Chapter Text
The garden of the Hebert house, whilst small, was large enough to host a small family meet up every year.
The smell of cooking meat filled the air, the faint sizzling was accompanied by conversation. Normally, conversation would be much louder, but this year, the garden was far emptier than normal.
With the recent death of Annette Hebert, neither Taylor's grandfather nor grandmother had bothered to attend. Normally, her mother would be in the middle of it all, keeping conversation going and greasing the social wheels... but now her mother was deep in the ground, never to again grace their home.
It was sad, that without her mother, her maternal grandparents had no desire to visit. Like, was Taylor so utterly worthless to them that she didn't matter?
Right now, she felt so numb to everything that she was able to passively observe her feelings in the same way a lighthouse keeper may note a passing ship.
Of course, she didn't know the full history behind the drama between her father and that side of the family, but didn't they love her at all!? Couldn't they put aside whatever bad history there was between them and her father just to say hello?
Instead, the only family who had come to visit were her uncle Keith and his husband, Arthur.
“Hmm... oh yeah, now that's how you cook a burger!”
In the tradition of middle-aged men across America, her father and her uncle's husband had put themselves in charge of the grill, and were discussing the meat and how well along it was coming along.
Arthur was trying really hard to distract her dad from things... he had always been a good man, keenly in touch with his feelings.
Her father wasn't sleeping, but something about the experience of entertaining and cooking was bringing out some small spark of himself again... even if it would soon die out.
Taylor had been trying to make him smile for ages without real success; was she doing something wrong?
She looked down at her paper plate.
The burger wasn't cooked properly; it was burned on the outside and kind of raw in the middle. Unbidden, Taylor remembered the words her mother had once said to her, just a few summers ago:
“The moment fire's involved, the men always suddenly seem to think they are Michelin star chefs.”
She'd said that with abundant wry humour as the two of them had watched her father absolutely massacre a sausage. It had ended up utterly black on one side and pink on the other, even as he proudly declared his prowess over the grill.
It was a nice memory, back when things were simple.
“Heyo, kiddo.”
Taylor glanced up to see her cncle Keithstanding beside her, a plate in hand. With a gentle smile on his lips, he took a seat beside her on the concrete step into the garden.
Across the garden, Arthur tried to flip a burger and promptly sent it careening to the ground.
“Hey Keith,” she said, ignoring the gastronomic massacre.
She'd never gotten used to thinking of him as an uncle; he had always just been 'Keith'.
“Hey, Taylor. How are you doing?” he asked.
She shrugged, not quite sure how to respond. What was she supposed to say to that?
'I feel hollow and empty all the time, everything feels like it's moving too quickly past me and like I can't grip it at all. I hate this. I just want everything to stop and slow down but there's no time and mum's already in the ground but I feel like she'll walk back in through the door at any moment. And school's bad and my best friend's been weird ever since I came back from camp a few weeks ago and I'm worried.'
She hoped it was just a phase, that maybe Emma had been distracted with family stuff, and she could go over for a sleepover some time soon.
A long moment passed without reply, before Keith reached out and put an arm around her shoulder and pulling her into a hug. His chest was solid; she'd forgotten just how good a hugger he was, and for a moment she tensed, just a little, before she gave him a squeeze back.
“It's okay, Taylor... if ever you need somebody to talk to, you know where I am, you know?” he said, voice soft.
“Yeah, I do...” she really did appreciate it... after the crash she'd ended up only talking to a few people, struggling to get over things. Keith had come by the day after it happened, grabbing the next flight from New York and taking a holiday from work to spend time with the two of them and help organise things.
Speaking of, she might as well try to keep the conversation going.
“... How's work been?”
That was a question adults liked to ask, right? It got them distracted for a bit.
Evidently, her ruse to move the topic on had not slipped past him, as Keith looked at her for a long, knowing second, before he chuckled.
“Same old, you'd be amazed how much paperwork you have to do when you work for the PRT!” he chuckled.
She didn't really know exactly what Keith did, she was pretty sure the term he had used was 'PRT agent.' But whenever she pressed for details, or asked what he did on a day-to-day basis, it was always boring things like meetings this, paperwork that.
“Is it fun? Or just... boring stuff?” she asked.
When she was young, she'd always wanted to be like Alexandria, but the more her uncle described PRT work, the more boring it sounded. She supposed that if you were a hero, you were more involved with the Protectorate side of things, right?
Heroes probably didn't do all their own paperwork, too busy doing... well, hero stuff.
“Oh, it's a mix of excitement and mundane things... oh, here, this one is actually cooked,” he said, pausing to slip her his burger, and giving her a faint wink.
She took a bite.
It was good. Better than the other patty on her plate
For the rest of the afternoon, she chatted with him about what it was like to work for the PRT, and just for a little while, she managed to forget a little about the sadnesses in her life.
Just over a year after that summer day, it all became too much.
The blue canvas of the sky above Taylor was growing darker as she flew higher and higher into the sky, far away from the ground and all of its problems.
She had no idea where she was going or exactly what she was doing, she couldn't see the ground below her due to the sea of clouds that carpeted the world.
The day she had chosen to break down utterly had been yet another horrible, dour day. The world was bleak, grey and sad, it was a day of realising that no matter what, she couldn't trust anybody even to help her at her most desperate.
But above the clouds, the world was beautiful, unblemished.
Her entire world right now was an infinite gradient of blue, stretching from so light it may well be white, to so dark that it could only be the darkness of the cosmos high above. A cosmos so far away from her... and yet, it was so close that with a moment's thought she could escape this world forever.
Great columns of clouds rose around her. They rose like waves in an ocean full of foam, frozen in time and just for her to enjoy.
It was all so beautiful, it was a heady distraction from the mental breakdown she had been experiencing just half an hour ago.
