Summus Proelium

Being trapped on an island full of evil, vicious supervillains should have been the definitive worst part of Irelyn’s recent memory. Hell, it should have been the worst part of her memory, period. And, to be fair, it was still right up there in a high position. But the fact that it even had competition said a lot about the sort of things that had been happening. Things like finally making it home after that whole island excursion, and seeing her parents for about two seconds before witnessing them literally explode in front of her as gas erupted from their bodies.

That… yeah, that had been a real low point, one that would haunt Irelyn for the rest of her life. She had been right in front of them, close enough to touch. Her mouth had opened to say something to them, but there was no time. No sooner had she met her father’s gaze, than they were… gone. She had literally seen her mother and father’s bodies physically blow apart to reveal clouds of thick, noxious fog. It had happened too quickly for her to actually consciously process it at the time, but she had seen her parents' bodies explode right before her eyes.

Honestly, that would have been bad enough if she had simply been allowed to move on from there. Witnessing her estranged parents being killed in front of her at the very moment that they were being reunited would have left her with enough pain. But no, that wasn’t enough for the man behind this whole thing. Immediately after that, in the bare couple of seconds after witnessing that horrifying sight, the Sleeptalk effect had kicked in. The gas that had exploded outward had done its job. Her last memory before passing out into what had apparently been weeks of a forced, drugged coma, had been the sight of her parents’ mutilated remains with more of that gas pouring out. She had fallen into a completely restless, yet unending sleep full of strange dreams and confusing memories while that image of her mother and father dying right in front of her remained locked deep in her subconscious, influencing everything she saw under Sleeptalk. It wasn’t only a matter of seeing that event play out over and over. She saw the event play out in different ways, in different locations. It mixed itself into her other dreams. A treasured memory of walking into one of the main dining rooms as a child to show her mother an article about ‘Flea’ and finally, for once in her life, seeing pride in her mom’s eyes had become horror in that dream-state as she saw that version of her mother torn apart from the inside and left mutilated.

Her time in that coma wasn’t fun, to say the least. On top of which, she had woken up after finally being cured, to not only find out if she had been a victim who needed to be saved without any control over her own destiny, but that the entire city had been shut down. So much had happened while she was left helpless and trapped in her own nightmares. The city was quarantined, surrounded with actual military force to trap everyone inside. Which, yes, made sense if they wanted to stop Sleeptalk from getting out if it had been contagious, but still. It was one more thing she had missed, one more thing she hadn't been able to help with. It was one more thing that had happened while she was helpless.

One thing for certain, she needed to get to the bottom of this. Maybe she hadn't been able to save her parents, or herself, and had been completely unconscious the whole time the cure was being made. But she could make damn certain that the situation was handled and that no one else would be affected by it. Because while Cup might've been responsible for actually making the stuff (another whole situation she had completely missed out on), Irelyn was positive that she wasn't the primary source of it. She wasn't the source of the idea or the plan. That had to be Pittman himself. It was him. It always went back to him.

All of which meant getting more answers from the only person who could provide them right then, a girl who had obviously been used by others her entire life, and who probably had no compelling reason to believe that Irelyn really wanted to help her, or that she could actually do anything useful. Particularly not after her performance thus far in this whole situation.

And yet, despite that, it was clear that Paige had something she wanted to say. From the way she was reacting, some very important things. Irelyn already knew that. It was obvious simply from the few glances she had allowed herself when she was telling the girl what she had already figured out. She didn't know everything. She hadn't put the entire mystery together, obviously. There were pieces that only Paige could supply. And she was about to do just that. She was about to tell her what that whole situation had really been. She was about to explain and fill in those very important gaps that Irelyn hadn't been able to solve on her own. The answers to questions that had been filling her mind since those first days on Breakwater were right there.

