N.B: For some rather fantastic artwork kindly drawn for this story, look for the links in my profile page.

...In brief, they live to prove death.
And it is this perversion of agency and desire that constitutes the deepest post-traumatic injury, and the most invisible and pernicious of human-rights violations.
- Nguyen L., 'The question of survival: the death of desire and the weight of life.'

--I--

The Stoics say, 'Retire within yourselves; it is there you will find your rest.'
And that is not true.
- Pascal, Pensée 465

--I--

Whenever evil befalls us, we ought to ask ourselves, after the first suffering, how we can turn it into good. So shall we take occasion, from one bitter root, to raise perhaps many flowers.
- Leigh Hunt

Three weeks later

Violet looked at the woman in front of her with a flat expression only just masking patronising contempt, and scratched the back of her hand where the itch from the IV needle recently removed had not yet faded. She wished dearly not to be there.

The office was a medium-sized room, decorated in fine pastel blue with framed pictures and photographs, low lighting. Violet found that this made it hard to focus on the woman in front of her, or indeed anything in the room. The chair she was perched stiffly on seemed overstuffed and oversoft, impossible to relax in. It was so squishy that the chair immediately bent the seated's spine in a position designed by Escher's yoga teacher on a bad day.

The woman herself was sitting on a perfectly ordinary high-backed office chair, and Violet wondered mutinously why she couldn't at least offer to trade places. She must see how uncomfortable being here made her. The least she could do was offer Violet a proper seat.

"Well, Violet?" said the woman softly. Her hands were empty – no clipboard. That was the one thing that Violet found immensely comforting. "Are you ready yet?"

Violet looked at the woman, Call-Me-Abigail, with that completely flat expression that just kept the anger behind it in check. No. That was the problem. She didn't feel ready to talk about it yet, not to this stranger, not to anybody. There was no way she could simply out her feelings and memories to anyone, least of all someone she didn't know.

Syndrome had been different. Syndrome had known already. Syndrome had understood. That was the crux of the matter. The pony-tailed middle-aged middle-class woman in front of her, kindly and well-intentioned as she was, would never understand any of it.

It was all her own fault, she thought ruefully. When she had landed in the U.S.A. at God-knew-where's airport she had been semiconscious, floating through a weird time-rip in her brain, trying to stay present but losing stray seconds and minutes. Either way, she remembered being put in the ICU of a hospital and then someone had given her a shot that finally allowed her to sleep.

When Violet had awoken it had been in a small hospital room and to her own frightened gasp. The dreams had followed her through the hours, a strange shifting kaleidoscope of barely-suppressed terror that had left her feeling scared and angry. There were many dreams, all strange and intertwined. She couldn't quite see the shape of them all. She was aware they were all connected – all linked with a crackling sinewy darkness; lots of ideas and images shifting between each other and although she tried to make some kind of sense of them they never did. She had understood them as not real and that the hospital was her here-and-now, but the marrow of the dreams still held a frightening core of truth that she couldn't shake. It, combined with her experience in the taiga, had left her with the clear and solid sensation of stagnation. She was stuck, and she wanted to move.

Violet loved Harker, but she didn't want to. She had never wanted to.

She had suggested a thrice-weekly visit with the in-hospital therapist and Dicker had leapt upon the idea like a starving wolf on a bacon sandwich. Violet had actually had to force the words past her lips, because the inherent wrongness in the idea screamed otherwise. She had thought it a good thing – she'd passed over on letting herself feel for a long time. Maybe forcing herself was the only way to start.

Violet was aware, now, that she had been right in that respect. If she left herself to her own devices she never would seek out the help she knew she needed. It had taken Syndrome's kind words and the way he had held her to make her realise that she was allowing herself to drown in her own blood.

Knowing this intellectually was one thing. Trying to make herself accept it was going nowhere. She stared resignedly at Call-Me-Abigail, all of this turmoil going on under a still face, and knew that she had to stop hiding away. The problem was that she didn't know if she'd ever be able to. The scars were hers and the time spent with Harker was a story she held close to herself.

It was a strange sensation; Harker was something she clutched near to her heart, something intensely personal, and exposing it to someone else would destroy the tenuous memory like watercolours under sunlight. The good things she remembered of him would fade away, memories of his kindness lost to the air. It sounded stupid, even to herself, but there were some things she had to keep. Remembering him as a person helped still the guilt a little.

Violet felt so angry. All the time. She wasn't able to lock it away anymore; it simmered under her skin like a close-fit t-shirt just stopped from reaching the surface. She needed to vent the rage, but there was no-one to understand it.

No-one at all.

Violet realised she had been silent too long. Call-Me-Abigail was watching her expectantly. Violet focused her eyes on the present with an audible snap.

"No. Not today."

