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wolfeyedwitch · 2 years

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trust issues for bailey

With Bloody Outstretched Hands, Part 11

So this has been sitting in my inbox for forever, but I have finally written the thing! I hope the... somewhat excessive... length helps make up for the length of the wait!

CW: manipulative/abusive whumper, gaslighting, abusive relationship, boiling frog metaphor behavior, school shooting, mentioned police brutality, mentioned hate crimes. Let me know if I missed anything, or if you'd like to join the taglist.

Masterlist

---

Bailey looked down at their knees after Foxfire took away their finished plate from breakfast. No use putting this off any longer; they needed to start talking.

“I should, um, I should tell you how I ended up with Slipknot,” they said, fingers worrying at the blanket covering them. That was a good place to start; then they could give the heroes all the information they had on Slipknot’s organization and allies.

“If you’re comfortable telling us, we’re more than willing to listen,” Tempest said.

“But it can wait, if you’re not up for it yet,” Foxfire added.

Bailey’s mouth twisted at that. If they were going to wait until Bailey was comfortable and ready, they’d be here for the rest of Bailey’s natural lifespan. No. Bailey was just going to have to suck it up and do what they came here to do.

“I wanna start by saying that none of this is an excuse for what I’ve done,” Bailey said, still not looking up at the heroes. “I’m not trying to make myself the victim, because I’m not. I’ve done some… some bad things, and I’m not trying to downplay that.”

Icarus’s face came to mind, swollen and mangled to near unrecognizability. They winced.

“We understand,” Tempest said. “Thank you for coming to us; that can’t have been easy.”

Bailey shook their head. In some ways, it was the easiest thing they’d done, or at least the easiest decision to make. They just had to stop being such a selfish coward and do it.

“Um,” Bailey said, eloquent as ever. “This happened my first year of college. I’m from— well, you looked me up, so you know. But it’s a hell of a lot less tolerant than out here. My parents were supportive, but the rest of the town? Hell no. Hate crimes weren’t common, but I wouldn’t really call them uncommon either. I was out about my gender, but I kept the fact that I’m powered to myself. I was- was actually pretty scared of my powers, then. I had some nasty accidents before I got any sort of control.

Foxfire smiled sympathetically behind their mask. “That’s totally normal. We all had to learn how to use our powers.”

Tempest nodded in agreement.

Bailey squirmed a little, uncomfortable under the heroes’ gaze. They focused on their fingers twisting the blanket as they started to talk again.

“Well. I came out here for school, and I started going to the Pride and Gifted Centers. I figured that maybe the Gifted Center would have resources for, for learning better control? And they got me set up with a therapist to talk about it and start getting less scared of my powers. So I kept going back. I got to know some people, and made friends with a few.

“That’s where I met Slipknot, though I didn’t know it at the time. I knew them as Alias.”

---

“Ugh, the street preachers are out on the main block again today,” one of Bailey’s acquaintances said as they walked into the Gifted Center.

“Which ones?” asked another. “Are people going to hell because they’re queer or because they’ve got powers, this week?”

“Both,” came another voice from the entrance. They were older than the typical college kid, maybe early thirties, with an air of refinement and self-assurance. In their nice slacks and sweater, they looked out of place next to the somewhat dingy, extremely comfortable furniture of the Center. They smiled at the students, who smiled or nodded back before breaking off into smaller groups.

All except Bailey, who stayed to talk more with the new arrival.

“Hello,” the newcomer said. “I’m Alias.”

“Bailey,” they said, extending their hand to shake.

Alias’s smile got even broader.

---

“They said they were a grad student. Studying… hell, I don’t even remember what lie they told me about that. But it seemed like our schedules matched up oh so well, because we always managed to run into each other in the library or in passing.”

Bailey gave a derisive snort. “They had me all scoped out and I didn’t even realize it. God, I was so stupid.”

“That’s not quite fair,” Airmid said as she entered the room. “‘Naive’ might be a better term.”

“No one is exactly their smartest when they’re 18,” Tempest added wryly.

Bailey shrugged, not knowing what to do with this… this… was it pity? Why were the heroes being so nice?

“Anyway,” they said, trying to get back to their story. “Um. Well, we just kept meeting up in passing. And then we started planning to meet up, and it just… kept going from there. They helped me with my classes, listened to me ramble about the history of powereds and how we’ve been viewed by different cultures. We became friends, or at least that’s what I thought at the time.”

