," you play your ace, frustrated that nothing seems to be getting through to him, "that you manipulated the xenobiolectric impulses to make Volt multiple orders of magnitude more powerful than any other human being? That you know exactly what Lord Valdivian is planning and how unstoppable he would be if he had even one person as powerful as Volt on his side? That S.U.P.E.R. would give anything to have you back so that they can use your research to amplify their own heroes?"
Eddie's eyes flash in anger and he pushes you back. You think he's going to slam you into the brick wall of the building next to you on the sidewalk, but he stops before your back actually makes contact. One hand grabs the front of your shirt and the other presses against the brick wall next to your head, boxing you in.
"Say it so the whole world can hear, why don't you?" he growls at you, like it's a threat.
Your hands move to his chest, as if to push him away, but then you move them up to his neck, putting just a bit of pressure on the hollow of his throat.
"I could destroy you," you whisper. "What will it take for you to see that I won't?"
Eddie leans into the pressure of your hands on his neck, bringing his face close to yours. "The same thing that will convince me to tell you everything. Trust."
He spits the word in your face, your mouths so close they're practically touching, but you're hyperaware of the invisible barrier between you. Your lower lip falls open subconsciously and you inhale his breath like it's the only thing keeping you alive.
And then he lets go of you and pulls away, standing several feet away offering his arm for you to take again. Like nothing happened.
"I can't do this," you say. "Either you let me in or you don't."
"I wish I could," Eddie says, and you want to believe that the sadness in his voice is real. "Can't you see that I'm giving you as much as I can? You're right. You could destroy Volt. I've already let you in far more than I should have. You have the knowledge to destroy him, but I won't give you a reason to want to."
"You haven't scared me off yet."
"So don't make me."
You feel tears well up in your eyes. You avoid Eddie's gaze as you take his arm and let him help you the rest of the way home.
When you reach your front door, he takes hold of your hand and squeezes it. He looks like he wants to say something, but you can't take any more of the hot-and-cold back-and-forth whatever he and Volt are doing to you, and close the door before he can say a word.
Fuck.
"Fuck!" you yell.
Screaming and crying might not fix anything, but it certainly won't make it worse. You fall onto your bed to bury your face in your pillow, and the motion causes you to cry out in even more pain. Your body unhelpfully provides the phantom sensation of Volt's hands on your shoulders.
You wish that you could take it back. You wish that you could rewind time to before you fought with Eddie, to this morning when everything felt so peaceful. And yet the root of the argument existed even then. You'd have to go back further, go back to… when? When you first met Eddie at the Breaker Box and he barely even noticed you in his concern for Volt?
What had he said—"if Volt trusts you, I trust you?"
The way Eddie's acting, you're beginning to think that neither of them trusts you, not in any way that matters. Has all of Volt's flirting been just that—superficial, just enough to make you feel special so you wouldn't turn on him?
You think back to the way that Volt saved your life without a second thought, knowing absolutely nothing about you, the way that he took a knife to the stomach for you. The way he calls you 'live wire' and always seems to know when you need his touch to tether you to reality when you feel overwhelmed. The way he took your side to convince Eddie to bring the two of you to the academy. The way he didn't so much as wipe the blood from Eddie's forehead before focusing entirely on taking care of you.
And then you think about Eddie and how he let you in to the Breaker Box after running into you at the abandoned factory. How he smiled at you and made you a drink, how he let you ask your questions. How he asked you to stay, how he gave you enough information to put together the pieces about him and Volt, how he trusted you as much as he trusted Volt to rescue him from the academy explosions and treated your injuries as gently as he could. How even when you yelled at him and threatened to expose him and Volt, he didn't let your back get hurt any further and still made sure that you made it home safely.
How last night when he and Volt thought that you were asleep, they said they cared about you.
You hold your head in your hands and sob.
What have you done?
You finally read through all of your text messages and look at the list of missed calls. You could respond individually, but you figure it would be easier to invite everyone over at once, and… you really don't want to be alone right now.
Within twenty minutes, everyone's at your doorstep. Abel goes in for a hug as soon as you let them in, but you hold up a hand to stop him.
"Take it easy," you say, smiling at him. "I hurt my back really badly yesterday. Gotta treat it gently."
"Ooh, that's rough," he says sympathetically. "How's it doing now?"
"I think I pulled something while I was moving all these boxes to put stuff away," you say. You're getting better at lying, though you don't know if that's a good thing or not. "The ibuprofen's helping, though."
"That's good," Kopi pulls in a chair from the kitchen so that there's enough seating for everyone. Between her, Abel, Maggie, Penelope, Dante, Winnifred, and River, your living room is getting crowded. You never thought that this would be an issue that you'd face. If only trying to fit all of your friends comfortably in your house was the greatest problem in your life right now.
"Sorry I freaked you all out," you say. "I didn't mean to ignore all of you. The pain medicine just totally knocked me out and I'm still pretty out of it. What I could really use is a distraction?"
"Well," Kopi says. "I have some good news. I've been over to Lyric's bookstore and his space is perfect for the coffee bar. Er, coffee and tea bar. The plumbing and electricity's already set up to add in everything I need, so it's just a matter of actually setting it up."
"I can't wait to visit it," Winnifred smiles. "Lyric always has such a good selection of books, too, so it'll be even better when I can sit down with a cup of coffee to read."
"Right? Coffee and books just go together so well. And I have a meeting scheduled with Mayor Celia for next week, where she should be able to approve a loan to rebuild my coffee shop. It'll take a while to get it back the way it was before, but I'm feeling a lot more hopeful now."
Maggie grins at her. "I'm so happy for you, Kopi. Speaking of Mayor Celia, did you all hear that she's hosting a masquerade ball next weekend to celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of Coolsville's founding? Are you all going?"
She addresses her question to the whole room, but her eyes don't look away from Penelope, who doesn't seem to notice that she's the sole object of Maggie's attention—or affection.
"Um, absolutely!" Dante says. "I love parties!"
"Could be fun," River says, looking over at Winnifred.
"I don't even know what you wear to a masquerade ball," Kopi sounds a little overwhelmed.
"I'm hearing that we're going shopping, then," Winnifred says, grinning at Kopi. "Who else is coming?"
"I'm in," you say, then decide to take the opportunity to give Penelope and Maggie a nudge towards each other. "You'll come too, Penelope?"
"What? Oh! Sure!" she says, clearly not paying attention. "Actually, I don't really do parties…"
"Come on," you plead, trying to give her a subtle nod towards Maggie. "You'll at least come shopping with us?"
Penelope blushes. "Well, okay," she agrees.
As it begins to get late and everyone starts to filter out after making you promise to not completely disappear for days on end again, you notice Penelope lagging behind.
"So," you say, nudging her playfully. "Are you going to tell me what all that was about?"
"What was what all about?"
"You know. You and Maggie."
"Oh," she turns even redder. "Is it that obvious?"
"She's clearly interested in you," you say, trying to encourage her to open up.
Penelope sighs. "I'll tell you over a drink?"
And that was how, less than twelve hours after arguing with Eddie and telling him that you couldn't do it anymore, you found yourself standing outside of the Breaker Box.
"Here?" you ask in disbelief. Eddie had told you that he knew Penelope from being a bit of a regular, but you still didn't really think through the implications of that.
"Have you been yet?" Penelope asks. She sounds a little nervous, like she's waiting for you to put down her choice of bars.
"No," you say. It's not really a lie—you've never been as a patron when the bar was open. "I, um, Dante doesn't like it though."
Penelope rolls her eyes. "I don't think he's ever given it a chance," she says. "They always have the best musicians here, actual live music instead of whatever synthpop EDM techno-whatever Dante likes."
You can't help but laugh at her dismissal of Dante's music taste, and while you're still giggling, she opens the door and ushers you in.
"You're back soon," Volt says, approaching you and Penelope. You try to tell him with your eyes that Penelope doesn't know anything about your relationship with him and Eddie, but luckily Penelope assumes that his comment refers to her and that he isn't speaking to you.
"Oh! Not that soon," she says. "I guess it is pretty soon though. Is it? This is my friend! She's new in town. I wanted to take her out."
Volt's eyes gleam in surprise and delight. "Your first time?" he practically purrs. "Well, I hope I can convince you to come back. I'd hate to never see such a lovely face again."
"And I'd hate to disappoint such a charming host," you say, looking up at Volt and batting your eyes, unable to stop yourself from flirting right back. Eddie must have not told him about your fight, or he's an even better actor than you knew.
You don't know which one's worse.
"My, my," he says. "Let me bring you ladies to a seat up front. I'll send our best bartender by with drinks. Enjoy the show!"
With a final wink towards you, he slips back into the crowd.
"I didn't know you were such a flirt!" Penelope teases playfully.
"He is rather handsome, isn't he?" you say, eyes still following Volt as he greets everyone he passes. "He's the owner?"
"One of them," Penelope says. "His partner, Eddie, the bartender, is the other. There he is now!"
You follow her gaze to spot Eddie sliding through the bar carrying a tray of drinks. While the crowd seemed to part before Volt, Eddie slips in between pockets of people without jostling anyone or alerting anyone to his presence in any way.
He approaches your table and fully stops when he sees you, his expression shocked.
"Don't act so surprised that I have a friend!" Penelope says.
Thank goodness for Penelope and how the idea that you might already know Volt and Eddie never crossed her mind.
"That's not surprising," Eddie says, placing two drinks down in front of you. "You're very charming, Penelope. This isn't a date, then?"
She giggles and rolls her eyes. "Nope! She knows all about you-know-who."
"See, here I was, shocked that you were on a date with a different beautiful woman," he doesn't look at you as he says it, but you can feel the intensity of his presence and the purposeful way he looks anywhere but at you.
"No," Penelope sighs. "Though she is very pretty, isn't she?"
"Thank you for the drinks," you say quickly, before Eddie can tell Penelope just how exactly he feels about you. "Thank you for coming here."
You try to put emotion into your words to say, "I'm sorry. I know you trust me as much as you can. That's enough. I'll make that be enough. Just look at me, please. Please forgive me."
But Eddie doesn't look at you. He just turns away and leaves.
A woman takes the stage to sit at a grand piano. This must be Keyes, who you overheard last night. She's absolutely stunning. You find yourself captivated by the way the lighting glints off of her gold-painted fingernails as her hands move up and down the keys.
"So," you say, taking a sip of the whiskey sour that Eddie's made for you. It's delicious. You almost wish that he had messed up the drink so that you could have a reason to be mad at him. "Tell me about you and Maggie."
Penelope sighs. "What's there even to say? I've been in love with her for years. Years! She's so brilliant and good at solving cases and she's always so determined to find the truth and help people. But she'd never feel the same way about me, so I've just been pining after her from the sidelines."
"What makes you so sure she doesn't feel the same way?" you ask. "You're incredible! You're so kind and beautiful and smart. Maggie has to see that."
"Sometimes I don't think that she sees anything other than her cases," Penelope takes a sip of her drink, something pink with a cherry in it.
"I can't believe that," you say. "Every time I've seen the two of you together, she's always looking at you."
"Even if she is interested in me too, what do I even do about it? She's still my boss, technically, even if it feels like we're partners with her solving the cases and me handling everything else," Penelope lays her head on the table dramatically. She really is a lightweight, you realize. She's had, what, three sips of her drink? "Sorry for whining to you."
"I don't mind," you smile at her. "Maybe you should let her know how you feel, though. This masquerade ball coming up could be a good time. I mean, you show up looking absolutely gorgeous? She'll be falling all over herself asking you to dance."
"You really think so?" Penelope asks.
"I do," you say. "Penelope, you're such a catch. If Maggie doesn't see how great you are, that's her loss."
You chat the rest of the night, Penelope telling you all the gossip she knows about everyone else in Coolsville. You still don't know who most of the people are that she mentions, but it's nice to spend time with her and listen to Keyes' magnificent piano playing. It's almost enough for you to forget whose bar you're in.
When Volt announces last call, you and Penelope get up to leave, holding on to each other as she stumbles.
"I didn't think I had that much to drink!" she giggles. She's even more giddy drunk than sober.
"Come on," you say, a little tipsy yourself, wrapping an arm around her and leaving the bar.
You don't see either Eddie or Volt as you leave.
As you're walking down the street towards Penelope's apartment, she suddenly stops.
"Is someone following us?" she asks.
You turn around to look. The road is well-lit from streetlamps and completely empty. If there was anyone else, you'd see them.
"Nope," you say, trying to reassure her. "Just us. Come on, it's only a few more blocks."
But as you turn back around, you spot something—or rather, someone. Two blue spots of light shine from one of the few shadows.
Volt.
You ignore him and keep walking Penelope home. If he wanted her to see him, he'd show himself.
He wanted you to see him, though. Has Eddie told him?
You bring Penelope to the door of her apartment building and make sure that she gets inside. You weren't too drunk to begin with and the alcohol has mostly faded from your system, or you'd call a cab to drive you home instead of walking.
You also want to see Volt.
He's by your side in a flash once you're out of view of Penelope's apartment.
"Did you enjoy the show tonight, live wire?"
You ignore his attempt at small talk.
"Eddie told you," you say. It isn't a question.
"Yes," he says simply. "And then I cornered him in the back room and told him what an idiot he was being, and that he needed to apologize to you immediately."
"You what?"
You're not sure that you processed his words correctly.
"You were absolutely right," Volt says. He takes hold of your hand. "We are lying to you, and it's unreasonable to expect you to follow us into danger unquestioningly when you don't know the truth."
You look at your hand in his. "No, I should be the one apologizing. I threatened him—I threatened you. He just wants to protect you. I know you've let me in as much as you can."
Your voice cracks and even though you want to say more, to make sure he knows how badly you feel like you've messed up, only a sob comes out when you open your mouth again.
Volt gathers you in his arms, being careful not to put pressure on your back, and holds you as you cry into his chest.
"He'll come around," Volt says. "I think the two of you should talk about this in person, though."
"Mmmhmm," you hum, not making a move to extract yourself from Volt's embrace. He doesn't move either, just holds you as long as you need.
When you eventually pull back, he gently wipes the tears from your face and walks you home. You feel like you're looking in a mirror: on one side, there's Eddie in the daytime, his gray eyes warm and familiar in the sunlight, steady like a rock that cannot be moved; and on the other side, Volt in the middle of the night, not glowing supernaturally but still bright, like the light shining from the window of a friend's house, waiting to welcome you in.
Notes:
guys I tried to write fluff this chapter I don't know what happened :') this was supposed to be a 2k fluffy filler chapter but alas the angsty brainworms took over
also I think crying into Volt's titties would fix me I just know it!!
also also lmk what you're wearing to the masquerade ball - I think all stories should include masquerade balls and also shopping montages to get ready for said masquerade balls but now I'm realizing that I have no idea what any of the characters will be wearing :0 I know the fantastic red shirt is a thing but unfortunately I personally do not look good in red and therefore the reader will not be wearing red sorryyyyy
Chapter Text
You're glad to have an excuse to get out of the house and to not be alone with your thoughts. You undid your bandages to check how your wounds are healing, which is about as well as can be expected, but you know that you didn't rewrap them as well as you could have. As well as Eddie would have.
Even though Volt told you that you had a right to be mad at the two of them for keeping secrets, you still can't help but feel like you overreacted. They had been letting you in, and you've only known them for a short time. It would be unreasonable for you to expect more, and yet…
You sigh.
You really need to get out and think about anything but Volt and Eddie.
Thank goodness for your friends. Winnifred eagerly gushes about a clothing boutique called Deveraux, and once you're there, you understand why she loves it so much. The boutique is bursting with color and pattern and you're quickly swept away by it all.
Penelope, for all of her reluctance, lights up once you're actually inside and starts pulling clothes off of the racks for all of you to try on. She and Winnifred bond over their love for some designers that you've never heard of called Curt + Rod (they explain that the pair needs to be connected with a plus sign, "it's part of the art!") who specialize in long, draped outfits with metal accents.
You try on a few outfits, but none of them feel right. Winnifred finds a tailored waistcoat that fits her figure perfectly, paired with a loose, flowing shirt and pants that ripple around her when she moves and weave in and out of the orange and blue heating and cooling currents that swirl around her body. Kopi eventually decides on a long purple dress that flows in a gradient from a vibrant violet at the top to a deep black near the hem. After she tries it on, you all make her do a spin to show it off, and when she sees how the fabric moves and flows, she lights up with a bright grin. Penelope goes back and forth on several options, but eventually decides on a deep navy blue dress with a long slit up one leg.
Maggie's going to lose her mind.
You try on outfit after outfit—there's one with a fantastic red shirt that you almost decide on, but nothing that screams "masquerade ball." You're about ready to give up on finding something for yourself when Winnifred pulls out something black from the back of the rack.
"Last one," she promises, seeing how you're tired of changing outfits so often. Your back pain has faded to a subtle but constant dull ache, but the movement in and out of the clothes isn't helping the pain. "If this isn't the perfect dress, I don't know what is."
You'll just have to take her word for it.
You take the dress into the dressing room and struggle into the layers of tulle, twisting yourself into knots to tie the corset in the back. You take a deep breath and walk out into the boutique to show your friends.
Penelope gasps, raising both hands to her mouth.
"You look…" Winnifred is lost for words.
"Stunning," Kopi finishes her sentence.
You blush and twirl around, showing off the magnificent ballgown. The black chiffon flows outwards from your waist in elegantly draped asymmetrical layers, and the corset bodice curves around your body to create a beautiful silhouette without constricting you in any way. Small puffs of fabric hang from your shoulders, exposing your neck and decolletage. The back dips down slightly in a v-shape, providing coverage while still feeling daring and eye-catching.
You've never felt more beautiful.
"I told you this would be the one," Winnifred says, smiling at you.
"Yeah," you laugh, spinning around again. You feel absolutely giddy. You don't want to ever take it off.
Eventually you do change back into your everyday clothes, and the owner of the boutique, Dirk, shows you all the selection of masks that he had ordered specifically for the mayor's celebratory ball. You pick out a black lace mask to match your dress and you all leave the boutique, bags in hand.
You all decide to visit Lyric's bookstore afterwards so that Kopi can show you all the progress on setting up the coffee bar—sorry, coffee and tea bar—and because you haven't gotten a chance to visit since moving to town.
The bookstore exudes coziness as soon as you step in. There are bookcases stretching floor to ceiling, packed with books of all genres. Lyric introduces himself as someone who seems effortlessly cool, with his partially shaved head and oversized cardigan, and shows you around.
Kopi's coffee bar is beginning to be set up on the left side of the store immediately after entering, and she already has a long wooden bar in place with several metal bar stools. She explains that she's in the process of picking out tiles for the backsplash, and you all look at the samples that she has laid out. Lyric's pick is a bright mustard yellow, and Penelope suggests that they could create a checkerboard pattern to really make it pop.
"Ooh!" Kopi exclaims. "That would definitely match with the menu boards I have picked out."
"I love it!" Lyric says. "I'll place the order for the rest of the tiles now."
You poke around the bookstacks, looking for something to take home with you. You've always loved reading, but you haven't gotten a chance to get your nose into a book since moving.
You end up in a corner near the back of the bookstore, pulling titles out of the stacks, flipping through a few pages, then putting them back. You aren't in the mood for anything too intense—you have more than enough stress in your life right now without adding the tension of fictional stories too—but you don't think that a romance is the right move either. You take a brief look at a historical bodice ripper with gorgeous cover art, but if you squint, the man's long blond hair starts to turn white and his definitely not historically accurate jacket is too close to a certain shade of blue. You put the historical romance back to look at another one, with a photograph of a brooding dark haired man leaning across a bar to look directly into the camera.
That one is quickly shoved back as well.
Surely there are books with love interests that don't look like anyone you know?
You pick up another one that doesn't feature any people on the cover, but when you read through the synopsis on the back—"When Scarlett moves to a new town, she doesn't expect to fall in love with the charismatic yet mysterious owner of a jazz bar… or his grumpy partner. As the sparks fly, how will she resist their electric connection?"—you let out an exasperated sigh.
"Not finding anything?" Lyric asks.
"I don't know what I'm in the mood for," you say.
"Well, you can never go wrong with a classic," he says, leading you over to a different shelf. "People have been reading them for centuries for a reason. Have you read Frankenstein yet? Mary Shelley's a personal hero of mine, and it's just as fascinating and horrifying now as it was when it was written."
"I haven't," you admit. "That's one of those books that I've always meant to read, and never gotten around to."
"Now's the perfect time," Lyric smiles at you. "If you want to, I mean. No pressure."
You pick it up and flip through the pages. It's not as long as you thought it was—in your head, all classic books must be at least six hundred pages and completely incomprehensible, but Frankenstein seems fairly approachable.
"I can't wait to read it," you say. "This is perfect, thanks Lyric!"
"Of course! Convincing people to read my favorite books is one of the best parts of being a bookseller," he says.
You pay for your book and rejoin your friends before leaving the store to head home.
As the four of you walk towards your house, you see a plume of smoke coming up nearby, but you can't tell what's on fire.
"I don't hear any sirens," Kopi says. "I hope everyone's okay! We should check it out, just in case no one's called the fire department yet."
You can't explain why, but you have a sinking feeling in your chest that only deepens as you get closer and closer.
"Oh, sweetheart," Winnifred says, her voice breaking. "I'm so sorry."
She sweeps you up into a hug, but you can barely feel her embrace as you stare at your house up in flames.
Your house that you had worked so hard to afford, that you were working so hard to make into a real home, that you were so proud to be able to call your own, that you had seen yourself living in for years and years to come—it's all gone up in smoke.
Around you, you can hear Kopi calling the fire department on her phone, and Penelope and Winnifred trying to comfort you, but you're frozen in place, hypnotized by the flickering of the flames.
Several years ago, you had seen a therapist who was big on using visualization. She had told you to imagine writing down all of your fears and anxieties, all of the worst case scenarios that flooded your mind, onto a piece of paper, and then setting that piece of paper on fire and imagining it turning to ash and blowing away in the wind. When you expressed your doubts, she told you that nothing could completely stop you from feeling worried about the future, but that taking the time to acknowledge your fears would help you let them go. Maybe there was some truth to that, or maybe visualizing the paper on fire just made you slow down and breathe for long enough that your body would've calmed down from the stillness regardless of what you were spending the time imagining, but it worked.
You feel a similar calmness now. It doesn't make sense, but all you can think about is how beautiful the flames look, dancing across the remains of your house. You stare in fascination as they creep along an exposed beam, turning the wood black in their path, gradually eating it away until it becomes so thin that it snaps, sending the entire beam crashing down in an explosion of sparks.
Red and blue lights flash in your periphery. A woman yells something, and then an arc of water sprays into the flames, dousing them.
As the fire sputters out, you see that one of the interior walls is still standing, despite most of the house turned to rubble around it. Load bearing, you think. The previous owners told you they tried to remove it in a renovation but couldn't. They told you not to knock it down when you moved in. You had tried not to laugh at the image of you swinging a sledgehammer and they had looked at your contorted, definitely not laughing, expression in concern.
You picture them standing here now, seeing that the only wall that survived the fire was the one that they had desperately wanted to remove. You can't imagine that they'd approve of your decision to immediately remove their wallpaper from it as soon as you moved in.
But as you keep staring at the wall, you realize that it isn't the same as when you left the house this morning. Something's different.
You don't know if your vision is blurred with tears or smoke or both. You move for the first time, stepping out of Winnifred's embrace, and squint to see what's been written on the wall.
Everyone's still moving around you—your friends, the firefighters, they're all talking with their voices blending together into a muffled hum of noise. You don't see or hear any of it.
On your wall, written in the same handwriting as the threat on the paint chip, are four words.
LIGHTNING NEVER STRIKES TWICE
You let out a strangled cry and fall to your knees. You fumble with your purse until you find your phone and, with shaking fingers, you open your contacts and call the Breaker Box.
Eddie picks up immediately.
"I'm so sorry," he says.
You can barely process his words.
"Volt?" you ask, your voice coming out as a whimper.
"I'm sorry," Eddie says. "It's all my fault. I'm so, so sorry."
The floodgates break and tears stream down your face.
"Spark?" Eddie asks. "Are you alright?"
You just keep crying. Volt's…
Volt is…
He can't be gone.
"Is everything all right?"
You hear the voice at the other end of the line, but your brain can't process it. You're hearing a ghost. It can't be real.
"Talk to me, live wire," the voice says, but you can't.
"She said your name," Eddie says. It sounds like he's crying too, or close to it. "I don't know— Where are you, spark?"
You don't answer, barely able to breathe through the tears drowning your throat, but you hold your phone out for someone, anyone, to take.
Eventually they put your phone back into your hand, but the call's been disconnected.
You sit in the middle of the road staring at the words on the wall, begging them to reform into something else, but they stubbornly stay still, taunting you.
