Electra

Erin tightened her hand on Mark's shoulder, even as she looked somewhat helplessly at James. "It's not an easy thing to get used to, probably. But it's something you and your dad can figure out together. He'll be in the same boat, right? It's not like your family will love you any less. You need to talk to them, and they'll help you figure it out." She was rather relieved to see Oliver walk in past James, looking as though he owned the place, for all she was pretty sure she'd closed the door to her room when she left. Not to mention the self-closing outside doors on the dorm. Oliver gave James and Erin a sociable nudge, then twined around Mark's ankles with a determined purr.

Erin took a long breath, rolling her shoulders and looking away. "Okay, that's good to know. I mean, I figured that was the way it was, they teach us about taunting and baiting in fight training all the time. But it's hard not to wonder, just because I don't know where they really are, if they're anywhere." She shrugged and pulled the cloth band from her hair, twisting it around in her hands. "Anyway," she asked after a few quiet moments, "did you get in any trouble with the school? Did Summers and them even remember?"

"Did you really see my family when you were gone?" she asked, the words tumbling out in a rush. Erin had told herself it was just another taunt from a villain, and that James had had no reason to tell the truth, but the idea still wouldn't leave her alone. Her family didn't deserve hell, but they hadn't deserved anything that had happened to them, and no earthly or divine force had cared about that. And if they were there, in this universe's afterlife... were they really entirely out of reach?

Stesha startled at the sudden intrusion into her mind. It took a moment to realize what was happening, and who was talking. "Tell Jack he can take his illumination and shove it," she said aloud to the kitchen ceiling, unsure of how to actually respond. "You've all been covering for him, why should you stop now? I haven't got anything to say to him." If she could've slammed the door of her mind, she would have, but Stesha didn't even begin to know how one went about doing that. Instead she flipped on her radio and turned it up loud, as though the music would drown out the voice in her head.

"Most of it's still pretty clear," she told him. "Some of the days between Halloween and the fight are blurry. We all worked ourselves into exhaustion though, so I think it's probably just from that. The fight itself, and before and after it, I can remember all that. Seems weird to remember all that and have everything be so normal now, but you get used to it, I guess." Erin paused for a second. "I was going to ask you. During the fight..." She trailed off uncharacteristically, then shook her head. "Never mind."

"Not everyone's as good as you are," Stesha replied, quieter now, but still attacking the little spots of dirt on the floor as though they'd done her a personal injury. "Not everyone has the same moral code, or lines they won't cross. Have you ever thought he might have started hero work because the people who could stop him would pay less attention to him if he looked and acted like one of their own? Or maybe to make himself feel better for the bad things he did every night? He was already on your team by the time I met him. It wasn't like he had some major change of heart, changed his ways, and started being a hero. Now I have to wonder whether he bit Moira too, and she just healed up too fast to ever notice it. It seems pretty likely with Taylor, anyway," she added sardonically, "since she didn't seem surprised, or even to care, that Jack was eating people. I don't even know how you tell with her if it's voluntary or not anymore." She stopped mopping for a minute, wrapping her hand around the end of the mop, then resting her forehead against her knuckles. "What are you going to do about him now?" she finally asked. "You know what he is, and what he does. Is he really worth your silence and your complicity in whatever he does when he's out at night?"

Standing backstage, Stesha decided to show off just a little bit. If not now, after all, then when? Still out of sight of the audience, she concentrated and began to grow the seeds in their pots out front. There was a murmur as the first shoots began to appear,that grew louder as the pots filled up and spilled over, flowers, fruits and vines beginning to appear everywhere. Vines tilted off the front of the stage, almost as far as the feet of the nearest audience members. When the applause started, she made one bright yellow tulip grow especially large and then stepped through it onto the stage. Spotting Taylor and Derrick in the audience, she grinned at them before waving to the audience and taking her seat.

"Poor babies," Stesha said with concern. "There was nobody around in the park that I could see when we were there. If someone did bring them here, they either escaped or got dumped. Can you help them get home?" she asked Derrick. "We have to be able to find their families somehow." She was interrupted by the chiming of the front doorbell. "Sounds like the pizza's here."