Call-Me-Abigail leaned back in her chair properly and sighed, watching Violet with mildly-disappointed brown eyes. Violet didn't allow herself to get angry at this response. The woman was trying her best. Violet knew she was being deliberately uncooperative, but she couldn't. She just couldn't. Not for anyone.

"Violet, I feel you're not comfortable talking to me."

Understatement, Violet thought, and then felt unfair for thinking it. The anger was hard to control, a constant presence as it was, and Call-Me-Abigail really was just trying to do her job. Violet nodded stiffly in response. She would be honest, she'd promised herself that. She so desperately needed... something. Something she hadn't realised yet.

"Would you be more comfortable talking about your experiences to someone else?"

Violet shook her head equally as stiffly. No, that would solve nothing. If she couldn't talk to Call-Me-Abigail, there was little chance she could talk to anyone else.

For a moment, long arms and easy breathing and warm water flashed through her mind. Violet realised, with the dull finality of a tombstone sliding into place, that she would be unable to tell anyone else about that ever again. For Syndrome, it had been... peculiar circumstances – four years of pent-up emotion with a certain combination to the lock that Syndrome had known how to pick. He had understood. That was the key word here. No-one else ever would.

He knew what it was like to be forgotten, but that wasn't the most important bit. It was that he had known already. She hadn't needed to describe her time with Harker to him; it had been a period of time that he had known all about. Not a word would have passed her lips if he had been truly ignorant of the subject. There had been no need for explanations, for speculation or for complex abstract thought. It was a story she had laid out, simplicity in itself.

Perhaps some of this had been broadcast on a mental frequency Call-Me-Abigail had been able to tune into, because she passed a hand over her eyes in a rare show of emotion. The woman had been nothing but professional for the last five sessions, and Violet took this a sign that she, too, knew these so-called 'talking bouts' were at an end, and not a fruitful one. The therapist leant forward with a sigh, hands laced in front of her, brown eyes now with a sharpness Violet hadn't seen before. A challenge. Violet leaned forward as well.

"Violet, it occurs to me that what happened was so traumatic that you simply cannot speak about it to one who hasn't had those same experiences." Violet's estimation of the therapist rose several notches. Call-Me-Abigail was smarter than she had given her credit for. "It also occurs to me that you can't speak to someone you don't trust. Is there anyone, a family member, a friend, anyone with whom you could speak?"

That was the problem, right enough. Violet shook her head and Call-Me-Abigail sighed again.

"Are you sure there's no-one? Anyone at all?"

Violet started to shake her head again, resting her head in the palm of her hand, one finger idly tracing where the scar on her cheek curved around the side of her jaw. But suddenly, there came images – scars, flesh, the body, its bones, marrow. She had spent so long remembering its taste that she had forgotten its feel – the warm, living nuclei of a whole.

Her choice was obvious, of course – the one option she had always had. Violet stood then, and shook the hand of the surprised therapist.

"No," Violet said honestly, "There isn't."

She left the hospital that day.

--I--

Violet tapped her fingers on the steering wheel apprehensively, and checked her reflection in the mirror of the car one more time. Her knuckles didn't want to let go of the wheel in her grasp, fingers locked tight about its faux-leather surface.

To stall for time, Violet looked out of the windows at the scene around her.

Idyllic suburbia. It was near sunset and the late afternoon sunlight lanced golden beams through the air like heat. The lawns looked dark green, a healthy verdant floor which in turn highlighted the perfectly clean sandy-coloured sidewalks. The road was dark without being deep. The tasteful low houses were set back from the road and lit from behind. They looked like summer homespun, comfort embodied, and Violet felt so detached from it all that it scared her. Surely it wasn't that long ago...?

There was some kid's toy lying upside-down on the lawn of the house across the road on the opposite side, and she watched it to postpone the inevitable. It was cheap red plastic of the three-wheeled kind, mass-produced in Korea for the modern American and their discerning children. Violet saw it had little black pedals, and watched one of them turn over lazily in the almost-still air of the suburbs.

Violet took a deep breath and closed her eyes. It was easier this way. Without looking she opened the car door, stepped through, shut it behind her and locked it. The keys went in the back pocket of her jeans and her hands twisted into a knot just above the small of her back.

One step at a time. Easy, little Thirty-four.

She stared at the ground to avoid looking straight up. The sidewalk was smooth and light with the occasional faded chalkmarks and small pitts in the stone that marked the passage of the years and the lengths and strengths of childhood they had borne. What's years to a lump of rock? she thought, but there was no anger behind it. Not today.

The air was now completely still and with just a touch of coolness that marked how summer hadn't quite arrived yet. It was still spring, but there had been a flush of hot weather throughout the whole city that had left no doubt that summer was on its way. The sky was a still blue mixed in with a golden-umber colour of the setting sun. It encouraged Violet. Most things she associated with bad memories were white, black, or grey. This colour was good; it was the saturation in her life. It wasn't monochromatic.

