Do you know what’s the main difference between a hangover and being sleep-deprived?

The hangover goes away.

Lisa Wilbourn’s experience with lack of proper sleep—

I don’t want to hear that from you.

“Hng… Just give me a minute,” Amy says from the sink of the high-tech kitchenette set at the back of the Dragon vessel sailing south at speeds that I think have been barred by at least a couple of international treaties.

“Amy, it’s my—my ixnay in a few hours. I still have to do the whole dress and makeup thing, not to mention my hair. If you don’t fix my head before we get to Brockton—”

“If I could fix your head, I would’ve done it years ago,” she says, her hand stuck inside of a glass pitcher filled with what used to be perfectly fine orange juice and is now a liquid swirling with purples and reds.

“Not. That. Funny,” I say to my state-mandated therapist as she fails at being discreet with her muffled guffaws and has to lean on the doorframe of the kitchenette.

“I mean…” Vicky comments with a hand waggle and a copyright-infringing smirk, smugly floating cross-legged over the counter as she indulges in enough croissants that I know Amy still takes care of her ‘dietary surpluses.’

That, or she’s really pregnant, and last night wasn’t a joke.

“That’s it. You’re uninvited. All of New Wave is uninvited. Brockton is uninvited. I don’t even know why I bother with a town full of snarky assholes,” I reasonably say, not at all finally letting go of the leash of my inner Bridezilla.

Also, Dinah, stop shooting me that flat glare. It’s completely undermined by the sleeping Missy clinging to you on your shared leather sofa like you’re a slightly oversized teddy bear.

… Power, are they… you know?

Lisa Wilbourn’s obsession with Nanoha franchise—

That’s not an answer!

“I mean, I still am Canadian,” Dragon mumbles from the rear wall of the kitchenette in a way that gets her own share of pointed stares from Hannah and Minnie, the second of which seems to have decided that she’s a Brocktonite by right of unstated marriage, snarky tendencies, and homicidal leanings.

“Okay, now we’re talking,” Amy says as she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, a now empty pitcher hanging from the other one and a manic gleam shining through her eyes in a way that really highlights her shrinking pupils.

“… Now I don’t want you messing with my head,” I prudently state.

“Hold still and take it.”

“Is that what you say to Piggot at night? Because I can now understand why she’s so keen on that whole ‘sublimation through ungodly violence thing’ she’s got going on—”

“They still haven’t sealed the deal,” Vicky comments, looking critically at her nails in that way of faking disinterest that nobody ever uses when actually disinterested.

“Oh-ho? Is there something you want to share with the class, Ames? Any juicy detail about how you’ve constantly engineered the perfect sex machine for years and have yet to indulge?” I say. And not just because I’m slightly terrified of what a drugged Amy can do to my brain and desperately want to change the subject.

I mean, yes, that may be part of it, but seeing the biokinetic flush to the tip of her ears and Vicky’s grin widen even further is far more… appealing.

“Bad,” Taylor says, cuffing the back of my abused head.

“Domestic violence is not okay,” I tell her, pouting at her over my shoulder and delighting at the hint of a flustered reaction that she hurries to suppress.

“Oh, but Thinker terrorism is,” Amy says as her hand treasonously slams down on what little of my shoulder my white shirt leaves exposed.

“Can we talk about this?” I say, my innocent smile somewhat strained as I turn back toward her.

“I am very tempted to disable your vocal folds,” she answers.

“Please, don’t. I have to say, ‘I do,’ and Power still hasn’t learned sign language.”

“Your power is bullshit…” Vicky mutters in despair, not for the first time.

“Says the girl who got her language center boosted just so she could read her French comics in the original,” I tell her, trying not to look like I’m planning to run as far away as Dragon’s ship allows me to.

“What?! That is an option?!” Dinah blurts out, making Missy stir in her sleep, immediately feeling guilty about it, and tightening her hug until the Shaker relaxes and nuzzles Dinah’s neck with her nose in a way that, were they together, should’ve caused more than a slight, fond smile.

I think.

Also, she just frustrated my plan to get Vista to give me enough room to flee from Amy without being aware that was my actual plan. As expected of a thinker nine.

Well played, Dinah. Well, played.

I hope you know this means war, though.

***

“What?” My hair stylist says.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I reply.

“But… how do you—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I pleasantly reiterate.