Erin unfolded her legs and dropped down from the bars, bringing them to the same level. She leaned on one of the upright supports as she studied him in the near-darkness. "Yeah, I know," she finally said. "I might have done the same thing, in your place, and you'd probably have yelled at me for it too. It's easier to look back from this side, when everything's over." She hesitated for a minute. "It seems like for a lot of people, even people who were there, some things about the invasion have gotten fuzzy at the edges. Do you still remember all of it?"

"What did you expect him to be doing?" Stesha demanded. "He's a vampire, right? Feasts on the blood of the living? Not everyone who's living is totally innocent, but they don't deserve to be eaten by monsters. I wonder how many of the criminals he's rounded up have never made it to the police station. Did you or anybody else ever check up on him to see where he gets what he eats? There was obviously nobody paying attention the night he was with me. Since when does fighting crime give anyone a free pass?" She turned back to her work, wringing out the mop and soaking up some of the water she'd carelessly splashed around. Maybe she wasn't being entirely fair to Derrick, who wouldn't see the worst in people if it bit him, but she wasn't yet willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Part of it was that she was pretty sure that when she was done being mad she was going to cry and possibly jump in the shower to never come out again. She at least wanted some privacy for that.

"Act poorly?" Stesha snapped, slamming the mop head against the floor. Water and suds flew everywhere as she stared into his blank, empty face. "It's acting poorly if you don't call someone when you said you would, or dump them with no explanation. He sank his teeth into my neck and drank my blood, and somehow made it so I didn't remember it later. That's a lot more than behaving like a jerk. I'm pretty sure it's a crime. Not that I could prove it. The fact that he was out there doing that, might still be doing it, for all I know, and you've been protecting him, makes me sick." Whirling away, she began to scrub the floor with great vigor, the sponge mop making squeaky noises against the linoleum that were loud in the quiet room.

Stesha was standing over the sink with a stormy expression on her face, waiting for the trickle of hot water from the faucet to fill her bucket. She spared him a glance. "I can't believe you didn't tell me," she spat. "You knew I went out with him, you know what kind of person he is. Or maybe you don't. You were awfully quick to believe that he couldn't do anything wrong, despite what Moira told me, and what I tried to tell Taylor." Giving up on the faucet, she hauled the half-full bucket out of the sink and put it on the floor. In the tiny kitchen she had to brush through him to get the mop, but that wasn't hard in his current form. She dipped the mop in the bucket and began sloshing hot water onto the floor. "I guess everybody's known except me for months. That's a heck of a joke."

He could hear water running in the kitchen and smell the strong tang of Pine-Sol in the air as soon as he came through the door, but Stesha didn't make an appearance. The plants were interested though, turning and moving in his direction in a way that didn't seem entirely friendly. "What do you want?" Stesha called from the kitchen. "Shouldn't you be celebrating the engagement?"

Immediately subsequent/simultaneous to Abra Kadabra.

The plants always reacted when Stesha came home. Sometimes, when she was feeling mellow, it was just to turn her way in momentary acknowledgement. Today as Stesha transmitted in, the plants filling her living space rustled as though moved by an unseen gust of wind. Runners began climbing the walls, covering the windows and blocking the door as she tugged the pins from her hair and tossed them angrily into an enameled bowl on the coffee table. She was mad, and she hated being mad, but underneath the mad she felt sick and sad, and that was worse. She'd take the anger while it lasted. The first thing she needed to do though, was to expend some energy before her plants filled the entire living room. Kicking off her shoes, she walked into the kitchen and started filling her mop bucket. The floor needed work anyway, and that was a nice, mindless exercise. The side of her neck ached as though she'd been stung by a bee, but surely that was just imaginary. Stesha resisted the urge to rub it.

"You're sorry," Stesha told Jack softly, "because you got caught doing what you do. And you don't care what he does to other people," she added, looking at Taylor, "because you love him, for whatever reason, despite everything." She looked over at Derrick. "And you knew what he was, for a long time, you all knew, and you didn't tell me because I wasn't a member of your special little club." She rubbed her forehead, running a hand over the flowers in her hair. "Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you'll be very happy together. I have to go." She closed her hand around one daisy and vanished without a sound.