She looked up again, this time a bit further than she had intended to, and caught sight of the place.

The house was low to match the buildings around it, but it was unique to her all the same – the roof a soft V without being imposing, the windows tall and clear and sometimes cream-curtained by long-straight drapes to match the shapes of the house. It was all lines without being awkward, contours that were human and inviting, a living thing that carried an air of love about it. It was warm, and whole, and coloured with the living. It was everything Violet wasn't.

The lawn was rich green, evidence of a wet spring. The windows reflected the light in a warm rainbow of ochres. The dark driveway was empty of cars.

No, she thought furiously, fighting back tears. I've not come this far to be stopped by something like this.

The walk up to the door seemed to go on forever. Violet was digging her fingernails into the palms of her hand by the time she was halfway up the drive, a small pain that kept her from sprinting full-throttle back to the car parked on the sidewalk. Seemingly years later, the door handle was cold steel in her grip and turned easily under the pressure she gave it.

Violet found that stepping into the kitchen was not as hard as she thought it would be. Evidently some part of her body remembered the routine because she found herself shutting it quietly and kicking the draught-excluder back into place beneath it with a practised flick of her ankle. That single domestic movement scared her deeply, and she paused to get her heartbeat back into normal range.

The kitchen wasn't lit at all – the lights were off and the blinds were down. It was cool and dark in there, but there was clear evidence of the sun pouring in through the doorless frame into the living room.

Violet tread softly with years of long practise, knowing every creak and squeak of the linoleum beneath her feet. She trailed one hand along the cold surface of the white counters on the wall to her left, moving her fingers around the microwave and the towel rack. It was a delaying tactic to keep her from walking into that warm and light-saturated living room and she wondered what she would do when she rounded it and found it empty.

Resolve squared away, she stepped onto the carpet with a grim line for a mouth and a flat blankness in her eyes.

What she saw stopped her heart, just for a minute. It was a jolt that had been long in the coming.

The lounge was as well-lit as she had suspected – soaked, in fact. It met well with the tasteful white of the room and the deep, resonant hardwood in the furniture. Nothing was glassy or shiny-bright; the very room and furniture absorbed the light and hummed warm, making it a part of the living space. It was a home where the light fell in high and tender through the tall windows, painted the walls a palette of orange pastels and touched gentle planes over the broadbacked man sitting in the two-seater by the window. The gold light smoothed over his features, a throwback to the glory heyday, and hid the lines about his eyes and mouth. His silver-blonde hair was coloured in by the sun's rays to a glowing gold; his very posture was easy and simple and relaxed. For a moment, he was as he had been to her years before – her whole world.

All the tension that had been in her drained as though she had snapped her fingers and wished it away. This was it – what she had come for. It left behind a lethargy that hurt the very bones of her body. She crossed her arms over her ribs, cupping each elbow in one thin palm. She was so self-conscious of who she was in this place – a stark outsider – and how she didn't fit at all. The fitted black shortsleeved t-shirt and blue jeans were a mistake, she reflected with some level of upset; they were harsh colours in this place.

His legs were crossed idly at the ankle, engrossed in the newspaper he was reading. Violet could see his eyes flickering over the dense text, squinting sometimes at the smaller articles, and nearly smiled. He refused to get glasses, one of his few pet vanities.

He turned a page and didn't look up. He was using the sun's light to read by, back to the window, just facing off to the side of her. His eyes stayed on the text, although he twisted his head around to her a little more. "Hey, Helen, we're out of milk. I was just going to the store. Do you want me to get anything while I'm there? I wasn't expecting you back so early, or I would have gone alr –"

He did look to her then, eyes already shaping the template of the woman he thought was there. But then his eyes widened, his mouth dropped open, and the paper was lowered slowly to his lap.

Violet hugged herself a little harder, trying to hide behind her mid-length hair. It didn't work. She hadn't used her hair for such a purpose for years and she grown out of the habit. Besides, she thought, I'm so out-of-place here he'd spot me no matter what I'd do.

Her nerves were being wound up as though on a rack. She itched for something to break the silence with. He hadn't moved yet, jaw still hanging open.

"Vi?" he whispered, a nickname she hadn't responded to for a long, long time. She suddenly found it necessary to look down, to shrink in on herself a little.

"Vi? What... are you okay? Violet? Honey?"

Violet did look at him then. He had half-risen from his seat, newspaper scattered on the carpet in front of him. Still she said nothing.

"Vi?" he said again, not quite believing.

It was enough for her. Violet took jerky steps towards him, still trying to hold herself together with her hands and force of will. It took all of her courage to sit next to him despite the distance she tried to keep between them and the way she didn't make eye contact. That would have been more than she could bear.