You don't know how long you sit there.
Someone shakes your shoulder. You ignore them.
"Hey," they say softly, moving into your line of sight. It's Kopi. "Your other friends? The people you called? Is that them here now?"
She helps you to your feet and you stand shakily, leaning on her for all of your support. She turns you to face down the road and—
"Volt?"
You can't be seeing correctly. The message on the wall—lightning never strikes twice—it couldn't have any other meaning—Volt must be dead—right?
But then he's upon you, moving faster than you thought possible, his body somehow glowing brighter than the sun, and you're wrapped in his arms. He holds you tight against his body, one hand making a fist grabbing your shirt and the other cradling your head.
"Is this— Is this real?" you stutter, not sure that you want to know the answer.
"I'm here, live wire," Volt says, and you finally start to let yourself accept the possibility that Volt's really here, that the message didn't mean what you thought he did, that Volt's alive against all hope. "I've got you, love. I'm here."
You look up at him and touch his face gingerly with your fingertips. His skin is cool to the touch and sparks of electricity jump between you when your fingertips get close to him. The shocks don't hurt, per se, but they're strong enough that you can't block out the sensation. Has he always been this… electric? You've never been shocked by his touch before.
His eyes are different, too. The irises have always been a pale, icy blue when they weren't alight with electricity, but have they always had no pupils? You look into them, white with darker gray shadows throughout like clouds threatening rain.
Threatening a thunderstorm.
"Volt," Eddie says. It's a warning.
But Volt continues to glow, increasing in intensity. His hair floats away from his face, crackling with small lightning bolts branching off in every direction. His eyes still bore into yours, but you can't tell if he's really seeing you or not with that blank white stare.
"Volt?" you ask quietly. You search his face looking for any sign that he's still in there.
You find nothing.
His grip on you tightens.
Lightning starts to spark from his entire body, not just his hair, but it somehow doesn't burn you.
"Volt!" Eddie yells. He grabs Volt's shoulders, sandwiching you between the two men, and presses his forehead to Volt's. You can feel the heat of his body pressing into your back. You couldn't escape even if you tried.
At Eddie's touch, Volt finally looks away from you, his neck moving sharply as if an unseen mechanism controls him.
His white eyes meet Eddie's.
The two of them breathe in unison. You feel their heartbeats, one in front of you, one behind you, adjust to match the other's rhythm, and it's as if they've become one person in two bodies, with you caught in the middle.
And then you feel your own body adjust to theirs.
You breathe in with them.
You all breathe out.
The pressure in the air changes. The smell of ozone dissipates.
And the spell breaks.
Volt gasps, taking in air like a drowning man just come up from a riptide. His whole body shakes and you hold on to him more tightly.
Eddie doesn't let go of Volt until his shaking subsides. He's back to his regular glow and his eyes are no longer portals to a clouded sky.
"Are you with us, love?" Eddie asks. His voice is hoarse.
Volt nods slowly, as if he's not sure.
"We're okay," Eddie says. You feel him look down at you, his chin brushing against the top of your head, and then back up at Volt. "We're all okay."
"What the fuck?"
You all pull back slightly to look at Penelope, standing with her mouth agape staring at the three of you.
Eddie moves to stand next to Volt, no longer boxing you in. He presses against Volt's side and wraps one arm around his back.
Volt loosens his grip on you and moves his hands to cradle your face, turning your head this way and that.
"Did I hurt you?" he asks.
You shake your head.
"You could never hurt me," you whisper.
Volt tenses.
"We'll talk later," Eddie says. He meets your gaze. "I promise."
You nod and see Eddie's expression visibly relax.
"The fire," Eddie says. "You aren't hurt?"
"No," you respond. "I'm fine."
"Good. Whoever did this will pay."
You hear the conviction in his voice and are reminded that although Volt is the more immediately obvious threat, Eddie is just as dangerous.
"Sorry, um, did no one hear me?" Penelope says, louder this time. "Because what the actual fuck?"
You turn to face her, though Volt keeps you held in his grasp, his arms moving to hold you around your waist.
"So," you start. "Um. You know Volt. And Eddie."
"Yeah," Penelope says. "I know them. You met Volt once, and now you have him on speed dial?"
"Is that what's most important here?" Winnifred asks. "Tell me I'm not the only one who saw whoever this is turn into a Tesla coil!"
Volt tenses and you place your hands over his.
"Easy," Eddie warns.
"It's fine," you say. "These are my friends. They've been investigating Lord Valdivian with me."
You hope you won't regret telling them that your friends are trustworthy.
Eddie sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "Well, I'd rather not have this conversation out here. The Breaker Box?"
Volt nods sharply in agreement. You can tell he isn't happy about it, but now that they all know about his power, he doesn't really have a choice.
"Let me call the others," Penelope says, already pulling out her phone.
"The others?" Eddie asks. "How popular are you?"
"I'm sorry," you say quietly. Volt still seems unresponsive, so you turn towards Eddie. "I shouldn't have called."
"No," he says. He cups your face, stroking his thumb over your cheek. He looks like he's in pain. "I don't care what the danger is. We'll be there."
"I was fine," you say.
"Your house burned down!" Eddie cuts you off.
"I wasn't inside," you shrug. "But I thought— Volt was hurt. Or…"
"What do you mean?" he asks.
You nod your head towards the wall. "Lightning never strikes twice."
Volt's grip tightens even more and Eddie's face is bleached of all color.
"At this point, call the whole damn town, Penelope. We're all fucked."
Notes:
lots to say about this chapter! first of all sorry not sorry for the fakeout Volt death - I promise that no characters will die except for the nameless Valdivian thugs but I will not promise that I won't freak you out a little in future chapters sorryyyy
this was going to be longer but the next few scenes that I have planned are fairly long so this would've been released later if I included them in this chapter - lmk if y'all prefer longer infrequent chapters or shorter frequent chapters. can't say I'll stick to either, but for scenarios like this I could've gone either way
also I was scrolling through pinterest and remembered one of my all time fave movie dresses so yes we are wearing the black ballgown from the waltz scene in anna karenina (clip for your viewing pleasure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPJQzFswyUA) Kiera Knightley looks so stunning in this scene I couldn't resist!!! special thank you to everyone who shared their dream outfit ideas on the last chapter… those may or may not have made an appearance here :)
finally thank you as always for all of the support - I am blown away by how much people are enjoying this fic and your comments mean the world <3
edit: sorry forget to mention this and remembered right after hitting publish so hopefully no one's read to the end yet lol - about Volt's eyes, I realized that the reader probably should've mentioned the whole Volt doesn't have pupils thing earlier but that I never actually wrote that, so for the purposes of this fic I'm changing canon so that his eyes only become pupilless when he's angry/losing control of his power, sorry if this is the thing that breaks immersion for you, that's my bad! but also if pupilless Volt does something for you and you haven't seen evorycromnom's art on tumblr yet https://www.tumblr.com/evorycromnom/791085572275011584/to-be-gentle-with-ones-calloused-hands-i-love?source=share I'm looking very disrespectfully
Chapter Text
Eddie unlocks the Breaker Box and ushers all of you inside. In the time since leaving your house—what remains of your house—Penelope's called everyone else and they're waiting outside the bar when you all arrive.
Volt refuses to let go of you the entire time. He still seems unwilling to speak, or unable. You're not sure what happened to him that he seemed to lose control. Even when fighting the Valdivian thugs at the academy and abandoned factory, he was always in control of himself, to a frightening degree.
At least Eddie knew what to do, but that makes you wonder—how often does this happen to Volt?
You're still puzzling it over as Eddie locks the door to the Breaker Box behind everyone and lowers all of the curtains so that no one can see in walking past on the street. Volt leads you towards the back of the bar where several tables and low couches are arranged in a curve around the stage. As the two of you sit on the couch, he pulls you into his side, wrapping his arm around you. You lay your head on his shoulder, and he absentmindedly presses a kiss to the top of your head.
The others take seats around you, looking at you and Volt with a mix of curiosity and fear, the latter of which is definitely not helped by Eddie stalking around the bar. He takes a notepad, pen, and the backpack with the files from the academy out of the office, throwing them all down on to the table in front of the couch with you and Volt.
He pauses in front of you, seemingly unsure if you'd want him near you after the two of you still haven't talked since your fight.
You hold out a hand to him, silently begging him to join you. Even though you know that you need to have a long talk with him about what's real and what he's been lying about, right now you just want the comfort of having him nearby. You know—or at least you desperately hope—that the two of you will be able to move forwards past this.
Eddie takes your hand. He holds it gingerly, as if you might rip it back at any minute. You squeeze his hand gently as he sits down on your other side, not physically touching you besides your hand, but still close enough for you to feel the heat from his body.
"So," he says, looking around the room. "How should we do this?"
You try to see the group through his eyes. Maggie and Penelope, the private investigator team. Both without abilities, but their experience solving mysteries could certainly be helpful. Winnifred, River, and Dante all have strong abilities and say that they don't like S.U.P.E.R., but when push comes to shove, will they actually act against them? And there's Abel and Kopi, who look lost among everyone else. A carpenter and a barista. What do they add but a security risk?
The thought makes you feel horribly cynical. They're your friends! And yet… You're beginning to understand even more why Eddie keeps his secrets close to his chest.
"Start at the beginning," you say, as surprised as everyone else to hear your scratchy voice. "Then fill in the blanks. All of the crimes stopped, what, six months ago?"
"I'll take notes," Penelope says, already grabbing the notepad that Eddie brought out. "Go ahead."
"We need to start earlier," Maggie says. "Why did the other Valdivian family members leave Coolsville? As far as I'm aware, that started around two and a half years ago, then about a year ago the other villains started working for him."
"Go back further," Eddie says. "Five years."
"But that was even before he became the head of the family!"
"Almost five years ago," Eddie says, barely acknowledging Maggie, "the current Lord Valdivian obtained knowledge that would have let him amplify people's natural powers. He didn't have all of the details needed to fully understand or implement this knowledge. I thought he couldn't do anything with it."
"And now?" you ask.
Eddie sighs. "I don't know."
"Sorry, who are you?" River asks. "Him, too," she gestures towards Volt, who hasn't looked away from you to acknowledge the others once.
"My name's Eddie. This is Volt. We own this bar."
"And he has the strongest ability I've ever seen," River says. "I was talking more about that."
"It seems like you have it all figured out," Eddie stares her down. "I don't see what else there is to say."
River, to her credit, is unfazed. "Do you have an ability? And how is S.U.P.E.R. unaware of you?"
"No," Eddie says. "I don't have an ability. We've been… off the grid. And I'd like to keep it that way."
Something triggers in your subconscious telling you that Eddie's lying. But he doesn't have an ability, not that you've seen, at least. You're sure that would've come up by now, unless it's something totally useless, but if he did have a fairly unimpressive ability, he'd have no reason not to tell you. So he's not lying—he doesn't have an ability. But…
The academy. He said that Walton only accepted students with abilities so that they could be trained to become villains.
Eddie either lied about attending Walton, or he has a secret ability.
You turn to look at him. He meets your gaze head-on, as if he knew you'd be able to put the pieces together, and squeezes your hand. A silent promise to tell you later.
You're going to hold him to that.
"Mind sharing whatever the two of you just discussed with the rest of us?" Abel asks. He's talking about you and Eddie, you realize. Your cheeks heat up.
"No," Eddie says.
"Alright, well—" Abel sounds shocked by Eddie's rudeness.
You decide to diffuse the tension.
"My bet is that Lord Valdivian has been working on developing the… technology that Eddie mentioned. Either he's close to figuring it out and shut down all other villainous activity to focus on the final stages of development, or…" Something occurs to you. "He does have an ability, right? Does anyone know what that is?"
Maggie starts to answer, but Kopi cuts her off. "You know what Eddie's talking about with amplifying powers, don't you?"
"Yes," you say. "And I won't tell you anything else about it either."
Maggie narrows her eyes at you. "You've been hiding information from me since the beginning of this investigation. If you don't have a good reason why, I don't see why any of us should work with you or…" she waves her hand at Eddie and Volt. "Them."
You look at each of them in turn. Volt still seems totally unaware of the world around him. It's getting to be more than a little alarming at this point. You assume that Eddie would have done something if the situation concerned him, but that thought isn't quite as reassuring as you want it to be.
And Eddie… He doesn't offer any sign as to whether he's comfortable with you telling everyone what you've been up to or not. Which, now that you think about it, probably means that he'll just interrupt you if you say anything damning.
That's good enough as a go-ahead.
"I'm sorry," you start. "Truly. I chose to lie to you in order to protect Volt and Eddie. I don't know if that was the best decision, but I thought that it was the best decision at the time. If I could go back and change things, I still don't think I would. If you can't forgive me, I'd understand, but…" You direct your next words towards Eddie. "In a perfect world we'd all be honest, but there's enough danger and hatred that even the truth can't dispel, that sometimes hiding the truth is the only way to guarantee safety. I have to believe that it isn't the only way, though. That honesty—that openness—can be worth the risk. That we can find ways to protect the people we love without any secrets hurting the other people we—care about."
Eddie's gaze is indecipherable, but he runs his thumb over your knuckles, and the feeling takes you back to that one perfect morning that you felt like you could have lived in forever.
Maybe you could.
"After Kopi's coffee shop was destroyed, I went to the abandoned factory, like I told you. What I left out was that Volt was there. He was the one fighting the Valdivians. One of them injured him and I brought him back to the Breaker Box, where I met Eddie. They've been fighting against Lord Valdivian too and I've been helping them. I didn't say anything because I didn't want to expose Volt and, well, you all know what S.U.P.E.R. would do to him."
"I don't like it," Dante says, looking at River. "But I get it."
You watch Maggie. You told her that you'd help with her investigation and now she knows that not only have you been lying to her, but you've been withholding information vital to her investigation.
"I— I need to process," she says.
"That's alright," you say. "I've been there. I understand."
She flushes bright red to match her hair. "Can we just get back to the investigation? Volt, er, Eddie, um, one of you? Why were you at the abandoned factory? She was there because we were able to track the people who destroyed Kopi's cafe to there, but how did you know they would be there?"
"Volt just needs rest," Eddie murmurs to you. Before you can even open your mouth to ask about moving him to a bed, he continues, "and to not freak out because you aren't there when he wakes up."
You smile gratefully at him, too relieved by his words to focus on how he said 'you' and not 'me' or 'us,' excluding himself from Volt's concern.
Eddie turns back to Maggie. "I've been keeping a loose watch on Lord Valdivian for years, ever since I learned that he knew, if only partially, how to amplify powers. Once I began to suspect that his knowledge might be more than theoretical, Volt and I began surveying to find where he might be keeping the machinery needed to perform the process. When I found records of an abandoned factory, I thought it would be worth checking out. Volt didn't find much, by the way. Just some sleeping rolls. It seems like they were using it as an outpost of some sort."
You file that away. You have no idea what strategic value is brought by an old factory on the edge of town on a road that hardly anyone travels, but you figure you can discuss theories with Eddie later if he doesn't want to get into it now.
"Okay," Penelope says. "But the timeline doesn't make sense for your back injury. You didn't actually hurt it moving boxes, right?"
Eddie laughs and you glare at him.
"What else was I supposed to say?"
"You're a horrible liar," he says, but he's smiling even as he shakes his head at you. "How is it, by the way?"
"Better," you say. "Still not a hundred percent, but healing well. I had a good doctor."
You turn back to Penelope. From the way that Winnifred and River are (poorly) holding back laughter, you can guess that everyone else is also done with your side conversations, but you can't bring yourself to care. Not when Eddie's being so… open? Caring? Affectionate? You don't know what word to use. All of the above, maybe.
"So," you say, stalling for time. "I, um, may have gone with Eddie and Volt into this old school with maybe hundreds of Valdivian soldiers and driven them in this crazy car chase and the car window shattered and it all ended up in my back, but, like, I'm fine now. Or getting better. I'll be completely fine soon."
"You what?" Dante's eyes are wide and his jaw's fallen open.
"Don't downplay yourself," Eddie says. "She saved our lives."
His life, maybe, if only because you were in the right position to do so, but Volt's? That's pushing it a little.
"Anyways," you say. "Eddie found all of these records," you gesture towards the bag. "And Maggie, you said you knew what Lord Valdivian's power is?"
"I wouldn't have thought that was public knowledge," Dante muses.
"It's not!" Maggie says brightly. "But I did some digging and he was registered in the S.U.P.E.R. database with the ability to sense when people are feeling tired."
You stare at her in disbelief.
"That doesn't sound very evil," Winnifred says.
Maggie shrugs. "The Lord Valdivian title is hereditary, so it's not like he was chosen for the role because of his ability."
"But how would amplifying that ability make him more powerful?" you wonder out loud. "He must be planning on amplifying the powers of whoever he has working for him."
"If he got it to work on anyone else, they'd already be out attacking Coolsville," Eddie says. "I didn't find all that much in the records from Walton."
He takes out the files and spreads them across the table.
"It's mostly receipts of shipments in and out, with food and clothing and ammunition. I also found what looks like a record of calls from the office landline, but the identities of whoever was calling are all in code. There weren't any transcripts of the calls either, not that I could find before I had to leave. I was hoping to find the names of anyone involved, but they didn't even have records of the people stationed there, let alone anyone else."
River picks up the folder with the records of the calls in it. She flips through a few of the pages, then stops and examines one more closely.
"Do you think…?" she shows it to Winnifred.
Winnifred takes one glance at the page, and then looks back up at River in horror.
"Yeah," she says. "I do."
"What is it?" Dante asks.
"Scandalabra," River points to the page. "One of the S.U.P.E.R. operatives used that name to conceal his identity whenever he was undercover. I never worked with him directly, as far as I knew, but the rumor was that he had the ability to change his looks, or mannerisms, or something, so that he could convince people he was someone else entirely. It's possible I met him and never even knew it."
"Do you think he's a double agent leaking information to Lord Valdivian? Or would S.U.P.E.R. have sent him undercover and he's still working for them?" Maggie asks.
"I have no idea," River says. "Either way, that's a direct connection between S.U.P.E.R. and Lord Valdivian."
"What about the masquerade ball?" Penelope asks. Everyone stares at her in confusion.
"What do you mean?" Maggie turns to her.
"Everyone will be there, right? Mayor Celia and all of her staff?"
"I think so," Maggie says.
"And she works with S.U.P.E.R. to protect the city, so she might know something!"
"Is your plan just to ask her straight out what she knows about possible collusion between S.U.P.E.R. and Lord Valdivian? I don't know how well that'll work," Dante says. "Not to shoot you down, Penelope, but if she's in on it, wouldn't that just alert her that we're on to something?"
"I was thinking more along the lines of breaking into her office?" Penelope says. "If all of the staff are at the ball, there won't be anyone in any of the offices."
"You're incredible," Maggie says.
Both women blush.
"So some of us stay at the party to keep an eye on her and the rest of the staff, while the others sneak up to the offices," Winnifred says. "I like this plan."
"I do too," Eddie says. You can tell that the others are surprised to get his approval. "The party's in three days. How about you all come back here the day after next and we'll coordinate?"
"Is it safe to wait that long?" Kopi asks. "I mean, her house was burned down! And my coffee shop was destroyed. It sounds horrible, but we've gotten lucky that both buildings were empty. Are any of us in danger?"
"I think they're only after me," you say. "Maybe Volt—the message they left certainly seemed to be about him. But Maggie and Penelope had been using your cafe to investigate Lord Valdivian for ages, Kopi, and no one bothered with it until I joined in. Up until today, I'm the only one who's received threats as well, and even though the message on the wall seemed like it was about Volt, it was still left on my house. It wouldn't be impossible to connect Volt to the Breaker Box, but they've left it alone."
"The academy," Eddie mutters. "Anyone could've seen you there. They'd know better than to go after me and Volt directly. Of course they'd try to hurt you if they couldn't get to us."
"That wouldn't make sense," you counter. "One of them gave me the paint chip with the threat before I even went to the abandoned factory. That was right after I met with Maggie and Penelope for the first time."
"Why would they threaten you and not either of us?" Maggie asks. "Unless you had some way to stop them that no one else did… Do you think there's something about your ability in particular that threatens them?"
You shake your head. "I have no idea. If they're concerned about people with abilities, Volt would definitely be a greater threat and he had been fighting them before I even moved to town. It'd be a lot harder to hurt him—"
"If not impossible," Eddie says under his breath.
"But by the time they burned my house, they probably would've known that the rest of you were working on the investigation as well, right? I could believe that Kopi's shop was collateral damage, as awful as that sounds, to try and stop the investigation, but if their goal was to stop all of us, why haven't they hurt anyone else? I mean, River, Winnifred, Dante, you were all actually trained by S.U.P.E.R. You'd be way more obvious of a target than me, and none of you would be impossible to harm, like Volt."
You say impossible, but you've seen him get taken out by a single knife wound. He isn't invulnerable, as much as you'd like to believe that someone with his level of power would be.
"Maybe it's just that they can't cover their trail entirely from me," you suggest. "Obviously Eddie and Volt were able to uncover the factory, but they didn't know for sure that the Valdivians were there. I was able to use my power to not only track them to the factory, but find them at Walton as well. Maybe they think that if I'm out of the way, the rest of you won't be able to find them until Lord Valdivian's plan is already in motion and can't be stopped. I don't think any of you need to be worried."
"That's not a comforting thought," Dante says. "Even if they are only after you, they're still after you! We gotta get you out of Coolsville. I say you leave tonight and get as far away as possible."
"I'm not going—"
"She's staying here—"
You and Eddie speak at the same time.
"The safest place for her is right here," Eddie says. "I'm not letting her out of my sight. She'll be safe. I promise."
"How are you going to protect her?" Dante asks, his flames increasing in intensity. "Volt could, sure, but he doesn't look ready to protect anyone right now. What are you going to do if a couple dozen Valdivians break down the door while he's still out of it?"
Eddie's glare is icy enough to freeze hell, but Dante refuses to back down.
"It's not a stupid question," Dante says. "I'm not leaving my friend to get killed because you think that you're untouchable."
"Eddie," you say quietly, pleading with him to answer Dante's question. You've already decided that you're staying with him and Volt no matter what, but you don't want the others to worry.
Eddie sighs. "Like she said, if the Valdivians thought that they could get into the Breaker Box, they already would have. They won't risk pissing Volt off. They know what he can do. This is the only place in the city that they're scared to enter. Besides, unless any of you can teleport and have been holding out on us, there's nowhere we could go where they couldn't catch up. She's staying here. End of discussion."
"I'll be fine," you say. "Really."
"If she gets hurt because of you, I will never come to the Breaker Box again," Penelope points a finger at Eddie. "I'll leave you horrible reviews everywhere."
"I'll keep that in mind," Eddie says dryly, but there's a hint of a smile on his face.
The others eventually leave the Breaker Box, albeit reluctantly, and you're left alone with Eddie and Volt, who's still wrapped around you on the couch, most of the way to unconsciousness.
"Will you be safe?" you ask Eddie. "I know you told the others, but… If someone comes after me and Volt's asleep, I don't want you to be hurt because of me."
"Oh, spark," Eddie says, his voice thick with emotion. "Don't worry about me."
"That's Volt's job?" you try to make a joke out of it, but your voice comes out choked.
"At this point I've accepted that I can't stop him," Eddie says. His expression turns serious. "I need to apologize for how I treated you."
"I do—"
"No," he interrupts. "Please. Let me apologize."
You nod, and see some of the tension leave his body before he speaks again.
"You're right," he says. "You're right about everything. Some of what I held back was to protect Volt, but most of it… I didn't want to scare you off. I'm still not entirely sure why you haven't run away screaming yet. I'm— I'm grateful that you haven't."
"I'm not sure either," you admit. "But even when I am scared, I still feel safe with you, somehow."
"I—" Eddie stops himself. His entire face blushes bright red. You wonder what he was going to say.
"I'm sorry too," you say. "For assuming that you and Volt would never be fully honest with me, even though you never said that, and for threatening to expose you. I guess I did, though, when I called you today. I wasn't thinking—I should have been thinking—I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions—"
Eddie cuts you off. "Not that I think you did anything wrong, but you're forgiven completely. By me and Volt. I don't ever want you to feel like you need to apologize to us for standing up for yourself. And today— You did the right thing. I'm glad you called. We both are. Even if everything was fine, we'd still want to be there with you. But especially with this," he pauses to make sure that he has your full attention. "I know who burned your house, and it's not Lord Valdivian."
