Chapter Text
Brockton Bay was a curious place at night.
Like any big city in the US, its thoroughfares were thrown into a strange, omnipresent illumination by thousands of streetlights set in regular intervals. It was that colour of orange that was just bright enough to provide a feeling of security, yet dim enough that shadows stretched and warped into odd, unnatural proportions.
Along a path bathed in this distorted glow, Taylor Hebert marched.
It was pretty stupid of her to be going for a walk at this time, but it was one of the few things that tired her out enough to sleep of late.
In a few days, she would probably be going back to school after this period of 'recuperation.'
... Perhaps it would have been kinder if she had just fully fallen unconscious until somebody could save her from what happened, rather than the momentary darkness she'd experienced before returning to reality.
But it was what it was.
She'd been saved, eventually, and gone to the hospital afterwards. There'd been a small settlement from it all, although it was more like hush money...
Soon she'd go back to school and nothing would have changed whatsoever.
If something good had come from it all, just one small mote of positivity, then maybe there would be some small bit of hope in her heart for a better future.
But as it was, what was there to look forward to?
She'd be graduating in a year, but what then?
...
... Maybe it was just a matter of perspectives, and her tired, insomnia-addled was hyper-focusing on the negative?
Passing an alleyway, she paused when something pale caught her eye.
In the last hour, she'd walked alongside plenty of such openings, normally giving them a cursory glance to make sure that they were empty before she passed them. Even if she was ugly and all those other things Emma always called her, walking by herself, even in a safe area, was still dangerous.
On the hard concrete of the space between the two buildings was a shape, pale and strangely contoured.
For a few seconds, Taylor wondered if it was just a bundle of cloth that somebody had dumped out on the ground and abandoned to slowly moulder away into scraps
Just a pile of worthless, discarded trash that nobody wanted to deal with.
And yet...
Taylor looked closer.
The longer she looked and the more time her eyes had time to adjust, the more definition she could see in the bundle.
A foot... an arm... long hair splayed out over a body as smoothly contoured as a statue by Michelangelo.
What she was looking at wasn't a bundle of trash; it was a woman lying in a heap like a baby swallow that had fallen and had no chance of making it back up to its nest.
Taken aback, Taylor paused, and as if sensing her gaze, the prone figure shifted. An arm emerged and pressed against the cold ground, fingers splaying out like the roots of some pale tree, pushing with the languid yet inevitable strength of one waking from a long sleep.
The figure rose and turned towards her, the curtain of dishevelled hair parting as the head lifted to reveal a face that looked towards her.
It was a woman, young, and beautiful in a way that was hard to describe. The light fell on her oddly, throwing one side of her into sharp illumination and the other into an ominous shadow that seemed just a little exaggerated. She had big brown eyes that stared at her with some combination of hope and fear, curiosity and wariness, intelligent thought and bestial cunning.
Taylor had never seen so much communication in a solitary look before, but at that moment she understood what poets meant when they spoke of eyes being the windows to the soul.
She was also completely naked.
Despite this, the young woman seemed quite unafraid of her condition and without shame.
She looked at Taylor with that unblinking gaze, her large eyes like dark pools in the darkness of the alleyway.
In one moment, Taylor saw a helpless young woman, deprived of clothing and possibly having suffered the worst of fates one human could inflict on another in need of help.
In the next, she saw a trap, a piece of bait intended to lure a good Samaritan further into the alley, where the jaws of the trap would close upon the person trying to help
"Are you okay?"
The question felt rather strange from her lips.
Of course the woman wasn't okay; it was February in Brockton Bay, and she only had her own hair for warmth! She was probably half frozen to death!
Yet, she wasn't shivering at all.
Instead, after a moment, the stranger raised a hand towards Taylor, long and slender fingers reaching out as if to try to grab at the hem of her pants, despite her being several metres away.
"What's your name, um, what happened?" she asked, tentatively.
Despite herself, she took a step closer, looking up from the woman at the alleyway around and behind her.
Even in the faint light of the streetlights, which made the shadows of the alley long and deep, she couldn't see anyone else there. There was no dumpster for somebody to conveniently hide behind, no hidden space. Just two long brick walls and the small space between them, not even any trash or debris that had been caught by the wind and blown into that space.
And there was nobody else visible on the street, not even a lonely car making its way to the other side of the city.
The woman gave no reply, she only reached out further towards Taylor.
Was she mute, or just trying to reel Taylor in closer?
For a long moment, she wavered on what to do.