---

“...and Professor A was saying how witches in the historical context could have been powered, and just broke off to form their own society!” Bailey said, gesturing excitedly.

Alias gave them an indulgent smile. “Yeah?”

“Yeah!” Bailey said with a laugh. “He has us doing research on it. I’m looking into the history of so-called sympathetic magic and how it could be related back to powers that are known and categorized today.”

“Like voodoo dolls?” Alias asked.

Bailey nodded. “That’s one name for it, from the Hatian and Louisiana voodoo traditions, but I’m looking more into other forms of doll effigies. I’m a little too white meat for voodoo,” they said with a laugh.

Alias laughed too. “Always so conscientious about cultural contexts. I like that about you.”

Bailey ducked their head with a smile at their friend’s praise. “Um, anyway… yeah, I’m looking more into the English traditions of witchcraft, and how that traveled to America, mostly the Northeast. Salem and the like. There, the effigies for sympathetic magic weren’t called voodoo dolls. They were called poppets.”

“Poppet…” Alias said thoughtfully. “Small and cute, but powerful, too. Maybe I should start calling you that.”

---

“Eventually I was spending vacations with them instead of going home,” Bailey continued. “They were inviting me to their house, taking me out to resorts, introducing me to their friends… I felt so special, that someone like them had taken an interest in someone like me.”

Tempest nodded. “Love-bombing,” he said. “It’s a highly effective tactic for manipulation.”

“And then…” Bailey’s throat was too tight to force words through. They tried, but nothing came out. They swallowed hard.

Foxfire disappeared in a flash of blue, then walked back through the door with a bottle of water. “Here,” they said, handing it to Bailey.

Bailey took it with a grateful nod. Their hands shook as they opened the bottle and took a sip. They replaced the cap before they could spill it all over themself.

“And then, my parents died,” Bailey finally managed.

The heroes gave sympathetic nods and hums. None of them looked surprised. Of course; if they’d looked Bailey up, they knew about that, too.

Nothing Bailey had was private. It made sense that their grief wasn’t their own, either.

“I… I didn’t handle it well,” Bailey admitted. “I kind of fell apart. I don’t have any other family, no relatives that could help me with it all. And in the midst of it all, Alias stepped up. They helped me figure it out.”

---

“Poppet!” Alias called out from across the courtyard. “Where have you been? Are you alright?”

Bailey wiped at their eyes with the back of their hand. “Not now, Alias.”

“Woah, woah, what’s wrong?” Alias said as they got close enough to see Bailey’s blotchy face and red-rimmed eyes. “Why were you in the registrar’s office? Are you okay?”

Bailey opened their mouth to tell their friend to give them space. Instead, all that came out was a sob.

Alias gently led them to a bench nearby and held them as Bailey sobbed into their shoulder, soaking their shirt with tears. “What’s going on, little poppet? Please, let me help. Even if it’s just listening.”

In between sobs, Bailey managed to get out their story. How there had been an accident, a house fire, and neither of their parents had made it out. How Bailey now had to figure out what to do with their parents’ assets and house and will and just everything when they were a thousand miles away from their childhood home. How they didn’t know if they would be able to stay in college without their parents’ income to support them. How they just didn’t know what to do.

And Alias just held them as they cried. They kissed the top of Bailey’s head and promised to help make everything better.

And they did. They invited Bailey to move in with them so Bailey didn’t have to worry about continuing to pay for a dorm. They hired a lawyer to help deal with Bailey’s family’s affairs, and helped Bailey get the extensions they needed in their classes so they could get everything sorted. They helped Bailey look for and apply to scholarships to cover tuition costs.

Everything suddenly seemed more manageable, with Alias there to help.

---

“Over the next year and a half or so, I started seeing things and adding the pieces together. Or should I say, Alias let me see the clues,” Bailey said. “It all came to a head during the shooting.”

“When that bigot went after anyone with powers?” Foxfire asked.

Bailey nodded, mouth dry as they thought back to that day.

---

Bailey was in the Gifted Center, in one of the back rooms, when the screams started. Interspersed with them were loud pops that Bailey had only ever heard on TV before: gunshots.

They panicked. They’d known about school shootings, had even had a safety briefing on them in one of their freshmen orientation classes, but they’d never expected to actually be in one!

Think, think, think. What were they supposed to do? What was the little mantra that police officer had drilled into their heads?

Run, hide, fight.

Well, they couldn’t run. The room they were in didn’t have an exit. They’d have to go back through the rest of the Gifted Center to get outside, and that was where the noise was coming from.