But then Irelyn had seen her oldest friend, a person she hadn't been face to face with in an incredibly long time. A person who had betrayed the Minority, and their friendship, all those years earlier before running off on her own to be a mercenary. Quite possibly the only person she could think of whose appearance would have distracted her away from listening to Paige right then. There was almost no one who could have presented themselves in that particular moment and not simply been told to go away and come back later after Irelyn had had a chance to talk to her adopted sister properly. But this was an exception. Possibly the only possible exception, at least among people who were still alive. This was Echo. Or, in her civilian life, Haley Torres. Though she probably wasn’t going by that particular name anymore. At least not regularly. She was a mercenary, a Sell-Touched. Not an outright villain, and she had at the very least maintained a sort of code of conduct. There were things she wouldn't do, types of people she wouldn't hurt. But she still did plenty of bad, even within that code. She helped thieves and other criminals. She stole things. The code of the Sell-Touched meant that they were allowed to come back onto the legal side and aid the Star-Touched without immediately being arrested, as long as they weren’t actually physically caught doing something illegal in that time. They were allowed to essentially call a timeout on being pursued by authorities as long as they were currently providing aid. Some cops interpreted that differently than others, but the overall point was that as long as a mercenary Touched wasn’t actively committing crimes and offered help with any given situation, they would be left alone for that time. Cities needed Touched who could help too badly to turn their noses up against those sorts of people. Though, to be fair, most Sell-Touched tended to commit their crimes in one city and then go play nice in another in order to avoid pissing off the exact same people one day that they were supposed to be working alongside on the next.

No shitting where they were supposed to eat, as the phrase essentially went.

After blurting that confused question about why Echo was there to the girl beside her, who obviously couldn't actually answer it, Irelyn put her hand on the door and told Paige to stay there. Before she could open it to go find out what Haley was doing, however, the younger girl spoke up. “She's been here for a while now, basically since you were hurt. In the city, that is. She's been helping the Conservators, since they’ve been so shorthanded. She's the one who caught one of those new Scions, the girl with the gems.”

Taking that in with a brief glance that way, Irelyn stared at Paige. There was nothing on her face, nothing that Irelyn could read to know what she was thinking. It just reminded her that she needed to have a real discussion with the girl. There were things they had to talk about. Whatever happened next, Irelyn needed Paige to understand that she didn't blame her for anything her father had done. Or for what he had forced her to do. They had to have that talk, but it was going to have to wait for a minute. No matter how much she really didn’t want it to.

And yet, in that moment, Irelyn saw something else in Paige’s face. There had been no emotion there before, nothing to give away what she was thinking. But, for just a bare instant, there was. Something played across the girl's face just as Irelyn was about to get out to talk to Haley. And she knew, without actually understanding how or why, that if she left the car right then without saying anything else, she would end up regretting it. She would lose her chance to… to what, talk to Paige? Why would she lose that chance? The girl was right there. It wasn’t like she would just disappear. How would that--no, she wasn’t going to argue with her own intuition right then, not after everything that had happened. She had known that Paige was being forced to make that call back then, and if she had listened to that instinct, everything would have been different. She wasn’t going to ignore it now, after all that shit.

So, listening to her subconscious, Irelyn reached out to put a hand on the other girl's arm. She ignored Haley standing on the front steps in her costume. She knew her friend was watching and clearly wanted to talk, but she could wait for a minute. Instead, Irelyn squeezed her adopted sister's arm. Her voice was soft. “I know we need to talk. I want to talk. I want both of us to be on the same page. I want… I want to help however I can. Just give me a minute, okay? Let me talk to her, and then you and I, we’ll… we’ll talk about everything, all of it. Whatever you need to say, whatever you want to get off your chest, or maybe whatever you need to hear, we’ll get through it. I will listen. But whatever it is, whatever we need to talk about, I want you to know, I am not my parents. And you’re not your father. We’re our own people with our own choices, okay?”