Erin put a hand cautiously on Mark's shoulder. "That's not true," she told him. "They still did all that stuff, no matter where your dad comes from, right? It's not like all the stories aren't true because one got, um, left out. And having superpowers doesn't make anybody less brave or worthy as a hero, right? Even if you dad was half genie, or whatever, he still did all the things you've told us about without ever knowing he had anything special protecting him. That's pretty brave."

Stesha continued staring at Jack in shocked disbelief while the others all seemed to talk at once, It was impossible not to pay attention to Ace when he spoke, but even then, the words only penetrated halfway. She raised a hand to her own neck, rubbing lightly at the spot that had been black and blue for days after the date she'd gone on with Jack. She took a step backwards, letting go of Moira's arm, when Jack approached. "Did you bite me?" she demanded suddenly. "And no more lies, I want the truth from somebody for once."

"You think any of us came to Claremont and joined Young Freedom to avoid getting hurt?" Erin asked him, half a smile on her face. "That is stupid. The smile vanished again. "If you had asked us, we could've helped. We definitely would've tried. When we got to that cemetery and couldn't save you, I thought you were dead. You said you understand what it means to have friends now, do you understand what it's like to be just a little bit too late? Maybe none of the rest of it would've had to happen if you'd trusted us."

After a stunned moment, Stesha snagged Moira by the arm before she could go much more than a step towards Jack. Though Moira could easily have dragged her along if she'd wanted, it was enough to stay her for now. "Don't you dare go anywhere until you explain that," she told Jack, her voice tight. "If that's just a figure of speech, it's a really inappropriate one." Seeing the fangs made her stomach do a quick flip, and she held on a little tighter to Moira's arm, more for support than restraint.

Stesha raised her eyebrows and grinned at the "seat of honor," but managed not to laugh. She'd seen odder floral setups at parties. "Sounds easy enough," she agreed. "If you're going to open the room now, how about I go backstage and just pop out when you're ready for me?" She stepped over to the empty planters and dropped a few seeds in them, making sure they'd be ready to go, then headed back into the green room. A little nagging voice in her head wondered what she was getting into, but she ignored it. It wasn't like she'd ever had stage fright. This would be fun.

Stesha clambered up from the side of the pool and hurried to find Derrick. Her eyes widened a little at the giant pile of stuff. "Wow, you must've bought out the store," she said with a laugh. "But I guess you never know what you're going to need. Come on and see what Taylor found in the park. They're weird, but really cute." She led him back down towards the pool, tugging the straps on her borrowed swimsuit. "I don't even know what they are, but they're kind of like babies."

"It wasn't all your fault," Erin corrected, resting her hands on her knees. "I'm still mad at you for running off by yourself like that. I can't believe you wouldn't ask us for help before you went and did something so stupid. I was right there, the night before Halloween, and you lied to me. But that's not enough to hang everything that happened afterwards around your neck. Nobody blames you for being born who you are, or for what your dad tried to make you do."

A little uncertainly, Erin rose from her seat and went to stand next to Mark, close but not touching him. She was not at all certain what to say, but he was her friend, and she'd never seen him look so sad. "Your grandparents must have been pretty happy to have a kid," she finally offered, rather lamely. "I mean, your dad seems pretty well adjusted. But adoption and stuff wasn't something people talked about back then, maybe they didn't want him to feel bad." She was making it up as she went along, but it seemed like it might be right.

"That's great," Stesha told Taylor with a laugh. "I knew it was just a matter of time till you got out of there. I just wish I'd been able to see the look on that jerk's face. Did you show him the picture from your cell phone? I barely knew the guy, and I've still saved it for posterity." She leaned forward, ready to hop back into the pool when Clingy suddenly submerged entirely, but it was quickly apparent that she could swim underwater fairly well, and thus escape the splashing. "I think we've bought some time with these guys, but how are you going to get them back where they came from? I mean, they didn't exactly come with a bill of lading."