TLV: IC Inbox

[statementfuckingends]

You've reached Timothy Stoker, leave a message at the tone and I'll get back to you.

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[skitter]

She pushes off from the desk, putting a bit more space between them. "Yeah, and then I got three weeks of really, incredibly fun in-patient care for that. It's not a continuing thing, it's an event that happened."

[statementfuckingends]

That gets a bitter little laugh out of Tim. "What I wouldn't give for that to be true. You know how embarrassing it is to admit you're scared of fucking clowns?"

[skitter]

She snorts softly - not in derision but in sympathy. "No, fuck clowns though."

[statementfuckingends]

Tim still wrinkles his face, but it's good-natured. "Fuck clowns and fuck shitty little cramped spaces."

He's severely un-fond of them after waking up with Taylor's corpse still bleeding on him.

[skitter]

"I don't like being- feeling trapped," she admits, with a short shake of her head. "I don't think anyone does. But it boosts my range, which Tattletale says is a stress response."

[statementfuckingends]

"I mean, that definitely makes it sound like the kind of thing that lets mums lift cars off their toddlers," he points out dryly.

[skitter]

"And if I could get myself stuck that way, I would," she adds, with a level look.

[statementfuckingends]

"And that's how you over-exert, burn out and get killed by something totally preventable because you literally couldn't defend yourself," he replies in the same even tone, raising one eyebrow in challenge.

[skitter]

She shakes her head. "I'm not going to go into details for you, but I am in a much, much safer position when that range opens up. Tim, range is literally my only limitation."

[statementfuckingends]

"Oh, boo hoo, your scary bug powers have an upper limit."

He doesn't mean for that to come out as mean as it does, and he immediately recognises that, if the way he grimaces is any indication.

He leans back in his chair and rubs his face with one hand. Taking most of the strokes over a larger patch of worm scars. "I get what you're trying to say. It sucks feeling like you can't do anything with what you have on your own."

[skitter]

Taylor sighs, arms folding across her chest again.

"I don't need help in the bug room. I can do that, whatever-" The eyeroll is mostly at herself. Not entirely though. "Whatever about small spaces."

[statementfuckingends]

Tim's mouth pressed into a crooked line, but he's not gonna force the issue.

"...if you keep coming out looking that pale I'm staging an intervention."

Much.

"Otherwise Rags is gonna find a way to make it my fault."

[skitter]

"Rags is a practical guy. I'll tell him exactly how much help I need with this. I already have one dad on board, don't need three."

[statementfuckingends]

"Hey, hold on--!" He brings both hands up in a wild 'time-out' gesture. "I am no-one's dad, thank you!"

[skitter]

That startles Taylor into a sudden broad grin, eyes squinting nearly shut.

"Don't worry, you don't look that old, Mister Stoker."

[statementfuckingends]

He doesn't look mollified, but he can banter that. "Oh finally, some respect from the local hooligan bug collector."

[skitter]

"You know, I've actually been called- a hooligan? To my face- well, mask? In 2010? Gave me an absolute heart attack, I thought she'd clocked that I was a kid."

The faint pause was Taylor remembering a second late who had called her that, and what had happened just hours later, but she shakes that off to carry on.

"Generally, I really do prefer supervillain. It has a panache."

[statementfuckingends]

"I do not respect you enough to begin even considering calling you a supervillain," he admits with a cheery bluntness.

[skitter]

“And I work hard to stay right in that niche of expectation,” she responds with matching cheeriness.

[statementfuckingends]

"Oh, I'm sure you do," he says with a slightly firmer cheer. "Someone with your powers would get a lot more done staying under the radar like you do. Don't let anyone know how deep it all goes, keep the real tricks under your hat. In a bloody wasps' nest."

He's not mad, he just knows people.

[skitter]

She shrugs, casual. "It's not that deep. I know there's no keeping secrets from Himself upstairs, but I like not being Skitter here. I'm on the radar back home in a huge, international news kind of way, I have to sleep in my mask, and I am Skitter the Great and Terrible every waking hour, even to most of my friends.

"This is... nice. Between the absolutely torturous bullshit."

[statementfuckingends]

"Speaking from experience, absolutely torturous bullshit never gets any easier. You just start tuning it out." It and everything else that makes you feel literally anything. Or maybe it's just the depression. "Skitter the Great and Terrible, though, really? You sound like a dime-store wizard from a bad epic fantasy."

[skitter]

“That’s hyperbole. But at home, I haven’t been Taylor since my dad and I fought over me dropping out of school and I left. That was a few months back.

“Since then, it was Leviathan, rebuilding after Leviathan and staking out my territory, the Slaughterhouse Nine, with Bonesaw and Mannequin both coming specifically at me and my people and Shatterbird putting my dad in the hospital, Bonesaw’s stranger plague, the PRT declaring us enemies of the state with a pending kill order because of what Panacea did to Glory Girl even though that was firmly not my fault, and now the shit with Coil and the Travelers. Which is semi my fault because I betrayed him first.”

Through that, her body language goes quiet, arms crossed over her chest She’s pushing anything else out into the bugs. It’s not a good time for anyone to be in the greenhouse.

“From the Nine arriving in Brockton Bay to me landing here was… either ten or eleven days, I think. I don’t think I got to sleep more than twenty minutes at a time in there. Had to visit Coil’s pet surgeon twice in that time for me, four more times for other people. So at least the torturous bullshit here spaces itself out. Except for the emotional trauma of finding myself siblings with Boom-boom, it’s been something of a vacation until now.”

[statementfuckingends]

He's aware there's a certain level of weight to being told any of this at all, and while he doesn't exactly have much context he's certainly catching on to the idea that Taylor's life is a goddamn hardship back home.

He's also vaguely aware that she's probably not fully here while she talks about it. She can certainly put her attention into bugs; he has to wonder if she can't push other things too.

There's one detail he's got to fixate on, though.

"We're really going with Boom-boom for him?" he asks, with a sly little grin.

[skitter]

She shrugs, the corner of her mouth turning up. “I’m trying names on for him. Think that one sets the tone I want.”