Notes:
ok so all of this was going to be in the last chapter until I realized that the plot recap was basically a full chapter in itself and then the cliffhanger was once again too good to pass up on! let me know your theories for who set the fire and what's up with Eddie having a secret power :) both of those will be revealed first thing next chapter as well as a bit more backstory/lore dumping before we're back to the action but hopefully talking through some of the mystery to figure out some of the answers is interesting enough in the meantime!
also scandelabra mention :) I love that freak haha he's absolutely not a major character in this but I couldn't help myself adding him in for a small part! spoilers for his full storyline coming up but I'm assuming everyone knows his secrets/realized ending by now so I don't feel too bad about dropping that into the middle of the fic lol
thank you all once again for the support and kind comments! mwah <3
Chapter 10: ch10
Notes:
this fic is now rated e for explicit ;)
also thank you Mary Shelley for the phrase "dark, shapeless substances"
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
"I thought he was dead," Eddie says.
"Who?"
"David Most."
You stare at him. "Who the fuck is David Most?"
"We went to Walton together," Eddie says. He looks at Volt and you can tell that he's considering whether to move him upstairs to the bed, or leave him asleep, curved around your body, on the couch.
He evidently decides on the latter, and continues with his story.
"My parents tried to keep my power hidden when I was young, but I couldn't control it, and so a recruiter from Walton took me away when I was six."
"That young?" you look at him in shock. "Also, when were you going to tell me that you had a power?"
Eddie looks embarrassed. "I was planning on never," he says. "You've changed things."
"What is it?"
You ignore him saying 'never.' He's being open now. You don't want to push him away by getting mad at him for hiding things in the past, not now that you think that you've both finally moved forwards.
"I would've thought that you'd figured it out by now."
You shoot him a look that says, 'um, no, absolutely not, are you out of your mind?'
"Electricity," he says.
You're incredulous. "What? Like Volt? How haven't I seen it?"
"I was never even remotely as powerful as Volt, but I could send small currents out of my hands, enough to electrocute a person."
"Could?" you ask when it seems like Eddie isn't going to continue, lost in his memories.
"I'm sorry," he says. "It's— It's hard to talk about all of this. I haven't shared this part of my life with anyone but Volt."
You hadn't realized just how much you were asking for when you told Eddie that you needed complete honesty.
"In the process of amplifying Volt, I lost my own ability," Eddie continues. "I had to—put part of myself into him, and then…"
He doesn't finish the thought. He doesn't need to.
You look at the sleeping man beside you and wonder how Eddie can still love him when he's the reason why he lost part of himself. You've never felt especially attached to your ability—it's never been a defining part of your identity—but you can't imagine losing it only for someone else to gain that exact power and be infinitely stronger than you had ever been, leaving you weakened. Incomplete.
But then you remember that quote—how does it go exactly?—"he's more myself than I am"—and you think that maybe it would feel exquisite rather than annihilating to share that much of yourself with another.
"They kept David and I separate until we were both fifteen and it was clear that no one else could keep up with us, and then we were pitted against each other until—" Eddie takes a shaky breath. "Until he died, barely a month before we would have graduated. They found his body burnt to a crisp in the bushes outside of my dorm window. The authorities tried to pin his death on me and I probably would have been convicted, if I didn't have a solid alibi from spending the entire night in the lab, with security camera footage of the entire time frame when the murder happened."
"Oh, god," you say. "That's horrible."
"Eh," Eddie shrugs. "He was a piece of shit."
You laugh involuntarily, then cover your mouth when you think about the fact that you're laughing at someone's death, even if he was a horrible person.
"'Lightning never strikes twice' was what he would say to me any time I did better than him at anything," Eddie explains. "I could never prove that he was sabotaging me when he would beat me in every subsequent contest, but I knew that's what he was doing. He hated losing."
"And no one else knew about that?" you ask. "That was definitely his message today?"
"I'd recognize that handwriting anywhere," Eddie says.
"It was the same handwriting as the paint chip."
"What paint chip?"
You must have never told him about the first threat you received.
"When I first agreed to help Maggie, someone handed me a paint chip with that handwriting on it while I was at the home improvement store," you say. "They told me to stop the investigation."
Eddie's expression darkens and you think you see a hint of lightning in his eyes, despite his loss of power.
"He's had his eye on you this whole time?"
You don't respond to the rhetorical question.
Eddie stands up and paces around the bar, his hands buried in his hair.
"I'm going to kill him," he mutters. "Actually kill him this time."
"Why would he care about any of this?" you ask. "If it is him, what's his motive?"
"It is him," Eddie says forcefully. There's no room for questions. "He doesn't need a motive besides hurting me."
"But to threaten me before I met you?"
Eddie sighs. "I don't know."
His anger still rolls off of him like waves of heavy rain in a storm as he moves to stand in front of you and grips your face in his hands. He looks at you like he's committing your features to memory.
"I don't want to scare you, spark." His tone is low. Fraught. Laden with emotions festering under the surface, and none of them positive. "But if David Most is out there and coming for you, there is nothing Volt or I can do to keep you safe."
"But…" you look up into his eyes, your voice suddenly smaller. "Why haven't we run away? If you knew it was him hours ago, we could be hundreds of miles away in any direction. He wouldn't be able to find us, right?"
"Running won't help. He won't stop until either he or I is dead and buried," Eddie says. "He wants me afraid. He'll want to face me. One on one. He wouldn't risk killing you before he gets that satisfaction, or he'll know that I have nothing left to lose. He'll want me desperate, not suicidal."
"What about Volt?" He's still asleep on your shoulder, but even his resting expression seems troubled, or maybe you're just projecting your own fears onto him. "What power does he have that even Volt couldn't defeat?"
Eddie's expression softens as he sees the terror in your eyes, but he doesn't let go of you as he answers your question.
"Something that no one could stand against, especially if he's amplified," he says. "Mind control."
Eddie ushers you and Volt up to bed, both of you holding him up from either side to carry him upstairs and into the bedroom. Once you lay Volt in the bed, you look at Eddie awkwardly.
"Here," he says, rummaging through the dresser to find a t-shirt and sweatpants for you to change into. You almost start crying when he hands them to you, the realization sinking in that you've lost everything except what you had with you—your purse, the dress and mask, Frankenstein.
"Can I check your back?" Eddie asks.
You nod, not trusting your voice, and pull off your shirt and turn around so that your back is facing him.
He unwraps the bandages tenderly, as if he's touching something sacred. As if this is the last chance he'll ever have to touch you.
His fingers dance over your skin and your breathing grows shallow. You feel as though any movement will break this spell. He's seen your body exposed like this before, when he first treated your wounds and then rebandaged them, but you weren't aware of your nakedness then like you are now. You want his hands to move. You want them everywhere. You want— you want— you want—
Eddie steps away from you.
"You, uh, they look good," he says. "Healing well. Probably don't need the bandages anymore."
"Okay," you breathe, your voice shaky, still facing away from him.
"Okay," he repeats. "Um."
You blush bright red and pull his t-shirt over your head quickly. It's long and hangs past your hips. It must be oversized even on him or Volt. You take a steadying breath, then turn towards him.
It comes as a small relief to see that Eddie's flushed as well, his whole face red, the color spreading down his neck, under his collar…
You push the thought away.
"Get some rest," he says, briefly nodding towards the bed with Volt. "I'll keep watch."
It's the wrong thing to say and he knows it.
"I won't be able to get any sleep tonight. Please just—" his expression contorts and you want to reach out to comfort him. "My mind will rest easier if I know where you are and I have an eye on the entrances."
You nod and his shoulders slump in relief.
"Eddie—" you start, not sure where you're going with this, only knowing that you don't want him to leave.
You take a step closer to him, and he takes a step back.
"Good night," he says, and then the bedroom door is closed and he's gone.
The second time that you wake up at the Breaker Box is nothing like the first.
You had fallen asleep curled up around Volt, his arms subconsciously wrapping around you even as he slept. You thought that you wouldn't have gotten any rest after the threat of Eddie's revelation, but as you laid your head on Volt's chest, the constancy of his heartbeat had lulled you under.
Until now, when you woke to a cold, empty bed, and the sound of Volt and Eddie arguing in the kitchen.
You pull yourself out of bed, still wearing only the t-shirt Eddie gave you, the sweatpants too much for the summer heat, and cautiously open the bedroom door.
"You never knew him," Eddie's saying. "You didn't— You didn't know me."
"Yes, I do," Volt says.
"Not as I was then. Volt, I was a monster."
"I can't believe that."
"You don't have to."
A floorboard creaks under your feet as you step into the hallway and both men turn to look at you. Eddie's still in the same clothes he was wearing yesterday, the bags under his eyes deeper than ever, but Volt has changed into a new royal blue shirt and black pants.
"Live wire," he says, but his smile doesn't reach his eyes.
"Volt," you greet him, ignoring his outstretched hand as you enter the kitchen. "What happened to you yesterday?"
"I got a little carried away."
"That's what you said when your eyes flashed with light right after we met properly. Yesterday was not 'a little carried away.' What. Happened."
You stare him down.
"I lost control," he says. "It hasn't happened since—"
He looks at Eddie.
"Since Lord Valdivian found the secret to manipulating the xenobiolectic impulses by capturing Volt and torturing the story of his creation out of him," Eddie says.
Your eyes dart between the two of them.
"You didn't tell her that," Volt says, his words heavy with unspoken meaning. You feel like he's referring to more than what Eddie's just revealed.
"You said you'd be honest," you say quietly. "You promised."
Eddie takes a step towards you, then turns around to face the other way.
"It's too early for this," he says.
"No!" you say, willing him to look you in the eyes as he goes back on his word. "If anything, it's too late. What's really going on?"
"The way you look at me," Eddie says. "I don't deserve for you to look at me like that. Either of you. Spark, you'll hate me."
"I'll hate you more if you keep this from me, too."
Your words are designed to sting and they work perfectly.
"Volt is…" Eddie starts. His body shakes with a repressed sob, but neither you nor Volt moves towards him. "I created Volt. I didn't just amplify his power, or transfer my power to him. I created him out of nothing."
Your eyes flash to Volt. He stands still as a statue, eyes white as marble, electricity cutting jagged paths over his body like thorns, the air held breathless in place around him.
"I thought I could take my ability away entirely. Tear out the xenobiolectic impulses at the root and throw them back into the universe. I didn't want it. I didn't want—" his voice wobbles, but he doesn't stop. "And when I had built all the machines, hooked up all the wires, gotten it all just right, I started the reaction and… there he was. I thought I had finally found a current strong enough to electrocute myself and an angel had come down from heaven to collect me.
"I remember standing there, in the worst pain I had ever experienced, my body on fire and the most beautiful man I had ever seen waiting with his hand outstretched, and I thought it must be a trick, that hell was crueler than I could ever imagine and I would take all the pits of fire and fields of ice over this torture of seeing him and being unable to take his hand. I thought there was no way that he was real. I thought there was no way that he could love me.
"I've done horrible things. Even when I pretended otherwise, when I argued that my hands were tied or that what people did with my research wasn't my fault, I always knew that the ability to manipulate the xenobiolectric impulses could give the most reprehensible people nearly unlimited power, but I didn't care. To create life—to tear out the heavens and turn dark, shapeless substances to the form of man—
"I had unleashed great evil upon the world. Knowledge that should have never come to light. So I destroyed the machines. I burned the whole lab down. But I could not bring myself to harm Volt. I felt he was the universe's way of balancing out all of the evil I had wrought. Someone who could undo all the harm I caused"
Volt speaks and it sounds as if his voice echoes through mountains. "I wouldn't leave you. How could I care about anything but you?"
"I wanted him to burn it all."
"I would have. For you, I would have done anything. But I could not burn the world without hurting you."
"And so I left him. I thought that would let him lose his inhibitions. I thought leaving him was the only way for me to atone. But—I could feel it in the air when he was gone. No matter how far I went, I felt his pull. Until the feeling disappeared and it was as if all the oxygen had been sucked from the air. Even apart, there was a comfort to knowing that he was alive, somewhere, but now all sense of him was gone and I could not rest until I found him. Lord Valdivian had captured him and was holding him in a cell deep underground, unconscious, wan, the life drained out of him. I removed his restraints, held his body in my arms—"
"All I remember was loneliness, and then… you."
"He lit up. Bright, bright blue. Like a whole new color had been invented. He… It was the most intense loss of control that I had ever seen from him. Arcs of blue lightning like a supernova all around us. I thought he'd explode."
"I didn't. We didn't."
"And as I watched over him afterwards, as I held his sleeping body against mine, I felt—content. For once in my life, I felt perfect calmness. I didn't— I didn't know I was even capable of love until Volt. Even then, I feared that it was only some narcissistic streak that drew me to him, no matter how much he reassured me that he was his own person and how much I knew that my fears were not the truth, until…"
He turns around. Finally, finally, he turns around, tears in his eyes and a tremor in his voice, but he turns around.
"Until I met you."
Your heart stops and your mind goes blank and all you can say is, "Eddie—"
And then he kisses you.
You fall into his lips, your hands fitting around his waist like they were meant to be there, your lips parting as you kiss him back.
He puts his hands on your shoulders and pushes himself back, just a bit.
"Are you sure you want this?" he asks. "Are you sure you want us?"
"How many ways do I have to tell you, Eddie? I want you," you say, then turn your head to look at Volt. "I want both of you. In any way. In every way. However you'll have me."
Volt finally moves. He's on you in an instant, his hands cradling your face. He pauses for only a second, and then he's kissing you where Eddie's lips just were. Eddie moves down your neck, pressing soft kisses and needy bites into your throat, and you feel like you'll come completely undone.
Eddie's hands slip under your shirt, stroking over your thighs and hips to tease at your panties.
"Please," you moan into Volt's mouth.
"What are you begging me for, live wire?" Volt's hands slide down from your face to cup your breasts, his fingers rubbing at your nipples through the shirt.
Eddie bites at your shoulder and you gasp. It'll leave a mark.
You wish he would leave more.
"Are you going to answer his question, spark?"
He presses up against your back and you can feel how hard he is.
"Touch me," you say, and Eddie smiles against your skin.
"Thought you'd never ask," he says, and then your shirt is pulled over your head, and Volt and Eddie's hands are on you once again.
Volt lowers his mouth to your breast. His tongue rolls over the nipple and his fingers pinch and tease the other. Eddie takes your chin in his hand and tilts your head back to kiss you.
"You," you breathe out in between kisses, "are both wearing far too much."
Eddie laughs against your mouth. "I can fix that."
Your fingers fumble for the buttons of his shirt and between the three of you, you somehow get them both out of their clothes as you stumble into the bedroom.
"Let us know if it gets to be too much," Volt murmurs into your neck, adding his own marks on top of Eddie's. He pulls your back flush against his chest as Eddie sinks to his knees before you.
He kisses one thigh, then the other, as Volt gently spreads your legs from him. You arch your back against Volt's chest as Eddie's mouth is everywhere but where you need him.
"Please," you beg. "Eddie!"
Volt's hands run over your stomach and you imagine you can feel his handprints burn into your flesh as Eddie finally takes mercy on you and licks his tongue over your folds. He swirls his tongue over your clit and you reach out to grab his hair, pulling him close into you. His teeth graze you and you moan at the sensation. Volt holds you fast, one hand splayed across your stomach and the other traveling downwards to tease at your clit as Eddie presses his tongue inside you.
Your legs shake, overwhelmed by the two of them working in tandem, and then Eddie looks up and makes eye contact with you as he sucks at your clit, and you fall apart completely.
Eddie works you gently through the aftershocks and you loosen your grip on his hair.
"You're so gorgeous," Volt says. "Looked so pretty for us. Don't you agree, Eds?"
His cock is hard against your ass and your pulse quickens despite still feeling like your legs could collapse under you at any moment.
"Yeah," Eddie agrees, looking wrecked, lips puffed and eyes wide. "She looked so damn pretty as she came for us."
"What do you think, live wire? Can you take another round?"
You nod, breathless.
"I'm not letting go of you now," Eddie says. He stands and kisses you deeply, like he's claiming you. You can taste yourself on his tongue.
"Good," you say. "I'm yours."
You kiss him again and push him back onto the bed, straddling your hips over him. He moans into your mouth as you stroke his half-hard cock fully erect. You feel Volt settle onto the bed behind you. You lean back to kiss him, and he holds on to your hips, guiding you down onto Eddie, holding you halfway as you adjust to the feeling of him inside you.
"Fuck," Eddie grunts as you slowly take all of him inside you. You moan as you bottom out, staying still only as long as you can take it, before you lift yourself back up and begin riding him in earnest. His hips snap up underneath you and between his thrusts and Volt's manhandling, you're no longer in control of any part of this situation, if you ever were.
You lean forwards, or Eddie's hands on your back pull you, or Volt's hands on your hips push you, and you kiss Eddie open-mouthed, your mouths bumping into each other more so than actually kissing. This position presses his cock against your walls at a new angle and you feel yourself tighten around him.
Volt's hands disappear for a moment, but you can't focus on anything but the feel of Eddie inside you, the sound of his gasps as you roll your hips into his thrusts.
"Can you take both of us?" Volt asks. His voice pulls you out of your haze, slightly, and you nod, your gaze blurry.
"Good," Volt murmurs. The bed shifts as he positions himself behind you, and you gasp as a finger circles your rim. Eddie holds you still as Volt opens you up, slowly pressing his finger into you.
"Relax, love, that's it," he kisses your shoulder as he curls his finger, sending a shock through you. You can't tell whether it's electricity or just the feeling of being so full. Your whole body shakes as he adds another finger. You let your head fall down to rest your forehead on Eddie's chest and he runs a hand through your hair.
Heat races through your body and your hips buck involuntarily as Volt thrusts his fingers into you, adding a third.
"Fuck, Volt," Eddie's voice is strained. "I'm not gonna last much longer if you keep making her move like that."
"My apologies, love—"
"Volt," you beg, cutting him off, breathy and desperate. "I need you. To fuck me."
"How could I not, when you asked so nicely?"
In the back of your mind, you want nothing more than to take him apart and leave him incoherent under you, but then his cock pushes past your rim and enters you, and you can think of nothing but the feeling of Volt and Eddie inside you, their hands everywhere over you. Volt sets a brutal pace, thrusting into you and pushing you deeper onto Eddie's cock as he pulls out, their bodies moving in sync stealing the breath from your lungs and sending your heart into overdrive.
You can't speak, can't even moan their names as Eddie's rhythm falters and he finishes with a cry, Volt reaching a hand down to rub your overstimulated clit to send you over the edge, spasming around Eddie as Volt slams his hips into you once, twice, then spills over into you, all of you trembling.
You'll have to get out of bed eventually and face the world. Face Lord Valdivian, face S.U.P.E.R., face David Most.
But now, with Volt gently cleaning you off with a washcloth, and Eddie stroking your hair and telling you how perfect you are, and both of them holding you close, warm skin and steady heartbeats against yours, you can't feel anything but peace.
Notes:
eeeeeeee plot twists and smut!! what an exciting chapter!! this was so fucking hard to write bc I am Not a Smut Writer let alone a Threesome Smut Writer - I tried my best but this was wayyyyy outside of my comfort zone as a writer and I would like to eventually feel confident writing smut so any constructive feedback would be appreciated :)
(also I am fully aware that Eddie would not monologue like this but a) he's so mad scientist coded and I think all mad scientists deserve a little dramatic monologue as a treat and b) it's my fic and I deserve a little dramatic monologue as a treat!!!!! I had to choreograph a threesome let me have some melodramatic purple prose)
(also also I need you all to know that I cackled for ages at the "Bright, bright blue. Like a whole new color had been invented" line bc in my head it went a little something like "Eddie thought that Volt was very scary and also very hot, much like Yves Klein's Blue Monochrome, the definitive scariest/hottest piece of artwork ever put to canvas" and if I thought I could get away with making him both a mad scientist and an art nerd he definitely would've said that line instead lolol)
Chapter 11: ch11
Notes:
for reference once we get to the ball I imagine Eddie wearing something similar to this (https://wwd.com/fashion-news/shows-reviews/gallery/dior-homme-mens-fall-1202973763/dior-homme-mens-fall-2019-43/) but without the pin and with the sash closer to the shade of blue he wears in game, but like go wild with your imagination - the reader's outfit is only described a bit as well if you want to imagine your own thing there :)
this is my favorite chapter that I've written so far (idk what that says about me haha) so I hope you all enjoy as well <3
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The third time that you wake up at the Breaker Box may be the best yet. Your head pillowed on Volt's bare chest, Eddie spooning you from behind, an arm draped over your torso to hold onto Volt, his legs tangled with yours. You cannot imagine a moment more perfect.
It's still only midday, the sun shining through the open window to cast Volt in a softer glow. You can believe his hair invisible from narrow strands woven into wide light, sturdy beams like a girder, chiaroscuro. Intangible.
He catches you staring at him. You expect him to smile—when did you start expecting his smile?—but he remains still, a painting grown outward to stone, the warmth of his form the warmth of David sun-heated as he was in the palazzo, gaze immutable. You raise your hand to his face but stop a hair's breadth from his skin. He doesn't lean into your touch, doesn't turn to kiss your palm.
"Volt?" you ask quietly. Had you messed this up? Did you push for too much, too fast?
He closes his eyes and the glow shines out of his eyelids like a paper lantern and you—you've always thought him beautiful, but you've never thought him art, never thought him crafted, never thought him made.
"Just promise me," Volt says, his eyes still closed, his body still unmoving. "Promise me you'll take care of him when I can't."
"What do you mean?" you ask, suddenly unnerved. "What do you mean when you can't?"
"Promise," he says, a plea and a command.
What can you say?
"I promise," you whisper.
Eddie shifts behind you, waking up after your nap, and it's only his movement that makes Volt open his eyes and pin you down with his gaze. You don't look away now, but give him a small nod.
"Thank you," Volt says.
His words are resolute, his sentence finite, but for some reason you find yourself waiting for more, until you realize that this is the longest he's gone without calling you "darling" or "live wire" or "love."
Is something wrong? Or has he merely dropped a mask you didn't know he wore?
"What're you two talking about?" Eddie mumbles.
"Nothing, love," Volt says, his tone and face soft. You can't help but see this as Eddie bringing him to life and your heart sinks in your chest. Will you ever be able to think of him the same way again?
Maybe he's right to stop flirting with you or leading you on with… whatever this thing is between the three of you.
Between the two of them. And you.
"Good," Eddie kisses your neck where a bruise has already purpled from him and Volt. "I liked when we weren't talking."
He continues pressing kisses to your neck, but you're frozen.
"What is it?" he asks you, noticing your lack of reaction.
"Just stressed," you say. "About—everything."
Eddie pushes himself up to look directly at you.
"What will help? Making a plan, or," he leans down to kiss you, "distracting you?"
You kiss him back, smiling into his mouth. Eddie, at least, is more affectionate than ever, as if all of Volt's effortless charm has been transferred to him.
"No," you pull back. "I know you said we couldn't fight David Most, but I can't just give up."
"Thought you'd say that," Eddie mutters.
He stands up and stretches, and you take full advantage of your position to enjoy the view.
"Quit staring, spark."
You roll your eyes and get out of bed to join him. Once you're close enough, his hands find your waist instinctively.
"Hey," he says softly.
"Hey yourself," you say.
"I, um," he blushes and looks away for a moment before holding your gaze again. "You're sure you don't hate me?"
You laugh then kiss the worried expression off his face, giddy that you get to have him like this.
"Pretty. Damn. Sure," you say, punctuating each word with a kiss.
"You are going to end up right back in that bed if you keep teasing me like this," Eddie says.
You pull yourself away from him reluctantly, as tempting as it is to let yourself be dragged back into the middle of the two of them, and hold a hand out to Volt. You hold your breath, waiting to see if he'll take it, and then his fingers close around yours and he stands, tall and sturdy like a mountain, and you can't imagine his "when I can't" ever coming to pass.
"Live wire," he says, voice deep and guttural.
"Volt," you breathe, and when he runs his thumb over your knuckles, so much of Eddie in the motion, but so much of him in the way he lifts your hand to kiss it, you think that maybe, if you all survive this, everything will be all right in the end.
You sit on the couch in the apartment's living room, wearing one of Volt's button up shirts and nothing else—the way Eddie's eyes linger on your bare legs almost makes you regret texting Kopi and asking her if she wouldn't mind picking up some essentials to bring with her tomorrow.
Almost.
"What do you think David wants?" you ask. "Besides pissing you off, or whatever."
Eddie groans. He's been pacing around the room, but stops in front of you to look you in the eyes. "That's enough of a reason," he says. "I know you never knew him, but when I tell you that all he wants is to make me suffer, I mean it."
"No, I think our live wire has a point," Volt says, sitting at the other end of the couch. Your stomach flutters at the use of the nickname—and the word "our"—but you still can't tell if he means it or if he just wants to hide your earlier conversation from Eddie. "Neither of us ever met him. I'm not saying it's impossible, love, but it does seem…unlikely that he'd have been in hiding for so many years and only come out to tell her to stop investigating Lord Valdivian. That couldn't have been motivated by your rivalry, when there was no connection between you and her at the time."
