Where The Heart Is: Issue 11 (Patreon)

Lady Judgement paused and adjusted her tie again, before stepping forward one more time. It was the sixth time, technically, that she had done so since her mom had dropped her off. She didn’t count the first one because she’d been walking, and that made it more like… a pre-adjustment. The gold-on-black pattern had to be perfect—each little hexagon aligned just right, enough to catch the light. The reflection off the elevator doors said almost perfect, and it was that almost that made this so annoying.

Pale fingers twitched to fix it again.

Her suit was sharp; clean lines, high collar, the weight of her oversized coat across her shoulders almost enough to weigh down her posture if it wasn’t for her new strength. The gold epaulets caught just enough light to draw the eye without looking like she was cosplaying a dictator, and the chain draping from her lapel to her pocket was angled just slightly off-center on purpose.

Asymmetry signaled authority. Probably. At least according to the Vought handbooks she’d read.

She squared her jaw, narrowed her eyes, and delivered her line low and steady, like the handbook said.

“Criminals of Brockton Bay… you have been weighed. You have been measured. And you have been found wanting.”

Three steps forward. Each click of her heels deliberate. Controlled. Her gloves—black with gold buttons—tightened at her knuckles as she flexed her hands in rhythm.

“Justice is not blind,” she said under her breath, slower now. “It sees all. The guilty cannot hide from my gaze.”

Lady Judgement pressed the elevator button with poise and grace. She could already imagine the slow turn of heads, the focus on her, the hush that would fall over the room when she stepped in. Her power making her eyes flare from brown to gold, and capturing the attention of the heroes.

It’d be dramatic. It’d be operatic. It’d be—

“Taylor.”

She jumped. Actually jumped as she heard the flat, bored-sounding voice call her name.

Her shoulders hunched, cheeks going full thermal meltdown as she spun around to find the someone that had just yanked the curtain on her mid-monologue. Her thermal meltdown went Chernobyl as she spotted someone she knew. “Oh.”

Emma leaned against the wall ten feet back, arms crossed, a single eyebrow raised like she was grading a math test and had just spotted a decimal where a digit should be.

Taylor blurted, “I didn’t know you were there!”—voice jumping half an octave and then stumbling down a register mid-sentence like it couldn’t decide what genre it was in.

Emma pushed off the wall and strolled over, the fabric of her suit—sleek white with subtle black paneling—catching the light like someone had designed it to be admired from runway distance. Her hair, of course, was perfect.

“Yeah, I figured.” Her tone was light. Playful. Almost mean. “You only drop the Lady Judgment monologue when you think no one’s watching.”

Taylor flushed brighter, her hands flapping in midair like she could physically push the embarrassment off her skin. “It’s not Judge Dredd, okay? It’s—it’s more like a mystical arbiter of cosmic justice.”

Once again, Emma rolled her eyes at Taylor but the other girl couldn’t hide the smile on her face. “Wow, super distinct.” One hand reached past Taylor and te nun-girl hit the elevator button again, even though it was already shining a bright blue. “You’re so right, Tay-Tay. I don’t know how I messed that up.”

“It is!” Taylor insisted. “First of all, Dredd is more like straight up grimdark authoritarianism. Lady Judgment is more… spectral retribution. Less ‘law as a weapon’ and more ‘vengeful celestial reckoning.’”

Emma raised both eyebrows, tongue sticking out of her mouth and she flapped her hand, working it like a puppet. “You practiced that one?”

Taylor hesitated. “No.”

Emma tilted her head.

“Okay, maybe a little.”

The elevator dinged softly, doors sliding open with that overly polite whoosh that always made Taylor feel like she was stepping into a spaceship instead of a building.

They stepped inside. Taylor tried not to watch herself in the mirror but absolutely did anyway, just long enough to re-square her shoulders and pull her coat tighter. She caught Emma watching and coughed into her glove.