Was it coming closer?

No, they couldn’t think about that right now. They didn’t have time to freeze; they had to figure out their next step.

The next step was hide. They could do that.

They pushed a small bookcase in front of the door, then turned the lights off in the room. They looked around for a good hiding spot. All they saw were the beanbags and squishy chairs where they’d curled up to read and study so often. The room was too open; there was nowhere for them to hide!

A hand gripped their arm, and a second one clamped over their mouth before they could scream.

“It’s just me, Bailey,” Alias’s voice said. “Come on, I can get us out of here.”

The rest of that afternoon was a bit of a blur. Bailey had to give a statement to the cops, who had seemingly taken their sweet time in getting there. The shooter had been taken into custody, but not before they’d left a string of casualties in their wake.

Alias came to pick Bailey up and bring them home. In the car, Bailey said, “You got me out.”

Alias just nodded.

“The doors were locked.”

Another nod.

“You took me through the wall.”

“You aren’t the only one with powers, little poppet,” Alias said.

“Intangibility,” Bailey said. “But isn’t that… isn’t that Slipknot’s power?”

Alias sighed. “There’s something that I need to tell you.”

---

“That’s when they told me they were Slipknot,” Bailey said. “And I knew they were a villain, but when they explained it, everything they said just made so much sense. They said they were fighting against…”

Bailey felt their cheeks prickle with heat. “Well, they said they were ‘fighting against the corrupt system that heroes help perpetuate’.”

Foxfire made a noise that somehow indicated both humor and dismay.

“Yeah,” Bailey said wryly. “Looking back on it, I feel so stupid. But back then, it just… made sense. They introduced me to the villains they worked with, and they all seemed to have such good reasons. They talked about how corrupt our society is, and how change isn’t brought about by asking nicely. A few of the ones that are known for being more violent said things like how societies don’t change unless you make them change. That they had to be willing to do things others wouldn’t, couldn’t, to get things done. And if I needed proof that something needed doing, then I could just look back at the shooting. Compare how that normie white boy got taken in without a scratch on him while powereds who hadn’t even committed a crime got killed and cops called it ‘self defense’.”

Bailey smiled humorlessly. “And I bought every bit of it.”

Even now, the reasons still made sense to them, was the worst part. Even knowing how much damage their former ‘team’ was actually doing, their justifications for it all still seemed legitimate. Because Bailey knew their history: nothing changed without some kind of catalyst. Many things that were illegal at the time are now looked on as the moral and just choice. The Underground Railroad hadn’t been legal. The Civil Rights Movement intentionally broke laws. Hell, the gay rights movement had started with a riot!

They shook their head to clear those thoughts. Now was not the time for that.

“Slipknot didn’t try to recruit me to work for them, at least not at first,” they continued. “I kept going to college for a while. But they offered to train me to use my powers. They… they said I didn’t have to worry about accidentally hurting them, given their own powers.”

---

“Okay,” Slipknot said. “Now show me what you’ve got.”

Bailey looked around the training room hesitantly. “Alias, I’m still not sure about this.”

“It’ll be fine, I promise, little poppet,” they said with a smile. “You can’t hit me, remember? Even if anything goes wrong, it’ll just pass right through me. And if all else fails, I have Healer on staff just in case.”

Bailey nodded and squared their shoulders. They surveyed the line of kettlebells laid out from lightest to heaviest. They reached for their powers.

Slowly, unsteadily, the five-pound weight rose into the air. It got to around waist height before Bailey lost their grip and had to double over panting.

Slipknot clapped their hands. “That was great, Bailey! Really great start. I know that was hard, but it’ll only get easier with practice. We can figure out a schedule for training around your classes and focus on your finesse as well as your upper limits.

“You’re going to be magnificent; I just know it.”

---

“Eventually, as I got less scared of my powers, they grew stronger,” Bailey said. “I ended up joining the villains for their group training, eventually. I started focusing less and less on my classes until it didn’t make sense to even go any more. I dropped out to join Slipknot as a villain.

“They gave me the name Poppet.”

At the time, it had felt sweet, like an inside joke they had that the rest of the world wasn’t in on. Now? It just felt like another thing Slipknot had ruined about them.

“This was two years ago?” Tempest asked.

Bailey nodded. “Yeah. Slipknot made a big deal out of it, too. They threw a party in my honor to welcome me to the team.”

---

“I can’t do this,” Bailey said, turning away from the door.