Even as she said that bit, about not being her parents, Irelyn felt her voice catch in her throat a bit. Of course she wasn’t her parents. They were dead. They were gone. She had watched them explode in front of her, breaking apart like a literal horror movie right before her eyes while gas escaped from what remained of their actual bodies to put Irelyn and all the people around her into several week-long comas. Which she had woken out of only hours ago, to be told that the nightmares she’d been experiencing through all that time had been very real after all. No, she wasn't her parents. Her parents, her mother and father, the people who had birthed, raised, and then cast her aside for not meeting their expectations, were dead. She would never reunite with them, would never have the chance for her father to change his mind and accept her. Her mother would never speak up in her defense. Her father had thrown her out, had disowned her, and her mother let him do it.

And now they were gone forever. That would be their lasting legacy. There would never be any reconciliation.

It was a thought, a realization, that made Irelyn absolutely positive that she needed to set things right with Paige. Whatever happened, whatever the truth, she needed to make the girl understand that she didn't blame her for it. They needed to get it all out in the open and move past it. Because she didn't want to get to a point with that girl where they would never be able to reconcile and understand one another. She didn't want to let what happened with her--with their parents happen with Paige. She might not have asked to have an adopted sister, but she for damn sure was going to find a way to make it work.

Getting all that out, her promise to the other girl that they would get through whatever they needed to talk about, Irelyn finally opened the door and stepped out. She walked around the car and approached the front steps, waiting until she was right in front of her old friend before speaking up. “I thought you said, oh, what was it? Something about how my family and the Evans combined wouldn't have the cash it would take to get you to come back here considering how awkward the whole situation was? Did a third rich family get involved to up the pool for that, or did this thing get done on a payment plan?”

Standing there in her costume, watching the other woman for a moment, Haley finally responded. But she didn't speak. She didn't volley a bit of teasing back at Irelyn. Instead, she took a few steps forward, coming down the stairs before her arms rose. Irelyn had just enough time to process what was about to happen for her old friend pulled her into a hug. She made a noise of surprise, standing there as Haley clutched her tightly.

“I wasn't kidding,” came the eventual reply while Haley continued to hold her tightly. “No amount of money would have been enough to make me come back here. But this was about you, and you're worth more than all the money in the world.” She released her then, and stepped back while staring at her. Reaching up, Haley unlatched the white helmet with its blue visor and pulled it off. She held the thing in one hand so she could look at Irelyn face to face. It had been years since the two of them had seen each other in person and awake like this. That continued for a few long seconds before she spoke again. “I know you think I betrayed you. And maybe in some ways I did. I chose to go do my own thing instead of staying on the Minority. But it was never about abandoning you. If I could've convinced you to come with me, I would have. We could've gone off to help people in our own way, on our own terms. I didn't want to be an enforcer for the government. I didn't want the authorities to decide who deserved to be saved, and I didn't want to be turned into some sort of security guard to uphold the system. I wanted my own life. And I wanted you to be part of it, as… as my friend. I wanted you to be there, but I didn’t want to force you into it. I didn’t want to manipulate or shame you into it. That’s what your parents always did.”

Irelyn opened and shut her mouth a couple times, searching for the right words. Finally, she exhaled. “You know what, I have a lot of complicated feelings right now. I don't know what to say about any of this. But you came back. You came back to help. And, as it happens, I was just thinking about how I don't want to leave relationships in a place where I'd regret never getting closure.” With that said, she pulled the other girl into a new embrace, and this time, they both hugged one another.

Irelyn really did hold a lot of complicated feelings about Haley leaving. Part of her didn't want to accept the girl’s presence right then. The sense of betrayal that had lingered ever since Haley left hadn't magically disappeared entirely. But it also wasn't something Irelyn wanted to cling to, especially not now. She wanted to let it go so they could move on, and she knew, in that moment, that the best way to do that was to actually try. She had to make an effort to move past those feelings.