"Violet? What's... Vi, what's that on your arm? And that? Vi, honey, are they scars?" There was fear in his voice. "What happened? God, please answer me Violet." There was urgency and panic mixed in with his speech, a weird soup of worry and confusion. And love. He reached out to touch her and she shied away automatically, like a frightened animal that had been hit just once too often. He drew his hands back as if burned and Violet felt the tears welling up. She kept her face down so he couldn't see them No. This was not how it was supposed to go. It was how it never should have been.

"Violet?" he said, and his voice was low and grave and warm. "Please, Violet. Tell me what happened."

Violet looked at him in that one instant, learning every small feature added on that she had missed in the last few years. His hair was greyer, much so, and thinner at the temples. There were extra lines in between his eyebrows and along his forehead. His eyes were wide and blue and frightened. She knew he could see the tears now beyond her control, turning her vision multi-faceted and cleaning away the barriers to the hurt.

"Bad things happened, daddy," she said in a voice that wasn't quite a whisper. She hadn't called him 'daddy' for thirteen years. "Some bad things."

"Oh, Violet, honey," he said, and there was such love and sorrow in his voice that she couldn't object when he wrapped her in his warm arms and drew her to him. She gripped his plain white shirt in her fists, pushed her face into his chest, and cried.

They stayed like that for some time. She would never speak of the 'bad things' again.

--I--

A year and a while later

Against his better judgement, and with the feeling he was making the third mistake of its kind in six years, Dicker opened the door to Violet's office.

He took a moment to observe the slight figure typing away at a laptop on the desk. She wore a fitted black t-shirt that stopped below the shoulder, leaving the silver scars on her biceps and forearms cleanly exposed. That, combined with the not-quite-straight black hair that reached her throat, accentuated her pale skin. She was quite the muted orphist of a girl, all serious eyes and secrecy, smooth muscle and firm lines. Her arms were secure evidence of that, strong curves still too slender for comfort. She contrasted with the office in a bizarre, comfortable clash – she was dark and pale, quiet and thoughtful, an image shattered by her vivid purple eyes that (ever so occasionally) had a spark of something other than solemnity in them. The office itself was a pleasant space made of pastel walls and healthy plants, books aplenty on a hardwood bookcase and plate-glass windows. Violet and the office were an odd juxtaposition of styles, especially in a place where she never used to fit. Dicker was once again forcibly reminded of how much the girl in front of him had changed, although it was measurable by only the smallest amount.

An incredibly significant amount, though.

Is it enough for her to stay stable? he thought, which brought him straight back to the topic at hand, and he sobered once again.

"Got a case, Agent?" Violet asked, without looking up. Dicker shook his head.

"No. You have a visitor, though."

Violet looked up. Her purple eyes were emotionless and her face was expressionless, but there was an openness and levity to her that bespoke of puzzled curiosity. There was no indication that her mind was still on her laptop. She nodded once at the chair opposite her side of the desk, but Dicker shook his head.

"Is it –"

"No, it's not the sergeant," said Dicker, anger and nerves making him interrupt. "He said he'd drop by the next time he's in the states, though." Zharov had been assigned diplomat to the U.S.A. six months ago, and though his occasional e-mails to Violet showed him to be half-amused and half-terrified at the posting, Dicker knew he would do well. He knew a good diplomat when he saw one, and the best usually had no relation to politics whatsoever. Nuclear weapons, indeed.

Sometimes Zharov mentioned that he took off his I.D. badge and assigned himself to the engineering department for a couple of days just to make himself feel better. Diplomatic immunity had its uses, although Dicker knew Zharov was doing okay with his assignments. He dropped by whenever he was in the states to discuss their mutual... problem. The problem, in fact, that was waiting just along the corridor.

I mean, what were we supposed to do? thought Dicker in uncharacteristic fury. Deny him entrance? "Sorry, you're the richest man on the planet who has more fingers in our government that we're entirely comfortable with and who could probably shut down our entire department, but we don't actually like you. Please could you and your rather impressive-looking bodyguard leave the building, or we will be forced to glare threateningly."

Well, that was the thing about entertaining the man who had more power than any single organisation, with the exception of the United Nations. Threats were useless, even with supers at your beck and call. Dicker considered himself a master negotiator for a) not hauling off and punching the man on sight, b) not hauling off and punching the man who had the temerity to be bastard's bodyguard on sight, and c) persuading them to donate a few minutes so Dicker could give Violet adequate warning.

His back and joints also supplied reasons for why options A and B were not viable, but for the sake of his pride he chose to believe in his own self-control.

"Who is it?"

Dicker was trying to think of another way to phrase "that evil low-down manipulative scheming bastard sonofawhore" when Violet's expressionless eyes caught his own.

