Wake-up Call – Chapter 54

As much as I love my baby—

[Motorcycle rate of accidental injuries substantially higher than—]

As much as I love my baby, [which is a lot], I must admit that, compared to a car, there are some things for which it may not be perfectly suited—

[Inclement weather often linked to driving accidents that—]

Things such as carrying a backpack filled with twelve hardcover comic books.

[Ebooks—]

Fuck. Off.

[Lisa Wilbourn's antiquated consumption of media—]

Power, these are [Asterix] books. Asterix books I'm giving to a [child]. They are meant to be read spread open on top of a carpet while you lie on your belly. They are meant to be [experienced]. And I'm not giving Dinah a gosh darn gift card for—

[Lisa Wilbourn's avoidance of swear words while thinking about Dinah Alcott—]

… I'm cool big sister Lisa. I have responsibilities.

[Lisa Wilbourn's reticence to take responsibility for—]

Fuck. [Off.]

…

OK, sorry, little brother, but you're touching a nerve, you know?

[Parahuman abilities interfaces rarely suited to navigating delicate conversations—]

At this point, I don't even know whether you're apologizing or sassing me.

[Mathematician's answer—]

You magnificent troll. I guess it runs in the family.

Anyway, maybe shut up for a moment. One of the many, many things motorcycles are objectively superior to cars in is finding a parking spot, but I still—oh, there's one.

Well, wasn't that anticlimactic.

I slow down from my [perfectly legal and sensible speed, Tay], and climb on top of the ample sidewalk before twisting in a narrow circle to get between two inferior bikes. Then, because [Brockton], I chain down everything chainable.

… It may be a bit of an overreaction, seeing as I am in the rich part of town and two blocks away from the mayor's house. On the other hand: [Brockton].

So I take off my pink helmet (shut up), shake off my hair before tying it back into my ponytail with a blue scrunchie, and… Sigh.

OK. OK, I'm just going to visit the girl likely to be the most powerful precog in the entire world. A girl I've bonded with to worrying levels after she's latched on an emotional tie born of duress, extreme circumstances, and her likely seeing me as a savior figure. A girl I care about more than I should, given our limited interactions beyond the projected future mes she kept talking with while she was the captive of our mutual enslaver. A girl I keep thinking about as my little sister.

A girl I've been avoiding since Taylor was shot. For reasons.

… Damn it.

With a grunt, I adjust the straps of the heavy backpack and march to what I really hope won't turn into another Thinker battle.

I mean, I could use the practice, given that Victor was barely a warm-up…

[Lisa Wilbourn's humility—]

My dear Watson, I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician, all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate one's self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one's own powers.

[Pedantic quotations—]

Oh, shut up. You love it.

[Anthropomorphizing of—]

Love you too.

Also… Thanks for the distraction.

With a single deep breath, I push the doorbell button, then try to pretend I'm not anxiously waiting for my doom and or well-deserved scolding.

"Lisa?" Dinah's father says before a warm smile goes over his lips. "Please, do come in! Dinah's been waiting for you."

Oh, I'm sure she has.

"Hi, Mr. Alcott. She's in the living room, right?" I say as he steps aside, and I do that uncomfortable thing where you're coming inside while trying not to look like you're walking past your host.

"Yes. She just had a snack, but if you're hungry…?"

"Oh, no. Please, don't bother on my account." Ah, social niceties, how good you're at filling up empty interactions.

"If you say so, but nothing is ever a bother when it comes to…" he trails off.

Oh. Damn it.

[Trembling of lateral commissure in both eyes, smile weakening—]

This is the last thing I need right now.

"Mr. Alcott… It's all right. Dinah helped me as much as I helped her; you don't need to… You don't need to say anything," I tell him with a calm voice I don't feel as I lay a reassuring hand on his arm.

He… stares at it. At my hand. And I see guilt flash through him, the guilt that this was the hand that saved his daughter and not his own, the guilt that he could do nothing but wait and grieve.

It's the guilt of a good man.

I almost hate him for it.

"Right… Right. I'm sorry, Lisa, I still… Don't worry about it; you've got more important things to do than play therapist with an old man, don't you?" he says with a rueful chuckle.

And I…

Slap the back of his head.

"Hey!" he yells, more out of surprise than anything, as he rubs his stinging scalp.

"None of that. You went through something incredibly traumatic, and comparing your problems to Dinah's won't do any of you any favors. You [need] help, [everybody] would, and God help [me], if the next time I see you there isn't a therapist's appointment on your schedule—"

"OK! OK! No need to go full supervillain on me!"

