Karen Smythe couldn’t sleep, and staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling and lying in an unfamiliar bed wasn’t helping. She was exhausted physically, mentally, and emotionally after her hellish day, but still, sleep refused to claim her. She even knew why and the irony of that was bitter since that was the very word keeping her awake. ‘Why’, one word that summed up all the turmoil in her life, and all the questions that tainted a life full of nothing but regrets.

Right now though, the big ‘whys’ were all related to this godawful day, like why did she get out of bed? That one was easy; it was because she had promised Stephanie that she would go to her stupid pool party that afternoon. Why the hell did she even do that when she already had a pool of her own at home? The answer to that was just as easy to determine, and harder to stomach.

She had gone, in part, because she would need to go out to get something decent to eat anyway and because her ‘friend’ had asked her to. Not that she cared about the party or even Stephanie enough to go, but she knew that if she didn’t agree to go, Stephanie would keep bugging her until she did. Their other ‘friends’ would get involved and then she would be under enormous amounts of peer pressure until she finally caved anyway. Karen was self-aware enough to know that when push came to shove, she just didn’t have the spine to stand up to them. Not even her ever-simmering aggression seemed to help with that, not with all of that anger directed at herself.

She was a weakling of willpower, a spineless coward who couldn’t say no under pressure. As much as she wished that she could be stronger and stick up for herself, she would have to have a self to stick up for in the first place. She was just a shell though, if any remnants of the girl she used to be still existed, she had long ago buried them deep inside herself where the pain could never reach them.

What remained was a shell of false bravado and ego carefully constructed to keep anyone from getting too close. It was simple social mathematics; if people didn’t get too close, then she wouldn’t start to care about them, and that would equal not having to worry about losing someone close to her ever again. Her ‘friends’ weren’t affected because they were used to dealing with people with big egos in each other, and possibly because they knew or suspected how weak she truly was.

She had learned a lot from them though, lessons like never show weakness and demand, don’t ask. If they hadn’t made her learn that lesson, just by being themselves, then she wouldn’t be able to keep people away half as well as she could now. And the fact that they were all assholes meant that she wouldn’t risk actually caring about one of them.

The biggest asshole of the bunch was Terry. She wished she hadn’t run into him on the way to the party because that led directly to all the other ‘whys’. Why had she agreed to follow that girl? Why had she started playing along with him by trash-talking the redhead and threatening the Sprite? Why had she been so fucking stupid?!

Even though the Unicorn had healed her cheek and somehow managed to regenerate her lost arm, she could still feel phantoms of the burning agony that had caused the now non-existent wounds in the first place. She had never felt physical pain like that in her life before, not even when she started changing into whatever she was now after the Mexico Incursion two years ago. She couldn’t make herself truly angry about it, at least, not anymore. Not when she knew that she deserved every bit of pain that she had been given.

She should have grown a spine and told Terry, “No,” but she had caved and gone along with it. She just thought they were going to mess with the girl, like Terry said, it wasn’t anything that he and the others hadn’t done before and she usually just had to make a catty comment and/or a vague threat or two to be involved enough to keep them off her back. She didn’t know that he actually intended to kill the girl. She didn’t know he was that psychotic, just that he was an asshole.

This time, her reluctant involvement had finally bit her in the ass. The redheaded girl, Ainslee, had barely reacted to her insults, but when she had threatened the Sprite… Karen didn’t expect her to react like that and, thinking about it now, she couldn’t truly blame her either. She was protecting her friend from a possible threat and Karen probably would have done the same herself, if she actually had friends and not disposable stand-ins. Ainslee Waking and gaining her special ability at that moment was just terrible luck that made the situation worse.

The memory of using her special ability on Ainslee when she panicked burned almost as badly as the phantom pains from the wounds that the redhead had given her in return. She could have killed her; she probably would have if the girl hadn’t drunk her blood to regenerate. Karen had been so terrified of that vision of death that was nearly upon her that she had reacted on instinct. The thought that she had used her acid beam on a living person made her want to throw up every time she thought about it.

She had been at home alone when she Awoke two days ago, opening a package that had come by courier at the kitchen table. She wouldn’t have opened it at all if she knew it was from Alistair. He was into her, but she wasn’t attracted to him, or any guy, so she had been avoiding him recently. He wouldn’t take the hint, and he was being fucking creepy about it.