"It's him, isn't it?" she said quietly. Dicker rested a weary hand on the doorframe and nodded. She was always right.

Violet took in one deep breath, but nothing else about her changed. Dicker shrugged, feeling the most useless he had ever felt in his life. He couldn't even protect her against this.

"Sorry, kiddo," he said quietly. "We couldn't stop him."

Violet nodded. "I understand."

Glory be, she probably does, thought Dicker tiredly, and shrugged again.

Her eyes locked onto something behind him and Dicker forced himself not to spin around. Instead, he turned with a slow, measured pace.

"I told you to wait," he growled at the man before him. It probably made a comical sight, he reflected. Pine stood over him by at least a clear six inches and had an easygoing smile on his face that Dicker rebelliously thought was faker than a stack of nine-dollar notes. At least that burly Russian of a bodyguard hadn't followed him, he admitted. Pine had had the audacity to come up here alone. That was a strike in Pine's favour, at least.

"Agent?" Violet said quietly, eyes never leaving their visitor. "Could I have a moment with our guest, please?"

Dicker thought about her question. What he wanted to say was: look, kid, I really don't want to leave you alone with him. Hell, I don't want you two on the same continent, let alone the same patch of carpet, regardless of who's there. This man put you through more than you could actually handle, and that's after you factor in that nightmare of a time he gave us nine or ten years ago. When you came back to us those barriers you'd put up were in tatters, your chemical dependancy on sleep aids was almost chronic in the first four months, and you just didn't want contact with anyone. We're not complaining about the barriers thing, don't get me wrong, but this... politician here used methods banned by international treaty, judging by your mental state. No, we still don't know what happened to you during your time 'Away' but you said the scars came from there and we're to stop worrying what 'Syndrome' did. Yeah, like that's gonna stop me worrying. And I still can't shake the feeling he's connected somehow. No, don't give me that look, you know I'm right. And I do wish you'd tell us what happened during your 'stay' with this gentleman right here. What we do know is that you've come down a little from DEFCON One, probably about DEFCON Three. It's not great, but it's an improvement, and you look like you're working your way down through the levels; your fighting style's a little looser and probably not as fatal, though I haven't had the courage to send you on any missions, and you're eating much better; and you're not as... severe as you used to be, even though your thought processes still occupy different sets of dimensions than the rest of us. Yes, all right, you've improved considerably since you were held hostage, but surely there was a less extreme method of toning you down? Whatever it was, we could've given you a hand, surely? Oh, and thanks for getting rid of the creepy stare. It's come as something of a relief, let me tell you. Now, if you could just work on that whole staring-right-through-me-like-you-can-see-what-I'm-thinking thing...

Instead, he said: "Will you be all right, Violet?"

She regarded him once more and Dicker's mind registered the scar again although his eyes never flickered to it. The silver fitted well with the purple of her eyes, he noticed, which were quiet and curious and level. Subtle was the word that sprung to mind. Carefully animated. Reserved and cautious. Still, the worrying concept that he was simply talking to a mask that kept all the emotions well-contained beneath it kept occurring to him. To be fair, who doesn't act like that these days? he wondered.

Violet's eyes snapped back to Pine.

"Sometimes discrepancies are easier to spot when the problem itself is inverted," said Violet very softly, and although she was watching Pine her words were for Dicker. Dicker let a small chuckle touch his voice. Well, at least she knew what she was doing, even if he himself had no clue whatsoever. No-one did, though, and that was hardly a surprise. Bob still called in on Violet about three times a week to see how she was doing, having long since (and with much disgruntled muttering) retired from super work. He ws a training instructor for the local fire department now. Dicker thought that Bob was just happy to see the inside of the NSA headquarters sometimes, but he never kidded himself that that was why he came here. It was always about Violet. Dashall visited a few times a week, and Helen came sometimes too, occasionally with Bob. However, Violet seemed to prefer one-on-one visits, and the room was always warmer when it was Violet and her father. Dicker had noticed how she kept away from large groups of people.

Still healing, he thought, and then wondered why he'd thought it. Still, it was good that the Parr family were taking care of their own. Violet needed it so badly.

"Agent," said Violet again, softly, and Dicker made up his mind.

"All right. But I'm just down the hall. If you need anything, give me a shout. I'll check on you in ten minutes."

"Please, Agent Dicker, I'll be fine," she said in a rare display of firm authority. Dicker shook his head resignedly, unconvinced by Violet's poor decision.

"Take care of yourself," he said, and meant it. He circumnavigated the taller form blocking the hallway behind him, and glanced back to see Pine pull the door shut as he walked in. Dicker shook his head again, and moved on.