“Anyway,” she said, trying to reclaim some ground, “I was preparing for our first impression. The Vought handbook explicitly says that early persona establishment correlates directly with team cohesion.”

Emma smirked without turning. “Taylor. You’ve read that thing eight times. I know. I was there.”

“Seven,” Taylor corrected instantly. “You fell asleep during ‘Heroic Deportment.’”

“Only because it was 2 a.m. and you were giving it a dramatic reading like it was the Declaration of Independence.”

“It’s important!” Taylor pinched the bridge of her nose, then blinked when her fingers hit nothing only to giggle a little bit. She still wasn’t used to the no glasses thing ever since that little injection they gave her. Shaking her head, she put her serious pouty face back on. “Chapter seven lays out the entire framework for social alignment within new team structures.”

Emma hummed, clearly not convinced.

Taylor wasn’t done, throwing her hair back and fixing Emma with her best imperious look. “I bet you didn’t even bother to read the section about costume semiotics, did you?”

Emma rolled her eyes, the nun-girl somehow managing to look just as imperious with a roll of her eyes. “Tay, girlie…”

But Taylor pressed on. “No, look, the psychological impact of color choices and design elements? That’s important stuff, Emms.”

“I skimmed it,” Emma said, arms folded, chin tilted just a little like she’d already filed the handbook under Set Dressing and moved on. “My costume came pre-loaded. You remember. ‘Holy Mary must radiate spiritual purity and divine compassion.’” She mimicked the PR tone, clipped and saccharine. “‘Market-tested virtue,’ basically.”

Taylor didn’t laugh. Not at first. She was too busy rechecking the gold trim on her gloves—finger to wrist, then back again. “It’s not virtue marketing, it’s symbolism,” she said, automatically, quietly. “White signifies cleansing, the body made vessel. Minimalist lines suggest sacrifice and monastic discipline and—”

“Uh-huh,” Emma cut in. “And push-up mesh didn’t pass focus group.”

That got a laugh, short and half-held, mostly to keep from wheezing. Taylor’s shoulders twitched. “Was it really mesh?”

“They wanted heels too,” Emma said, like she still couldn’t believe it. “Dad threatened to call a press conference.”

“I would’ve worn heels.” Taylor checked her reflection again. Her coat hung heavy, perfect. She tugged one sleeve anyway. “As long as I got to keep the epaulets.”

“You chose the epaulets.”

“They’re historical,” she said, tone shifting. Lower, more formal. Her Lady Judgment register. “Military lineage. Legal dominion. They denote authority.”

Emma leaned into the mirrored wall behind her, arms still crossed. “They denote drama.”

“They’re not dramatic,” Taylor mumbled.

“They literally jingle when you walk.”

The elevator was moving now. Taylor could feel the ascent in her ribs. Each floor number blinked like a countdown and the air started to feel thinner, like someone had turned the pressure up but forgot the oxygen. She pressed her gloves flat again. Left, then right. Same buttons, same check.

Out the corner of her eye, the city bled downward. Brockton Bay framed in glass, reduced to rooftops and dots. From up here it looked like something you could just… fix. Maybe. If you had enough time.

“Can you believe it’s actually happening?” she said, not quite to Emma. “We’re on a team. A real one. With call signs and group dynamics and probably… protein bars shaped like the logo.”

Emma’s smile softened, for real this time. “Yeah. It’s wild.”

“I keep thinking I’m gonna wake up,” Taylor said, voice lighter now, almost laughing, like if she said it fast enough it wouldn’t sound fragile. “Or someone’s gonna point at me and go ‘nope, that one’s here by accident, get her out of the costume closet.’”

“They do that,” Emma said, still casual, but something in her shoulders changed, “I’ll knock their teeth out. Rearrange their molars alphabetically.”

Taylor blinked at her reflection. Then back to Emma. “I’m being serious.”

“So am I.”

“You don’t have to defend me all the time.”

“I don’t,” Emma said. “Just when you forget how much you belong here.”