"You said it's his handwriting, and the wording was his too, but is there any chance that someone working for Lord Valdivian would have been able to find that out and replicate it?" you ask. "If I were him and I knew that you were getting close to stopping him, and I had this information about David Most, I'd probably pretend to be him to threaten you away. Eddie, you're the only one who understands the xenobiolectric impulses enough to really be able to stop him from using them. He'd never be able to get past Volt to hurt you physically, so it makes sense that he'd try to psych you out. It still doesn't explain why the paint chip would have his handwriting too, but maybe all of the Valdivian operatives were trained to replicate his script in case any of it got to you," you shrug. "It's not that hard to forge handwriting. Give me a sample and a couple days practice, I could even do it."
Eddie looks like he's going to argue, but Volt speaks up. "Darling, you said that even when you were growing up, his mind control was strong enough that none of us could fight him. Either you're right and he is alive, in which case we're all fucked and there's nothing we can do about it, or Lord Valdivian is planting these clues to distract you from acting against his real plan. I, personally, would rather spend our time acting against the devil we know."
"So, what now?" he huffs, realizing that the two of you aren't going to give into hopelessness, or whatever his plan is. "We continue to go along with this masquerade ball plan?"
"Yes," Volt says. "Maggie, Penelope, Dante, and I will sneak into the offices while the rest of you monitor the party."
"You're not separating us," Eddie says.
Volt looks at you, reminding you of your promise to him this morning. Does he think that something will go wrong at the party?
"It's a good idea," you agree with Volt. "He's too obvious with his hair to be seen at the party, and it makes sense for us to split up to cover both parts of this plan."
"I thought you trusted these people," Eddie says.
"I do." You reach out and grab his hand, forcing him to stop his pacing and look at you. "But they're missing critical information and I don't want this to go wrong because someone else didn't realize that something was important. This way, we can monitor everything without needing you to share all your secrets with everyone."
"I don't like it," he says.
"But…?" Volt prompts.
"Fine," he sighs. "Just don't expect me to dance."
Volt mocks outrage. "What? And leave our live wire alone? You'd rather sit back and watch the most beautiful woman in the room dance with someone else?"
You blush, even if you can't tell whether he means it.
"Wouldn't mind if she was dancing with you," Eddie mutters.
"Now, now," Volt tsks. "Offer the lady your hand."
"What?"
"I'm teaching you to dance," Volt pronounces, his mouth twisting up into a smile.
"Come on," you say, looking up at Eddie and extending your hand. "Dance with me."
He raises an eyebrow, but takes your hand and pulls you to your feet. Volt stands up from the couch and walks over to the record player, flipping through the collection of records until he finds the one he's been looking for, and a string quartet launches into a waltz.
"Eddie, hold her waist. Now, place your hand on his shoulder," Volt instructs.
You move into the position he indicates, expecting to feel ready to be swept off of your feet, but it mainly just feels unnatural, especially as he gestures toward you to lift your linked hands higher, above your elbow.
"Good!" Volt says. You and Eddie look at each other, and then at him incredulously.
"Now," he says. "The footwork. Eddie, I'll show you how to lead. Darling, just follow him in reverse."
He shows you the steps, which are less complicated than you would've expected, but you still find yourself moving the wrong foot, crossing your legs, and needing Eddie to catch you when you stumble. Which isn't so bad. Eddie's hardly naturally graceful at this either, his movements jerky as he concentrates on where his feet are moving.
"I don't think this is working, Volt," you say as the track on the record ends and you and Eddie are still falling over each other.
"Nonsense! May I?"
You step back and let Volt take your place with Eddie. The next track starts up and—
So that's why people dance.
They move as if they're one unit, a four legged beast with two heads, familiar in its territory, confident in its footing on the ground. Eddie leads, but you know it's Volt guiding his every move.
The music picks up and they glide around the room, long strides that move from one into the next with no hesitation, as if this is how they were meant to move and walking merely a crude imitation. You watch them in awe.
And then they're back around the room near you, and Volt spins away from Eddie and takes you in his arms and you were wrong, this isn't a beast on the ground, this is a bird in the sky, Volt's arms like air currents holding you aloft. You're no longer thinking about where you're moving, only where Volt is moving you. He touches your hand, your waist, your arms where they brush against each other like the tides upon the shore. You feel him against your neck, your chest, your hips, your legs intertwined with the air between you a third partner, the breath from out your lungs still yours as it touches him.
He lifts his arm and you twirl away from him, your hands parting for barely a moment, but when they touch again, it's Eddie's hand reaching for yours, his holding the small of your back. You don't fly as you had with Volt, but there's something to be said about a heart that doesn't race. You feel—grounded. Safe. His eyes like river pebbles, submerged.
Volt shows you where all of the utensils are kept in the kitchen as you help him chop vegetables to make dinner. He points out the spices arranged by flavor profile; the drawer with the pots and the drawer with the pans. Dish soap refills under the sink.
He touches you infrequently. He touches you like unset mortar.
You sleep in between them tonight. Eddie is the first asleep. You do not think he realizes that his arms only wrap around you, inches away from Volt, their fingers reaching for another across your stomach.
Kopi arrives early with the clothes that she promised to bring and you take them upstairs to the apartment so you can change in privacy. You'd have made Eddie and Volt take you shopping, but the Breaker Box van is still out of commission from your heist at the academy, and neither will run the risk of you being attacked if you leave the bar, as if Lord Valdivian is hiding in the changing room waiting to jump you or something equally ridiculous.
You put on jeans and a tank top and then, because you can't help yourself, Volt's royal blue button up left open over the ensemble.
"Volt," Eddie says when he sees you, "can you let everyone in downstairs?"
"Of course," Volt murmurs and leaves, and then Eddie's on you, his lips crashing against yours and his hands everywhere, in your hair, on your body, until he lets go of you and steps back.
"Sorry," he says sheepishly. "Wanted to do that while we were alone."
"You're not too big on PDA, are you?"
"Nah, that's more Volt's speed," he says.
And now would be a great time to tell him about Volt's ominous "when I'm gone" conversation, wouldn't it? You had just convinced Eddie to be fully honest with you, and now you're keeping secrets from him?
"As long as I get you like this in private, I'm the happiest woman in the world," you say instead, and kiss him one last time before heading down to the Breaker Box.
Everyone's gathered and ready to go, Penelope with her notebook and multicolored pens and Maggie with a file folder already spread open across one of the tables.
"Nice of you to join us," Winnifred says, looking between you and Eddie.
"Yup!" you say brightly, ignoring any and all of her (correct) implications. "Maggie, is that background on Lord Valdivian?"
"Sure is!" she says. "Here's everything I found. His full name is Franklin Lieste Valdivian. He's twenty-eight years old and became the head of the Valdivian family three and a half years ago, approximately, after his uncle died of a heart attack with no children of his own, and his father refused the title, passing it to Franklin. Like I said earlier, he has the ability to tell when people are tired, and it seems to have manifested around when he was sixteen or seventeen, but that's not super clear in the records. He was apparently very sick as a child so he only made a few appearances at family gatherings. I couldn't find any evidence to suggest that he still has that mystery illness, but that could be why he still doesn't show his face. I could only find this one photo of him, from a gala the family held for his uncle's 50th birthday that somehow made the newspaper."
She points to a blurry child at the edge of the gathering, half hidden behind a woman who you assume is his mother.
"Okay," you say, when it becomes clear that this is all that Maggie has. Not to put her down—this is a ton of information for her to dig up that you would've expected to be impossible to find. "How does this help us?"
"I have no idea!" she says.
"Well, it's a start," Dante says encouragingly.
"It is," Volt says, and you watch everyone in the room turn towards him. With the exception of Penelope, you realize that their only experiences with Volt have been him losing control when your house was burned, and falling asleep on your shoulder the last time you all gathered at the Breaker Box. This is their first introduction, their first real introduction, and you're honestly a little nervous for their reactions.
You shouldn't be. This is Volt, after all, who could charm the sun into shining brighter on a cloudy day.
"Dante, Maggie, Penelope, and I will investigate the offices," Volt says. "I've looked at the city hall blueprints and we'll be able to access the fire escape from the garage, so the four of us will act as drivers, drop all of you off out front, then park and head up to the upper levels of the building rather than entering the ballroom."
"Why that group?" Abel asks. "I know I'm not good for much when it comes to all this detective work, but surely it's a lot less suspicious if I get caught. It'd be real easy to believe that I got turned around and ended up there."
"True," Volt says. "However, Maggie and Penelope have the most experience with this case and Dante's worked for S.U.P.E.R., so between all of us we'll be able to identify anything relevant. I'd ask Winnifred and River, but they stand the highest chance of being able to keep Celia preoccupied with conversation at the ball."
Abel nods, accepting Volt's explanation.
Volt smiles dazzlingly. "Wonderful! Shall we discuss logistics?"
A storm breaks the next evening as you get ready for the ball, battering the Breaker Box like a ship at sea.
You had almost forgotten the sound of rain and thunder.
"Volt?" you poke your head out of the bedroom door, keeping your dress hidden from Eddie standing in the living room. "Will you help with the corset?"
"Of course, love," he says.
You hear his breath catch once he enters the room and sees you.
"You look beautiful," he says, and his voice is so soft and earnest that despite his strangeness the past few days, you want nothing more than to fall into him.
"Thank you," you say quietly, turning around so that he has access to the lacing at the back of your dress.
Volt's fingers are deft as they smooth out the ribbons and pull them taut. He moves gently and deliberately, and when he's done, you ask the question that's been gnawing at your mind.
"What do you think is going to happen to you, Volt?" you ask. "What are you so scared of?"
His fingers linger close to you. You want him to just reach out and touch you, to hold you close and tell you that everything will work out alright in the end, but you want the truth more.
"There is a chance," he finally says, "however small, that you and Eddie will survive a confrontation with Lord Valdivian and I will not. If that happens, Eddie won't take care of himself. He'll need you. He was a wreck, not sleeping, not eating, barely keeping himself alive when we were separated for the first time, but he cannot march into the halls of the dead and lead me out as he did from the Valdivian cells. You must hold him here. You must be everything I was for him and more."
Volt's presence looms behind you. He casts a dark shadow over your entire future, and you think that he would still burn you on a pyre, tie rocks to your feet and toss you to the sea, plunge a knife into your chest on an altar, were it not that your life serves Eddie far better than your death.
"You would trade my life for his, wouldn't you?"
You need him to admit it. You need to know.
"Yes," he says simply. "And I would trade anyone but him for you."
Eddie holds his jacket over your head as you run up the steps of the city hall, lifting your skirts in both hands and ducking your head to see the rain strike and puddle and drain from the darkened, drenched steps.
After the all-encompassing pouring of the rain, the echoing foyer sounds like a kaleidoscope. Shoes on the marble floor; clothes brushing, thick wool and tweed and slippery silk and taffeta catching like spiderwebs; voices floating to the high ceiling and whistling back, refracted by the crystals of the chandelier. The wind outside, the rain, the thunder; the walls absorbing their howling and holding it muffled for perpetuity.
Your breath, gasping, as your chest rises and falls above your corset.
"It's magnificent," you say, looking around the hall. The high ceilings held aloft by Gothic arches, painted with mythopoetic figures draped in pink and blue hidden among white clouds, gilding and ornamentation and every inch a work of art.
And then your gaze lands on Eddie. You'd seen him in bits and pieces, shattered reflections as you rushed from the Breaker Box to the car to the city hall, but here, in this space, surrounded by blooms of red and violet and gold billowing cloth, he is the most magnificent sight of all.
His suit is tailored to perfection, a deep gray that complements you beautifully, and a dusty blue sash drapes from his shoulder around his chest, catching the light, pearlescent. You can't look away.
The rise of his brow, the fall of his hair. The cut of his shoulders, the angle of his elbow lifting his hand to offer to you. The color of his eyes: gray as dusk, as morning fog, as the start of sunrise and the end of sunset, the movement of time eternal. And oh, how those eyes look at you—
You are Titania, you are Helen, you are Lúthien dancing through the forest—Eddie looks at you like a man lost at sea spotting land for the first time in years.
"Dance with me," he says, his voice low and heady.
You place your hand in his and follow him through the foyer into the ballroom. It's somehow even larger and more opulent than the entrance, with multiple dangling chandeliers and an orchestra playing at the far end of the room.
Eddie wraps his arm around your waist, pulling you close, and you fall into the steps that Volt taught you. It feels so natural to dance with him like this, to be so close and so in unison, responding to his slightest touch almost before the thought even crosses his mind.
The music picks up and the other dancers form up in a line, separating from each other to pick up the dance with a new partner.
You land in the arms of a man wearing an elaborate, aristocratic silver outfit with a towering blond wig and mask carved of wire like wax dripping down his face.
"Mademoiselle!" he exclaims. Though he speaks French, you cannot place his accent. "Monsieur Argente, at your service."
"Enchantée," you say, arranging your arms around him as the dance continues, faster, more frenetic.
Argente leads you through the steps and your feet struggle to keep up. It's all you can do to stay with the beat, your smile falsely plastered on. As you spin past the orchestra, you see the hairs spiraling from the violinists' bows where they've broken. The musicians don't seem to notice as they play on, sweat pouring from their faces.
You follow the pair in front of you down the center of the ballroom, where Argente twirls you once, twice, three times, then leaves you spinning in place, the lights and colors blurring together until a pair of strong hands find your waist and shift your momentum into a gentler arc.
"Eddie!"
"Volt hardly prepared us for this," he says, but you somehow both manage, as if your feet have been bewitched and are moving you of their own accord.
The music swells, and all too soon you're parted from Eddie and passed to a new partner. The man's expression is blank and though you can't place him, you could've sworn that you've seen him somewhere before.
As you take his hand for the dance, feeling his clammy skin against your palm, your power surges. You're caught off guard—you can't keep it out—you let it in—
A profound sense of emptiness tears through you, and above all else, a foreign will pulsing through the veins of the man holding your hand.
How…?
You know that your ability only works on objects. You tested it on your friends plenty, plants and pets, and the only things that can communicate with you like this are, well, things.
His eyes look into you blankly as the timpani builds and your muscles automatically propel you through the dance, moving from him to the next partner.
The sensation fades, but you can't tear your gaze away from him. It wasn't his clothes, or any jewelry on his wrists. You would stake your life that your power considered the man himself—an object?
You barely notice the sickly sweet scent as it fills the air, or the pale purple vapor swirling on currents unseen, until you begin to feel faint. Your head is spinning. You can't focus on anything around you.
Something hard hits your knees, and you realize it's the floor.
All around you, people are crashing down, their eyes rolling back in their heads and their tongues lolling out of their mouths.
"Not my cleanest work, but it'll do."
You look up to see Argente standing above you, a handkerchief pressed to his face, but his voice no longer carries the same placeless accent. You blink, and all of a sudden it's a different man, wearing the same clothes, but his face now emotionless and calculating, eyes like black holes.
He narrows his brows when he sees you still awake. Something fills your vision, you hear a hollow thud, and then—
Everything goes dark.
Notes:
I had to put the Tolkien reference in there with Luthien - my first and favorite fandom <3 also apologies if there are any inaccuracies with the dancing, I had a roommate several years ago who was big into partner dancing so this is based off my experiences dancing with him which was mostly just spinning around the kitchen and him dipping me with no warning so I'd freak out no matter how much he told me he wouldn't drop me (he never did for the record)
lots of angst and melodramatic language this chapter!!! hope you all don't mind too much haha :) as always thank you for the support and comments, I love hearing your theories - there's a lot to unpack in this one!!
Chapter 12: ch12
Notes:
hi all just a heads up that part of this chapter describes food being withheld from the reader insert and the feeling of not eating for days on end - this isn't in the context of an eating disorder or body image issues, but I know this can still be triggering so if you'd like to skip that section (you won't be missing any plot points), it goes from "Several hours later, you still don't know what to do" to "You sleep like you're in purgatory, dull and restless in the fields of Asphodel" (the fourth section as separated by the line breaks)
if there's any other subject matter in any of the chapters that isn't covered in the fic tags that you think could use a content note at the beginning of the chapter like this, lmk and I will add it :) take care of yourselves <3
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
It's quiet when you wake up. As if you've lost the whole sense. You raise your hand in front of your face, your eyes refusing to focus on anything else, the background blurred. You snap your fingers, expecting to only see your hand move like you're in a silent movie, but you hear the sound clearly.
What is going on?
The last thing you remember is dancing at the ball, passing from partner to partner, and—Monsieur Argente, only it wasn't him, it was someone else wearing his clothes who stood over you and hit you on the head and knocked you out, and… brought you here. Wherever here is.
You're laying flat on your back, still in your ballgown, a slightly scratchy cotton sheet underneath you. You shift your weight and it moves under you, but not much. The mattress sits on a metal bedframe, no headboard, high off the ground. One pillow, covered in the same material as the fitted sheet, the flat sheet. The sheets are white. The walls, ceiling, and floor are white. Well-maintained. Smooth laminate, no grime in the grout. No dust or dirt. A metal table, two metal chairs, pushed up against the opposite wall, though there'd be room to pull them out. There aren't any windows, though there are two doors, one along the wall with the table, and the other along the wall between the table and the bed. You try one, which opens into a utilitarian bathroom with a toilet, sink, and shower, but no mirrors.
The other is locked. You reach out with your power to see if it can tell you anything and—nothing. You can't feel a thing. Your power just…doesn't work.
Shit.
You take a deep breath. Okay. You can think your way out of this.
But before you can do anything, the locked door swings open and the man from the ball enters. He's changed out of the silver outfit and instead wears an all black suit and jacket, his long blond hair falling past his shoulders.
"Who are you?" you ask. You stand tall and try to keep the tremor out of your voice.
The man smiles, lips that just keep curving upwards and upwards.
"My name is Jon Wick," he says. "Mind if I have a seat?"
You back up, letting him further into the room, and you sit down at the table facing each other.
"I'm sorry for the…unorthodox way we brought you here. You understand, of course, that we could not risk the chance of…losing certain individuals."
"Who's 'we?'" you ask. There's a whole lot more that you're curious about—who does he mean by 'certain individuals?'—but this seems a safe place to start.
"S.U.P.E.R., of course," he smiles, that same unnerving smile. "We have reason to suspect that Lord Valdivian had agents within the crowd at the ball, and worked with the mayor to ensure that…all suspects would be apprehended."
"And civilians." Kopi. Abel. Are they okay? You don't want anyone to be hurt, but they more so than any of the others have been caught up in this with no way to protect themselves.
"You aren't a civilian," he leans forward across the table. "You're powerful. And you've been investigating Lord Valdivian. I want to work with you. I want to know everything you've found."
It makes sense. On the surface, it makes sense for S.U.P.E.R. to be working to stop Lord Valdivian, but…
"Why doesn't my power work in here?"
"I'm afraid we don't have many holding…areas that aren't protected against the use of abilities. This is only temporary. You'll be moved somewhere far more…comfortable once you help us."
He looks at you expectantly.
"Did you get them?" you ask. You don't really want to give anything away before getting answers of your own. If it means playing along in order to figure out where your friends are, and whether Volt and the others were found, you're fine waiting and asking the questions that someone who's planning on cooperating would ask.
"Who?"
"The Valdivian operatives."
"Yes." He's not very forthcoming with his answers.
"And everyone else? I saw at least a few other people with abilities there."
"We've brought in several other superheroes to aid in the investigation."
What you really want to know is where Eddie is, but Jon seems determined to make you name him before offering anything.
"So everyone without an ability was…what? Knocked out while you took the people you needed, then woke up on the floor of the city hall?"
"Something like that. Why, was there someone in particular you were wondering about?"
Fine. If he wants to play it this way.
"The man I was dancing with before you. What about him?"
"I don't recall. The masks did make it rather difficult to catch anyone's face. If you had his name, I could look him up in our records to see if we had him…in custody. Does he have a power?"
If you tell him Eddie's full name and he somehow escaped S.U.P.E.R.'s grasp, would this give him away? But if he escaped the party, he'd surely be able to escape them again.
You take a deep breath and stare Jon Wick down.
"Eddison Watts," you say. "Where is he?"
Jon Wick laughs. It starts deep in his throat before bubbling up into a high pitched, whistling giggle.
"Dear, dear Eddison Watts," he says. "Yes, he's here. Right back in his lab. Is he who you're so worried about?"
"I want to see him," you say.
"But of course!"
It's that easy?
"Tell me everything you know, and I'll deliver you to him straightaway."
"No," you say. "Bring me to Eddie, and then I'll work with you."
"He's terribly busy," Jon says.
"He won't mind being interrupted by me."
"Oh, but I will! Here," he pulls out a legal pad and a pen. "Write down everything you know—take as much time as you need!—and once you're done you can see him. I do hope that reunion comes sooner rather than later."
He smiles at you again, and leaves the room.
What would he already know? You don't want to give anything away that could hurt Volt or Eddie, especially if they already have Eddie captured, but almost everything that you could tell him could be linked to Volt in some way. You hope that he's evaded them, at least.
Will he come for you? Can you wait it out until he arrives to save the day?
But even if he would, could he? You don't even know where you are. Presumably a S.U.P.E.R. compound, but Jon's word is the only evidence that supports that theory, and you aren't willing to stake your life on just that. He could be working for Lord Valdivian and trying to figure out how much of their plans are known by pretending to be S.U.P.E.R., or even David Most, if Eddie's theory that he's still alive is correct. Eddie had said that David wouldn't kill you but would want to hold you hostage or hurt you in order to get to him. In that case, why would he care about what you've discovered about Lord Valdivian though?
You sigh. You don't know who captured you, or where you are, or if Eddie's even actually here as well. Until you know what effect your actions will have, you decide to sit tight, keep your cards close to your chest, and figure out as much as you can.
The paper and pen that Jon left are immune to your power as well, despite being brought into the room from outside. You press yourself against the door and try to communicate with any objects in the hallway, but there's still nothing. You've been able to hear objects that you can't see or that are separated from you by a door before, albeit less strongly, but you would be able to hear it. So—the space itself represses powers, rather than the objects within it carrying some sort of special property. Which was what Jon had told you, and makes more sense for blocking the powers of anyone besides you, but it's good to confirm.
You don't have anything on you. Someone must've emptied the pockets of your dress while you were unconscious, removing your phone. What else can you do? The door opens inwards, so even if you broke the lock you'd need to break it off the hinges in order to push it out. You could rip the bones out of your corset to use as some sort of tool, maybe, but the door hinges are completely hidden, so you wouldn't be able to unscrew them even if you could create a makeshift screwdriver.
There's no way to break out. Unless…if Jon comes back, you might be able to force your way past him and out the door while he's opening it. Will there be other guards? Or rather, how many other guards will there be? Your desperation might give you more of an edge than you'd normally have, but you're hardly a physical fighter who could take out multiple trained guards, especially if they have weapons and you don't.
So you can't fight your way out. Could you convince Jon to let you go? You could play along and feed him false information so that Volt and your other friends aren't implicated, and hope that's enough for him to reunite you and Eddie, then the two of you can figure out a plan together.
You wonder once again what information S.U.P.E.R. has about Lord Valdivian, and what information they'd hope to gain from you specifically. You can't imagine that there's all that much that you've learned that they don't already know. You could tell Jon about the abandoned factory being used as an outpost, or the hordes of Valdivians at Walton Academy, or the information that Maggie discovered about Lord Valdivian—Franklin Lieste Valdivian—but you're pretty sure that she found most of that through either S.U.P.E.R.'s database or public records.
The abandoned factory. Eddie cleaned up all evidence of Volt's involvement, and you tracked the people who destroyed Kopi's coffee shop there all on your own. You could feed Jon the same lie you originally told Maggie and Penelope, that you went on your own and saw a mysterious figure fighting them who left before you could identify them, and leave out that you went back and met Eddie.
You sit down at the table and start writing your testimony. Once you're done, you stand up and wave it in a circle.
"I did it," you say. You aren't sure where the cameras or microphones are, but you're certain that there's surveillance somewhere in the room. "This is what I know about Lord Valdivian. Where's Eddie?"
Jon Wick makes you wait.
It feels like it must have been hours when he finally comes back to your room, opening the door wide enough for you to see four armored guards with S.U.P.E.R. emblazoned on their chests and guns strapped to their waists. It must be deliberate, letting you know that there's no possibility of an escape by force.
He carries a tray of food: the end of a loaf of bread and a mouthwatering stew. You watch the steam rise from the bowl and realize just how hungry you are. How long has it been since you ate?
"What do you have for me?" he asks.
Once you hand him the legal pad, he slides the food across the table to you. You dig in eagerly.