--I--

For some reason, Violet always remembered it as a not-unpleasantly cool day when Dicker stuck his head around her door and said she had a visitor. It was summer, however, and the heat outside was sticky and unpleasant. Violet herself didn't feel it. The building was air-conditioned, although not to such a degree that she would later remember it as.

There was very little – practically nothing, in Violet's limited repertoire of knowledge – that would make Dicker burn that badly with ill-repressed ire. The connection was easy to make, especially after she'd factored in the self-aimed anger and powerlessness evident in his loose hands. It was a shock, certainly, but one she'd managed to neutralise. She'd been expecting it, in a half-assed kind of way, but the jolt was still real like the old fear and wariness that accompanied it. Some habits died hard (like me, she thought, with some measure of black humour), and she had fought too long and too often with the man in front of her. Today, she noted with a strange sense of unplaceable irony, he wore a sturdy white shirt rolled up to his elbows, tieless as ever and unbuttoned to the collarbones, and accentuated by a navy t-shirt underneath. The dark blue brought out the anger in his eyes.

The urge to jump up and do something was very strong within Violet – her capacity for violence was demanding that Syndrome should not go unpunished. It was angry and miserable and screaming. Instead, something wired a little less deep in her cerebral cortex took control, ruthlessly suppressing the tight focus that would have come with her defensive stance, whisperingwait, watch, talk into her mind's ear. This was a new technique for a Violet, a new sensation entirely. It was as if a part of her had been broken off and forged into something new in the last year or so, moulded into the shape of a point that was so translucent as to be see-through. Its very lack of solidity had shocked her before it had occurred to her that something did not need to be weighty to be influential. Like a word, perhaps, a direct contrast to the tightly-clenched fist she was so used to. And it was separate to her – a new side to herself, another facet on her personality that had mostly consisted of uptight control. It was a her that had been born into the nature of subterfuge, the politics associated with capture and escape, a fragment of herself now locked forever into the role of cool advisor.

Syndrome closed the door behind him and it latched with a click. He didn't bother with the intensity of keeping eye-contact, but Violet didn't mind. It gave her time enough to study him, and the first thing that was evident (to her practised eye) was that the easygoing movements were just calculated enough to hide the thick tension within him. It surprised her for a moment to think that he was apprehensive about being here, then realised her first trip back home. Some steps had to be taken.

But what could he possibly be here for? she wondered. He had left her behind, and made it quite clear.

"How's Nikolaevsky?" she asked quietly, and Syndrome turned to look at her again. There was a half-formed smirk starched on his mouth.

"I'll tell him you asked after him. He's fine."

"Your bodyguard?"

"Was he ever anything different?"

"Your commander, for one."

"And he still is."

Violet took a moment to digest this information. Syndrome was still allowed a private army. Worrying. Were the U.N. allowing him more leeway?

Syndrome's eyes were tracing the scars on her biceps, silver sketches on the pale accentuation of her skin. Violet fought the urge to pull on a very thick jumper and instead folded her hands in front of her. She was aware of their positions – either side of a desk, she sitting, he not. Well, smalltalk was over. Time to be businesslike.

"Why are you here?"

Violet thought she caught the slightest falter of the smirk, but she could have imagined it. Syndrome folded his arms over his chest and allowed the grin to widen a little.

"Just checking up," he said slowly, with a touch of malice aforethought. Violet wasn't listening. She had seen that arm-folding manoeuvre from him before. He was becoming defensive. "You still look dead inside," he added bluntly.

Quick to the point, this one, she thought wryly. Still, he'd never been one for the subtle nuances of human behaviour, proved by his disastrous first contact with Dicker. She'd communicated a lot of information before he could stop her. For a genius, he had some quite gaping flaws in his people skills.

"It's a habit I know I'm never going to break. I've done it too long, the damage has been done. But it doesn't matter now." It isn't a self-defensive wall anymore, she didn't say. It had been downgraded to a more acceptable stoicism, although what she had said was true. She had done it for too long. It was now a part of her personality whether she liked it ot not. She preferred to think it muted her emotions rather than totally suppressed them, but that was good. It was progress. What, in the meantime, had Syndrome done?

"Why are you here?" she asked again, and the falter in the cocky smirk wasn't just her imagination that time. He thought he'd evaded the question once already.

"You still have the scars," he said, making a pointed look at her arms. Violet made no move to hide them. "I would have thought you'd have gotten rid of them."

Violet shrugged. "What would have been the point?" she asked softly. "I would have still known they were there." Better to be able to see them than to feel they were biting at her under the surface of her skin. She risked a small smile, too. "Not all of us can afford full-body plastic surgery, anyway."

His fingers were flexing. Violet decided he didn't know he was doing it.

"What do you mean by 'the damage has been done'?" he asked suddenly, eyes narrowing. Violet kept that still, calm expression on her face.