Taylor’s hand went to the little gold hex pinned above her heart. She traced it like she was checking the edges hadn’t dulled. “It was… localized temporal stasis,” she said. “It’s not perfect. Doesn’t work the same under stress. Not always.”

Emma raised her brows. “Still better than ‘light aura makes your scrapes tingle.’”

Taylor snorted. “It’s more than that. You—you project a regenerative field. That’s huge.”

“Yeah, sure. Real glamorous. Every time I use it my skin glows like a fucking lamp.”

“You glow elegantly,” Taylor said, pointing. “There’s an aesthetic.”

“There’s trauma,” Emma said, but not harsh. Then, her voice softened slightly. “There’s aesthetic too, I guess.”

They fell quiet for a second. The elevator hummed. Taylor watched the mirrored version of herself glance away, then try to fix her stance without making it look like she was fixing anything.

“You met Homelander before,” Emma said, not a question.

Taylor shook her head, once, sharp. “It wasn’t really a meeting.”

“He flew you out of a wreck. That counts.”

“I didn’t even see his face that day,” she responded, thinking back to how hectic it had been back then. “Not really.”

“He remembered you.”

“He shouldn’t have,” Taylor said, and the words hit hard enough that she nearly winced at hearing them out loud. “It was two years ago. He saves people every week. Every day. I wasn’t—I was just the kid in the car.”

“You were the girl lighting up a block and freezing time around your mom,” Emma said, quiet now. “You think he wouldn’t remember that?”

Taylor didn’t answer. Her hand stayed over the hex. Not gripping, just… resting there.

She remembered the feeling more than the moment. The silence when everything stopped. Not muted—gone. Her mother still breathing, but not moving. Blood hanging in the air like beads of glass, caught mid-fall. No sirens. No screaming. Just her and the light, and the scream inside her own chest not finding a way out.

Emma’s hand settled on her shoulder. It was warm. Taylor didn’t look at her.

“He saw what you did, Tay. That’s why we’re here.”

Taylor exhaled. It shook on the way out.

“I didn’t think it would show,” she said. “I didn’t mean for it to.”

“You lit up the entire crash site,” Emma said again, voice steady now, but softer than before. “Dad said they could see the glow from a block away.”

Taylor fidgeted with one of the epaulets again—not to fix it, just to have something to do with her fingers, like if she focused on the chain threading under the button she wouldn’t hear the echo of his voice again. That moment—”I remembered you”—still looping somewhere behind her ribs like it hadn’t landed yet.

“I still can’t believe he remembered,” she said, not loud. “That he thought I’d be good enough.”

Emma tilted her head without really looking. “Tay. You stopped time.”

Taylor didn’t look away, but her hands paused. “You don’t have to say that.”

“You literally froze time. That’s not me being nice, it’s just—physics.”

“I didn’t freeze time, I just… slowed it. In zones. With constraints.” She pinched the chain on her pocket and flicked it back against her thigh. “Localized temporal stasis, technically.”

Emma gave her a look that said she wasn’t going to argue the branding.

“Besides,” Emma added after a beat, “your power’s actually useful. Mine’s just—”

“Don’t.” Taylor didn’t raise her voice but it landed like she had. “Your power is amazing. How many people can take pain away? Not like numb it. Just—gone.”

“Anyone with aspirin and a Band-Aid,” Emma muttered, soft, not quite biting.

Taylor turned, face scrunched in that you’re-not-getting-away-with-that expression she always made when someone got a trivia answer wrong on purpose. “You fixed that kid. The one from the park. His arm was like—it bent backwards. I saw it. You fixed it. No hospital. No splint. You just—held him, and it healed.”

Emma made a face. “While looking like a convent dropout from a music video.” She gestured to the habit. “Honestly, I still think it’s a prank. They’re just waiting for the cameras to pop out.”