You look back up at him after you've finished eating. He's done reading and is watching you with an inscrutable expression.
"This is everything?" he asks. You could lie and say yes, but you doubt he'll believe it.
"Take me to Eddie," you say. Not admitting anything, but a little negotiation couldn't hurt, right?
"Liars don't get visiting rights," he says, and his lips twist into that smile of his. "Tell. Me. Everything."
"This is enough," you say. "Take me to Eddie, and I'll give you more."
"You don't get to make demands."
He stands up, takes the tray of food, and leaves.
Fuck.
Several hours later, you still don't know what to do. You've run through everything that's happened to you since moving to Coolsville, and besides the abridged version of your trip to the abandoned factory, there isn't anything that you could tell Jon Wick.
If you tell him about your second visit to the factory, you'd have to mention Eddie, which would mean explaining why he was there, which would mean mentioning Volt. And you didn't even learn anything about Lord Valdivian from that! Everything about Walton Academy is a no-go. Even though he would likely either know or be able to figure out Eddie's past at Walton, you wouldn't be able to explain how you survived without Volt, and if anyone visited the site of the academy, the molten metal and scorch marks would give him away.
You could tell him about the man at the masquerade ball, who responded to your power as if he was a hollow shell, an empty sarcophagus, but there's no evidence to connect him to Lord Valdivian.
Right?
You sigh and let yourself fall onto the bed. You don't know what time it is, but you're exhausted, and you haven't found a way out of your predicament yet. Sleep won't hurt. Maybe once you're well rested, you'll think of something.
You sleep fitfully in the still-lit room, your arms reaching out for bodies that aren't there. How did you become so used to Eddie and Volt in so short of a time?
When you wake, you feel barely more awake than you did the previous day. You pace back and forth across the narrow space, running the same arguments through your mind, but you still can't come up with something that will satisfy Jon Wick, short of making something up entirely, but you know you aren't a good enough liar to pull that off, especially if he saw through the first story you gave him. If your mostly true story that you had prepared and told before wasn't convincing, any complete lie will be even less so.
You keep pacing. Jon Wick doesn't come back. You have no sense of the passing of time, only that your feet grow tired and your stomach grows hungry, but no food is brought. When you get thirsty enough, you drink water out of the bathroom sink.
The ballgown was comfortable to dance in, comfortable to spend an entire night in, but as exhaustion sinks into your body, you want nothing more than to take it off and change into something softer. You can't imagine anyone bringing you anything else to wear, though, so unless you want to fashion the flat sheet of the bed into a makeshift toga, you're stuck in the ballgown. You take off your dress shoes eventually, placing them neatly by the end of the bed. It worries you a little—what if the opportunity arises to escape and you're barefoot?—but your feet are beginning to swell and blister from wearing the shoes for so long. You sit down on the edge of the bed and massage your feet, before laying down and falling asleep again.
You're groggy and your whole body hurts. You don't want to move, but it's the kind of pain that you know means that you need to stretch. It feels like each individual muscle has been compressed in a vacuum sealed bag. As you force yourself into yoga pose after yoga pose, your stomach growls. You drink more and more water to try and convince it that you're full.
In your dreams, you're sitting at a massive banquet table, dishes of all sorts in front of you, each more fantastical than the next—towering stacks of pastries, the largest vegetables you've ever seen, an entire turkey with a fountain of gravy shooting several feet in the air before falling down to pool around the serving platter. You can practically taste it.
You can literally smell it.
"Are you ready to speak?"
Jon Wick's voice pulls you out of your dream. He sits in one of the chairs and holds a tray of food. It's tantalizing.
"How did you meet Eddie?" he asks.
You don't say anything.
"What has he told you about himself?"
Silence.
"Who else has been investigating Lord Valdivian with you?"
You tell yourself that he's a figment of your imagination.
"What will convince you to open up?"
Not real. Not real. No matter how much your nose tells you that the scent of food is the only thing that is real, not Eddie, not Volt, not even Lord Valdivian himself.
"Disappointing. It seems you need more…incentive. I'll come back with this once you're feeling more talkative."
You slip back into sleep.
When you wake again, you imagine yourself as a marionette doll. You pull the imaginary strings to make yourself sit up, stand, walk back and forth, stretch up, reach down, touch your toes. Even the movement is not enough to differentiate between wakefulness and sleep. You feel like you're running in a dream, like your body's underwater. The fog in your mind won't clear. You try to think, but the synapses don't connect and your thought gets stuck before it can travel the neural pathway to its conclusion. It plays on a loop like a toy train running around the same circular track, through the station, over the bridge, past the same wooden tree painted bright green, at the station again and chugging past without stopping.
You sleep indefinitely. You feel as though your stomach is cannibalizing your muscles, your brain, your bones. Maybe Jon Wick comes back in to interrogate you, maybe you just imagine it. You sleep like you're in purgatory, dull and restless in the fields of Asphodel.
Something grabs your arms. Your mind fills in a boat, a storm, an ocean, a monster with tentacles suctioned onto you.
It drags you up, out of bed, and—out of the room? Sounds rush in, loud and overlapping and you can't make out anything clearly. It's the background radiation of your universe, everything screaming their existence. You pull at your arms, trying to cover your ears and block out the noise, but they won't let go. You twist yourself around in the arms of the S.U.P.E.R. guards. They hold you tightly like an eel out of water, like you're the monster in the ocean and they can't wait to stuff you and mount your head on a plaque.
They let go of you and shove you forwards into a new room. You fall down onto your hands and knees. Concrete under you. Bruises already forming.
It isn't a cell like your previous room. You can still hear the door, the table, the light. Why have they brought you here?
And then you hear another door open and shoes, frantic on the floor, running towards you. Hands under your armpits, pulling you up, a body against your own, arms around your back and a face pressed into your hair.
"Are you okay? Oh, baby, what have they done to you?"
You don't want to look up. The voice has haunted your dreams. You can't stand this nightmare.
"Look at me, baby, it's going to be alright," and his hands are on your face, tilting your head up and your treacherous eyes won't stay closed and—
"Eddie?"
"I'm here," he says. "We don't have much time. They only let me see you because I told them I'd give them information. I know we can't tell them everything, but you have to tell me, what can we tell them? We need to buy time, baby, just tell me what you want me to give to them, they said we could be together if I told them something, anything."
Something's wrong.
"Baby?" you ask.
Eddie smiles at you and something's wrong.
"You never call me baby," you say.
His smile falls and his face melts away and you pull out of his grasp with all the strength remaining in your body as Jon Wick emerges like a snake shedding its skin.
"I really thought that would work," he says. "Take her back."
You pick at the fabric of your dress, prying apart the fibers of the bodice so that you can pull out one of the pieces of boning. The edges are rounded but you try sharpening it against the metal bed frame anyways.
It doesn't work.
You sit at the head of the bed, back pressed up against the wall furthest from the door, knees pulled up to your chest, tense.
Jon Wick is a shapeshifter.
You knew this. You saw him at the ball. But…you had felt Eddie against you. You know what his body feels like and that was him holding you, down to the stubble of his beard and the callouses of his hands. If it weren't for his slip-up calling you baby, you never would have known.
He could be anyone. How could you ever trust anyone again?
The room is silent at least. It's only marginally better than the feeling of having no defenses against all of the objects outside of the room projecting themselves into your mind. You feel empty. Body, mind, and soul.
Sleep doesn't come. You want nothing more than to escape to some other plane of existence, where even if your dreams are troubled, they'll be different troubles than your waking life, but your mind remains stubbornly on, hyperaware of the physical sensations of the wall against your back, the dips of the mattress, the smooth material of the boning, each individual thread of the bedsheet.
You hear footsteps in the hallway, voices yelling, muffled thuds. It all seems distant and unimportant.
And then the door opens.
"Darling," Volt says, and your lip trembles.
"I'm here," Volt says, and you shake your head from side to side.
"Come with me," Volt says, and you scrunch your eyes closed.
"We have to be quick. More guards are coming. You have to come to me. I can't go in and get you. Please," Volt says, and you cover your ears so you don't have to hear the tears in Jon Wick's voice.
More footsteps echo down the hallway, louder and louder.
"How perfect! He's already chosen his cell."
You open your eyes to see Volt turn around to face Jon Wick, and then the S.U.P.E.R. guards are pushing him backwards before he can call on his power, and then Jon Wick closes the door on you and—
Volt.
Notes:
sorry this chapter was delayed slightly! I was reading this incredible book this weekend and could not put it down until I finished it so I was Not Writing (the book in question was Saturnalia by Stephanie Feldman - if you like horror, fever dreams, alchemy/tarot, climate change, trauma, and ambiguous endings, I would highly recommend! if you aren't into literally any of those themes maybe pass on it, the ratings are generally low and I get why but also I loved it haha)
my only other update is that I'm starting a new job this week so updates may be less frequent as I figure out my new schedule :( my last job was also remote and I was able to write/do other stuff if it was a slow day but idk the vibe of this one yet and I Do Not want to come across as lazy or distracted my first week (second week is fine to be a bad employee lol)
also sorry scandalabra/jon wick lovers - I adore him but the idea of secret identities -> shapeshifting -> terrifying bad guy was too good to pass up narratively! this is scandalabra slander and I'm both fully aware and offended at myself on his behalf please forgive me
Chapter 13: ch13
Notes:
hi all this is the chapter that most earns the graphic depictions of violence tag as there are several scenes of physical/psychological torture - ymmv on how intense you find it, but this is the worst that it will get in the entire fic so I felt like it was worth mentioning up front. on the bright side everything goes up from here though!
to avoid the worst of it skip the fourth/final section starting with "The S.U.P.E.R. agent looks bored…" and then maybe read the last few lines after "A hand rests on the back of your head…" to get the plot point setting up the next chapter
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Volt collapses as he passes over the threshold of the cell. All of the light fades from his body, like when you saw him stabbed in the abandoned factory, but faster, faster, and it doesn't stop. You rush to his side and cradle his head in your lap. His eyelids flutter and a groan falls from his mouth.
"He's dying!" you yell, your voice scratchy. How long has it been since you've spoken out loud? "You're killing him! I'll tell you anything, just let him out!"
The door stays closed.
Can Jon Wick even hear you on the opposite side?
"Eddie's research works," you scream, as loudly as you can despite the sobs threatening to overwhelm you. "It works! He transferred his power to Volt. The amplification works! Please, let him out, I'll tell you more!"
But the door stays closed.
Volt's breathing steadies as your own grows increasingly erratic, your chest heaving and shaking over him, tears falling out of your eyes to land on his translucent skin. The loss of his electricity hasn't killed him, not yet anyways. You watch his chest rise and fall like the hour hand of a clock moving imperceptibly—but still moving.
You brush his hair away from his face. The strands are no longer electric but thin, vesicular, abhorrently melancholy like the legs of a dead spider. One snaps as you push it to the side.
Will the rest of him fall apart the same way? Without the electricity holding him together, will he chip apart into pieces? Or will he be like a tower of sand, balanced on a billion microscopic fulcrums, one atom away from collapsing instantaneously, not even eroded but vanished, returned to the aether from which Eddie called him?
The thought slips in like a mosquito through the crack of a door, miniscule, buzzing around your head, draining you slowly: is Volt even mortal?
He came into existence fully formed, spontaneous conception, xenobiolectric impulses made flesh. Does he age? Will he—would he—watch you and Eddie grow gray, see your skin fold in pleats, bury you and stand eternal by your graves, his rainless storm unable to grow flowers over you, the grass scorched yellow-white like aged placeless bones?
Once you had visited a natural history museum, in a life that feels foreign to you now, and you had seen a fulgurite, fossilized lightning, mineral fused into an amorphous ridged mass. It sat under glass. You had thought that it was a piece of coral or else petrified wood dug out of some bog, dark gray, opaque, rivulets down its length, carved of water or the frozen pressures of the deepest ocean trenches rather than the cosmic heat of lightning.
You imagine Volt fossilized like that fulgurite, an effigy that is both creator and creation, and it seems a more fitting end than this, his figure fragile in your hold.
His eyes move rapidly under the lids and the vein in his neck pulses. You, even in your weakened state, curve an arm under his knees and the other around his shoulders, and carry him to the bed, his weight the weight of a daydream.
There is little to be done. You tear the sleeve from your dress and wet it under the tap, lukewarm the only temperature available, and press it to his forehead gently. You kneel at his side and hold his hand, your lips whispering prayers into his knuckles, like the words will echo through his bones and your voice will be enough to fill him with life, like you are Eddie, like you can take his place.
How could Volt have ever thought that you could take his place?
The universe shrinks to your body, his body, the rest unobservable. You float in space, all sensations gone but his hand in yours. Somewhere lightyears away, something opens, something enters existence, its signals travel towards you, you assume it will be dead and gone, a cloud of inert gas dispersed from the source, but the tray of food is present if cold when you tear yourself from Volt to drag it across the floor.
You eat mechanically, one hand holding on to him like you're a lost child clinging to a toy, the other lifting a utensil up and down a set path. After three bites you feel sick; after four you think you should save some for Volt. You push the tray under the bedframe, squirreled away as if that will keep it safe and untouched, and climb into the narrow bed next to Volt. His body up against the wall, yours on its side facing him.
Sometime while you rest, Volt's condition changes. He breaks into sweat, fever burning him from the inside out. His limbs thrash, as if he could fight it away. You wipe the sweat from his brow and struggle to hold him in place so that he won't hurt himself. Twin bruises blossom like violets opening in a timelapse, under your fingers where you hold his wrists down successfully, a map on your arms where you don't. His head falls back, his throat thrusting upwards and his mouth open like he's excising a demon through his silent scream, but his eyes stay closed, gently, the mechanism to open them gone entirely. His heart beats polyrhythmic in his wrists. You would tear the muscles out of your body to wrap around his bones to keep them cushioned if you could, but you can't, so you hold yourself over him all night instead, absorbing the impact of his pain until the fever extinguishes itself and you both collapse.
You come back together slowly, an explosion in reverse, pieces of you mixed in with pieces of Volt.
His eyes open. They land on you as if drawn magnetically, and he smiles.
You cry—how could you do anything but cry?—and he kisses away your tears, which only makes you sob harder. He's so—alive under your hands, and you touch his face, his neck, any inch of skin you find, just to feel him and know that he's real, and you think that this must be how Eddie felt when he reached out and touched Volt for the first time. He is a miracle, you think, and you have made him profane by bringing him here.
He still holds you when your body exhausts itself. Even when you whisper your contrition, when you tell him how you admitted the efficacy of Eddie's machines, when you plead his forgiveness hoping that he will not grant it, he holds you, and you feel safe.
You bring the tray onto the bed and the two of you sit side by side, backs against the wall and bodies curved inwards on each other as you share the food, alternating bites of rice and something approaching vegetables.
"He's a shapeshifter," you tell Volt once you've finished the food, your voice still weak. "Jon Wick. He—he almost convinced me he was Eddie. He wants to know about Lord Valdivian and our investigation and Eddie's research. He says S.U.P.E.R. has him here in his lab. I think they want him to amplify their powers."
"If he is here, I didn't find him," Volt says, and you feel something break within you. "I didn't see any labs. It's a prison, just rows and rows of cells like this. You were the only one I came for."
You read between his lines: the others aren't here, either. Did S.U.P.E.R. let them go, or are they being held elsewhere?
"We're being observed, aren't we?" he asks.
You nod your head. "I don't know where their cameras are, but I'd assume they can hear and see everything. They only brought food because I gave them information about Eddie when they locked you in here too, so they must have been listening."
Volt looks shocked. "You said that was all you told them?" he asks, and you nod.
He lifts his hands to hold your face close to his.
"How have you held on?" he whispers, like he can't believe you're still here with him, like you're a ghost that could drift out of his grasp at any moment.
"I couldn't hurt you," you say.
"Oh, live wire," he breathes, and kisses you.
His lips are the sweetest thing you've ever tasted.
The S.U.P.E.R. agent looks bored as he draws his fist back to clobber you in the stomach again. You double over in pain, having given up on bracing yourself against the impact, before he grips your hair to pull you back upright.
You're tied to one metal chair, legs bound and hands looped around the back, Volt tied to the other. He watches you with a pained expression on his face but he says nothing, even when the S.U.P.E.R. agent hits you again.
"How did you break into this facility?" a second agent asks. He holds a clipboard with a list of questions that he's been circling through. You feel disgust at Jon Wick not even bothering to interrogate you himself, though you assume he's still watching.
"Where is Lord Valdivian hiding?"
"Who are your accomplices?"
"How did Eddison Watts transfer his power to you?"
The agent hits your face this time instead of your stomach, and you feel the bridge of your nose snap and break. The pain reverberates through your skull and you can't stop your cry of pain from bursting out. Your blood is warm as it gushes down your face. Some of it runs in between your chapped lips and you hate that it feels so good to be tasting anything that your tongue swipes out to lick up as much as it can before you realize what you're doing.
"No!" Volt cries out, but you shake your head.
"Don't," you mouth at him. "Don't give them anything."
He nods, eyes refusing to leave yours, as tears run down his own face.
After the agents leave your cell, untying your hands but leaving you to undo the binds around your legs and Volt, he rips the other sleeve from your dress to wipe the blood from your face, and you use your shaking hands to wipe the tears from his.
They try knives next. Blades under Volt's fingernails, thin lines over his once beautiful, now skeletal face, slicing through his nostril, and you let yourself scream, but only wordless anguish. Volt repeats the word, "No," like a mantra and you say it back to him, call and response. You think you can see the blood draining from his body, his blue veins drying up into endless white plains.
You use your teeth to tear the hem of your dress to wrap his fingers, to press against his nose.
"We match," he says, nodding towards your own swollen, blood-encrusted nose, and you press your forehead against his, needing his touch more than you need to minimize the pain.
"Where is Lord Valdivian?"
"Who are your accomplices?"
"How did Eddison Watts transfer his power to you?"
At least the water washes away some of the blood on the once-pristine white floors, you think, as your head is pulled out of the bucket and you watch it splash out, spilling everywhere.
But there's no drain, and now the cell is moist as well, stagnant pools that won't dry.
"You'll get an infection," Volt says. Your dress is approaching your knees.
"Better me," you say. You don't finish the thought: better me than him. Neither of you will say his name. It's bad enough to hear it from the guards every time they come in. You think that hearing it from Volt's lips would be enough to send you fully over the edge. This is as close as you can come to acknowledging him.
Later, your bodies cautiously tangled together, refusing to let your bruises and wounds keep you apart any more than necessary, you think you hear Volt whisper, "Is it?"
He's still quiet when they slice your skin, and break your fingers, and it's only when one of the guards spits in the bucket and Volt cries out in terror before they even plunge your head underwater, that you realize that they've given up on you and are fully focused on using your pain to break Volt.
"No!" you yell once they pull you out, but the cry uses your valuable breath and water rushes into your lungs as they push you back down. You choke and thrash your head, but their grip on your neck is tighter than a vise and your body is immobile, ropes chafing against your wrists and legs. Your thoughts slow down and ice creeps through your body, spreading outward from your lungs to freeze your muscles, only your extremities still spasming out of your control. You think you hear voices, but it all seems so far away…
You're pulled upright. You choke and cough, great heaving motions, and you fall forwards, the chair crashing down with you as you land on your knees, your head on the floor, gravity helping you expel the water from your lungs. Your sputtering eventually subsides and your coughs are dry, nothing more coming up.
A hand rests on the back of your head.
"I knew he'd give in eventually," Jon Wick says, stroking your hair. "Lucky you."
You feel a pinch in your neck, and everything fades into darkness.
Notes:
hi I'm so sorry for comparing Volt's hair to a dead spider it has simply been Too Long since I have written body horror and I am trying to hold it back but this slipped out and I liked the line too much to take it out, I promise this will not become a horror fic entirely about dead bugs but please have grace for a Girl and her Hobbies (turning hot men into even hotter eldritch horrors)
also this is the lowest point and things will not be this bad again! obviously not everything is solved but they will be reunited with Eddie soon! I can't promise that I won't mention bugs again but I can promise that there won't be more torture - thank you all for sticking with this fic even as it's become way more intense than anyone signed up for at the beginning <3 appreciate you all very much!! we've had the hurt and now it's time for the comfort, lots of Volt cuddles coming next chapter - I need it as much as the reader does!!!
Chapter 14: interlude: Eddie
Notes:
hope you all enjoy this mini Eddie character study, it was originally going to be at the start of the next chapter but I thought it worked better on its own, the next proper chapter is coming either tonight or tomorrow <3
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Eddie wakes up strapped to a medical examination table tilted vertically, fully immobile. They've even pushed a gag between his teeth, whoever 'they' are. He takes in the room—clean, high-end equipment, but no labels or logos anywhere.
They aren't trying to hide their identity from him, though, he quickly realizes.
Jon Wick. Eddie's—well, he's probably back down to being his second least favorite person in the whole world now that David Most's decided to come back to life, that asshole, and take back the title of first. He takes the gag out of his mouth and Eddie tries to bite him.
"Is that any way to greet an old colleague?" Jon Wick asks, wearing that simpering expression of his. Eddie wants to punch it off of his face.
"Where is she?" he snarls.
"She's quite the dancer, isn't she?"
Eddie doesn't often wish that he still had his power, but right now he wants nothing more than to smite the man in front of him.
"Don't worry, Eddison, she's completely safe. That is, if you keep it that way. You see, I was looking into your old research, and I think I'd like to see the results."
He leans in closer, but not so close that he'd be within reach of Eddie tearing his throat out with his teeth, which is what he would be doing if possible. It feels good to know that Jon Wick is still scared of him. But the feeling pales in comparison to his fear of the man hurting his spark. Her bravery, her selflessness, how he put her in danger from David Most just by being near her, how she heard the very worst parts of him and she still chose to step closer, to accept him, to accept Volt— He loves her. She's changed everything. It's no longer just him and Volt, locked into orbit around each other. She's there, a third well of gravity pulling him and Volt off of their courses, unpredictable, inescapable, and he wants nothing more than to fall towards her forever.
He's going to tell her, when he gets out of this. He knows that Volt feels the same, too. He's never let someone in besides Eddie, has never been protective over someone besides Eddie. He imagines the two of them dancing in the Breaker Box, swaying in the kitchen, Volt's hair illuminating her face. He wants to serve her and Penelope drinks at the bar, wants to hold her hand in the early morning light as they walk to Kopi's coffee shop, all three of them sat around a table, Volt reviewing the seasonal pastry selection like he's a highbrow food critic, their spark playing along but rolling her eyes at Eddie, even though they both secretly love it. He wants her in their bed between them, her soft lips, her body tangled in Volt's, in his, the way she smiles in the morning when she's still half asleep.
That future is within his grasp. As long as no one else amplifies their power to become strong enough to tear it apart.
When Eddie won't talk—when, presumably, his spark won't talk—Jon Wick brings in a truthteller. Eddie doesn't recognize this one, but S.U.P.E.R. keeps a few on staff and he's had the misfortune of meeting others. This must be important to them, to delegate one of their most powerful assets.
"She's very loyal," Jon Wick says. "Saw right through me pretending to be you."
"Of course she did," Eddie scoffs. She's brilliant. He's so proud, even as he worries about the consequences for her.
"But not loyal enough."
Eddie's blood freezes.
"Or, should I say, not loyal enough to you." Jon Wick's features shift and he forms himself into—Volt. How the fuck does he know what Volt looks like?
"I did some digging," he says, and it's Volt's voice, only it's not, the inflections are all off, but the uncanny valley is enough that Eddie can barely take it. "I didn't know you had a partner, Eddison. Finally found someone who'd put up with you."
He doesn't know. Eddie wants to holler in joy that Jon Wick doesn't know the truth of how Volt was created, of who Volt really is. Of what Volt's existence implies.
"He came to rescue your girl, but having his powers stripped really took it out of him. She begged for me to let him go. She told me that you gave him your powers. That you amplified them."
Volt's in one of the power-repressing cells? But…he is his power. Eddie's power. How can he be alive without it?
"I wonder why you held out on us, Eddison. You figured it out. The greatest mystery of our times, manipulating the xenobiolectric impulses themselves." His voice sounds admiring. Eddie wonders what atrocities he would need to commit to make him feel disgust. "Maybe you need a little more motivation to share your accomplishment."
"Don't hurt them," Eddie says, his voice cracking. Jon Wick knows exactly what leverage he has over Eddie with the two people locked in that cell. "I'll do it. I'll rebuild the machines for you, just don't hurt them."
"Lie," the truthteller pronounces.
"That's too bad," Jon Wick says. "Contrary to what you may believe, I don't enjoy causing you harm."
"And yet you do it anyways."
Jon Wick smiles and Eddie knows that he's said something wrong. "Not to you," he says, and leaves the room.
