Chapter Text
The only thing Lisa sees in the girl is death.
No name, no sense of who she is; just that she has powers and that's not enough to keep her alive, not enough for Coil to keep her alive anymore.
She looks at the girl and knows her lifespan is measured in weeks at best, days at worst, and the only thing Lisa can find in her empty brown eyes and the bruises that mottle too-pale skin is an almost-placid acceptance that, soon, things will end.
Coil sees the look on her face and even without her power she knows he's smiling under that damnable mask.
And he gauges her expression, sits behind his desk, lets the silence build until it twists at Lisa's gut-
He says seven words.
"How much is she worth to you?"
She pays his price. Bundles the girl and her tattered scrubs into her car, drives them back to her apartment.
She talks along the way, enough for two girls combined, bouncing phrases, words, letters of the alphabet off the girl in the passenger seat who couldn't even buckle her seatbelt.
Lisa calls her 'Tee,' even though the girl has the affect of El Capitan; Lisa's power says it's her name, or a part of it, and that'll have to do for now.
Tee won't eat.
Well, that's not the problem.
She will eat.
If Lisa tells her to.
And then she becomes this spindle-limbed starveling thing who eats and then stops when there's no more.
Wants to obey, her power supplies, and Lisa doesn't feel like finishing her dinner anymore.
She pushes it across the table to Tee. "Here, it's yours."
Tee stares at the two plates in front of her, one empty, one full.
Says nothing.
Does nothing.
Doesn't even look up at Lisa; avoiding eye contact, her power chimes, and she grits her teeth.
"I'm not hungry." The words come out with a savage little twist, something in her wanting to dig her words into Tee like fingernails and pinch until she gets some, any kind of reaction. "You eat it."
She helps Lisa do the dishes after.
Tee becomes Tay and Brian pulls Lisa aside with criticisms about focus and commitment and responsibility to the rest of the team.
She bites back words about honor among thieves.
She doesn't tell him about the dreams she has, where Tay is in the middle of a nightmare and she goes to wake her up and her eyes open and it's her own eyes looking up at her, hurting and wordless and terrified like one of Bitch's strays.
He knows something's pulling her apart, but not what. Not who.
Coil knows who's caused her to come undone, reminds her of it every time he calls and asks oh-so-pleasantly about her 'charity case.'
"It's important to remember other people's circumstances," he says, honeyed and pleasant. "What's the phrase? Today you, tomorrow me?"
She bites her lip until it bleeds and smiles with red hazing the crevices between her teeth.
She agrees to be good.
For her sake.
For Tay's sake.