And that’s the story of how I ended up forking over more than three hundred bucks to get my hair into a presentable state.

***

Rebecca

The world swirled, slowly yet dizzying, and only a green light behind me and a crimson one in front of me made it through the murky spirals.

“Welcome back, Alexandria,” Dragon’s voice said.

And, suddenly, I was not locked in mortal combat with Behemoth, the air in my lungs burning, the full might of the Yanbang behind me, and a Thinker on our comms telling me that there was hope.

“Is there anything you would like to comment?” the reporter rudely thrusting a microphone against my helmet asks, repeating some variety of what all the other gathered members of the press corps and paparazzi have already tried on me, David, and Keith.

So far, David has been inscrutable, Keith as personable as ever, and me…

“I hope the couple is as happy as the occasion warrants,” I say, not entirely robotically.

Mostly, because Dragon sounds warmer.

“Are those your personal feelings or the official stance of the Protectorate?” the same reporter insists, his brown fringe bouncing as he energetically vies to remain in his front-liner position.

We could’ve used that enthusiasm in the past Endbringer battles.

“The official stance of the Protectorate is to send the full might of the Triumvirate to act as bodyguards in a wedding. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions,” I say, Keith struggling to muffle a hint of a giggle at me letting a bit of Becca slip through Alexandria’s black helmet.

“Speaking of ‘the full might of the Triumvirate,’ have you recovered fully? Can you comment on the rumors regarding why you were freed so long after the Yanbang was?” the pest insists.

And I, uncharacteristically irked…

Answer.

“I was pushing down Behemoth with my own hands. The close combat made pulling me out of the stasis field a far riskier proposition. Dragon was understandably leery of freeing Behemoth.”

“Is that the truth?” I asked Contessa as soon as it was safe for me to open a door to Cauldron and found her waiting for me, sitting at a white desk with a mug of tea between her cupped hands.

“Yes. Their understanding of chronal displacement has advanced quite a bit since the battle took place, but they still had to be cautious,” she immediately answered without asking what the question was about before taking a slow, careful sip.

“And, surely, this has nothing at all to do with getting me out of the way from both the PRT and Protectorate so that some changes could be enacted in my absence,” I said, my arms intimidatingly crossed and my feet pointed down as I floated slightly up in a display that I knew to be useless but was still a reflex from a carefully cultivated image it had taken years to perfect.

She smiled.

“Endbringers are a blind spot, Becca,” she told me, the white portal behind me closing, and…

And I finally saw that I wasn’t at Cauldron.

The white room in front of me was recently painted and tiled, but only the small corner that could be seen from the door I had stepped through. Everything else? What was behind me?

A kitchen.

A perfectly regular, hospitable kitchen, with a string of garlic and some dried sausages hanging under wooden cupboards with warm tones that the fluorescent panels used on Cauldron’s base dimmed into something vaguely cold and distasteful.

Contessa’s smile warmed up, and she stood, flicking off the light before opening the shutters of a tall window that allowed the sunlight to come in through panes of glass set in black lead and the same old, warm wood as that of the cupboards.

“Italy?” I asked, looking at the reddish field with sparse wild grass and a few olive trees that sprawled out from the window.

She nodded.

“It didn’t have this name in my old world,” she pointed out after a light silence that had me struggle to reorient myself and my expectations passed. “The language was different.”

“You never talk about your old world,” I said, my arms finally uncrossing.

“I never talked about a lot of things,” she answered, tilting her head to point at another mug of tea set on a white marble counter, plumes of steam wafting up from it.

I… I hesitated before taking it.

Because she still was Contessa.

But if there was some nefarious plot to be found inside a mug of mint tea, I couldn’t begin to fathom what it consisted of.

“So. Now what?” I asked, the liquid too warm on my lips but not to the point of pain, much less a harm I could never again experience.

Her eyes closed as she took her second sip, and a low, pleasant hum came from the always impeccable woman as she appeared to delight in her herbal brew in ways that I’d never seen from her before.

“The Birdcage is no more. There have been no Endbringer attacks since Behemoth. Most of the old S-class threats have been dealt with. There are public education programs to assist capes the world over, helping them adjust to their powers and place in society. Tinkers around the globe are collaborating in ways that the former Toybox could only dream of, and Dragon is coming closer every day to turning all those innovations into something replicable with regular technology. Crime is down, the economy is recovering, and Beth’s population is once more sustainable,” she said.