"It was a habit I kept for too many years," she said, gauging his reaction with analytical eyes. None so far. "Things happen, and they can't unhappen. The things that happened to me..." She shrugged. "They left their mark." No more naïvety, no more butterfly views of the world, and there never would be again.

"Then you're just not trying," said Syndrome with a quick, sharp bite to his tone. Violet heard something else there, half-sounded, in the waves between his words. "If you really wanted to go back to the way you were, why don't you just do it?"

"Because that would hurt," she said, sharper than she'd intended. "It would all be pretend. I'm never going to be that person again. Why act otherwise?"

Violet did wish sometimes to be that young person again, to be light and happy and wholesome, but it was long out of her reach now. Innocence was a one-time-only special offer. Syndrome and Harker had taken it from her, for forever and ever, amen.

"Why are you here?" she asked for a third time, adding a pointed twist to her words. This time the smile didn't re-appear, cruel edge to it or no. Instead his mouth was thinning into a line sharp enough to cut paper. His skin was paling too, she noted.

You can know the history without knowing the person, Violet reminded herself as she watched Syndrome try to dredge up the answer he knew to be true. The statement in itself held more honesty than anything she could remember. It was true of Buddy Pine to Mr. Incredible, and it was true of Mr. Incredible of Syndrome. It was also true of Violet to Syndrome, and of Syndrome to Violet. Perhaps, and most importantly, it had been true of Dr. Harker to Thirty-four.

Violet still tried not to think his name. She wasn't ready to tread that ground. She didn't think she ever would be, if the occasional nightmares and scattered migraines had anything to say about it. The split she felt in herself of Thirty-four and Violet was a good thing. She didn't need that anymore for the coping mechanism that it had been, and she wasn't the same person.

"Well?" she asked softly, and with that Syndrome lunged forward. His fists landed on her desk with a crash loud and audible enough to wake her laptop, pushed to one side, from sleep mode. The laptop itself thunked to the floor, but Violet never moved her eyes from Syndrome.

"I can't feel right!" he shouted hoarsely, half-crazed eyes locked onto hers. He looked like an animal caught in a trap, or perhaps caged and left to starve. He looked desperate and mad, half-delusional with pain and fatigue. His hair hung a little longer than she remembered, she thought vaguely, but not by much. An inch, maybe. "It's your fault!" he added in a furious low tone that could have been a shout under different circumstances. "I was fine until you – you –"

Yes, she knew what he meant. Brief feelings flashed through the flesh of her arms and hands – a kiss to the forehead, fingers threaded through red-orange little-grey hair. Words, spoken into silence but worth more than that, closeness, time spent near. How much of that, exactly, had been a common occurrence for him? she wondered. Touch was an addiction – she knew that from her experiences with Harker. Just one touch, meant kindly. That was all it took.

Then she remembered more: hands, arms about her own, warm water, stillness and quiet and tired eyes to low lighting. There were words then as well, frightening ones, ones she decided she could afford to give away. They had started Tell me about Harker.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction; there was the Doctor, who created Violet – an opposing force to what he did. Then there had been Violet, who had created this Syndrome in front of her now, albeit unknowingly. She had responsibility for that like Harker had responsibility for her, and like Syndrome had responsibility for him. It was an interlocked triangle that nevertheless made sense.

Violet leaned forward then, but Syndrome still tried to jerkily stand upright from his palms-down brace over the table. His breathing was quick and his pupils were dilated. A pulse point was beating just hard enough to be visible under his jaw. She didn't even try to steel or brace herself. She could see how the tension had strung thick cables throughout his body, suspending his muscles under high torque, and when she moved her hands from their meek folded position in front of her she knew he would try to push her away. She predicted his movements easily, moved her arms forward, and gently took his hands.

Syndrome went taut as a whipcord and he fought her grip without actually struggling, but she didn't let go. Violet knew it to be a self-defensive measure; she'd used it herself often enough. Contact was one of the fastest ways to bring down a barrier and she had had to force herself to have contact with other people. It had worked, though. After a while it had felt good to connect with people again. There was still a lot of work to be done.

It took maybe four minutes but eventually he relaxed, although he didn't reciprocate the gesture by returning the pressure. Instead, he said: "Why won't you ever be the same again?"

Violet tightened her hands just a little and nodded her head to indicate he should sit. He sank into the chair opposite her, and Violet brought their hands together at the centre of the desk. His eyes were scared and angry and petulant, and she knew that he had come here to check that she was 'normal' again... that there would be some hope for his own transition back to a semblance of working normality. You still look dead inside, he'd said. That was what concerned him. He didn't want to be stuck as he was for the rest of his life.

Violet made sure she had his full attention and kept her eyes focused onto his, leaning over the desk slightly.