It started with lewd messages and dick pics, but the day that she Awoke there had been a dildo in the package with a note from Alistair saying that he’d had it made from a cast of his own… disgusting thing, and he thought she might want to get a feel for it before he made her take the real thing. She was so horrified, scared, and disgusted all at once and just wanted that disgusting thing gone, so she would never have to see it again. The acid beam took care of that, but it also burned holes through the refrigerator and several walls in her house.

At first, Karen had been okay with the whole Dark Elf look. She figured that maybe it would help encourage people to keep their distance from her. Since Waking though, she was scared and wondering if her kind really were meant to be as evil as in the stories she had read. There was all the heightened aggression she felt that the doctors said was normal for her kind and then there was her special ability. It was an acid beam, for fuck’s sake, how could a good person ever get an ability like that?

She had hardly left her home in the two days since, not until she left for Stephanie’s party so people wouldn’t think she was acting unusual. She was terrified of reporting her ability and getting tested, afraid that the Vanguard would deem her evil and dangerous. What if she really was as bad as Terry, Stephanie, Alistair, and the others and she was just lying to herself this whole time?

Somehow, that fear hadn’t manifested, even when she fucked up by helping Terry and almost proved those misgivings to be true. The agony of Vice-Commander Carpenter searching through her thoughts and memories had almost rivaled what Ainslee had caused her physically, but she had seen something there, something that stayed her hand and convinced her to give Karen another chance. She probably didn’t deserve it, but maybe ten years of serving in the Vanguard and feeding Ainslee would make up for almost killing her.

She couldn’t admit that though, least of all to Ainslee and the Sprite, Lily. She would need to keep them at a distance and be the bitch they probably expected her to be. She couldn’t let herself be real or vulnerable with them because if they ever forgave her then this might not be the penance it should be. She might let them get close, they might come to mean something to her, and it would hurt all the more when they eventually left her like her parents had.

That thought only brought to mind the question that still haunted her every night. Another ‘why’. The biggest ‘why’. It had always been, and likely always would be, the one that had forever changed her life. Why did she ever go to that fucking resort? She knew the answer, of course, and always had, but that never helped to relieve the pain and loss. Thinking about it only ever made it worse.

She and Mom had planned that damn trip for months to celebrate her sixteenth birthday, and she had been so excited about it. Daddy had even taken time away from running the business that he had built up from nothing to join them for the family getaway. Her family wasn’t obscenely rich, like Terry, Stephanie, Alistair, or any of the other kids close to her age that she had met on that doomed vacation, but even without her parents’ life insurance policies, she likely would have been set for life. She would give up every cursed penny just to have her parents back.

She still had nightmares about that day. The Titans’ weapons sizzling through the air, the sounds of explosions, collapsing buildings, and screams of people being captured or killed both near and distant. The smell of blood, burnt ozone, and charred bodies filling her nose and making her want to vomit. The worst by far was the flashbacks though. Just thinking about it was enough that she was forced to live those moments again in visceral and agonizing clarity.

What was once paradise was now Hell as Karen ran alongside her mother through what had once been the picturesque resort town that she had begged her parents to take her to for her sweet sixteen. There was nothing sweet about this birthday though. The sound of screams, thundering Titan footsteps, and explosions filled the air that her strained lungs desperately screamed for as she ran.

An accusatory voice, her voice, told her, “This was my fault. If I hadn’t wanted to come here, Mom and Dad would still be alive. It was all my fault. My fault… my fault… my fault… my fault.

Karen couldn’t breathe and familiar hot tears streamed down her face and onto her pillow as the accusations rang through her mind and she rocked back and forth in the fetal position. “Karen… Karen, snap out of it!”

A nudge against her mind. Familiar, and painful, but somehow, she got the sense that there was an attempt at being gentle. What? Why? Wait, she was having a flashback, wasn’t she? She didn’t know how long she had been lost in it this time, but she probably didn’t want to know. “Don’t think about it,” she told herself firmly as she struggled to regain control of her breathing and wiped at the tears on her face.

When she could finally breathe somewhat normally again and was lying on her back to keep taking slow and steady breaths, she opened her eyes to once again find herself looking up at the unfamiliar ceiling of her current room in Vanguard Tower. “Are you okay now?” a familiar voice asked. She turned her head to see Vice-Commander Carpenter hovering over her bed with a concerned expression on her angelic face.