I took a pause, the blunt list of things I’d missed bouncing in my head as I struggled to remain unmoving.

Floating in the middle of a kitchen.

Holding an old mug.

A warm mug.

“Was…” I thought about everything. All the loss, pain, and death. All the blood on my hands. All the things I could never atone for weighing down on what may have once been my soul. “Was it all part of the plan?”

She slowly took away her mug from her lips and gently set it on the white marble counter she’d been leaning against before slowly walking toward me with the sunlit window behind her, her eyes on mine until she reached me.

Until she could take my helmet away and stare at me without the filter I hadn’t realized was still between us.

“Would you believe whatever answer I gave you?” she asked.

“Is that the official stance—”

“Yes. Yes, the official stance of the Protectorate is to tell the actual truth. Shocking, I know,” I say, almost choking on the unintended double layer of irony.

“But what about the allegations regarding the changing policies that took place during your forced absence—”

“I think,” Keith finally interrupts, “that today’s events should merit more attention than Alexandria’s presence here, don’t you?” he says with an easy smile that no amount of Thinker prowess ever allowed me to imitate.

“Is it the fact that a gay wedding—”

“If you’re looking for a juicy quote by trying to piss me off, you’re about to get one,” somebody who should never be allowed in front of a microphone says.

Me.

Keith blinks at me in quickly fading confusion, and I can hear David sigh through that ridiculous helmet of his as the reporter tries to hide the shark-like grin that spontaneously manifested right after my line while the other gathered, microphone-wielding vultures zero in on the media disaster sure to unfold.

And I…

“I don’t know, Contessa. I haven’t known in far too long,” I said.

Her soft smile remained as my helmet dropped from her hands just so she could place them around mine, pressing my palms harder against a warm, comforting mug.

“Let’s find out,” she said.

And I… I just kept floating, staring into earnest eyes that could have been sincere or yet another layer of a plan I never was entirely privy to, trying to parse the new world I had been brought into, trying to fit everything I had once done with all the things that I no longer had a hand on.

Trying to reconcile my past with the better world that was born not out of hard choices and bitter compromises, but…

But heroism.

I could have killed her, right then and there. Executed her for all our crimes before flying out of Earth’s atmosphere and fading away into the black void as the protection of my powers abandoned my body, left to be ravaged and lost forever.

I could’ve… sacrificed.

One last time.

But, instead, I felt the warmth of a mug of mint tea and the softness of hands that still bore the callouses born out of firearm use.

“All right,” I muttered as my head dropped away from her earnest gaze and into a brown, warm liquid with white plumes of steam floating over it.

And, for the first time in… since Hero’s death, I stopped being Rebecca Costa Brown and allowed myself to become Becca.

“Are you threatening a member of the free press, Alexandria?” the reporter insists with barely disguised glee.

“That wasn’t a threat; this is: if you so much as try to bother the brides-to-be, you’ll discover firsthand how fast somebody can fly without suffering permanent damage.”

“What Alexandria is trying to say—” Keith starts.

“What Alexandria means—” David overlaps.

“What I mean is that I’m here to be a bodyguard, and that includes taking away unwanted guests. Also, that neck-braces can be a great investment for your future comfort.”

The gathered press explodes like a bank of piranhas, and, out of the corner of my eye, I catch the grateful smile of a Thinker seven who just managed to sneak into the wedding venue with only a minimum of harassment from the few reporters who hadn’t smelled blood and were, instead, trying to cover the actual event they had come to report.

And, in one of the rare instances since… since everything happened…

I smile.

***

Lisa

I shouldn’t be nervous.

“It will be all right,” Colin says with precisely the same kind of voice I expect him to have when reassuring his many, many partners in a hospital waiting room as Hannah curses him and his reproductive urges.

That is, trying to sound comforting while being about to lose his mind himself.

“It’s… It’s stupid. I know it’s stupid,” I try to say, sitting in the improvised waiting room some tasteful dividers have partitioned for me right by the side of the grand entrance. “I… this changes nothing. We already decided years ago that… together…”

I trail off, raising my eyes from the gorgeous, unwieldy, incredibly awkward, many-layered flaring white skirt that Taylor wove for me over the course of months after we bought the apartment above and below mine to install her many terrariums and what Dragon once called ‘Baby’s First Tinker Workshop.’