"Because events change people. Harker changed me forever, and I'll be like this for the rest of my life." That enough was true. She would never be the open person she had once been. Torture had killed that person away, as bemusedly daft as that sentence sounded in her head. Violet was made of new bones now, shaped from the pieces left behind, and she was a different person. That much was true. But the core of her bones was the same: it was the marrow of herself that had always been there.

Evidently it was not what Syndrome had wanted to hear. What he had been hoping for was an uplifting spiel about how, if we work hard and achieve our goals we can become who we want to be. Not true, thought Violet, working on trying to keep him from tensing up again. His eyes were going hard, deadening, disconnecting.

"We all change. All of us do. Some more than others. Some more than once. I've changed forever, but I've changed a little bit more since." She didn't even need to add 'and so can you', as trite as it would have been to say. Syndrome knew.

"How?" Syndrome asked in a voice almost frenzied with fear and self-loathing, leaning over the table, hands tight on her own. "How? How do you do it?"

It's not hard, she thought. Take some kindness, throw in a pint of pain with a pinch of understanding and what you've got left is the long-term route to living with yourself.

She knew it was a long process. Hell, she wasn't even a fraction of the way through it herself. But she knew how it should start, as painful as it was. Some wounds needed cauterising.

Violet moved up a hand to pass her fingers through his hair. He didn't seem to register the touch, but Violet felt the small hairs of the nape of his neck stiffen. She had the brief memory of a kiss shared between two people who had waited out the day to end. It had been a conclusion. Well, this one would be an opening.

She raised herself from the chair she had been sitting in and, without letting go of his hands, just touched her lips to his. Trust me, she was saying without words. We have spent so long betraying each other, but not now, not in this time or in this place. Neutral ground. No labs, no lights, no white coats. Just here, and now, and today. We will touch and it will be peaceful.

Violet had watched her heart burn for the sake of a madman's treachery, and had no need to watch it happen to Syndrome. He was not a kind man and she had no reason to suspect he ever would be: Syndrome was cruel, and thus Syndrome was life. But she could use as much of that as possible.

Violet sat back down and laced her fingers through his. They were joined together by a hand's grip, a cavern of decades, a pattern of years, a span of minutes, a couple of feet.

She reminded herself of another late-night wondering, trying to gather all her courage for what was to come next: that it was perfectly possible to have one's heart broken without it losing the ability to function. She could see deeply-bruised passions stirring inside Syndrome and she recognised them for what they were – a mirror to her own, just that year or so ago. His expressions all fit second-hand as though shielded by a faulty mask, and she decided it might be best to show him what he'd shown her. It was only fair, after all. Syndrome had had held her and helped her, and although the intention was for it to have been to his advantage she owed him for it anyway. She could not stay furious at him, not any more. All flesh is grass and steel, she thought without reason. And we'll build skywards on that.

The room was quiet and cool and still, just warm enough to be comfortable. She could feel Syndrome shaking through their connection; just enough to be noticed. His eyes were fixed on their fingers, and when she ducked her head to catch his gaze she saw how much he suffered. He had waited too long to speak of it, and knew what she would ask next. He was ready.

I know, and I hurt, even if it's not for you.

She said, "Tell me about Mr. Incredible."

Fin.

So many thanks to all you guys who stuck with me the whole story long and really helped me keep it going, and who kindly overlooked my British grammar/spelling/punctuation; not least to my wonderful beta crzysheelf, who is actually a saint with the patience of a glacier. No, really. She put up with me and my sporadic communication when another, less holy, person would have garroted me with piano wire. Slowly. Also, I owe a debt of thanks to SavvyOX who reviewed every single chapter with wonderful comments, and also Twistedangel213 for claiming I was like a (foamy) crack addiction. And to Clint McInnes too, a belated reviewer who made me blush like a schoolgirl (and who assumed I was a guy. Trés hilarious.) Oh, and Qohelth,another man with the patience of a... well, a very patient thing. Oh, what the Hell, I love ALL you people and I'm not gonna have time to name you all. You know I love you. Love love love, and all that jazz. Jazz jazz jazz.

Clint McInnes: All finished. What do you think? (Heh, I'm not above soliciting reviews.) I like that you liked the little lines I try to slip in from time to time to, y'know, give a semblance of literary ability. I kinda went overboard with them in this chapter, particularly when Vi goes home. I know her meeting with Syndrome wasn't exactly... climactic (hem hem), but no matter how I tried to fit that kind of an ending in it just would not sit right. Besides, I already had the last line of the story planned out. If I can permit myself a moment of blatant self-advertising, I covered that theme in my 'Purity'/'Taint' Synlet one-shots pretty comprehensively anyway. I wanted to do something a little different... a little more psychological. (Insert maniacal laughter here.) Anyway, I hoped you liked this chapter!