AN: READ THIS: I want you all to know that from the moment this became more than a one shot this was the intended conclusion. I know some of you will hate it, but this is the ending I want to write. It just feels right to end it on this note.

Thank you all for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this as much as I have.

Guilt: Emma

I stood at the fringe of the group with a hoodie I'd forgotten about scrounged from my locker and pulled low hiding my face and hair. I wasn't sure what people's reaction to me might be right now, but I was aware enough to know it wouldn't be very pleasant. Most of the crowd had drifted off once they realized there was nothing they could do anyway.

Taylor had spent the past hour since the scream drifting in and out of consciousness. Sometimes she would scream, sometimes she cooed happily, mostly she coughed and shivered.

She shivered a lot. The nurse kept mumbling about shock and tried to keep her bundled up in a small mountain of blankets. If the worried frown on the woman's face was anything to go by it wasn't working as well as she would like.

This was my fault. I'd sided with Sophia and spent a year and a half driving my best friend into a near suicidal depression. Then I helped cram her into a locker full of rotten blood and things that did not bear thinking about.

I'd lived it. Every taunt, every trip, every stolen bit of homework, every moment, every second she spent in that filth.

I got to experience my ex best friend losing all hope in fast forward, and it was all my fault.

At first I cried, I almost tried to deny it but the feeling of guilt swelled up and crushed that before it could build up any steam. Now I was sitting here feeling numb and guilty, guilty and numb.

I honestly didn't know what to do except for staying as close to Taylor as I could manage. What else could I do?

The sound of Taylor giggling shook me from my thoughts. "Clean, so much cleaner." The girl giggled though her voice rasped unpleasantly from all the shouting she did earlier. From when I trapped her in her locker. God, why did I do that? I sighed. I guess if I'd been stuck in that filth I'd be happy to be cleaner too.

"The city is so much cleaner now!" She crowed.

The… city? What the hell?

"Can you see it?" She asked the nurse with a rapturous expression on her face. "There as so many fewer bad people now. Gone, gone, gone~ Dead and gone~" she sang before breaking down into giggles that changed into coughs which shook her whole body.

When the coughs subsided she just giggled again lightly. "And the rest, the ones who just stood by and let things slip, the ones who just accepted everything wrong." she broke of her train of thought to giggle again. "They're so helpful now! All they needed was a little push."

H-how? How could she know what was going on? She'd been mostly unconscious since the beginning?! A seed of an idea started to grow at the back of my mind but before I could chase it Taylor spoke up again.

"I did it! I really did it!" She giggled.

God whatever the nurse had given her was really messing her up. Did some merchant in the school offer her their stash to help out?

"I'm a real hero!" She crooned sounding pleased even as the words made things start to click into place for me. With the realization came the sensation of ice being dumped across my back. "First day as a hero and the city is already a better place! The gangs of gone, gone, gone~" she said starting to sing again before another series of coughs shook her body.

The nurse tried to shush her, to gently calm her down as she tucked the blankets in tighter around Taylor's shivering body.

It worked, at least for the moment. Taylor seemed to calm down slightly and subsided into soft mutters and little giggles. "I'm a real hero, a real hero." She murmured.

She was the one who screamed. She was the cape making everyone feel guilty. Somehow she was keeping tabs on all of us, on what she was doing. Though she didn't seem to be all there at the moment.

Still the gangs, just gone? All from guilt? It seemed impossible. But then again… How many lives would they be feeling guilt over ruining? How many actual deaths did they have on their hands?

How guilty would I feel if…

"Should have helped me sooner." Taylor slurred to the nurse. "Was in your office often enough for you to know something was wrong." The nurse reeled back like she'd been slapped and tears started to run down her cheeks. "You and the other teachers, had to know, but never stepped in. Don't know why, can't see the why. Why, why, why? Can't see the why. Just the action, the inaction too. Can't see the why, wonder why~"

She broke out into more giggling coughs. The Nurse must have given her something really strong.

"So much to see, so hard to focus on anyone. Maybe that's why, can't focus." She mumbled before closing her eyes. Her breathing started to even out a bit though she was still coughing a bit even in her sleep, and despite the blankets she shivered constantly.

It took another ten minutes for the paramedics to arrive. They cursed to themselves about only having the one life star chopper in the city and about the roads seemingly all being blocked with accidents.

Ten minutes after they left with Taylor the oppressive feeling of guilt disappeared.

In that moment I knew two things; Taylor had been the source of the scream, of all the guilt, and I was now partly responsible for the death of the girl I once called my best friend.

Then the guilt came back. Real guilt. Guilt that came from me rather than guilt that was applied to me. The difference was impossible to explain. Like the difference between two shades of white, or two different brands of cola.

With a hiccup I broke down crying again.

{}{}{}{}

I hadn't done much in the past two days. Hell most of the city wasn't doing much. Casualty and injury reports kept piling up. There were rumors that a bunch of people had gotten powers because of the scream and gone straight to the PRT, with more rumors that it would mean at least twice as many new capes who had not come forward. Still that was all from the PHO boards so it was hard to say how much of it should be taken seriously.