Slipknot caught them gently by the arm and turned them back towards the door. “Yes, you can. It’s going to be fine, little Poppet. Besides, everyone is waiting for you. Don’t you want to show off all my hard work?” they said teasingly.

Bailey was wearing a super suit for the first time. Slipknot had designed it for them. It was gray and red, with a mask that protected their identity, protection for all their major vital bits, and a plethora of pockets as well as a utility belt. It was striking and distinct from every other villain and hero in the area, and Bailey loved it. They loved how much thought and effort their friend had put into making it, to keeping Bailey safe both physically and identity-wise.

Bailey took a deep breath. They could do this.

They opened the door to riotous applause.

---

“It was just little stuff at first. Acting as lookout, adjusting cameras so there were bigger blindspots, that kind of thing. As I got better, got more trusted,” Bailey spat the word like it tasted bitter, “my jobs got bigger too. Pretty soon I was given small solo missions, and then taking part in even larger group operations.

“Training changed, too. It got harder, rougher. There were times I wasn’t allowed to use my hands, just my powers, to work on my fine control. In group training, there would be uneven splits of teams where I would have to defend against a lot of the others.

“It just kept snowballing, I guess. And by the time I realized that I was in way over my head, that this wasn’t what I wanted, I was too afraid to leave.”

---

The group was laughing, comparing scars and telling the stories behind them. Viper had just shown a big one down her back from being thrown through a window by a hero two states over, back when she worked solo.

“Don’t worry Poppet; you’ll have stories to share soon enough,” she said, patting them on the knee.

They ducked their head. On the one hand, it would be nice to be part of the easy comradery here, able to show off their scars and tell their stories like they actually belonged. On the other, though…

“The heroes really did all of that?” Bailey asked. “I thought they had, like… rules against that, or something.”

The villains all looked at them, then broke into laughter.

“Oh, Poppet, sometimes I forget how new you are to this,” Viper said.

“Sure they’ve got rules,” said another in the group. “According to what they tell the public, anyway.”

Other Villain smirked at Bailey. “All I can say is, don’t show them any weakness, and don’t get caught. With that kind of attitude? The heroes would chew you up and spit you out.”

Bailey looked to Slipknot in alarm. Slipknot nodded solemnly.

“We’re nothing but villains to them, little poppet,” Slipknot said. Their voice had none of the levity of the others. “We’re already the bad guys, so to them? Anything they do to us is justified. That’s why I’m always so careful with our exit plans. I don’t want any of you to get caught by them. I don’t want to lose any of you.”

---

“They said… they said you did terrible things,” Bailey admitted quietly. “They said that villains who get captured by heroes never make it to jail, or not any jail that normals go to anyway. They said any kind of weakness I showed, like being in pain, was just something you’d take advantage of. That you’d do whatever it took to get me to talk, to give you everything I knew about Slipknot and the team.”

“Bailey,” Foxfire started, sounding absolutely gutted. “We wouldn’t—”

“I know that now,” Bailey said, ducking their head so they didn’t have to see the expression that went with that tone. “But I didn’t then. Even once I figured out I didn’t actually want to be on the team, didn’t want to be doing everything they were, I was still too chickenshit to actually leave. I thought my options were either them finding me again, or you lot taking me in. Neither of those seemed like good options.”

“What changed your mind?” Tempest asked.

“The story recently, of the geomancer heroine and the ‘villain’ that could talk to animals,” Bailey said. “I figured that if Avery could get taken into custody and end up fighting with the heroes there, then you’d at least listen to me.”

“Thank you for trusting us,” Foxfire said.

Bailey’s mouth twisted wryly. This wasn’t trust. They couldn’t trust the heroes; they could barely trust themself at this point. This was just… picking the least bad option.

“This wasn’t your fault, you know,” Airmid said.

Bailey looked at her, puzzled. “What?”

“She’s right,” Tempest added. “Slipknot intentionally manipulated you. It sounds like they spent quite a bit of time and resources on the process, too.”

“It’s like the boiling frog thing,” Foxfire said. “If they’d just started out with the behavior they ended at, you’d never have gone along with it.”

Bailey shook their head. Foxfire was giving them too much credit. “I looked that up once, you know. About boiling a frog. Turns out the only way they stay in a pot of water as it heats up is if you lobotomize them first.”

They gave a snort of derisive laughter. “I guess that makes me dumber than a brain-dead frog, because I stayed.”

---

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With much love to @whump-a-la-mode for these prompts that helped spark this entry!

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