The truthteller sets up a screen in front of Eddie, showing one of S.U.P.E.R.'s holding cells. He sees his spark and Volt, curled around each other on the narrow bed, and it takes everything in him not to call out as if they could hear him. They look so…frail. The two strongest people he knows, reduced to these pitiful forms.
What has Jon Wick done to them?
As he watches the guards walk in, tear them from each other, and tie them down, he feels ashamed of himself for thinking that either of them would break no matter how physically weak they are right now. They refuse to answer the guards' questions, so Eddie won't give in either. This is bigger than all of them. He watches them beat his spark and he makes a note of where to hit them later. Everywhere.
They slice Volt open, but once he's out of here he can fix that. Even after his power was gone, transferred fully into Volt, he's been able to channel—energy? xenobiolectric impulses? something else entirely?—to reform Volt. Not even the knife wound from the night they met their spark proved a challenge for him. Volt slept it off and was back to himself the next day, easily. This is… he can fix this. He tells himself that he can fix this.
It's harder seeing them hurt her. She's so strong that sometimes he forgets that she's mortal, skin and bone like anyone. Like him. He forgets that sometimes, too.
He watches her get waterboarded again, but this time it's worse. Something's wrong— Something's even more wrong than the sight of the woman he loves being tortured because of him.
Her body thrashes, not even trying to escape deliberately. She moves like a fish that's been pulled from the water and Eddie sees what's happening like it's a nightmare come to life. She's drowning. She must've not had time to take a breath before they pushed her underwater again, but the guards aren't letting her up, even seeing her now.
Eddie can barely drag his eyes away from her, frozen in place from the horror, but then Volt shifts in his peripheral vision and Eddie sees just enough of him to know that he's about to do whatever it takes to save her, that he's ready to put the noose around his own neck so that it isn't on hers.
"Stop," Eddie begs. "Stop!"
He can't let her die. He can't let her death be on Volt's conscience; he can't let the deaths caused by releasing the xenobiolectric impulses be on Volt's conscience. He knows Volt better than he knows himself and he knows that Volt will do anything to save her in this moment, no matter the consequences.
And that's the heart of it, he thinks to himself, his damned hamartia—he won't let Volt be the one to save her. Eddie will make himself as monstrous as he needs to be to protect the people that he loves. To keep them from becoming monsters themselves.
"I'll build your machines," he says. "I'll build everything you want."
The truthteller's eyes flash and then they press something on their tablet.
Eddie sees Volt's mouth open to cry out in slow motion, but he doesn't get the chance to speak before Jon Wick enters the room and calmly tells the guards to stop, as if every second isn't precious, as if his love isn't dying before his eyes.
But then they pull her up, and she's falling forward and coughing up water, and Jon Wick's hand is on her head—he's going to cut off that hand if it's the last thing he does—but she's alive.
She's alive.
And Eddie will do anything to keep it that way.
Notes:
bene gesserits your dating sim superhero au - I was trying so hard to think about who would fit the truthteller role and the best I could come up with was Amir, but in a deleted scene I had him as a celebrity photographer like the Annie Leibovitz of this world and even though that probs won't come up I love the idea of him being a professional hypeman/incredible artist too much to remove that possibility lol so that's why the truthteller is just like a guy who's there
I wasn't going to have anything from any other characters' perspectives until doing my bullet points of 'what's Eddie up to this chapter' and I just had to write this out fully and then share it even though this is going to mess up all of the chapter numbers rip :( there will likely be a Volt interlude near the very end of the fic so that'll also throw everything off but whatever haha, see you all again in 1-2 business days with the next actual chapter!!!! sorry for the false notification ik we were all excited for cuddles and healing IT'S COMING I promise!!!!!!
Chapter 15: ch14
Notes:
and so the chapter names diverge from the numbers in ao3...
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
You slip in and out of wakefulness. Latex fingers pull back your eyelids, shining a light in one, then the other. The same fingers run over your body, clinical, cataloguing your wounds. At some point your dress must have been removed. You feel metal, cloth, alcohol wipes. Needles inserted into your shoulder, your elbow. You blink your eyes open to see a doctor standing over you.
"This is going to hurt," she says, and then she's rebreaking your nose and the pain is just as intense this time around, until it gets to be too much and the doctor fades away.
You don't wake again until you feel the world rumble underneath you, lurching forwards, and you realize that you're in some vehicle, bound to a seat with your eyes blindfolded. Your ability is still gone. Everything is silent around you. You try to call out Volt's name, but you don't hear anything in response. Have you lost your hearing, or your voice, or have you been separated?
The vehicle comes to a stop. You feel hands on you, surprisingly gentle, lifting you up, carrying you a short distance. They set you down on something soft and the blindfold is lifted from your face.
"Volt?" you whisper. You don't want to dare to hope, but if your power doesn't work, then no one else's can... "Is it really you?"
He nods, tears streaming down his face, and you've never seen anyone more beautiful. He kisses your forehead and you collapse into his arms.
You're in a comfortable, if sparse, set of rooms. The couch that you're on is brown leather and the walls are a shade of pale gray tinted just enough to not remind you of the white walls of the cell. You can see a table with three chairs and a small kitchen through an opening on the other side of the room from the couch. There's one window that lets in the afternoon light, but there are metal bars across it, with barely more space than the width of your wrist between them.
"Where are we?" you ask Volt. "What— what happened?"
"I don't know," he says, holding your face in his hand, running his thumb along your jaw, underneath the bandage protecting your broken nose. "They—stopped. Jon Wick came in and stopped them, then I remember waking up in what looked like a hospital room and a doctor cleaned my wounds. She gave me something to knock me out, then I was in a van and the guards left me here. They had you in another van. I begged them to let me carry you in. I— I couldn't watch them touch you."
You turn your face to kiss his palm.
"As long as we're together, I won't question it," you say.
What you don't say—and what you're both thinking—is that you aren't together, not fully.
"They left us food," Volt says. "I'll go make us something?"
He waits for you to nod before standing up and walking into the kitchen. You try not to reach out and pull him back, but it's difficult. Instead you follow him with your eyes. The doctor must have given you both the same dark blue scrubs to wear, but you could be convinced that Volt chose the color himself the way that it contrasts with his skin and hair. The sleeves are long and cover any bruises on his arms, but you can still see the bandages taped to his face and wrapped around his fingers. He moves slowly, but he's somehow still graceful as he peels a peach, slices it into small pieces, and puts it in a bowl.
Your whole body aches as Volt returns to the couch and sits down next to you. You curl into him, needing his touch. He feeds you the fruit slowly, one piece at a time, and his fingers linger against your lips. The taste is overwhelming, the feeling on your teeth, your tongue. Once you've finished, Volt kisses your cheek and stands up again to return the bowl to the kitchen.
As he's returning to you, the door to the apartment swings open, and Jon Wick steps in, flanked by several S.U.P.E.R. guards.
You flinch and curl in on yourself, hugging your knees to your chest.
Volt's across the room in an instant. His fist catches Jon Wick across the face and splatters blood onto the wall behind him. He wraps one hand around his throat and squeezes, Jon Wick's face turning purple, as he punches him in the gut, ignoring the way his limbs flail and scramble for purchase.
If it weren't for the S.U.P.E.R. guard raising their gun towards Volt, you could have watched this all day.
"Volt!" you cry out, and he lets go of Jon Wick with disgust.
"I will kill you if you touch her again," he spits out, before backing up to stand in front of you protectively.
The guards move closer to block off Jon Wick, who coughs several times before he's able to speak.
"Thanks to your friend Eddison Watts, the two of you can't be touched," he says.
Eddie? What has Eddie done? And…where is he?
Jon Wick continues. "He's agreed to work for us, on the condition that the two of you received medical care and were kept somewhere more comfortable." He sighs. "And unmonitored. So. If you need anything, there's a phone that will automatically connect you when you pick it up. And, uh, don't try to escape. We are monitoring that. As long as you behave, he won't be hurt, and as long as he behaves, you won't be hurt. Understand?"
None of you move for a terse second, until Volt nods.
"Good," Jon Wick says, and then he and the guards are gone.
Once you hear the lock click in place behind them, Volt sweeps you up into a hug and you cry tears of relief into his shoulder. His body shakes against yours and his hands grip you tightly. You hadn't realized just how much tension you were carrying until you let it all out, trusting Volt to keep you upright as you sob in his arms.
Eventually your tears subside, and you raise your head to look into Volt's eyes.
"He's okay," you whisper. It feels as if the words might stop being true if you say them too loudly.
"We're okay," Volt says. He smiles at you, even though you've never looked so bruised and battered, and kisses you.
You lean into the kiss, running your tongue along his lip, but he stubbornly keeps it chaste.
"Darling, you must be exhausted," he says.
"So take me to bed?"
It's hardly your best attempt at seduction, but he picks you up in his arms and carries you across the apartment into the bedroom.
"I can walk," you say, pushing against his chest playfully. "It's not like they broke my legs."
Volt freezes.
"Sorry," you cringe.
"No," he says. He sets you down on the bed and brushes your hair out of your face. "Don't apologize. I— Love, do you realize how hurt you were? Especially— Especially towards the end. You were dying. I was watching you die in front of me and I couldn't reach out and save you, I just had to watch, I— I know we promised each other not to give in, but I couldn't take it, I would've done anything, I would've given up everything and I don't know why they stopped but oh, my love, I have never been so scared, I—"
"Come here," you say, and he lays down next to you, wrapping his arms around you and positioning your head on his chest. He kisses your hair, and you start crying again.
"What is it?" he asks softly.
You shake your head and try to hold the tears back, but they keep streaming down your face, uncontrollable.
"It's alright, love," he says, rubbing slow circles on your back. "Whatever it is, I'm here for you."
"Do you mean it?" you ask.
"Of course," he kisses your hair again.
"No—" you try to figure out your words. "When you call me love. You don't mean it. Not— Not like you do with him."
Volt's hand stops moving on your back. He slowly raises both of his hands to your face, lifting it up so you're forced to look at him. You try to pull away, but he holds you firmly.
"I love you," he says. "I love you. Not the same way that I love him, but— I love you."
You kiss him.
This time he doesn't pull away when you deepen the kiss, teasing your lip, letting you pull his tongue into your mouth, meeting your touch with his, over, and over, and over.
You want to keep going. You want his hands to run over every inch of your body, erasing everything else that's happened to you, replacing it all with him so the only sensation your skin knows is Volt's soft touch, but he's right. Now that your body isn't under constant threat, your limbs feel like they're made of lead and you feel yourself sinking under. You brush your lips across Volt's again and lay your head next to his on the pillow.
"Not the same way," you say quietly. "What do you mean by that?"
Volt considers the question, taking a moment to gather his thoughts. You wait, watching him patiently.
"I've never been without him," he says. "He's been there from my…creation, of course, but even when we were physically apart, I had his power. His electricity. I am—or I thought I was—him. Not in any literal sense. We've always been two people, but… I was part of him.
"He told you we separated a few months afterwards? That he thought I needed to find a purpose apart from him? I know that I can live without him. Even before I was caught unaware and captured by Lord Valdivian, I lived without him. I… I won't say that I was fine, but I lived. I found people who would offer me food and shelter in exchange for doing odd jobs. I traveled, a bit. I learned to dance. I fell in love with gardening and watching life grow. And I missed him.
"The woman who taught me to dance, Rainey, she had been a real star back in the day, but left the stage behind to run this small record label, a passion project for her. She took me in, had me manage all the equipment for her, and the way she described it was— She loves singing. I always knew where she was, could hear her coming from a mile away by the sound of her voice. But she missed the audience. Even if it was just one person, she said, singing was different when it was for someone. She'd sing even if no one ever heard her, she'd sing without the hope of anyone ever hearing her. It was a part of her. But she said she wouldn't be herself without the stage, without the back and forth, the connection between her and the audience.
"That's Eddie, to me. I could live without him. But I wouldn't be myself without him. There's no part of me that isn't what it is because of him. I wanted to see what—who—I could become with him. I've never known what I am, but I loved the person I was becoming with him. It didn't feel like he had created me and there I was, a static being, but that he had given me the ability to create myself. I wanted him to be there with me as I did it. That was love. The process of creation.
"Without the electricity, I thought I would die. That's why… I'm sorry I made you think I was him, by not coming in to get you. I thought crossing that boundary would pull me from existence. I didn't think there was any part of me that wasn't electricity. I don't know how I survived. I don't know what parts of me survived. I don't know what parts of me died.
"I've been thinking about what I am, and I still don't know. I may never know. There might not be any definition for me that isn't tautological. I'm trying to make my peace with it, that I'm myself, not the electricity, not just Eddie's power. I think— I think love is the same way. Eddie and I have never had a conventional relationship. It's never been that hard to say that we love each other and leave it at that, since there's never been anything even remotely similar to our relationship, so if we say it's love, who could tell us otherwise?
"But then, trying to figure out who I was without the electricity, being left with the reality that who I am with the electricity doesn't fit into any definition, but that who I am without the electricity is different, but equally undefinable— If my relationship with Eddie can be wholly unique and still be called love, then my relationship with you can be the same. Not the same. I mean, if you feel—"
"I love you," you say. You feel yourself smile without even meaning to.
"Do you mean it?" Volt asks, his expression mirroring yours, the smile spreading across his face.
"How could I not? Volt, you're—" You shrug slightly, lost for words, and wrap yourself even closer around him. "I love you."
A tear falls from his eye and you wipe it away with your thumb.
"Oh, live wire," he whispers, and his voice sounds like music.
Time passes strangely. No one intrudes on you and Volt; you see nothing of the outside world. The angle of the sun changes through your one small window. It burns yellow, orange, purple at the end of the night. The moon rises and then, presumably, sets, across the sky where you can't see.
Volt insists on taking care of you, on carrying you from the bed, to the couch, to the table, on cooking you meals and watching you stomach more and more each day, on looking after your wounds, reading from the care pamphlet left by the doctor and portioning out antibiotics and painkillers. When your fingers, broken but set in splints, can't return the favor, he does it himself and thanks you for passing him the roll of bandages, the alcohol wipes, though you can tell his own fingers are in pain as well.
He helps you shower; you help each other shower. He won't touch you the way that you want, which you reluctantly agree is probably for the best while your skin is still more purple and mottled green than not, but the gentle way he washes you, his touch almost reverent, is enough for your body to learn to expect softness.
The bandage comes off your face.
The splints come off your fingers.
You wrap your arms around Volt as he cooks, your face between his shoulder blades, and you're almost happy.
Eddie is unavoidable. Neither of you have mentioned him since that night, but you see his absence everywhere. The third chair at the table, still never pulled out. The bed isn't too large, but it's too empty. Volt will make references to some joke he has with Eddie, waiting for a punchline that never comes. You look away from Volt mid-conversation, not sure why, until your eyes scan the whole room and you realize that you're looking for Eddie's reaction.
Is it good that you haven't heard anything about him? Does that mean that he's playing along, that he's working on the machine for S.U.P.E.R., that once he's done you'll all be reunited?
You don't know how long that would take. Volt doesn't either.
He's hard against you when you wake one morning, your back pulled to his chest, his leg draped over yours, his need for you evident. You feel him wake and notice his situation. You both pause, waiting to see what the other will do. You're healed enough, you realize, that you could reach around, grasp his cock, stroke him to completion, turn to face him and bring your mouth lower, healed enough that you could ride him, slow and gentle in the delicate morning light.
You get out of bed and busy yourself making breakfast while Volt takes a long shower. You redistribute the food into two large portions before he comes out into the kitchen, fully dressed, and you tell him that you felt extra hungry today.
"That's a good sign," he says, and ignores how you leave half of it uneaten.
There's a knock at the door.
You and Volt were stretching, following the physical therapy outline left by the doctor, but it's since devolved into trying to replicate pairs yoga poses that you had tried once with your friend Sam at a class you had signed up for that neither of you had realized was meant for couples. It didn't seem especially romantic then, and even trying them with Volt now, you still don't entirely get the appeal as a date activity.
The sound freezes you. You disentangle yourselves and stand up. Volt positions himself between you and the door as he calls out, "Come in."
You hold on to Volt's hand and he squeezes it reassuringly as the door opens and four S.U.P.E.R. guards step in.
"Come with us," one of them says. You don't see much of a choice.
The hallway is shielded to repress your powers as well and you wonder about all of the doors that you pass as the guards lead you away, two in front, two behind. Are they dozens of other apartments housing dozens of other people like you and Volt, hostages to ensure the cooperation of anyone S.U.P.E.R. wants but doesn't have any other means of sinking their claws into?
Volt holds your hand tighter.
Your abilities come back once you exit the wing. You're initially overwhelmed by all of the voices, the sounds, the images, but you raise your mental shields quickly. When Volt steps over whatever invisible boundary delineates the area with power from the area without, he doesn't adjust so seamlessly.
Everything goes white. You can't see an inch in front of your face. You still feel your hand in Volt's, and you use that sensation to figure out where he must be standing. You move to try and face him, reaching out with your free hand until you find his body and take hold of him, grabbing his arm.
"Volt!" you yell. You don't know if something about him is blocking out all sound, or if the brightness of his light is enough to overwhelm not only your vision, but all of your other senses as well.
The light pulsates, like it's traveling in waves off of his body, nuclear fission that will never run out of fuel.
You slide your hands up his arms, his neck, to hold his face. Color starts to come back into the world and you see his eyes in bright blue, pupilless, his outline glowing the same impossible shade of blue.
"Look at me!" you cry out, trying to get his attention.
He is placeless, out of time and space. Those solid blue eyes don't see you. They barely seem to see this dimension at all.
You pull his forehead to yours and call out his name, repeating it like a mantra.
"Volt, please!" you beg. "Come back to me!"
The pressure in the air changes.
His hands snap to your arms.
His gaze returns to this world, focused solely on you. It's intense. Like the universe itself is staring into you, the sole object of everything's attention, more fascinating than all the stars in the sky.
Volt breathes in, and it's like all the air in the room has been sucked up, and then he exhales, a hurricane force wind tearing everything apart except for you, caught in the eye of the storm, held safe.
The light fades. His eyes are no longer that indescribable, more vivid than reality, shade of blue, but white-gray, still pupilless. You see his shape, his skin, his features emerge from the remnants of his explosion.
"Volt?" you ask, your voice soft and hesitant.
He takes a shaky breath and stretches out one hand, then the other. Sparks jump between his fingers. A smile grows across his face and he laughs, watching the electricity come back to him. He brings his hands to your face and kisses you, and you forget everything except the feeling of his lips on yours and his electricity dancing across your skin.
You spend an eternity in his arms.
When you come back down to reality, the guards are somehow unharmed from Volt's outburst. It must have been all light and no heat, you assume. You see him realize that now that his power is back, he could kill the guards without a second thought.
"Eddie," you say, your voice low. "At least let them take us to him."
Volt nods, but you can tell he isn't happy about it. Not that you are, either, but finding Eddie needs to be your top priority now. You can't think of any other reason why the two of you would have been taken away and not immediately thrown back into the other cell or killed before you could get your abilities back.
"Come on," you say to the guards. "Let's get on with it."
They lead you down several long hallways to an old elevator with an elaborate wrought iron cage, which they pull open and gesture for you to enter. They stand outside and one of them pulls a lever to send you and Volt down into the darkness below.
The elevator comes to a rickety stop. Even with the light of Volt's hair, you can't tell where they've sent you.
You leave the elevator and walk down the hallway. It would be pitch black if not for Volt beside you, and you hold close to him for comfort. It's not damp, exactly, but you wouldn't be surprised to see mold on the walls or bugs crawling underfoot. You don't look.
A doorway emerges at the end of the tunnel. You can't make out what's inside it, only a rectangle of yellow light that seems infinitely far away.
As you keep walking, it grows larger and larger, and you're somehow surprised that the laws of physics haven't vanished from this space and that your steps are bringing you closer.
Volt steps inside first, putting out his hand to hold you back, and he gasps, speechless.
You follow him and it takes a second for your eyes to adjust to the light, but then you see what he sees and you gasp, too, because it's Eddie, alive—alive!—and running towards you, and then you're swept up in his arms, both of you, all three of you, together, and he's sobbing and repeating, "I love you, I love you," and you're saying it back through your own tears and this—this might convince you to believe in miracles.
"You're alive," he says as if he needs to convince himself, kissing you like he needs to feel the breath from your lungs to know that you're still breathing, and you just laugh as you kiss him back.
"You're alive!" you say, giddy with the feeling of having him here, in the flesh, touching you, real after so many days and nights seeing only his ghost between you and Volt.
And then, because no good moment can last that long without something going wrong for you, a voice that you hoped that you'd never hear again interrupts you.
"Isn't this touching?" Jon Wick sneers.
You tear your gaze from Eddie to see him standing across the room—a laboratory, you realize now, full of machinery and workbenches—wearing his typical black suit, standing next to someone you don't recognize in a purple veil.
Eddie's arms tighten around you, as do Volt's, and you feel them position themselves one on either side of you.
"They're here," he says. "What a touching reunion. Time for your end of the bargain, Eddison."
"And then you let us go," Eddie says.
"And then you all walk away and we never have to meet again," Jon Wick agrees. "Now, how does it work? If the truthteller senses any lies from you, there will be guards swarming the room in an instant. How many do you think he could kill before they hurt your girl?"
"I won't lie to you." Eddie's jaw is tight, his voice terse, and you want to comfort him but you don't know how, not when you're barely holding yourself together, not when Volt's a thread away from snapping himself.
Eddie squeezes his eyes shut and takes a deep breath. He opens them, kisses you, kisses Volt. Steps away from you towards the center of the mass of machinery.
"You put the…subject here," he indicates with his hands, and Jon Wick's eyes follow his movements greedily. "There's a lot of current running through it, so they need to be strapped down so that they don't fall out of place partway through the process. This dial controls how much they're impacted. All the way to the left, their powers are removed. All the way to the right, they're amplified."
He twists the knob to the right.
"These are the settings that amplified Volt," Eddie says, his voice almost alarmingly level.
Jon Wick looks to the truthteller, who nods their head in confirmation.
He smiles, and you wonder if he's always been able to twist his lips that high or whether it's a practiced expression. Whether he shapeshifts his cheeks, his muscles, his skull.
"This lever is the main power switch. Once the subject is in place and the dial's set to the right place, you pull this to start the reaction."
"And this will make me like Volt?" Jon Wick asks eagerly.
"Yes," Eddie says, and the truthteller once again confirms his words.
Jon Wick steps into the machine and the truthteller comes forwards to tighten the straps on his wrists, his ankles.
"I'm moving the final pieces into place now," Eddie explains as he pulls on several other levers and multiple sets of terrifyingly sharp needles descend to surround him.
Once they're in place, he pauses.
"Well?" Jon Wick asks. "Get on with it."
Eddie looks back to make eye contact with you and Volt. He nods at you and then pulls the final lever to turn the machine on.
You hear the current of electricity humming as it travels along the wiring, looping around the massive metal contraption, before reaching the needles pinching into Jon Wick. He screams in agony as sparks shoot between the machine and his body.
"We have to go," Eddie says.
You nod, but you can't tear your eyes from Jon Wick. Is this how much pain Eddie was in when Volt was created?
The tenor of the humming of the current changes. Pieces of him float away. It's as if the skin is being pulled off of his body, all in one piece like a flaying, though he's unharmed underneath.
He looks unharmed underneath.
"Now!" Eddie says, more urgency in his voice.
You can't help it. You turn back to watch as the skin balloons up, sinew growing underneath, thought become flesh, and it twists from a faceless humanoid mass into Jon Wick's own form.
It smiles and reaches for him, tearing at his arm so that it comes away a bloody mess, the hand still caught in the restraints.
You run for the elevator and don't stop until you're on the main floor, down the halls, out of the building, stumbling away from that accursed place.
Jon Wick's screams carry even as Volt calls blast after blast of lightning down from the clear blue skies and you leave the smoking ruins of the compound far behind you.
Notes:
local aromantic tries to describe love more at 7!!!!!! if this chapter didn't tip you off to me being hopelessly arospec idk what would lol, also poll in the comments: does Volt actually know the word tautological or is that the most ooc moment in the whole fic?
ik we were all excited for the boys to kill Jon Wick but I think letting his own shapeshifting doppelganger have the honors works as well :) plus perhaps a hint about how Eddie's machine works??? potential implications for what some of the other bad guys are up to???? hehehe
onboarding is done for my new job so theoretically next week they'll actually have me working full time (cross your fingers for me bc I would like to be paid full time haha) I'm also debating doing kinktober so that I'm forced to practice writing smut so that would also slow down updates here if I'm writing pieces in advance for that, but we'll see how that goes! not that there's ever been a set schedule for this lol but jsyk to prepare for all the inevitable cliffhangers haha
I'm very excited for the next arc being back in the rest of the world…things may or may not have changed drastically while our heroes have been trapped by S.U.P.E.R. and I can't wait for you all to see :D
Chapter 16: ch15
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
You run down the hallway, shoes squelching on the dark floor, and into the elevator. Volt slams the cage shut as Eddie pulls the lever and you rise slowly, slowly from the basement laboratory. Eddie grabs your hand and squeezes it with a deathly tight grip.