Schools had been shut down for at least the rest of the week and so many people were calling in sick to work that it was almost as if the whole city had declared a national holiday just to stay home and drink or eat chocolate. That or whatever everyone else did to cope with, well whatever you wanted to call Taylor's power.

My method revolved around large tubs of Ben and Jerry's. It wasn't really working.

Dad had left the news running ever since we had all gotten home, no one had really been ambitious enough to argue about changing it. Mostly I tuned it out and looked over the PHO boards from my phone. Someone had started a page for victims of the attack to talk about what happened to them. It was a mess. Dozens of people talking about things they saw, some of them sticking to facts, some broke down and just hit the max word count typing things like 'I'm sorry', a lot of people said it dragged up things they were not proud of and left it at that.

Sophia hadn't gotten in touch with me since it happened. I'm really not sure what happened to her.

"Hello? Heeelllooooo~" The voice was different enough from the droning backdrop of the news that it forced me to look up. There on my tv screen was a blond girl in a purple costume smiling foxily back at me.

"Well hi there Brockton Bay! My name, or at least what I'm going by for now, is Tattletale. See some friends and I were previously in the employ of Coil, who thanks to a certain traumatic incident we are all familiar with, was shot by one of his own men. I find that rather poetic because the only reason I worked for him is he threatened to kill me otherwise." She said smiling brightly.

What the hell?

"Normally I wouldn't choose to put my team and I at risk for something like this, especially since we're not really sure what we plan to do next. But given it's been two days, and the PRT haven't said anything other than they are investigating, combine that with the fact that they already ID'd the fresh trigger that caused all this and that they plan to spin things in their favor… oh right I should probably mention I hacked into their systems to find out this stuff. Woops." She said giving a carefree shrug.

Really? Was this girl seriously admitting to hacking the PRT, now after everything that had happened?

"See the poor girl who's responsible for all this, what are they calling her again? Karma? Jiminy Cricket? Or have they settled on that S-class name people have been kicking around, Anubis? Well she's dead." The capes face became serious as she said that.

"One girl turned the whole city upside down in less than an hour immediately after getting her powers, then died before she likely even understood what she was doing while in the back of an ambulance. Every parahuman gang leader in Brockton Bay is dead or gone thanks to that girl. I know she caused a lot of collateral damage. I know a lot of people who didn't deserve it got hurt, but she did more for this city in one hour than all the heroes have since they first set up shop here."

"She saved a lot of people. She saved me from Coil. So I owe her one. So whatever they say, whatever they want you to think… I want you to remember. She forced us to judge ourselves based on what we have done, and then she let us decide what we wanted to do about it. So remember that she was a person, not some monster, not some villain, just a scared teen named Taylor who got a terrible ability."

I could feel the tears starting to streak down my face again. As the girl sighed tiredly.

"So yeah, whatever you do… don't let her be remembered as a monster. Her name was Taylor, and she deserves better than that." With a hand gesture the video cut out and an image proclaiming the station was experiencing technical difficulties appeared

{}{}{}{}

That was how things had started to completely fall apart.

PHO jumped all over Tattletale's impromptu news broadcast, and people started asking questions. What are trigger events? How do trigger events happen? How often do capes accidentally hurt someone or break things when they have just triggered? And most importantly of all, could anyone find proof of Tattletale's claims?

Then clues started rolling in from all corners. Turns out the infamous Void Cowboy went to Winslow. He confirmed the Taylor Hebert a student at Winslow had been trapped in her locker by bullies and that the locker had been filled with month old used feminine hygiene products. Of course his words were more along the lines of 'stuffed in there with old bloody garbage' but as more people backed up his claim the details started to come out.

Then someone with connections to the hospital Taylor was being taken to came forward to confirm that a 15-year-old named Taylor Hebert had died on the way to the hospital approximately an hour after the scream do to complication caused by blood poisoning, and that the initial call stated she had been trapped in close proximity to bio-hazard material for an extended period of time.

Then my name came out, along with Sophia's and Madison's.

And suddenly people weren't blaming Taylor for what happened. Sure a lot of people who lost loved ones in traffic accidents or whatever were still pissed, but the general feeling was that the people who caused her trigger were responsible for all the accidents, and Taylor was responsible for how many fewer villains and gangs the bay now had.

It didn't make any kind of logical sense. But that didn't really matter when the whole city was running on emotional overload.

I was standing on the roof of an old abandoned high rise looking over the latest news on my phone. I'd been ignoring texts and phone calls all night. I finally saw what I had been expecting, a link to a press release declaring that the police had a warrant for the arrest of several of the students and staff from Winslow. They didn't give any names, but everyone already knew who they meant.

I shutdown my phone and looked out over the city. From this high up I could see a lot.

Glancing down I couldn't help but think.

It's just one small step.