"I'm not kidding! You need to be in a good place so that you can help Dinah, you hear me? If you don't do it for you, do it for [her."]

His lips thin as he looks into my eyes with—

[Perceived emotional manipulation accepted as—]

Yeah. That.

"Right. I'll… I'll talk to my wife," he finally says. And then he smiles at me.

Except, this time, seeing the strain, the hint of sadness and regret… This time I can believe it.

I nod at him and, before the moment breaks and we're left anticlimactically reaching for some way to keep the conversation going, I walk toward the mayor's living room, where I'm greeted by a grumpy Dinah sitting on the sofa.

She's wearing a pale, creamy shirt that reaches down to her knees, low enough that I can't see what kind of shorts she's wearing, and the disparity of colors between her and the dark, reddish leather sofa strikes me as fully intentional as she's symmetrically sitting down between two cushions, the line in the backrest going straight over the crown of her head as she glares at me.

Huh. I guess I'm not the only one who obsesses over petty details before a confrontation.

"Hey there! How's the headache?" I say as I walk around the glass and mahogany coffee table while her eyes follow me with the kind of intensity that would make me check my pepper spray if I was in a subway.

"Gone. As you already know," she answers with a tone dry enough I wonder if she may be dehydrated.

It would explain the bitchiness.

"OK? I mean, I suspected, but—" I say, standing right to her side, hesitating on whether or not to sit.

"If you suspected, you could have confirmed. [Asked me]," she accuses.

Oh. Well, it's not like this is that unexpected.

"I didn't want to bother you," I say as I set my helmet on the coffee table before unceremoniously plopping down beside her, the cushion to her right sinking with my weight and disturbing her carefully arranged symmetry.

It also manages to, [entirely coincidentally], make her lose her balance and fall over my side right as I stretch my left arm over her shoulders and drag her into a restraining hug.

[Meaning of the term 'coincidence'—]

It was a joke! I was being cheeky!

[Lisa Wilbourn's usual cheekiness—]

You're mean…

"OK, so, before you can bitch at me any further—and don't even [think] to use that word until you're a grown-up teenager like I am—I brought you a few gifts."

For some mysterious reason, Dinah's muffled reply isn't entirely intelligible, what with her face smushed against my side as I lightly noogie her. Eerie, I know.

Also, for some other mysterious reason, I'm unable to take off my backpack without letting go of her, so I prolong the torture just long enough that I'm sure my point is made and then proceed to do so.

Dinah, furthering the mystery, shoots me a surly look. Gosh, I wish there was a Thinker seven around here to solve all these enigmas.

[Lisa Wilbourn's brattiness—]

I know you aren't up to it, Power. No need to strain yourself.

[Lisa Wilbourn's immature, disrespectful propensity to taunt—]

Heh.

Anyway, it is without dislocating my shoulder that I finally manage to take my heavy backpack off, set it between my legs, and slide the zipper open—

"Comic books," Dinah says, yet again showing how dangerously dehydrated she is.

"Not just any comic book; these are [Asterix]. The first twelve, with Uderzo's pencils and Goscinny's marvelous, fantastic words—"

"You think I am a kid."

I look up from the colorful cover of Asterix at the Olympic Games, with the blond, cunning Gaul (that I haven't based my identity off of) standing atop a podium with a laurel wreath on a cushion in his right hand.

Then I look at Dinah's wide eyes, the ones she tries to narrow in resentment before something else pushes them open, and I softly smile at her.

"You [are] a kid, Dinah," I tell her, patting the back of her head.

There's a brief struggle. The part of her that wants to lean into the warm contact, the part that will always, [always], shy away from any sudden touch, no matter how wanted, and the part that wants to show me how displeased she's with me.

In the end, she stands still as I ruffle her hair with perhaps a tad too much sadistic enjoyment.

… This is all Tay's fault. She and her weird hair thing. It's not me being stereotypically sisterly. Not at all.

"Is that why you didn't call me?" she finally says, avoiding my eyes.

And I…

"You know it isn't," I say.

"Then [why?] I could've… I could've helped you! You know how strong I am—"

"I do. I do, Dinah, you're far stronger than I am, but… But I don't want to…"

"You're afraid," she says. Accuses.

And I close my eyes, unwilling to face the burning in her hazel ones.

"Yes," I say. Guiltily.

"You're afraid that you… That I will become… dependent on you. That you will hurt me so I will remain by your side, and… and…"

I open my eyes and drag her into a hug that ends up with my backpack on my right, the comics strewn over the dark leather, and Dinah sitting on my lap as I rest my chin on top of her head.

"You've been using your power," I mutter.

"I… I [may] have," she says, her hands clutching my sky-blue top.