“It’s a hundred times better, no a thousand times better, than the original costume set you showed me pictures of.” Taylor couldn’t help but wince at the memory of that stripperific look. Hell, her mom was literally against slut-shaming on principle — you couldn’t work with a feminist supervillain and not support women — but even she called the look ‘slutty’. “Remember? The one with the corset and, like, angel sleeves?”

“God, yeah.” Emma winced too, actually gagging with her tongue out as the image passed through her head too. “It was basically lingerie with a cross. For when you re-debut at eighteen.”

“You told me your dad almost flipped the table.”

“He asked if it came with a pole.”

Taylor choked back another laugh and kept spinning the pocket chain. “He’s awesome. Your dad, I mean. So’s mine. I still don’t know how they both said yes.”

“Like they could’ve stopped us,” Emma said, not even pretending to be humble. “Remember when we were ten and decided we were gonna be bounty hunters?”

Taylor grinned. “Your mom still hates me for the yard.”

“It was a trap.”

“It was a grave.”

“My dad thought we’d killed someone.”

“We were committed,” Emma said, brushing invisible dust off her front. “Still are.”

They both laughed, but Taylor’s stuck in her throat a second longer.

“Remember our pact?” Emma asked, voice lighter than her face.

Taylor nodded, and something in her face pulled taut. “Always. Heroes or not at all.”

Emma jerked her chin toward the ceiling. “Even if everything goes sideways up there?”

“We stick together,” Taylor said, and it felt like a script. She offered her pinky anyway. Emma hooked hers around it like it meant something. Maybe it still did.

Emma smirked. “Even if I think Lady Judgment sounds like a D&D NPC.”

“Hey!”

“Just saying. You had options. Hextech? Chronolord? Way cooler.”

“Chronolord sounds like a Doctor Who villain.”

“Hextech sounds like a start-up that sells modded smartwatches.”

“It’s thematic,” Taylor said, her voice going warm and dramatic. “Lady Judgment invokes the cosmic machinery of restoration.”

“Invokes a yawn,” Emma countered.

Taylor nudged her. Emma leaned into it.

“You’re the worst.”

“You’re obsessed with me.”

“Unfortunately.”

The elevator slowed. The air didn’t. It got tighter. Taylor adjusted her shoulders again. Breathed in.

The breath didn’t help.

This was the part where it all got real. Like—headline real. Photoshoot real. Judged-by-strangers real. Her mouth was dry but she smiled anyway, a little too big.

“Shhh,” she whispered. “Gotta get into character.”

Emma rolled her eyes but said nothing. Taylor straightened, adjusted her gloves again, let her fingers rest just under the epaulet chain like it meant something.

The floor dinged.

“Justice is not merely punishment, but the restoration of balance to a disordered world.”

The doors slid open too smooth, too quiet. Like the lobby had been holding its breath and finally let it go.

Taylor didn’t move.

Across the polished floor—glossy enough to show reflections but not enough to look at for long—a blonde girl was already mid-story, voice pitched somewhere between a fan convention and a musical number. Her costume gleamed. Gold filigree across white fabric, like a cathedral threw up on a runway.

“—can’t believe we’re actually on a team together! I’ve been following Super-Sweet since your first single, this is so amazing—”

The boy beside her, Supersonic probably—red and yellow trim, gear like a track star’s fever dream—nodded in a rhythm that didn’t match his smile. The corners of his mouth twitched like someone had stapled them up too tight. His eyes didn’t blink much.

A couch sat center-stage. Blue bodysuit, red stripes, white star—Greg, American Son—hunched over a bowl of chips like he was being paid for it. Elbow propped. Shoulders forward. Eyes stuck to the floor. Crunch. Chew. Crunch. Glance. Not at her. Back down.

Taylor’s mouth was dry and she hadn’t even tried to speak yet.

Every line she’d practiced—every greeting, handshake, team-first impression—just… collapsed. Her throat moved but no sound. Her glove twitched against her thigh like it had missed a cue.

Emma didn’t speak at first. Didn’t have to.

Then she leaned in, breath warm near Taylor’s ear.

“…this seems fun.”