The elevator reaches the next floor, back to the clean white aesthetic of the rest of the S.U.P.E.R. facility, and you set off at a sprint again as soon as Volt gets the cage open.
"This way!" Eddie guides you through the maze of hallways.
Volt moves ahead of you, shooting lightning at any S.U.P.E.R. guards who get in your way.
Somewhere, an alarm is pulled, and red lights start flashing. More and more guards show up, but it's nothing that Volt can't handle. He seems larger than life with his power back. If it weren't for Eddie's hand in yours dragging you along, you'd have stopped in your tracks to watch him in awe.
You reach an exit and push the door open, setting off yet another alarm, and come face to face with another guard.
You freeze.
Volt's busy behind you, holding off the hordes all congregating on your position from within the facility, so he doesn't notice the guard outside. You know that you can't fight him alone.
You don't have to.
Eddie rushes past you to punch the guard. You've never seen him move like this before—effortless, efficient, like he's seeing three steps ahead to meet each of the guard's strikes with his own. You press yourself against the outside wall, trying to stay out of his way.
The guard unholsters his gun and that must be the opening that Eddie was waiting for. Now that the weapon's within his reach, he feints out the guard to get in and strike his wrist, causing him to drop the gun right into Eddie's hold. He shoots him, takes hold of you again, and you take off again running out of the S.U.P.E.R. compound.
You don't run into any other trouble once you're outside in the bright afternoon sunlight. The building is low, contemporary, covered in reflective white exterior panels that bounce the sun into your eyes when you turn back to see Volt exit behind you and Eddie.
"You need to get away as fast as possible," Volt says. "I'm going to burn it all."
"No!" you blurt out, before you even realize you've spoken.
"I'll be alright," he reassures you. "I just don't want either of you in range of the rubble."
"Stay safe," Eddie says. "Come back to us."
"I will," Volt promises.
You watch him turn back towards the facility and light up, bright enough that your eyes blink reflexively, before Eddie tugs at you and you run in a straight line, not aiming anywhere but away, as far as you can go.
Your legs feel like they're on fire and your lungs are empty. It feels like it did when you were drowning, heat instead of ice burning your body from the inside out. You focus on the feeling of Eddie's hand, and that's enough to keep you going just a bit further, before your legs give out and you finally collapse.
Eddie picks you up and carries you as he keeps running. You want to ask why you can't just stop, why this isn't far enough, but then you hear the effects of Volt's lightning and pieces of the building are flying through the air, landing all around you.
He keeps running and you cling to him, terrified, until it seems like you're out of range of the destruction and Eddie sinks down himself, legs folding underneath him, and you both turn to see the facility behind you, nothing but charred rubble now.
You gasp for air. You imagine that you can feel the ash coating your lungs, floating back out of your mouth like smoke when you exhale.
Eddie catches his breath before you. He holds you against him and rubs circles on your back as your breathing finally slows and evens out.
"I've got you," he says. "You're out. You're safe."
Volt comes over the hill then, striding towards you, his hair a glowing halo around his face. He holds you and Eddie close to his chest and then, silently, the three of you begin the long walk back to civilization.
You move slowly.
No one follows you.
Eddie confers with Volt briefly, deciding which way to trek over the wide grassy expanse beyond the S.U.P.E.R. compound. In your rush to escape, you headed away from the road, and none of you want to backtrack any closer to the burning compound unless it's absolutely necessary, and maybe not even then.
"We'll head south," Volt decides. "I went north from the city to— They can't have moved us very far from there."
Will any of you ever be able to discuss what you've gone through?
You put your head down and focus on putting one leg in front of the other until it grows too dark to see.
"We have to stop," Eddie says. It's fully nighttime now, a new moon. Volt's hair provides the only light, but even that isn't bright enough to illuminate the uneven ground. He keeps walking.
"Volt." It doesn't even sound like a reprimand. Eddie just sounds tired.
Volt finally stops and turns to face you. "It isn't safe here," he says. "I need to find you somewhere safe."
"Nowhere's safe," you say, your voice cracking. "Eddie's right. We should rest. Continue in the morning."
"You're hurt?" Volt asks. His tone suddenly shifts to concern. He runs his hands over your shoulders, your arms, your hips.
"No," you say, taking his hands in yours. "Just tired. We've been walking for hours, and my— My strength isn't fully back."
"Then we'll rest," Volt says. "Eddie—"
"I'll take first watch," he says. Volt must be exhausted too, you realize, even though he didn't want to stop. He expended more power than you've ever seen, and all that after being deprived of it for weeks.
Volt sighs in relief.
But as you lower yourselves to the ground to try and get some sleep on the rough grass and dirt, you see two headlights in the distance.
"Never mind," Eddie says. He takes off at a sprint towards the car. At some point after the sun went down, you must've gotten close to a road.
"It could be—" you call out, but he's already too far in front of you. The car stops and you hear yelling, then several gunshots.
"—S.U.P.E.R." you finish. "Oh, god, Eddie!"
You run after him, Volt beside you, but sigh in relief when you reach the unmarked black van and see that Eddie's perfectly fine, three bodies fallen onto the side of the road. You don't look at them too closely.
"Eddie," Volt breathes, wrapping his arms around him and sinking into him, his face falling into the crook between Eddie's shoulder and neck. Eddie holds him close, rubbing circles onto his back and murmuring into his ear.
"Hey," Eddie gets your attention. "Help me get him in the back?"
You nod and slip an arm under Volt, even though he protests that he's fine. You can see the light fading from his hair. It's a surprise he hasn't fallen asleep already, but the adrenaline must have kept him going.
Eddie opens the back of the van and the two of you maneuver Volt in so that he's laying down, surrounded by boxes and a few duffel bags, one of which you move to act as a makeshift pillow for Volt. Once he's as comfortable as possible, Eddie kisses his forehead.
"Get some rest, love," he whispers, before heading out of the back of the van to get into the front. "You coming, spark, or staying back here?"
Volt's hand shoots out to grab your wrist.
"I'll be up in a minute," you say.
Eddie pauses, looking between the two of you, but decides not to pry. He hops out of the back and you hear him open the door on the driver's side and get in.
"What is it?" you ask Volt. You lean in closer to him, your face inches from his. "Are you feeling alright?"
He meets your gaze, pinning you in place.
"Will you still keep your promise?" he asks.
Your promise to take care of Eddie if Volt dies. Why is he bringing it up now?
"You aren't—" you choke back a sob. "What happened? Was that too much energy? You can't— You're going to be alright, right?"
"Yes, love," he reassures you. "For now. But in the future—"
"You aren't going to die," you insist. "I won't let you. Eddie won't let you. We're going to keep you safe."
"Darling," Volt says. "I don't plan on dying. If it were up to me, I would live with you and Eddie forever. But if it comes down to it…"
You lean your forehead against his. "Eddie comes first. I'll take care of him."
"No," Volt murmurs, his voice even quieter now that you've reaffirmed your promise to look after Eddie. "Both of you. I would die for both of you."
"It won't come to that," you say. "But we'll take care of each other. No matter what."
"Thank you, love," he whispers.
You kiss him softly and head up to join Eddie in the passenger seat.
"Hey," you say quietly, closing the car door behind you.
"How is he?" Eddie asks. He starts the van and begins driving down the road, then reaches across the console to take your hand.
You raise his hand to your lips and kiss his knuckles.
"He thinks he's going to die," you say. You don't know how to lead into it, but Eddie needs to know.
He looks confused.
"Volt. He made me promise to take care of you if he died."
"Just now?" Eddie asks. "Is he—?"
"No," you say. "He just seems tired. I think— I hope he'd tell us if he was hurt now and not just tired, but— It was after we slept together. You were still asleep afterwards, and he was acting strange. All the way up to the masquerade ball. He told me you wouldn't take care of yourself if he died, so he made me promise to look after you if he couldn't. He kept talking about the possibility that you and I would survive Lord Valdivian and he wouldn't. I don't know what he meant. I don't know what he thinks is going to happen."
"Lord Valdivian?" Eddie asks. "He said Lord Valdivian specifically?"
"Yeah," you confirm.
Eddie sucks in a sharp breath. You raise your gaze to look at his shadowed profile, only lit by the faintly glowing dashboard and the low headlights.
"He knows I'd do anything for him," Eddie says. "He knows— You've already done so much for him. What does he see?"
"You think he's right?" you ask, then quickly change your wording. "I mean, you think he actually sees some scenario where he specifically would be in danger, where neither of us could do anything for him?"
"I don't think he'd scare you unnecessarily."
"He wouldn't scare you unnecessarily," you correct. "Maybe he wouldn't want to scare me now, but back then, when he first brought it up?"
"He loves you," Eddie cuts you off. "What do you mean?"
"No, he does," you reassure him. "But we— we had a lot to talk about. Figured a lot out about—us. How we all fit together. But, Eddie, even now? He still wanted me to promise him, even after everything."
You don't mention that previously he said that he would sacrifice you for Eddie and that now his only priority seems to be placing both of you above his own life.
"Fuck," he says. "What can we— Is there anything we can do about it?"
"I don't know. I was hoping you would know what he thinks will happen so that we can prevent it, but… Maybe he's just worried."
"Maybe," Eddie says. He doesn't sound convinced. You aren't, either.
You drive in silence for a few minutes. Eventually you pass a road sign, and Eddie turns at the next intersection to head back towards Coolsville.
You think of something that's been nagging at you, flitting around the back of your mind.
"Eddie, those men who were in the van? Who were they?"
You aren't sure that you want to know the answer, but you ask anyways.
"Who did you kill?"
Notes:
sorry this one took a bit longer and ended up being fairly short/a bit of a filler chapter setting up what's to come! I definitively decided to do kinktober so in between the last chapter and this one I wrote my first fic for that and it ended up being 4500 words so uhhhh either I'm going to have to make those shorter or chapters here will take like twice as long lol - gonna be posting like crazy in October though! definitely won't be doing all 31 days but my goal is at least 10 (cross your fingers for me!)
the side effect of coming up with kinktober ideas is that now I have several aus floating around and I'm trying so hard to finish this before starting on any of those! but like my inception fic brain got turned back on and now I really want to write e/v in an inception au, I think I have de! characters picked out for all of the inception crew except Yusuf (my love!!) so I was thinking Beverly or maybe Farya? if you have any ideas lmk though bc I'm not convinced on either of them yet. my thoughts for the others are Volt as Dom, Eddie as Mal, Prissy as Ariadne, Washford as Arthur, Drysdale as Eames, Franklin as Saito, and David as Robert, I could be convinced to change any of them though if people have thoughts, except for Eddie, Volt, and Prissy (I love her story so much and the potential for cool nature-y levels based on her in game turning plastic plants into real plants??? unmatched I love weird trippy nature) - I will be finishing this before posting any other long fics but that doesn't mean I can't start outlining haha
anyways thank you for reading/commenting as always! mwah <3
Chapter 17: ch16
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
"I—" Eddie's fingers fidget on the steering wheel. "They were wearing the same uniforms as the other Valdivians, I assumed—"
But he's thinking the same thing you are. The van's unmarked. There aren't any maps, or phones, or badges. The boxes in the back were unmarked. The bags too. Everything is generic. It almost feels like a prop, like it isn't actually being used.
"What would Lord Valdivian want out here?" you wonder. "He must have been—"
"Working with S.U.P.E.R.," Eddie finishes. "Or else… Three men wouldn't be enough to attack the facility."
"We'll have to check what they were transporting once we get back," you say.
Eddie hums. "Once we get back," he repeats.
You reach the crest of a hill and see Coolsville in the distance, silhouetted by the headlights. The city seems darker, like there's less lights on than usual. The only vehicles you pass are black vans similar to your own. As you get closer, they grow more and more frequent.
One of them cuts you off as you turn into the city proper.
"You could use the damn blinker," Eddie mutters.
"Eddie," you realize. "None of them are using blinkers. We've only seen Valdivians, and none of them are doing anything to communicate with each other. Something's wrong."
"It's just like the factory. Shit."
"You said they didn't notice you there as long as you blended in, right? We'll have to pretend to be them until…"
You trail off. Until what? There's no sign of any other life in the city. It's the early hours of the morning, still not yet sunrise, but the emptiness is eerie.
"Okay," Eddie breathes. You reach across to take his hand again, pulling it away from his white-knucked grip on the steering wheel.
"We'll be fine," you say, trying to sound more confident than you feel. "Go around the city, past everywhere that our friends could be hiding, then if we don't see anything, we'll leave. They seem to all be converging around the city, so heading away should let us escape and regroup."
"Okay," he says again. Some of the tension leaves his body, but not much. "Okay."
He keeps driving.
"There!" you point.
A small fire burns on the asphalt sidewalk, but you don't see anything actually on fire, just the fire itself, burning steadily without any fuel.
"Do you think—?"
"Dante?" Eddie says. "Could be."
You can tell he doesn't want to get his hopes up only to be let down. Neither do you, but… You could also really use some hope right now.
The flames jump and move down the sidewalk.
Eddie follows them down the street and through a complicated maze of back alleys, then down into an underground parking garage. The gate is down, blocking your progress. Eddie parks the van and you wait for a minute, before you hear a disembodied voice.
"Identify yourselves," it says.
You look at Eddie. Do you trust the possibility that Dante has led you here, or could this be an elaborate trap?
He leans over and kisses you, his hand tangling in your hair, then hands you the gun. "Here's the safety. Point and shoot."
You stare down at the gun in your hands. What does he expect you to be able to do with it if you've just pulled into a building full of enemies?
He gets out of the driver's seat. "Eddison Watts," he says. "You want my barcode, too?"
"Holy shit!" the disembodied voice says. "Eddie? Come in!"
The gate rises and Eddie gets back into the van to pull it forwards. You pass the gun back to him.
"Next time you get that freaked out before even seeing a threat, you hold on to this. I'll take my chances," you say.
The parking garage is completely dark. It looks abandoned, like it was under construction and the budget ran out mid-demolition. The flames are back, and Eddie follows them deeper into the garage before reaching the back corner near an elevator that must lead into the building above. He parks, but neither of you leave the van, until you see a maintenance door open and Dante emerges.
You leap out of the van and run forwards to hug him.
"Where have you been? Are you alright? We've all been so worried about you guys," Dante says.
You try to answer him, but the feeling of touching another person outside of the compound and knowing that your friends are alive is too overwhelming, and you can't get the words out.
"It's a long story," Eddie says. "Is everyone else safe?"
"Yeah," Dante nods. "Volt?"
"He's in the back. We all need rest."
"I can tell," Dante says. "I'll get you set up with a room as soon as possible, but everyone's gonna want to see you right away."
"We want to see them, too," you say, pulling yourself away from Dante. "Is it safe enough here that we can wait to explain everything?"
"Nowhere safer," he says dryly. "A lot's happened. The city isn't safe anymore, just this building. Lord Valdivian's taken over the whole place."
"Oh, god," you raise your hand to your mouth.
"Hey," Dante's voice softens. "You got here. You're alright. Let's get all of you upstairs."
You give him a shaky smile.
Eddie opens the back of the van where Volt is still asleep. You remember how long he slept after the fire that burned your house. Now that he's destroyed the entire S.U.P.E.R. facility, you wouldn't be surprised if he slept for a week. You feel like you could sleep for a week.
You and Eddie position yourselves on either side of him. Eddie strokes his hair gently.
"Wake up, love," he says. "We're safe. We made it."
At the sound of Eddie's voice he blinks slowly, looking between the two of you. He lets you help him to his feet and, together, you follow Dante through the maintenance door and up into the building.
Dante's right that the three of you are swarmed as soon as you reach one of the higher levels. You can't even tell who's hugging you, just that you're surrounded by people who love you.
"Oh my god, what happened?" Kopi asks. "Is your nose broken?"
You reach out for Volt and lean against him for support.
"Yeah," you say quietly, but thankfully Dante jumps in.
"We'll talk after they rest," he tells everyone. "Maggie, do you know where there's room?"
"On it!" she says, leading you down a hallway that looks like it used to be used for offices. You're relieved to see that the door she stops at looks nothing like the doors to where you and Volt were held.
"We were able to bring mattresses from a warehouse nearby but no bed frames, so it's not the most comfortable, but it's better than nothing," she explains, opening the door to show a square room just barely bigger than the mattress, with a bulletin board hung on the wall and brown packaging paper taped over the windows.
"It's perfect," you say, exhaustion setting in at the sight of somewhere to sleep.
"Good. Umm…" she looks up at you through her round glasses. "I'm really glad you're safe."
She hugs you briefly, and then you're left alone with Eddie and Volt.
Volt wraps his arms around Eddie and pulls him down onto the bare mattress. He holds his back against his chest and you can't help but to stare at how perfectly they fit together.
"C'mere, live wire," Volt murmurs, extending a hand towards you.
You take it and lower yourself down next to Eddie. He immediately moves his arms around your waist and you feel yourself drawn to him like you're free falling in orbit. Your forehead resting against his; your fingers loosely intertwined with Volt's over Eddie's hip. In the space between Eddie's heartbeats you fall asleep.
You wake up and you feel like you're still unconscious, caught in the same dream you've been having every night since the ball.
Eddie.
Eddie.
His lips, his sighs, his breath hot against your skin. The muscles of his chest, his shoulders; the hair on his forearms, the stubble on his chin. His hands on the soft skin of your stomach. The weight of his leg falling over yours.
He's looking at you the way he looks at Volt. Like he can rest now that he sees you.
"Hi," he says, a smile growing across his face.
"Hi," you say back, and then you kiss him.
His mouth is gentle yet insistent, his lips glued to yours, and you feel like you could melt into him, your bodies fusing together until you don't know where you end and he begins. Volt's hand travels up your arm to your shoulder, your neck, his fingers in your hair. You break away from Eddie just long enough to watch Volt press kisses into his neck, until Eddie pulls you back to him.
His hands travel up your sides as if he can't get enough of the feeling of your body under them. You nip at his lower lip, and tug at his shirt, Volt's hands joining yours in pulling it up and over his head. Once his shirt is gone, Volt tilts his head to kiss him. Your lips linger at the hollow of Eddie's throat and the blood in his veins pulses against you as if his heart itself is kissing you the only way it can.
"Fuck, I need you," Eddie mutters into Volt's mouth, reaching at his shirt, which Volt eagerly removes before they both turn on you.
You sit upright, kneeling with your legs on either side of Eddie's legs, his hands holding your waist and Volt laying on his side, one hand resting on your thigh and the other tangled in Eddie's hair. You lift your shirt over your head and let it fall beside the mattress. Eddie lets out a whimper that sounds almost like a moan at the sight of you, and turns his head to the side, blushing. You laugh and lower yourself back over him, needing the feeling of his skin against yours, undeniable proof that he's here, that he's real, that you're together—really together, you and Volt and Eddie finally here in between you where you've been missing him for so long.
Your fingers brush against Volt's underneath the waistband of Eddie's pants. He laughs softly at the fumbling contact and kisses you, your lips meeting above Eddie, moving in unison the way you've grown used to over the past weeks, but now there's no hesitation, no bittersweetness to the taste of his lips.
You undress Eddie the rest of the way together before both moving in to kiss his face, his jaw. You bury your face into the crook of his neck, reveling in the scent of his skin, before his fingers at your hips grow too demanding for you to ignore, and you shift yourself so that your pants can slide down, kicking them off at the ankles. Volt, next to you, is now equally bare, and there's nothing but lust in your touch as you reach for him and come together over Eddie until there is no space between the three of you, just your bodies closer, closer, closer.
You fuck again in the showers—apparently the building had contained a gym at some point, not that you're especially concerned with its history right now—and you have to clean yourselves again after Eddie spills over into your hand, Volt coming against his stomach, your thighs dripping with your own pleasure. Showering with Volt feels familiar. Showering with Volt and Eddie feels right.
Eventually you step out of the water and dry off, changing into clean clothes. You haven't worn anything but the scrubs that S.U.P.E.R. provided in so long. You feel like a real person in jeans and a t-shirt, like you belong to yourself again.
"You look good," Eddie says when he sees you in the outfit. "You look—"
You cut him off with a kiss. You can't hear him say anything about your appearance referencing the past, not now. After Lord Valdivian is defeated, after the city is safe, then you'll let yourself fall apart. You'll let him put you back together.
"You're beautiful," he says, once you've finally let him go. He presses a soft kiss to the bridge of your nose where it's still bent. Where it will always be bent.
"You really are," Volt says, circling an arm around your waist and kissing the top of your head.
"Love you both, too," you mutter, trying and failing to hide your blush.
Eddie chuckles and holds you close to his side as you all walk across the building to regroup with your friends and figure out what the hell's been going on in your absence.
The building lobby is crowded with dozens of people, all talking and moving around at once. Volt's hand tightens on your waist and you can tell that he's just as overwhelmed and set on edge by the commotion as you are. Thankfully, Eddie's able to spot Winnifred standing and talking with a tall, elegant woman, and he guides you and Volt towards them. As you get closer, you see the rest of your friends sitting near them on low couches around a circular table with food on it.
You sit, and before anyone can say anything to you, Volt fills up a plate for you, making sure that you're all set and have taken a few bites before he gets anything for himself. Eddie looks at you inquisitively. You give him a small smile and shake your head slightly. He nods, a hint of concern still in his eyes, and places his hand on your knee. It's a comfortingly solid weight. You focus on it as Winnifred concludes her conversation and the other woman turns to face the three of you.
"Celia Stipple, Mayor of Coolsville," she introduces herself. "I understand that you've all been through a lot. You escaped from Lord Valdivian?"
You and Volt look at Eddie in unison.
"From S.U.P.E.R., actually," he says. "The compound northeast of here."
"The prison?" Celia raises an eyebrow. "I thought that had been shut down, unless someone requisitioned the facilities specifically."
"The…agent who held us," Eddie says. "He was likely acting outside of S.U.P.E.R.'s jurisdiction for his own gain. It wouldn't surprise me if he had requested access to it and the support of S.U.P.E.R.'s resources, and someone had approved it without looking into what he was actually doing. It doesn't matter. He's dead now."
When Celia doesn't ask any follow-up questions, he asks the most important question. "Dante said the city isn't safe. What happened?"
"After the attack on the masquerade ball, you two and an unidentified other man were the ones taken. The rest of us all woke up where we had been knocked out by the gas. I immediately went up to the offices to call for S.U.P.E.R.'s aid, but no one picked up on their end. That's where I ran into your friends, who had the idea that the intruder may have been trying to access the offices, but they were unable to catch them."
So they hadn't been caught snooping. That's good, at least.
Celia continues. "After confirming that the intruder wasn't breaking into the offices, we returned to the main hall to find you missing, and Volt set off immediately. The rest of us pooled our information and began building a plan to keep everyone safe in the event of an upcoming attack from Lord Valdivian. At the time, we assumed that the intruder at the ball was working for him, but since he was from S.U.P.E.R., I'm not sure why he was there."
"He wanted me," Eddie explains. There's a hitch in his throat. "And he took her to get to me. Not sure about whoever the third guy was that you said was taken too."
"Hold on," you say, putting the pieces together. "Penelope, pass me paper and a pen?"
You draw a rough sketch of the man that your power recognized as an object.
"Was this the other person who was taken?" you ask.
Celia examines the drawing. "Yes, that lines up with the security footage we have. Do you know him?"
"I was dancing with him when the gas was released," you say, your voice steady despite the thoughts racing through your mind. "He probably took him because he thought he knew me and Eddie, or something like that."
You can feel the questions coming off of Volt and Eddie, but they'll have to wait. You aren't entirely sure what you've figured out, but it's something that you'd rather discuss with them in private.
Celia nods, accepting your explanation. "Either way, we were able to evacuate most of the city and set up an emergency protocol for everyone else, so when the Valdivians moved in, the remaining superheroes, and some who came in from the neighboring cities to help, were able to secure this building as well as some of the underground metro tunnels. They came in all at once, a massive force from all sides, and started killing anyone they saw out on the streets. Almost everyone made it to safety."
The 'almost' lingers in the air.
"The van you arrived in will be extremely helpful," Celia continues. "If we can use that to blend it, it could give us an opening to strike back."
"It's unmarked," you say. "They all are. And none of them seem to communicate, either. Have you found anything about that? I thought the Valdivians always had their family crest or something on their supplies."