After all, when it came down to it, Haley had come when she was needed. She had come to help. Yes, it was for Irelyn herself rather than the city or other innocent people, and that complicated things even more. But it was what mattered. She was here. All the rest of it, the emotions and complicated thoughts, they could be dealt with later.

Even as that thought came, Irelyn heard the sound of a car door opening. She looked over to see Paige getting out. The blonde girl held a hand and looked apologetic. “I'm sorry. I wouldn't interrupt, but you've got a call.” With that, she held out Irelyn’s phone, which had been left on the dash. “It’s um… it's from Ten Towers. It sounded important.”

Frowning in confusion, Irelyn took the phone and answered. “This is Flea. Yes. Sure, connect me to Skip.” The person on the other end had been a dispatcher, letting her know that the other Touched wanted to talk.

After a moment, the familiar voice came through. “Flea, I apologize for interrupting. I know you just woke up, and found out about your parents. I wouldn't have called, except you are the only one I know of who lives here in Detroit and had any experience with these people. I don't want to call in outside resources until we know for certain.”

The words made Irelyn blink, looking at Haley, then at Paige before responding slowly. “It's okay. I know everyone is stretched thin. What's going on? What people?”

There was a brief pause, then the other girl sent a text with a picture attached. When she looked at it, Irelyn felt her breath catch. “Is… is this--”

“The picture was taken inside the city,” Skip confirmed. “Those are the people I think they are, yes? I had hoped it might be an impersonator, but given the power displayed…”

“That’s Badb,” Irelyn confirmed. She heard both Paige and Haley give a pair of sharp inhales. “Which means the rest of them are her gang, her… cult. The Garden of Badb. She’s here in the city.”

“We believe they were the ones responsible for the attempt to destroy the cure that… awakened you,” Skip noted. “Thank you for the confirmation, we shall handle the situation.”

“I’ll be right there,” Irelyn started to insist. “I can pull the suit out of my car and--”

Skip interrupted. “No. I have very strict instructions from your superiors that you are not to be involved in any of this. They don’t know what sort of side effects you might still be subjected to, and if you were to fall asleep or begin hallucinating in the middle of an… encounter like this, you could do much more harm than good. That is not a suggestion, it is an order. You are not to come.”

Irelyn wanted to argue with that. Oh boy did she ever want to argue. But she couldn’t. They had a point. She had just woken up from a multi-week coma hours earlier. There was no telling what might happen if she ran into a fight right now. So, reluctantly, she mumbled an agreement before disconnecting.

“Badb?” Haley grimaced. “That’s bad news. And it’s her entire gang? What the hell would they be doing here? Wait, why did they call you anyway?”

“She fought them once,” Paige put in quietly. “During a prisoner escort. A Fell from Minnesota was over here and had to be driven back there. It was high-profile enough that they needed Touched escort. Flea--Irelyn was part of it.”

Giving a little nod at that, Irelyn added, “It was about three years ago. Badb and her people attacked the escort. We tried to stop them, but… well, it didn’t go that great. She’s dangerous. That’s why I need to be out there.”

“Well, you can’t,” Haley stated flatly. “But I can.” She interrupted before Irelyn could speak up. “I’ll go help your friends, no charge. I’ve had some experience with Badb too, so I know what I’m getting into. Just trust me, okay? I’ll handle it while you rest. Let me do this.”

Irelyn wanted to argue, and she sure as hell didn’t want to send her old friend off to fight without her. But she had no choice. They were right about her not being able to go into something like that right now, even if she did feel fine. So, in the end, she simply embraced Haley again and made her promise to come back to talk more extensively once it was over. She literally made the other girl hold up her hand and swear she wouldn’t just take off and disappear for years again.

Once Echo was gone, Irelyn exhaled, standing there in front of the empty house that had once belonged to her parents. She had no idea what was going to happen now. Except… “I guess we can have that talk now, huh?”

“Yes,” Paige agreed, moving beside her. “We can talk.

“And I can finally tell you the truth about what I am.”