(TAYLOR HEBERT) CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The first few days after everything had happened felt… strange.

It wasn't bad, or even overwhelming, just strange in a way that left Taylor feeling slightly off balance, as though her life had shifted tracks so abruptly that her mind was still catching up to where her body already stood. There were no Endbringers in the sky, no collapsing buildings, no desperate, life-or-death decisions pressing down on her from every direction. Instead, there was a routine, the almost stubborn attempt by normalcy to reassert itself.

And yet, it did not feel the same.

She spent most of that time resting, because her body left her little choice in the matter. Long hours of sleep, interrupted only by meals and the occasional conversation with her dad, who hovered just a little more than usual without quite crossing the line into suffocating. She could not fault him for it, not after everything.

But rest did not mean stillness.

Her thoughts kept moving, circling back again and again to what had happened, to what she had done, and more importantly, to what it meant going forward. The watch remained on her wrist, a constant reminder that none of it had been a fluke. That this was her life now.

And somewhere along the line, as the exhaustion began to fade and her body returned to something resembling normal, Taylor realized something that surprised her.

She liked it.

She wasn't talking about the fear, or the chaos, or the moments where everything felt like it might fall apart if she made a single wrong decision. Those she could do without. What stayed with her instead was the clarity that came with action, the certainty of knowing that what she was doing mattered, that she could make a difference in ways that went beyond surviving another day at school or enduring another quiet, suffocating evening at home… that part stayed with her.

She liked being a hero.

She liked being the hero. 

Which was how she found herself in the kitchen a few days later, standing across from her dad and trying to explain something she already knew he was not going to like.

“I’m not going there to start a fight,” she said, trying to keep her voice level. “I just want to talk to him.”

Her dad stared back at her like she had just suggested setting the house on fire for fun.

“Taylor,” he said slowly, “you’re talking about Lung.”

“I know.”

“He’s not some random thug you can scare straight,” her dad continued, running a hand through his hair in clear frustration. “Or even someone you can reason with. He’s one of the most dangerous parahumans in the city. People don’t just approach him and have conversations.”

She shifted slightly where she stood, but held her ground. “That’s kind of the problem, isn’t it?”

He frowned at her, clearly not following.

“The ABB’s been operating for years,” she went on, the words coming easier now that she had started. “Drugs, trafficking, everything that comes with being a major gang, and people just… accept it. They barely even talk about it.”

His expression tightened, though he did not interrupt.

“I can do something about it,” she said, more quietly now. “Or at least try.”

“By walking into their territory and asking their leader to stop?” he asked, incredulous.

“When you put it like that, it sounds worse than it is.”

“It sounds exactly like what it is,” he shot back.

She winced slightly at that, but she didn’t back down.

“I’m not going in blind,” she said. “I have the watch. It won’t let me get hurt. It didn’t before, and that was against the Simurgh.”

Saying it out loud made something in her chest relax, even as it drew her dad’s troubled gaze.

The Simurgh.

An Endbringer. A monster that entire cities evacuated for, that heroes gathered from across the world to fight, and even then, only to survive rather than win. Taylor had stood in front of something like that and come out the other side. More than that, she had forced it to retreat.

The thought still felt unreal when she lingered on it too long, like trying to hold onto a dream after waking, but the memory of it lingered all the same: the pressure in the air, the sheer wrongness of the thing, the certainty that she was outmatched in every conceivable way…

And she had still won.

Or at least, she had done enough.

Compared to that, Lung felt… smaller. Dangerous, yes. Powerful, unquestionably. But still something that existed within the boundaries of what people understood, something that could be fought and beaten by capes without it turning into a city-wide disaster.

A part of her, quieter and harder to ignore than she would have liked, whispered that it had not been that simple. That the fight against the Simurgh had been chaos and desperation and a string of decisions that could have gone wrong in a hundred different ways. That she had survived as much by circumstance as by capability.

That if even one thing had gone differently—

She pushed the thought aside before it could fully form.

It hadn’t gone differently.

She was here. And if the watch had carried her through something like that, then trusting it now was not foolish. It was reasonable.

Her dad still didn’t look convinced.

“That was different,” he said after a moment, his voice lower now but no less firm. “You didn’t have a choice then. This… this is you choosing to walk into danger.”

“I’m choosing to do something,” she replied.

He looked at her for a long moment, searching her face as though hoping to find some trace of hesitation, some sign that this was just a passing thought rather than a decision she had already committed to.

“I know you want to help people,” he said finally. “I get that. I’m proud of you for that. But this isn’t just helping someone cross the street or stopping a robbery. This isn’t a situation you can walk away from if it goes wrong.”

“I know.”.

“And you think talking to him will change anything?”

“I think doing nothing definitely won’t.”

That earned her a tired, frustrated exhale.

For a while, neither of them spoke.

Then, because she knew he needed something more than just her confidence, something more than faith in a piece of alien technology he barely understood, she added, “I won’t do it alone.”

He looked up at that.

“I’ll involve the PRT,” she said. “They’ll know where I’m going and what I’m planning. If something goes wrong, they step in.”

His frown deepened slightly, but it was different now. Less outright rejection, more careful consideration.

“You’d actually do that?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“No going off on your own at the last second?”

There was a brief pause before she answered, but she shook her head. “No.”

Another pause stretched between them, heavier this time, filled with everything he wasn’t saying out loud.

Finally, he let out a slow breath.

“I don’t like it,” he admitted.

“I know.”

“I really don’t like it.”

“I know,” she repeated.

He studied her for a while longer before giving a reluctant nod. “If the PRT is involved,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “and if they’re aware of what you’re doing… then I won’t stop you.”

Relief eased the tension in her chest.

“Thank you,” she said, meaning it.

He didn’t look reassured, but there was a certain air of acceptance around him. The understanding that this was not something he could simply forbid and expect her to obey. And that was enough for now. 

“Just… be careful,” he added quietly.

“I will.”

And that was that.