I look into his eyes. Into supporting, nervous eyes looking down at me as he stands by my side like he so often has since we recovered him from…

From death.

“Forever,” I whisper, finally finishing the syncopated line stuck in my throat.

He smiles.

Something melts away from his nerves as he takes a knee in front of me, taking my hand and cupping my cheek, our eyes not drifting away through the entire, effortless motion of somebody who’s at times a bit too pushy about getting me in a gym.

“I’ve got Amy on call, if I ever feel the need to get in better shape than what marvelous genetics have gifted me,” I said.

“It’s not just about that,” he said, rolling his eyes out of sheer practice more than anything else. “It’s also about learning to move, Lisa. You have a library of kinetics inside your head that you could start taking advantage of right now.”

“… I hate it when you have a point.”

“It’s a parent’s job.”

I smile at the memory, at him being here, and at having actually become a pretty gosh darn good dancer with both Power and my… my father’s help in the months since Taylor and I settled on a date.

Because, of course, he actually coded a subroutine for his combat algorithm so that dancing lessons would now be something that his (at times) huggable armor is capable of.

“Lisa,” he starts, “there are a lot of things I’m supposed to tell you. About how this is not the ending of anything but the start of something. About how your life is going to get better than you ever thought it could be. About how I’m going to deliver you to someone I trust to take care of you in my stead.

“That’s tradition.

“Screw tradition.

“I won’t stop being there just because you are married. Taylor and you won’t become any different than the unbearably sappy, madly in love couple you’ve been for the past years. This changes… nothing. Nothing that actually matters.

“This is an oath.

“And what changes is… whatever you decide that oath changes.”

His lips close, but his eyes remain on mine, as earnest as they’ve ever been since he clumsily stepped into a role that started out as a joke. A joke that grew more and more with every time it was said by me, him, Taylor, and… and everybody who ever cared about us.

A joke that… never stopped being funny. That kept bringing that spark of joy. Of a happiness I thought I had lost forever years ago, when I fled from a house that wasn’t a home.

A joke that became ours.

“I… I already swore. Almost at the very start,” I say.

“I know. And I’m proud of you, the woman you’ve become, and the girl you once were,” he says.

“You’re… you’re gonna make me mess up my makeup,” I tell him with a tremulous smile, tears already running down the corners of my eyes.

“Dragon made sure I brought something for that,” he says, his own smile wavering.

And so I trust the technology of the two best Tinkers I’ve ever met and let the tears fall as I drop forward into his open arms, his warm chest as comforting as it was the first time we hugged without an unwieldy armor between us.

***

My makeup is fixed, my hair in place, and…

And my bridal veil is carried behind me by white, spotted butterflies.

Colin is by my side, his arm offering me a support I need more than I thought I would, the firm muscle under my hand keeping me steady as we stand by the opening of the partitioned waiting room.

Then the music starts.

Wagner’s Bridal Chorus, just to spite any remnants of the Empire Eighty-Eight that may lurk in my adopted city.

Also colloquially known as ‘Here Comes the Bride.’

So we step out and into the waiting, red plush carpet with gold trimming that goes from the entrance of the as-of-yet still not inaugurated ferry station to where the former mayor of Brockton Bay stands, waiting to officiate my wedding as his niece waits for me in her place as maid of honor.

And…

And I don’t need to meet Taylor’s eyes. Not when her butterflies are carrying the veil she wove for me, the gossamer thin, almost weightless, precious piece of lace that compliments the pattern woven into my elbow-length gloves and what adorns the strapless neckline of a dress that shouldn’t be white after many, many years of enthusiastic cohabitation.

I don’t need to meet her eyes to know she’s… centered on me. Taking me in. Accompanying every step I take by Colin’s side.

I still do.

Her shape’s blurred by impossibly thin white threads, but her black tuxedo still stands out, the satin finish of her lapels and the straight lines traveling down her sleeves and the side of her pants matching both a tie adorned with a silver needle capped by a grey pearl and the shade of her hair, brushed back into a low ponytail tied with an elaborate bow.

Her green eyes are on me. Taking me in. Never wavering.

My cheeks burn.

It is both the tingle of a blush I can’t bother to suppress and the strain of a wide smile that I can’t shake off, that keeps growing with every step through the multicolored shafts of light cast by the high ceiling, through every beat of the solemn piece of opera that Wagner crafted for the tale of Lohengrim.