"We've noticed that too," Celia says. "No one's figured out why they're all unmarked, but one of the superheroes who answered our call for aid is a hacker, and they've been working to figure out how they're communicating."
"A hacker?" you ask, barely allowing yourself to hope. "Not—Mac?"
"You know them?"
"We grew up together," you say, delighted to see your childhood friend again, then quickly losing your excitement when you realize that they've put themselves in danger by coming here.
"They're working to monitor communications right now," she says. "But they should be done with their shift in a few hours, if you want to see them then. They've been invaluable. All of the superheroes have. And you three. I can't imagine what you've gone through, and then coming back to the city like this."
"It's a lot to take in," Eddie says. "We'll do whatever we can to help. But—I'm not putting either of them in danger. We stay together. No matter what."
"I understand," Celia says. Her expression seems to soften at Eddie's protectiveness. She must feel the same way about the entire city, you think. "Go rest. I'll let you know if we find anything for you."
You head back to your makeshift room to wait in a more quiet place until you can meet with Mac. Besides, you want to run your theory by Volt and Eddie where no one else can hear you.
Once you're inside, the door locked behind you, Eddie takes hold of your face, cupping your cheeks in his hands.
"Just then, with the food…"
You answer him before he can even finish his question.
"He starved me," you say quietly.
Eddie's eyes blaze with anger.
"It's okay, Eds," you say. "He's dead. We're safe."
"His doppelgänger may not be."
"What?" you almost shriek. "But—Volt destroyed the building. There's no way it survived."
"It's a shapeshifter," Eddie shrugs. "It could've become a fly, or a cockroach, or a microbe waiting until the smoke cleared."
"It's that powerful?" you ask, surprised. "I didn't think shapeshifters could alter their form to that degree."
"It's amplified," Eddie says. "It could become anything."
"They're like me, aren't they?" Volt asks. His voice sounds pensive and his stare seems to be miles away, pondering something only he can see.
"What, the doppelgänger?" Eddie considers the question. "I guess so, but— Volt, you're nothing like that thing. Just because you were—created the same way. That doesn't mean anything."
You take Volt's hands in yours, but he doesn't meet your gaze.
"Volt," you plead. "Eddie's right. You're good. There's nothing monstrous about you."
"It doesn't matter either way," Volt says, still avoiding you. "We have bigger problems. More importantly, I know how we can defeat the Valdivians."
You stare at him in shock. "What do you mean?"
He sighs, then turns to focus on Eddie.
"I think you're right," he says. "David Most is alive. He's amplified. And he's mind controlling all of them."
"That's impossible," Eddie says, shaking his head. "No, no, Volt, you're wrong. He can't be amplified. True amplification—increasing someone's own powers—is impossible."
"But then—" you try to make sense of his words. "What was your research about?"
"Theoretically, the xenobiolectric impulses can be moved into or out of a person, but it's a process of transference, not direct amplification or removal. Back then, I only cared about removing them from myself, so I neglected to study the other end of the spectrum until… Until this second time. That damn truthteller was always there, making sure that I was working on amplification and moving xenobiolectric impulses into someone, not out.
"But as I rebuilt the machine and began running tests, I started to see that it was impossible. It's— Think of it like you're a hill, and the height of the peak represents the strength of your xenobiolectric impulses: how powerful you are. Then imagine two hills on either side of you, both taller than your hill. If you put a ball at the top of your hill and gave it a push, it'd have enough momentum to travel away from you and up to the peak of the next hill. Whether you push it forwards or backwards, it doesn't matter. It's still leaving you and making someone else stronger.
"I still don't know why a new person is created, instead of the impulses moving into an existing body, but even when I was testing with extremely low amounts of power, I couldn't get them to transfer between two people, or to somehow increase in power within one person. Even if David Most is alive, he wouldn't be able to control this many people."
"Unless he did amplify himself, and whoever was created from that process is the one controlling them," Volt says. "If I have stronger electricity than you, and the doppelgänger can shapeshift in more extreme ways than Jon Wick, anyone created from David Most could control a whole army."
"I suppose that makes sense," Eddie says, the color draining from his face. "Why would it be working for Lord Valdivian, though?"
Your imagination runs wild at the thought of something even more powerful than David Most, a hivemind hellbent on destruction.
"It's not," you realize, putting more of the pieces together. "We haven't actually found anything to connect any of them to Lord Valdivian. The unmarked vans— the plain uniforms— There's no reason why it couldn't have moved its own army into the buildings abandoned by the Valdivians. The factory, the academy. I think that it's pretending to be Lord Valdivian so we won't see the true threat. That's why— That's why it was after me. The other man at the ball that Jon Wick kidnapped along with us. He must have been part of it. He was… I don't know what he was, exactly, but my power sensed him as an object. It felt like he was moving out of someone else's volition. I'm the only one who'd be able to tell he wasn't controlling himself. I'm the only one who could uncover it. Volt, is that why—?" You can't bring yourself to finish the sentence. "How long have you known?"
"I've suspected ever since the academy," Volt says quietly. "The most reasonable explanation for them acting like a single mind was that they were being controlled by a single mind. All we need to do to stop them is destroy the xenobiolectric impulses at the source. Eddie, if you could build a machine to amplify them, surely you could build one to reverse the process. I may not fully understand your research, but it seems like you should be able to build a machine that could release a shockwave that would reset everything to its natural, unamplified state. That could stop the mind controller. That could save everyone."
Eddie swings away harshly and leans his forehead against the wall, his whole body tense. When he turns back around, his eyes look bloodshot, like he's holding back tears, and his expression is pained.
"Don't ask me to do that, Volt," he snarls. "Anything but that."
"But it's possible?" Volt asks.
"Not for me," Eddie's voice breaks. "Not for me."
That's when it sinks in for you—if the process was reversed, all of the amplifications would be destroyed. David Most's mind controller, Jon Wick's shapeshifting doppelgänger—
And Volt.
Notes:
tears running down your thighs amiright??!?!?! (thank u Sabrina for the absolute bangers) I felt like the reunion sex was very necessary!!! especially now that Volt's shared his theory on the mind control and why he's been convinced that he'll need to die as part of destroying all of the amplifications… is he right? would destroying all of the amplifications destroy Volt as well? will Eddie and our girl find another solution? (or given that there is no way I'm letting Volt die, what other solution will they find???)
also just finished kinktober work #3! we are now at a 2:1 smutty:scary ratio which is better than I thought I would be doing - I'm quite proud of the scary one (even though it does Not fit for kinktober and is just 800 words of some fucked up horror, so if anyone wants to read that now lmk I lowkey want to just post it now as its own thing bc it's not at all kinky just nasty and also Eddie gets off) - it still remains to be seen whether the smutty ones are actually good smut lol but at least they aren't horror!
Chapter 18: ch17
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
"Live wire," Volt says, begging you.
"You don't get to call me that if you're planning on making Eddie kill you on the off chance it'll stop Lord Valdivian, or whoever it is behind this."
You can't look at him. You had thought—even with his fatalism, you had thought that it had been out of concern for Eddie. That Volt would take a bullet for him. Hand himself in so Eddie could go free. Not—this. A half baked plan made of speculations and a martyrdom complex.
Even if you agree with some of his speculations.
"I don't even know if it would be possible to reset all of the amplifications," Eddie says. He seems distant, like he's dissociated himself as far away from the possibility of Volt's death as possible, off to some plane where no one can reach him.
"But you'll try?" Volt asks.
"No," Eddie gathers Volt in his arms, pulling his head down into his shoulder, one hand tangled in Volt's electric hair, the other fisted in his shirt. "No, Volt, I can't lose you, love, I— I can't be alone again."
Volt looks at you over Eddie's shoulders and you hate that you ever met him, that you now know him well enough to know what he's asking silently, that he trusts you enough that he could die content knowing that you'd be able to take care of Eddie.
You hate it.
But you—
You nod at him.
Volt nods back and sinks into Eddie's embrace. He wraps his arms around him, holding your gaze just as tightly as he holds Eddie. Those blank white eyes… You can't look away.
"Eddie's right," you say, and it feels as though someone else is speaking through your mouth. "We don't even know if that's possible, or if it would work even if it was. We'll find another way."
You press yourself against Eddie's back and kiss the area where his jaw meets his neck.
"We'll find another way," Volt repeats, and from the way Eddie exhales and kisses Volt's hair, you think he actually believes him.
It's easy to pretend that everything's going to be alright when you see Mac. You both squeal when you see each other and you run up to hug them.
"Ahhh!" they exclaim, grinning at you. "It's so good to see you!"
"It's been so long!" you say. "I've missed you!"
You introduce Eddie and Volt, and Mac gestures for you to follow them down the hallway into a small room that's overflowing with different screens and monitors.
"I heard you were interested in S.U.P.E.R.," they say. "I could get into their systems, if you want to take a look?"
You exchange a look with Volt and Eddie. You aren't sure that you're ready to confront the truth about what S.U.P.E.R. is really doing, or what Jon Wick was up to, acting as an individual outside of S.U.P.E.R.'s jurisdiction. Which scenario is worse? That S.U.P.E.R. is corrupt, or that they've allowed corruption to fester? Not that there's much of a difference between the two.
"Yeah," you say. Volt takes your hand and squeezes it comfortingly. "Anything you can find."
"Got it," Mac says. They pull their wheelchair up to the keyboard and begin typing. You're amazed at how fast their fingers fly over the keys. When you were both learning how to use your powers together growing up, they described the difference between using their power and normal coding as if they could see not only the intent behind the original programmer's code, but all of the connections and layers at once, like they could see the logic play out for any and all given scenarios.
"There," Eddie points over your shoulder at a small window showing a security feed.
Mac enlarges it to fill an entire monitor, and you see Jon Wick walking through the long, sterile, white halls of the prison where you and Volt were held initially. You hold on to Volt tighter.
And then you see who's walking behind Jon Wick, not restrained in any way but still escorted by several S.U.P.E.R. guards.
"That's him!" you gasp. "The man from the ball."
Eddie leans in closer. "He looks almost familiar. Not just because I must have seen him at the ball, but like I've seen him somewhere else as well. I couldn't tell you where, though. Can you follow them, Mac?"
They press a few more keys, and the view shifts to another security camera at a different angle.
Jon Wick opens the door to one of the cells. The man smiles and says something to him, but the security camera is only picking up video, not audio, so you don't know what it is. He walks into the cell.
You hold your breath, waiting for an immediate dramatic reaction, but he just pauses. Or, maybe freezes is a better word.
Mac switches to a camera angle within the cell to see the man's face. He doesn't blink. His chest doesn't rise and fall. It's as if all of the life has gone out of him.
And then he collapses.
His muscles give out like a tower of blocks with the base removed, all of them falling at once. Jon Wick and the S.U.P.E.R. guards rush into the cell, surrounding him and blocking him from view, but they quickly jump back and out of the cell, slamming the door shut behind them.
It's no surprise why.
The body wrinkles and contorts as if something is eating it alive, piece by piece, burrowing through the guts, traveling the body's pathways to consume the liver, the spleen, the lungs. It shrinks into itself, rapidly, unevenly. The bones themselves are warped and the flesh atop them spirals grotesquely to fit the now-deformed skeleton, itself diminishing through the femur, now the scapula, now the left part of the skull caved in.
A black spot appears on the foot, the clothes and shoes now disintegrated too, fibers become dust in the air, the spot growing out of the vestigial remainders of webbing between the third and fourth toe. It shines green in the light, bubbling up and wriggling out, spreading across the toes, the knuckles, the spindly bones of the foot. Vapors rise through the air.
It looks like liquid; it looks like thousands of millipedes, of strings of many-legged creatures crawling over and under and through in a writhing mass; it looks like mold reaching its tendrils towards a food source, spores shooting into the unknown searching for purchase on inert flesh.
Another spot grows on the elbow; it emerges from the elbow. One on the leg, the right thigh where it creases against the hip, then another on the ribcage, the throat, the eye, still glassy, now mirrored in black and green. They grow, expand, eat, fall in on themselves like collapsing sinkholes only to rise again throughout the rest of the body, fountains spurting upwards.
For one horrible moment the entire corpse is covered and it almost seems as though it'll stand up, the body remade of shifting viscous sands, alive, until it caves in and devours itself, a stain on the white floor, and then nothing.
You stare at the screen.
Time only reasserts itself when Volt lets go of you and you flounder, unmoored, legs no longer balanced without his hand a necessary support. Eddie catches you and you hold on to each other, his face reflecting the horror on your own.
What was that?
Volt reaches out as if he's in a trance, his fingers floating in front of the monitor. His head tilts to the side and his lips part slightly.
"I—I don't know what happened," Mac says. They press a few keys as if what you all just saw was due to a technical error and could be troubleshooted away. The monitor turns off, but you can't put it out of sight, out of mind.
Volt's reflection gazes back at him through the black screen. His fingers move to his cheek, his lips, his jaw, as if he's Narcissus at his pond, entirely absorbed in his own image.
"Can you give us a minute?" you ask.
Mac nods and leaves, but Eddie stays where he is until you look sheepishly at him and then at the door.
He raises an eyebrow. "Is everything okay?"
You nod. You don't trust your voice to speak right now. You don't trust that Eddie won't see straight through any lie you tell him.
"Please?" you add quietly.
"I'll be in our room," he says. You can see the pain in his eyes that you're leaving him out of this, but this is a conversation that you need to have with Volt alone.
Eddie closes the door behind him.
Once he's gone, you turn to look at Volt, who's been standing in place looking at the now-blank monitor screen the whole time, as if he was frozen in position.
"Volt?" you ask softly.
He doesn't move.
You reach up to touch his jaw, and he tilts his head down to kiss your palm.
"You can't do this," you say, trying to keep the tears out of your voice. How can he be so tender and yet so distant? "Volt, love, you can't do this to Eddie."
That gets his attention. He turns to fully face you, cloudy white eyes locked onto yours.
"This… insistence on self-sacrifice," you say. "You can't keep telling Eddie that you're going to die. Do you really think he's going to be able to live without you just because I'm here now?"
"He'll have to," Volt says.
"No," you insist. "He won't. To put it bluntly, this plan of yours is fucking stupid, Volt. You can't seriously think that instead of, oh, I don't know, organizing all of the superheroes here to fight back, our only option is to build a machine that might not even be possible to build, in order to destroy an amplified mind reader who might not even exist, created from someone who died a decade ago? That's insane."
"It can be built," he says. "I read through as much of Eddie's research as I could understand, trying to figure out what I was, and a complete reset of the xenobiolectric impulses is theoretically possible. I may not understand all of the engineering, but I do understand the theory. It can be done."
"How?"
"Eddie describes it like we're all hills with the xenobiolectric impulses balanced precariously on top. If you push a very specific point by a very specific amount, you can move the impulses from one person to another. But if instead you use more energy and don't direct it towards an individual, it'll affect everything. Theoretically, it'll send out a shockwave that will dislodge all of the xenobiolectric impulses, and then, once it passes, everything will settle back down into its original configuration. All of the amplifications gone. Reset."
It makes sense.
It almost makes sense.
You'll take Volt's word for the physics behind the reset, but something about the outcomes doesn't add up, because he lived without the xenobiolectric impulses. For weeks! You don't know why or how the other man died when he was thrown into the power-repressing cell, but without a shadow of a doubt, Volt survived losing his power. If he could do it once, he could do it again.
And if Volt's theory is right, that David Most amplified himself and the resulting creature is controlling everyone, then it's still out there. The other man was likely being mind controlled, but he wasn't the amplification himself. The mind controller could've created some sort of self-destruct in case it ever lost contact with one of its minions. You blink your eyes and are overwhelmed by the image of the decay ravaging him from the inside out and imagine all of the bacteria in his body being given one final command: destroy.
You wonder what happened to the xenobiolectric impulses when your powers were repressed. Were they still there, laying dormant, or were they ripped from your body, trapped on the outside, trying to find a way back in?
How would the reset be different?
You play through the consequences in your mind. Eddie builds the machine and pulls the lever to reset the xenobiolectric impulses. They return to their original positions: David Most, if he's still alive, Jon Wick, if he's still alive, and Eddie. What happens to the amplifications? They lose their power, obviously, but what about their bodies? You can't use the decayed man for reference—he wasn't an amplification, he was… something else. What was he?
A mystery for another time. It doesn't matter. Right now, your only data point is Volt. Without his power, he was physically weakened, but it passed through him like a sudden fever that burns itself out but leaves the victim alive. So he'd survive.
Except that the reset isn't just transferring Volt's power back to Eddie. It's completely undoing all of the manipulations, shaking out the universe and letting it settle back into its natural state. To go back to Eddie's metaphor, it isn't moving the ball from Volt's hill to Eddie's. The whole landscape is being flattened and then snapping back into shape as it was before anything was changed. Erasing Volt entirely.
"You need to both be there," you say. "You and Eddie. The xenobiolectric impulses can transfer, right? They've already transferred between you. Right after the reset, you need to hook yourselves up and initiate the transfer between the two of you. I think— The worst of it didn't set in for a while after you lost your powers. Even if the reset speeds up that process, I think if you do it immediately afterwards then you'll survive."
"And if it doesn't work like that?" Volt asks.
You look him squarely in the eyes. "Then your plan is already in motion. We cause the reset, the other amplifications and—the amplifications are destroyed, and Eddie and—we walk away. The city is saved."
"I hope you're right," he says. "I don't— I don't want to leave you."
You close the space between you, holding on to him and trying to convince yourself that you won't look back on this as another number lower on a countdown.
You and Volt are both visibly more relaxed when Eddie opens the door to let you in. He still looks concerned, but you grin at him as you enter and plant a kiss on his cheek.
"We have a plan!" you say. You bury any doubts deep within so that all he sees is your confidence.
"Am I going to like this one better than the last?" he asks, raising an eyebrow.
"Well, it doesn't involve me dying," Volt says, maybe a little too breezily given how ready he was to sacrifice himself barely an hour ago, but at least it gets Eddie to lighten up and listen to you.
"Good," he says, letting out a small laugh and taking Volt's hand.
"We will need you to build another one of your machines, though," you say.
"Why? And where are we getting the materials for this?" he asks. "Even with all of S.U.P.E.R.'s resources at my fingertips, it still took me around two weeks to construct it. Trying to build it here would be nearly impossible, especially when I don't even know if I'd be able to find all of the materials I need and smuggle them in without everyone being discovered."
You exchange a worried look with Volt. You hadn't even considered the logistics of building the machine in the first place.
"That does complicate things," Volt says.
"The idea was that we'd do the reset, then you and Volt would immediately set up a transfer of xenobiolectric impulses between yourselves, so that he'd be able to survive while the other amplifications were destroyed in the reset."
"Huh," Eddie muses. He looks at you, impressed. "That should work."
"The only problem is that we don't have a machine built to do it, so unless we can figure out that step, we're back to square one," you sigh.
The three of you look between each other, stumped by this roadblock.
"What if we didn't need to build it?" Eddie says suddenly.
"What do you mean?" Volt asks.
Eddie starts pacing around the small room, running one hand through his hair and tugging at it as if he'll be able to pull his thoughts straight out of his brain that way.
"If we're right that David Most amplified himself and is working for Lord Valdivian to control everyone, then he must've had a machine to amplify himself, right? It couldn't have been the first one I built, since that was destroyed, so he must have another machine. Volt, do you think—?"
"When Lord Valdivian captured me?" Volt continues Eddie's train of thought. "That would've been when he got the information. He must've pieced the rest of it together and built the machine."
"It'd make sense if he built it there," Eddie says. "And I can't imagine him destroying it. So if we could break back into that facility and alter it for the reset, we wouldn't need to build anything ourselves."
"Oh, is that all?" you ask sarcastically. "Sounds easy enough."
Eddie laughs, looking genuinely happy for the first time since you were reunited.
"Nothing we can't handle," he says. "I'd bet on us against anyone."
Celia will never approve of this plan. Good thing you have enough friends to help you gather supplies and make your way out of the safehouse without her discovering you.
Kopi and Abel find you large backpacks and fill them with rations, flashlights, sleeping rolls, and medical supplies.
River adds a gun for Eddie and a knife for you. She shows you how to use it. You aren't completely confident in your skills, but it's the best you're going to get.
Maggie and Penelope plot a course through the metro tunnels into the old mines, where Eddie says that he can navigate the rest of the way.
Winnifred and Dante trade their shifts on guard duty to make sure that they're the only people assigned to your route.
Mac watches the security cameras, replacing them with a loop so that anyone checking the footage won't see where you've gone.
You leave in the middle of the night. You're traveling underground. The sunlight won't matter anyways. Even Eddie accepts Winnifred and Dante's hugs on the way out, passing through a maintenance door in the basement and down the tunnel until you reach the edge of the area that the heroes have been patrolling.
It's all unknown from here. You hold onto Winnifred a moment longer, then let her go and head into the darkness.
Eddie holds a flashlight; you hold Volt's hand. You walk along the maintenance platform on the edge of the tunnel. The trains have all been shut down, but the rails look cavernously deep. You move cautiously. Quietly. Everyone's told you that the tunnels are empty and therefore safe, but you feel like you can sense the mind-controlled soldiers moving above, never stopping, never slowing, their reach penetrating closer and closer to you, Volt, and Eddie, three miniscule specks trapped within a labyrinth, already within the beast's grasp, toying with you before your inevitable end.
You press closer to Volt as Eddie leads you deeper, his flashlight swinging from side to side like the beam of a lighthouse guiding your ships through a narrow, oppressive waterway, as if you're Elric passing through the sea maze to Imrryr and the horrors within.
The platforms are fewer and further in between. They exist in states of increasing disrepair, a series of dioramas illustrating urban decay, older and older architecture. Tiling, vaulted ceilings, concrete with bare pipes exposed. Eddie pauses to consult the map before stepping off of the maintenance pathway onto the platform that passengers must have once used to board their trains, although it seems like you must be the first people to set foot here in decades.
You step past the ticket booths, down beyond a sign indicating a bus terminal, a weak shaft of light coming from the only staircase you've seen since you descended from the safe house, towards the very end of the station where an unobtrusive tunnel leads even deeper underneath the earth.
"The subway was built during the last few years that the mines were operational," Eddie whispers. "This was used as an additional entrance."
The darkness seems unending.
You push onwards. The tunnel towards the mines turns from tile flooring to wood to dirt under your shoes. Wooden planks framing the walls, the ceilings, pushing against the packed dirt to hold the way open. You don't want to look and see where they've rotted away, where the nails have rusted and come loose. You focus on putting one foot in front of the other. Your nails dig half moons into the back of Volt's hand.
Eddie stops suddenly and Volt tugs on you to stop you from crashing into him.
"What is it?" you ask. Even though you're speaking quietly, you think you can hear your words echo down the tunnel in front of you, announcing your presence. You've heard of avalanches caused by loud noises, the force of the sound waves enough to dislodge the snow and send it barreling down the mountainside, burying anyone in the way underneath the densely packed, immovable whiteness. How much sound would you need to produce to cause the same effect on the dirt around you now?
"This is where the map ends," Eddie says. He folds it up and puts it in his backpack.
You wait for him to explain what the plan is now, but he just sets off again. You and Volt follow him in silence, footsteps deafened, inaudible. The light of Volt's hair is nothing compared to the strength of Eddie's flashlight. You're as good as invisible to him, nothing more than his shadows, inextricably bound to him as he makes his way deeper and deeper.
Notes:
hi everyone so sorry this one took a while!! I finally finished training and started actually working so the new job anxiety's been kicking in :( I'm very grateful to have a full-time job where I can work remotely and since one of my coworkers from a previous job referred me I already know a few people so the anxiety isn't as bad as it could be, but I've still been spending my free time destressing instead of writing—so for anyone else dealing w anxiety rn, I'm right there with you, also as it turns out drinking water/exercising/eating well/not staring at computer screens all day helps!! we will get through this 💪
also I did post two oneshots in the meantime if either extreme of the dead dove/fluff spectrum sounds appealing to you (don't mind the self promo haha I just think they both turned out pretty good!) - updates for this fic may continue to be on the once-a-week schedule for now, but we're getting closer to the end so hopefully that'll just build up more tension/anticipation (maybe?) after this there's one more regular chapter then an interlude from the shape shifting doppelganger's perspective so get excited for that (if that sounds exciting to you lol it's very exciting for me to write!) Volt's pov is coming soon as well finally!!! my love!!!! I think it's pretty obvious to everyone I've talked with in the comments but I've completely fallen in love with the concept of his character over the course of writing this so I hope his chapter will be worth the wait (also we're going to save the day without sacrificing him! yay for the new plan!!!!)
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GhostPheonix7Xp on Chapter 1 Mon 28 Jul 2025 05:51AM UTC
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Last Edited Fri 08 Aug 2025 04:24PM UTC
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