"Dinah… This isn't how you talk. How you speak. You're forcing yourself to talk like you think you should rather than how you would."

Her face nuzzles on top of my chest. Tearless.

For now.

"You don't take me seriously," she whispers.

"I do. And I also joke around with you, and poke fun at you, and do all the things people do while also respecting one another, because that's what relationships are."

"You…"

"I… I care for you, Dinah. Maybe more than I should, maybe more than it's healthy, but we're not healthy. We're two broken parahumans who went through something terrible, and you had it so, so much worse than I did, but I still see myself in you, and… And I care. A lot."

Her arms wrap around me, tight enough that the thin limbs feel like bands of steel around me.

"If you care… People who… who care for one another are supposed to ask for help. To not let the other be harmed," she says, mulish and stubborn.

I can't help but let out a relieved smile at her no longer putting me up on that pedestal she was so keen on having me on. Asterix looks good on his podium, but I'd rather remain in the background.

"You… You have already divined why I didn't, haven't you?" I ask.

She nods.

"OK. OK, then you know I… I keep analyzing things around me, Dinah; I can't help it. It's who I am. And so I find levers and stress lines, and everything I need to turn people around, to make them—"

"Ask me," she says.

Demands.

"What?"

She pulls away from me, her face slightly reddened in… Maybe anger.

No, there's definitely anger in there, aside from anything else.

"Ask me. Take away all the fear and uncertainty, and… and show me. Show me what is it that you're so scared of doing to me."

"Dinah, I—"

"Or are you afraid of knowing?"

Her eyes narrow, and I try to answer in kind.

I can't.

"Fine. I… I guess this is for the best." I close my eyes yet again, unwilling to face her as her faith in me crumbles, and… "Chances I will harm Dinah Alcott?"

"Zero point zero two."

I blink my eyes open.

She's looking at me with the kind of smug that can only be fraternally inherited.

"You're lying," I immediately say.

She smacks the back of my head.

"I'm not screaming in pain, so [no]," she grumbles.

Yet again, I wonder if she needs some urgent liquid intake.

Bourbon may do the trick.

"Dinah, you—did you just manipulate my phrasing?" I say with an eyebrow rapidly climbing up my forehead.

"Of course I did. Because your dumb self kept asking about the chances that you will hurt me, and those are two very different things, because everybody hurts everybody without even meaning to, but harming is not the same at all, and, and I think I saw you slipping on a wet road while carrying me on your bike, so please be careful, but that was the worst thing you did in the reflections, and—"

Before she can asphyxiate herself with her increasingly rambling dissertation, I hug her to me.

"I'm so, [so] proud of you," I tell her, kissing the top of her hair.

"You're embarrassing me," she says, pleasantly flushed, wiggling against me.

"Of course I am. That's my job."

"I… I am not a kid," she insists.

And that cuts the moment short, doesn't it?

"Dinah…" I tell her, softly pushing her away from me so I can look straight into her eyes without cowardly blinking away. "Being a kid is not an insult; it's a stage of life. Please, don't let… don't let that be taken away from you."

Her eyes harden.

"I… I have lived more. I… I have… I am not like… like I was. Can't be."

On the one hand, she's obviously right. Her perspective will never be like that of her peers, not only because she understands a part of humanity she should have been shielded from for years, if not her entire life, but because her own power gives her a perspective that exacerbates all of that, that lets her pretend at a maturity she doesn't, and shouldn't, have.

On the other…

"That's stupid," I tell her, rolling my eyes.

She, of course, rears up in sheer indignation.

"I am [not] stupid—" Oh, look, yet another sign she's turning into a mini-me.

… That's terrifying.

"I'm not saying [you] are; I'm saying [that] is. Smart people can have very dumb beliefs, you know? For instance, my girlfriend thinks being tall, thin, and having long legs is a [bad thing]. How ridiculously stupid is that?"

"… You're trying to embarrass me. Bringing up mature subjects so that I—"

"Not really, 'trying to embarrass' is not a thing I do," I interrupt with a cheeky grin that is all mine, and she will have to practice for years before she can copy it.

[Lisa Wilbourn's—]

Not now. I'm in the middle of an intense Thinker battle, and I don't want you to drag my performance down.

[Lisa Wilbourn's arrogance—]

I've learned from the best.

"You still are… What are you even trying to do, then?"

"I'm not trying anything, Dinah; I'm just kidding around with my adoptive sister."

Her body [freezes].

"I…" she lowers her voice before mumbling.

"What? Didn't you hear me say this in any of your futures?"