What was she doing?
She was running away like a coward.
She just couldn't face it all.
If she had stayed, then she would have been in so much trouble. They would have arrested her and thrown her in prison or something; she'd left Winslow in chaos, with alarms ringing and people screaming and shouting in fear. She wasn't even sure what it was that had finally pushed her over the edge, it was all such a blurred mess in her head.
Before she had really known what she was doing, she had transformed into pure light and blasted through the ceiling, so desperate to escape, to be away from the place where nobody cared.
And now, here she was.
She transformed her body back to normal and allowed herself to plummet through the air, dropping like a stone.
Gravity embraced her utterly, and she felt keenly that utterly destructive instinct and call to just keep falling forever, that call of the void one felt at the edge of a tall building. She fell for what felt like an eternity, watching as the clouds below grew closer by the second.
Before she hit the sea of clouds, she transformed back into pure light.
She could fly as fast as she needed, weaving between cloud formations so quickly that no living creature could match her.
She felt so... so... frustrated by everything!
By how hopeless everything was!
Of all the fates in the world, Taylor had gained Parahuman powers and promptly scuppered any opportunity she had to make a good impression. She'd destroyed federal property and ran, like a criminal. She should go back, she should do something, anything to make this situation right!
Instead, she screamed in irritation and pointed at a cloud, thrusting her hand out and transforming her finger into light, containing all the energy that just wanted to be directed somewhere.
She poured her everything into it before releasing it.
A radiant lance burst free from her finger, one that crossed the space of miles instantly. Within that column of white and gray cloud, the light burst in an explosion.
God... fucking... DAMMIT!
She set off again, anxious.
In a moment, she had crossed a continent.
She didn't understand her power on an intellectual level, but she had an innate sort of knowledge of it: transformation, manipulation, absorption of light. She could become it, concentrate it, direct it in herself.
Somewhere over the Midwest, Taylor floated, staring upwards into space.
The world above her was dark, yet clear. Right now, she wanted to be like that.
And so, she stared, hanging serenely like a suspended star.
Breathing was unnecessary like this, nor was anything but a state of pure thought, of empty, hollow reflection as she considered her options, and despaired at most of them.
“Taylor.”
She whipped around.
She hadn't heard somebody else joining her, and when she saw who it was—
“K-Keith?”
Indeed, her uncle was hovering a few metres away.
“But... You're... a Parahuman,” she said, dumbfounded.
“... I kind of forgot I am out of uniform right now,” he chuckled, face falling a little as if moderately embarrassed, before shrugging. “Well, out of costume I'm Keith Hebert, but in costume, well, I'm Legend.”
It was such an utterly forward statement that it took a few moments for her to work it out. The ever-vague descriptions of what he did for a job beyond being a PRT agent, the odd times that he could not make family gatherings or could not be reached with calls.
And in that time, Keith floated a few feet closer.
“Listen, Taylor, we need to discuss what has happened—” he began.
Gods, how surreal, to just be floating somewhere discussing the fact that she had powers, that Keith also had powers. It was all so much!
“I can't go back!” Perhaps it wasn't best to near shout at her uncle... at Legend, but she couldn't help it.
“Taylor, it's alright.”
“How's it alright!? I blew up my school, I... I don't want to go back!” the air around her was humming, her body was radiating light uncontrollably as if she were some sort of human lightbulb. She tried to lower the brightness, she wasn't sure how, it was just something she knew how to do, but then it just came back again.
Keith... Legend... floated forwards and pulled her a hug.
It was... the very last thing she had expected to come out of this entire situation.
She floated there, trying to digest everything she was feeling as those familiar arms came around her shoulders and squeezed her tight. Legend, Keith, smelled of that familiar cologne, which was just a little too sharp on the nostrils, but which she had come to associate with the man over the years.
And somehow, it smelled like home on some level.
No, not home.
Just... reassurance.
“What are you thinking, Taylor?”
That question had been posed to her by her father, hours after Legend talked her back into returning to Brockton Bay.
The man had not joined them; he was too busy handling the clean-up of what had gone down in Winslow, and Taylor was in her family home, wondering exactly what would happen next.
The arrival of Legend rather smoothed things, or at least, went a long way to reassuring people that everything was in hand and would be handled properly. After all, how often did a member of the Triumvirate come to visit Brockton Bay? Sure, a school building had been damaged, but it was nothing that money couldn't handle... right?
The problem was the number of people who knew the truth about her now.
She was a Parahuman.
Kids knew, they would tell others, the internet would probably be ablaze with people discussing it all—
“I don't know dad... I don't know what to do now,” she admitted, staring blankly at the opposite wall.
It wasn't like she could go back to her previous life now, and just going to Arcadia... that wouldn't work either, right?
The PRT would be able to do damage control, right? Like, surely random kids gaining powers happened in public spaces often enough for there to be procedures for all this?
Her father nodded in response to her statement.
The reveal that his brother was Legend didn't seem to have fazed the man a huge deal. Actually, he had been more concerned about her. It was rather heartwarming to see him push aside the strongest Blaster in the USA to focus on her, as if Legend were a troublesome puppy in the way.
“The Wards?”
She rubbed at her arm, fingers transforming to light for a moment out of nerves.
“I'm not sure about that...” she mumbled. “I don't think I'll get much of a choice about it, though... you know, I might be, like, needed to join the PRT to stay out of trouble.”
She hated the idea of not having much choice in the matter.
Still, having somebody like her Keith as one of the bigwigs of it all would help somewhat, right? She didn't like the idea of being like Emma, being one of those people who could just get away with things by batting her eyes and letting her father handle things...
But neither did she want to get in trouble for what she had done to Winslow.
Things would be alright with Keith to supervise her, right?