There’s a castle named after the main character. A nice castle.

We, instead, get a ferry station.

And there’s not a solemn group of well-paid, live musicians. There’s, instead, the speaker system of the place that Taylor decided would be symbolic enough of us, of what we’ve fought for and achieved, that it needed to be where we finally fulfilled a promise made in a hotel that I ended up buying because I couldn’t bear to see it turned into a restaurant and apartment block when the neighborhood improved.

And now I’m standing in front of her, forming a triangle with Dinah’s Uncle at the apex, and Colin… Colin delivers me to my future bride.

We want to whisper. To say one last irreverent, sappy, unbearably corny thing now before it’s too late and we are…

Not different. Not at all.

Except in the ways we choose to be.

Dinah’s Uncle speaks, but I barely register it as I keep smiling and looking into Taylor’s eyes, delighting in how she never looks away from mine, barely blinking as her own smile remains fixed in place, not as exuberant as mine, but… but maybe more intense in different ways.

Ways that match her.

Dinah’s Uncle says something and then pauses.

And Taylor speaks:

“I, Taylor Hebert, do solemnly swear to take you and protect you. To cherish you. To never let go. I swear that, from this day until death takes me, I’ll love you and treasure you.”

There’s a lot unsaid. A few arguments we had about what would or would not be appropriate. I insisted she added that she would laugh at my jokes, and she said she wouldn’t lie today of all days.

Then, of course, we had what amounted to just enough of a fight to have makeup sex over it.

And now Dinah’s Uncle, former Mayor of Brockton Bay, and I guess some sort of honorary uncle to me as well, has said a few more words that I’m supposed to repeat without my voice cracking from tears or laughter.

“I, Lisa Wilbourn, do solemnly swear to be yours. To love you like I already do, if not more. To trust you, support you, and cherish you. I swear that, from now until the day I die, I’ll look at no one like I look into your eyes, and I’ll be grateful for every day I see them.”

I almost lose it at the very last moment, my throat clenching as I think of an eternity by Taylor’s side, a life shared with somebody who will never, ever let me go.

“The couple has chosen to exchange rings as a sign of their love and commitment,” he says with the voice of an experienced orator.

And Alec, Taylor’s best man, because Grue, sitting on the first row, is too busy trying not to bawl his eyes out in a way that’s about as heartwarming as it’s funny as his sister looks at him more bewildered than I’ve ever seen the little gremlin be and Rachel comfortingly pats his thigh while Argos tries to climb over her lap to lick the musclebound sap…

Well, Alec steps forward and takes a black velvet box out of the pocket of his immaculate tux.

I see the edge of a grin peek out at the corners, and I barely have a moment to ready myself for—

The box opens.

The music stops.

And, from behind some of the dividers that turned this part of the ferry station into a proper place for an exchange of vows, an exuberantly dressed Katy Perry steps out as the music restarts with something that is very much not German opera:

“This was never the way I planned~

“Not my intention~” she sings.

And I can’t even manage to look away from the box where, rather than a pair of sober golden bands, lies a cherry ChapStick.

Well played, little bastard.

Well played.

Some of the attendants murmur in confusion, some (I will get my vengeance, Dinah) squeal in undignified fangirling, and I prepare to unleash the full might of Power on a French Canadian asshole—

Butterflies take flight, carrying my veil with them, and Taylor’s lips find my own, devouring me with a kiss that, of course…

“I kissed a girl, and I liked it~”

Tastes like cherry ChapStick.

 

 

=======================

This, believe it or not, was planned back around the same time when I plotted how to get Colin out of his coma.

So, if you didn’t expect it? If it caught you at all by surprise? If you expected an actual ring to be in that box?

There’s only one thing I can say to you:

Tee-hee~

Okay, with that masterful rejoinder out of the way, I can only add that the next chapter is, indeed, the very last one. The End. There’s an afterword I just posted right now that will come out a week later, after the story has had room to breathe.

For now?

It’s back to writing for me. Just… Not this story.

Let’s talk more about this when this is over, all right?

As always, I’d like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon: aj0413, LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, and Xalgeon. If you feel like maybe giving them a hand with keeping me in the writing business (and getting an early peek at my chapters before they go public, among other perks), consider joining them or buying one of my books on Amazon. Thank you for reading!