44

Abjuration 4.7

I considered the question for a moment. Naturally, I had already thought about it. From my view, there were certain capes whose powers might be very useful to me—even necessary.

At the moment, my only lead for escaping Worm was to get to the space beyond the moon via an Earth that isn't guarded by the Simurgh, and there weren't many methods of doing that safely. I could go to Aleph and try to go on a spaceship with NASA/Russian/Chinese infrastructure, or get a suitable Tinker. Tinkers didn't generally have space travel tech, so I needed a roundabout way of doing it.

String Theory might be necessary for the rocketry. I didn't know of any other comparable Tinkers that might be able to produce rockets powerful enough to escape Earth's gravity and continue on beyond the moon.

Most of the other capes in the Birdcage were sort of useful in other ways, but most would also be difficult to control.

Though I suspected Amelia asked for a different reason.

"Do you want to meet your father?"

Taylor's eyes widened slightly, but she said nothing. Amelia had already mentioned offhand that time after we took out Shadow Stalker that she was adopted from a villain, but Taylor didn't know who exactly.

Amelia looked down on the ground. "It's…a little tempting. He was a villain, but ever since you told me I started remembering a little of my time with him. A part of me wants to know what he's really like."

"And the other part?"

She sighed. "I know he's a Birdcaged villain. I looked him up on the wikis, and I know he's done a lot of bad things. But there's also how Canary's being slandered. I'm just wondering if he was really all that bad. What do you think? Do you know anything about him?"

"Marquis was famous for both his prowess in battle and his strict adherence to his rules of not harming women and children. He was a villain, but an honorable one, and he was framed for Iron Rain's death, which was Kaiser's plot. He did kill a lot of other people though. On the positive side, he fought off a visit from the Slaughterhouse 9 almost by himself," I said.

"Kaiser killed his own sister?" Taylor asked, outraged.

In the old days, the Empire 88 was led by Allfather before his son Kaiser inherited it. Iron Rain was Allfather's daughter, and people thought Marquis killed her, but at some point in the canon it was revealed by Marquis that he didn't do it.

"Yeah. I don't know much more than that about Marquis' history. In the most likely alternate future where I didn't come to Earth Bet, you would have met him eventually in the Birdcage, after…well, you know, that incident, which definitely won't happen now that I'm here."

"Oh," Amelia said weakly.

"What?" Taylor asked.

"Don't worry about it, Taylor. Just something very personal for Amelia," I said. "Anyways, Marquis did care for you and still does. He would help you if you asked, probably."

"Should I?"

"Ask him to help us, and break him out of the Birdcage if he agrees?"

She nodded.

"Taylor?" I redirected.

"If you think he can be reformed…" she muttered. "I'm not opposed, I guess. We're already planning to make use of Bakuda and Coil, right? Marquis might even do it willingly. Why not?"

"I won't oppose it either, if you want to break him out, or just go talk to him," I said.

Amelia frowned at me.

"Thanks, but I meant to ask what you think I should do. Not whether you'd be okay with it. I want to know what you think is the right decision."

"I was going to leave it up to you, seeing as it's your dad…"

"I know. But I'd rather hear your opinion first."

I drummed my fingers on the couch armrest. "Alright. Here's what I really think then."

A slow sip of water.

"Amelia, do you know why Carol adopted you, if she hated you so much?"

She was caught off guard by the question, and was silent for a few seconds, searching for an answer.

"I don't know," she said.

"Marquis asked her to, you know? He asked the whole Brigade to look after you. His enemies. But they were heroes, and they orphaned you. They had to take responsibility, didn't they?"

"So…she never wanted to. She did it out of a sense of…responsibility?"

"More like pressure from her team. Sarah, especially. If she had a real sense of responsibility, she wouldn't have treated you the way she did. She would have hid how she felt, at least."

Amelia stayed silent, but nodded.

"Back to Marquis. Why did he ask her to take care of you? Was it the really the final request of a defeated villain? Marquis, who almost single-handedly pushed the Nine and the Butcher out of Brockton Bay, lost to a few small-time heroes just because he had to guard you hiding in the closet when they didn't even know you were his weakness?"

Her eyebrows furrowed. "You mean…"

"He could have protected you. He wasn't even that injured, at the end. He could have fought harder, broke his rules. The Brigade broke the unspoken rules first by attacking him in his house, after all, so it would only be fair to retaliate. He could have got you out of there with one last ditch effort and ran away to disappear forever and live the life of a civilian with his precious daughter. But he didn't."

Now she looked stunned.

"As your father, it should have been his responsibility to raise you. Maybe he thought he couldn't be a proper father, or maybe he just thought his rules were more important. Either way, he wasn't willing to do it, and passed off his responsibility to a woman that didn't want you."

"Oh…" She said, voice weak again.

"He probably didn't think he was abandoning you. Probably justified it to himself as giving you a chance to grow up outside of villainy. To have a mother as well, instead of just a father. I don't know what really went through his mind. All I know is that, in my opinion, love isn't about knowing when to let go. It's about enduring, sacrificing, improving, and living on for the sake of someone else. It's easy to die. It's easy to run away. It's easy to throw in the towel and say that someone else can do better. It's infinitely harder to walk into hell with someone you love and have the strength of will to come back out together."

She was silent and contemplative.

I took another sip, and so did she from her own glass, as she stared into the reflection in the water.

"On that fateful day when you lost your father, what would little Amelia have wanted? To stay with your dad, even if he was a villain? Or go with some prejudiced strangers, even if they were heroes?"

From inside her sleeve, a large vine extended out, a bulge moved along its length, and the tip opened to deposit a sculpture of living bone on her palm.

"I didn't want them to take him away. I loved him more than anything else in the world," she said, almost a whisper, staring at the sculpture of her father she had made the day she ran away, and had kept ever since. She stayed like that for several long moments, as if lost in a memory.

Then her eyes turned cold. The bone sculpture cracked all over, red liquid dripping through as if it was bleeding, and exploded into a cloud of white flakes, the blood turning to a fine red mist.

"I understand. There is no reason for me to meet Marquis."

Taylor looked dazed at the display.

"You're sure about this?" I asked.

Amelia nodded firmly.

"I get what you're trying to tell me. He abandoned me. By giving up his responsibility, he also gave up his role as my father. "

"I think you made the right choice," I said.

She smiled. "For someone so self-absorbed, you sure have an interesting philosophy on love."

"Hey, just because I love myself doesn't mean I can't love anyone else," I said. "You have to love yourself before you can truly love anyone else."

I doubted that would ever happen, but that was apparently the leading theory on self-esteem and self-compassion on my Earth. I was just regurgitating that wisdom here.

"I think I've heard enough advice from you for one day."

"Not advice this time. Isn't that a common saying on Earth Bet too? It was on my Earth."

"It is. I've heard it before," Taylor chimed in. "I think I've even seen that on a poster in elementary."

"So have I. But I don't think it's true," said Amelia.

"Oh? Care to share your own philosophy then?" I asked.

She shrugged. "It's pretty simple. You can love anyone if you have the right neural connections and hormones. That's just how our brains work."

Both Taylor and I looked at her strangely.

"What? I can read brain activity, remember? I know exactly how love works."

"Isn't that kind of depressing? You don't think there's any deeper meaning or purpose to it? Just…chemicals?" Taylor asked.

"I didn't say that. Science doesn't answer why, just the what and how. I don't disagree with what Kaleidus said earlier. I'm just saying that even if that's how it should be, that's not what actually happens in our brain. People fall in love for stupid or no reason at all. That's the chemicals at work."

The discussion on love continued for a few more minutes before I excused myself to get back to work on keeping the party in order.

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