“I’m fine, I didn’t need your help,” Karen snapped out of reflex. Push her away, can’t have her get close. She didn’t have the energy to direct her aggression toward the woman right now anyway, it was all directed where it belonged, at herself, for letting this woman see her so weak and for bearing the responsibility of her parents’ deaths.

The Angel coolly arched an eyebrow, calling bullshit with a mere expression. “I’ve seen everything in your mind, Karen. You need to start letting people in, but I won’t push it if you don’t want to talk about it yet. It’s something you can explore with the therapist I’ve arranged for you.”

“Sounds wonderful,” Karen snarked, wishing that the woman would just leave so she wouldn’t have to say something really mean and feel bad about it later. “They can tell me all about how I have survivor’s guilt from the Incursion and losing my parents, how I push people away because I’m afraid of losing people I care about again, and because of what my family did after the Incursion. I’ve been down that road before, at school.”

“Yes, I’ve read your file as well as your mind,” Carpenter said. The look in her eyes made Karen think that she was trying to decide whether to try to talk more or comfort her. “So, what did happen with your family? Your file only states that you emancipated yourself and kicked your uncle and aunt from your home not long after you moved to Amethyst Harbour and started going to your school.”

Karen considered the question and decided that it wouldn’t change anything to tell her the truth. It wasn’t like she hadn’t probably seen it in her mind already. “I was never close to the extended family. After the funeral, all these relatives I barely knew or never heard of showed up to start kissing my ass and to try to claw out a slice of the family fortune. They didn’t give a shit about me, only the money. My aunt and uncle acted like they were my parents and hired some shifty lawyer to try to steal what Dad worked his ass off most of his life to build. When I read the papers that they wanted me to sign, I got my own lawyer and kicked them to the curb.”

That wasn’t all there was to it, but it was enough to give the general picture. She didn’t include the fact that she had found her gold and ruby bracelet, the last birthday gift that her father had got for her, in a pawnshop downtown. It still had the engraving and everything.

It was the one time that she had truly stood up for herself. After she got a good lawyer, she got herself emancipated and got her lawyer to sell her father’s business, liquidate any other assets, and donate a large sum anonymously to an orphanage in Amethyst Harbour. An orphanage for teens like her, who lost their families in Incursions, had nowhere else to go, and needed to deal with being Altered.

She suspected that the telepathic Angel knew the details she had skipped, but she didn’t say anything about it. She didn’t say anything, just watched her with an uncertain expression on her face, as if wondering how far she could push without breaking her like fine China in the hands of a clumsy waiter. When Carpenter spoke again, the words were not what she had been expecting.

“You’re a better person than you’ll let others see, even yourself. You don’t need to be alone, and you won’t be. That’s why you’re on a team now. Don’t push them away, give them a chance. Give yourself a chance. I can’t order you to make friends, but you’ll be depending on one another. Would it really be so bad to open up and let them get to know the real you? They need to be able to trust you to have their backs, and trust goes both ways,” she said in a quiet tone.

She made it sound so easy, but the fact that they would be training together as a military unit only made Karen more certain that allowing herself to get close and have feelings for them would be a bad idea. She would do her part and watch their backs, but she couldn’t go through watching someone she cared about die again. Burying that surge of pain that surged through her chest at the thought down deep, she forced out a noncommittal grunt and grumbled, “Yeah, well thanks for the pep talk, is there anything else you came for, or can I sleep now?”

“I had time available and the readings of your vitals from your tracking implant were concerning, so I thought I would check on you. I also thought I would see if you wanted to get anything from home to help make you more comfortable while you’re here. We could grab you some clothes, self-care stuff, and maybe a keepsake or two in a secure jewelry box… like a bracelet,” the Angel gently suggested.

“Hmph. Do you treat all your conscripts like this?” Karen asked suspiciously. Still, she couldn’t deny that she would very much appreciate getting those very things from her home.

“No,” Vice-Commander Carpenter said as she shook her head and offered an arm to help Karen off the bed. “Just the ones I want to see turn their lives around. And since you’re a conscript, as you’ve so helpfully pointed out, I can order you to take action. So, get your ass out of that bed, and let’s go get you some things from home.”