"It's... not the same… And I stopped asking questions so I wouldn't be hurting when you came, and… really?" she says, lifting her head to look at me with eyes wider and more hopeful than I've seen in a while.

As in, ever.

"Would I lie to you?" I tell her, brushing her hair aside before kissing her forehead.

"Yes," she immediately answers as she hugs me once more.

"Clever girl," I chuckle as I wrap my own arms around her.

We remain there, in silence, just… enjoying the other's presence. Reassured that we're not alone, that there's someone who both cares and understands.

"I'm still not a kid," she mumbles, breaking the moment as thoroughly as if she had taken lessons from Alec himself.

… Never the two shall meet.

"You are. Pass me… Asterix the Legionnaire."

She leans back to glare at me.

"This is another of your stupid Thinker tricks. I just know it's another of your stupid Thinker tricks," she says as she rummages through the haphazard pile sticking out of the mouth of my backpack.

"Of course it is," I tell her as I grab the comic she handles me, opening it and going quickly through the pages until I find the one I'm looking for as Dinah turns around on my lap so we're both facing the page. "Here, read this part."

She shoots me an arched eyebrow over her shoulder before obediently looking at where Asterix is asking a Roman soldier to look through the enlistment documents (carved marble slates, of course) for a Gaul named Tragicomix.

Dinah chuckles before she cuts herself off.

"So? What's the joke?" I say.

"I… Well, there are a few. The archives are comically unwieldy, and when Asterix asks for the name, the soldier says a very long phrase rather than the short one he should say. As in, when someone asks my name, I would say, 'Dinah, with a 'd,' like Denmark,' but here I'd be saying, 'Dinah, with a 'd,' like 'Dinosaur Park that keeps getting movies made of.'"

I chuckle at her own joke.

"You're right," I tell her, patting her head to both her pleasure and indignation. "But not entirely."

And she frowns.

"What do you mean? It's just a dumb comic, I—"

"It's actually a very clever comic, Dinah. You understood a part of the joke, the one meant for kids, but there's another part: what the soldier says is 'Timeo danaos et dona ferentes,' and that's Latin for 'beware of Greeks bearing gifts.' That's a Virgil quote from the Aeneid, one that references the Trojan horse, right before Asterix and Obelix set out to enlist in the Roman Legion to rescue Tragicomix. It's not something you should've picked up on; it's not even something many adults would've picked up on."

She looks at me, eyes widening in the kind of wonder I miss so much.

"I… But… It's a [comic]," she finally protests.

"And it's all right for you to enjoy it. It's all right for [me] to enjoy it. And it's all right for you to enjoy it years from now, in a different way than you do now. There's no hurry, Dinah. You don't need to be anything other than you."

"But I… I don't [want] to be a kid anymore," she finally says, turning sideways, her left cheek resting on my chest.

And I breathe.

Really, making me change objectives in the middle of a conversation? Unfair, Dinah, that's just unfair.

"Then don't. Don't be a kid, don't be a grown-up. Be [you]. But that means not throwing away any part of you, sis, it means that… you will…" I pause, trying to get my own thoughts in order. "It means that you can feel as you feel, and not as others want you or expect you to. It means that you can be both weak and strong. It means that… That you can enjoy Asterix, and Lucky Luke, and whatever else you want, in whatever way you want. But don't rush. I'll be here, by your side, every step of the way, and you don't need to run to catch up to me."

Dinah doesn't answer. Not with words.

She just rests against me, her breathing deep and slow, until I set aside the comic so I can hug her and caress her hair.

Then we two Thinkers, after our arduous battle, stay in silence atop a sinfully comfortable leather sofa as the light coming from the windows turns amber.

I don't know when I nod off.

I just know that, when I wake, Dinah is resting atop me, and there's a soft bamboo blanket covering us.

==================

This work is a repost of my most popular fic on QQ (https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/wake-up-call-worm.15638/), where it can be found up to date except for the latest two chapters that are currently only available on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true)—as an added perk, both those sites have italicized and bolded text. I'll be posting the chapters here twice weekly, on Wednesday and Friday, until we're caught up. Unless something drastic happens, it will be updated at a daily rate until it catches up to the currently written 88 chapters (or my brain is consumed by the overwhelming amounts of snark, whichever happens first).

Speaking of Italics, this story's original format relied on conveying Power's intrusions into Lisa's inner monologue through the use of italics. I'm using square brackets ([]) to portray that same effect, but the work is more than 300k words at the moment, so I have to resort to the use of macros to make that light edit and the process may not be perfect. My apologies in advance

Also, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon: Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, Xalgeon, and aj0413. If you feel like maybe giving me a hand and helping me keep writing snarky, useless lesbians, consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!