The Devil in the Glass City

by RiverDelta

Summary:

Lisa and Taylor have some fun with mind alteration. Taylor has a good time, and Lisa knows for a fact she wants it.

Notes:

• For Alotoaxolotls.

This was the day I'd lose everything. I was in my office at Protectorate Headquarters. The plaque on the door was in brass, and it read "Weaver". The walls were covered in beige wallpaper, and the carpets were 70s shag. I was standing in front of the Devil. I sat behind my desk, and she toyed with one of my pens, her neon purple suit standing out as she eyed me hungrily. "I could take your soul away," she said, adjusting her mask. She was blonde, she was elegant, she had hips and a chest and all the other things men valued in women. She put a gloved hand on my chest, standing above me. "I could erase your thoughts and I could make them go away for good," she said, a cocky smile on her perfect lips.

She wore matching lipstick, naturally. "Lisa," I began. "Do something else." The woman in front of me was "the Minimalist". I'd suggested "Autocrat", but PR hadn't liked it.

Lisa cracked an even wider smile. "I could help you. I know the way you think, because that's my power: I get into your mind, I identify thoughts, memories, or personality traits, and then I remove them from your head."

I wondered why I didn't know that already. We'd worked with each other for the last eighteen years, right? Why couldn't I remember what her power was? Somehow, I didn't feel any fear about what she was describing. According to her, she was a human Master, and that was typically a real problem. But this was Lisa. Lisa was trustworthy, I thought. At least, I couldn't think of any reasons why she would be duplicitous.

She put the pen down. She started to play with me, instead.

"I can see in your brain, it's like rummaging around a treasure chest in, you know, partial darkness," Lisa said. She had perfect green eyes, like emeralds, which was another thing men seemed to find appealing in her. Then again, those men never seemed to actually approach her. "I can see all that trauma in you," she said, under the halogen lights of my office. I was in my costume, a white, skintight bodysuit with a vampiric quality to it.

"I don't have any trauma," I lied, narrowing my eyes.

"Annette dies. Danny tries his best. You lose your best friend. You get thrown in a locker for a little. You're alienated. You get powers. You fight on the street. You kill. You win. You kill, over and over, and you always win. You're covered in blood. You shoot a baby. You break your convictions. You give yourself up, eventually, to be a member of the Protectorate: 'cut ties, I'm sorry'. You're miserable. You hate your job. You see me again, and I'm perfect."

I realized that Lisa must've been able to read minds at a short distance, as a secondary power. No wonder she used to pretend she was psychic back when we were Skitter and Reclaimer. No wonder she has never once lost anything. "You're a terrifying woman," I said.

"I know I am, but I know you like it even more," she says. "I'm not into all that gross sex shit, but for you I'd bump uglies. I just wanna, you know, help you with your trauma first," she said. "Because I'm so nice."

Protectorate ENE Headquarters was not a place for nice people: at least, not at the ranks that Lisa and I were at: and Lisa was one of the worst. I thought of the glazed-eye nobodies and remembered that Lisa made that old asshole I knew Sophia look absolutely tame. "I don't think fucking would be professional," I said.

"I mean, there's ways I can enjoy it, I just don't have a drive," Lisa added. "I can take your drive away too. I know Brian's not satisfying you," she said. "Is he just too small, or is it his insufferable personality?"

I stood up. "Lisa, no, stop." I started to pace back and forth in the combat boots that made up the bottoms of my costume. "You're playing with matches."

"I love playing with matches, it's kinda my thing," Lisa said, putting her hand on my hip. "And I wanna take your pain away, because I'm just that sweet."

I thought about my mother, texting, before her neck snapped like a twig in the hands of a bored child. I took a breath. "Okay. But just my mother's death," I said. "Nothing else."

"You'll want more, but sure," she said, and she removed one of her gloves. I did the same. "Shake my hand, Tay, okay?" she asked, and I held out my hand. We shook.

It was as if I'd been choking ever since it happened to me, and now it was gone. I didn't know what had happened, but I remembered being in pain: and now the pain was gone. Joy filled my body like a flamethrower into a crowded room full of people, and I looked at her with reverent awe. "You can do more?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah," she said, and I noticed her lips were slightly chapped under the makeup. "I can do so much more. How about that situation with the locker?"

"It wasn't the locker," I said, standing against the wall. "It was the abandonment, the feeling that people stopped caring about me: stopped treating me as human."

"Shake my hand," she said, holding out her hand. I shook. What else would I have done? The pain vanished. I wasn't sure why I used to hurt so much, but now I had no reason to. Whatever had happened had been undone, and my whole psyche had reformed to accommodate that. I started to giggle, actually giggle, and she hugged me. I embraced her lovingly. "Not into the gross romance shit?" I asked, chortling like a schoolgirl as we snuggled.

"I don't have a drive for it, but I can enjoy it when it happens," Lisa said, making a finger-gun at me before reaching up to touch the back of my neck.

She didn't ask, because I knew I would have said yes anyway, and that was the last moment I remembered killing Aster Anders in cold blood. Then, after that, was the last moment I remembered bullying Scion to death before Panacea fixed me. My crimes were wiping off of my heart like cheap sludge. I was becoming pure. "You could... You could start a cult," I mumbled.

"Would probably pay better than the Protectorate, huh?" Lisa said. "I'll consider it!"

I groaned, but then she took away my moral compunctions against starting cults. I wondered what was wrong with my head, until she didn't, and I felt her fingers against the back of my neck pressing down lovingly. It was like a massage.

"Maybe I'll take away your name, or your memories of being a villain, or your overly serious personality," Lisa continued. "Maybe I'll remove your favorite book, or your memories of your dad." Then, she did, and I forgot what I'd lost. I'd lost everything, I could feel it, and all I had was joy. I laughed, I smiled, I giggled, I tittered.

She gave me joy. She loved me, and snuggled me up against her suit, until my blushing, orgasmic face buried itself into the crook of her neck against the soft silk undershirt. "Take away more!" I said, and my use of big words, my aggressive way of speaking, and my ability to self-justify anything just vanished: I was being made aware of traits I had right before I lost them.

I cuddled deeper and deeper into her body, into her soul, as the finger on my neck kept taking stuff away. I didn't have a name. I didn't have a family. I didn't have a life. All I knew existed in this wooden, old-style police-issue office. She stole my memories of looking up at the sky.

Brian left my mind, never to come back.

So I sank further into her grip, in complete joy, as she started to tell me who I was.