The Daughters of Monsters #5

I'd love to see what's next for Gloria and Cleo. It would be interesting to learn more about their father's rivalry as well as what Cleo has planned. 

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

The next day, Gloria did what the daughter of any good villain, trapped in enemy hands, would do. She snooped. It was surprisingly un-difficult, at least for the basics, but then she figured that if it wasn’t the basics it didn’t matter. Her father knew the basics of Victor Hart.

It was Monday, so after an uneasy glance at her father that the hero ignored, Cleo had vanished off to school and Gloria…well. She was suddenly immensely, painfully, aware of how close they were to the summer holidays. A few scant weeks. After that, there would be no one who would ask ‘and where is Gloria Thornton?’ until at least the new term, and that was assuming the hero didn’t have some kind of sway over the school board. Gloria could believe it.

She tried the front door, and it was very effectively locked, as were the windows in the guest bedroom.

So, she snooped. It was better than panic.

The Hart residence was more polished than one would expect a superhero’s home to be, closer to the kind of suburban bliss that always found its way into white people’s Pinterest boards. There were many a photo of the hero and his daughter, and then some carefully framed ones of him, his daughter and Cleo’s mum. Cleo had her eyes. They looked happy.

She found herself avoiding Cleo’s room, even if it was probably the room she had the most right to be in, if she was pretending she wasn’t a hostage. She avoided the hero’s study too, because she could hear the hero moving around inside, and wasn’t in the mood for a confrontation with a super-powered man. Instead, she examined the knives in the kitchen, and wondered if they would take her to the hospital – allowing her to escape – but figured probably not. She headed further into the bowels of the house, past the kitchen, down in the cellar.

In the cellar, behind the extra stocks of food and hodge-podge items typically relegated to storage in the lowermost pits of a house, was what could only be called a shrine.

It was not a shrine to Cleo’s mum.

There, tucked out of view but not hidden, were more pictures of her father. Younger than he was, now, so much younger. In one picture he had his arm around Cleo’s father. In another, the hero was pressing a kiss to her father’s cheek, while her father pulled faces at the camera. In yet more, they were both laughing, with a woman Gloria recognised as her own mum. She picked up faded photograph, feeling something lodge in her throat. Her hands were trembling.

It was too much of a coincidence. It was surely too much of a coincidence, and yet…

Well.

Superpowers weren’t exactly common. Certainly not to the extent that their fathers had. Gloria was her father’s daughter, and she could just about slowly toast a piece of bread with fire power if she tried really hard. It wasn’t worth it when she could just use a toaster.

She stroked her fingertip along the curve of her mother’s face. She couldn’t have been much older than Gloria herself was – seventeen.

“I keep it as a reminder,” came a voice behind her.

Gloria jumped. She whirled to face the hero.

Victor Hart leaned against the cellar stairs, watching her with an unreadable expression on his face.

“You and my father knew each other,” she said, even if it had to be obvious. “You knew my mum.”

“We grew up together, your mum and I,” he said. “We went to the same college, where we met your father.”

“I didn’t know.”

“It was a long time ago.” He took a step further into the cellar, his hands tucked in his pockets. He looked different to the hero who had been fighting her father the night before. He looked like a tired middle-aged man, with slightly greying hair, and a goddamn sweater vest that she wanted to sink her claws into because he didn’t get to look like he was harmless.

He was not harmless. She’d seen her father stagger home bruised and bleeding, wracked by despair, enough times to know that much. She backed away a step, and he stopped.

“How much do you truly know about your father’s work?” Mr Hart asked, in a casual tone of voice that Gloria didn’t believe in for a second.

“I’m not going to talk about my father with you.”

“He didn’t believe in raising you a civilian, I see.”

“Oh, yeah, because Cleo’s totally normal and well-adjusted. Normal kids are happy to die in a street battle without a drop of existential panic.”

“She’s a good kid.”

“Like it’s ever been so simple as good and bad in a war zone.”

Mr Hart sighed, casting his gaze over the shrine of friendship that he and his villain had once had.

“He was always charismatic, your father,” the hero mused. “Passionate. Intelligent. Ready to fight the world for what he believed in. A little like you, if my daughter is to believed – though I’m told you’re not much of a fighter, when you can avoid it.”

Gloria said nothing to do that. Something fluttered uncomfortably in her chest at the thought of Cloe talking about her at home. Had it been a strategic discussion, after they learned her surname? Or was Mr Hart going by the chatterings of a daughter with a crush? Was Gloria’s own father combing through every gushing, excited thing that Gloria had ever said about Cleo in a new light, searching for a weakness to exploit? Most definitely.

“My daughter is a fighter,” he said. His voice was very soft. His eyes, when Gloria dared to meet them, were not. “I raised her to be one, you’re right. Despite everything, I still believe in the importance for standing up for one’s beliefs, you see.”

Once again, Gloria said nothing, watching him like one might watch a snake. It was probably fine if she didn’t make any sudden moves. She doubted, after all, that he was taking time out of his day for an idle chat.

. He pulled up a smile, and moved a little closer again, to take the photograph out of her hand and putting it back down on the table.

“So it is a reminder, you see,” he murmured, picking up his earlier thread, as he gazed at the photos. “That power corrupts. That love is not infallible or inherently moral. That nothing lasts, so all we can do is good while we are around. Do you believe in any of those things, Gloria?”

“I believe you’re a self-righteous dickhead.”

He smiled, faintly. "I know I have only ever tried to do what I think is right. I know your father cannot say the same."

"Boohoo." 

"He blames me for your mother's death," he said, and she froze. "Not heard that story either?"

"Are you to blame?" 

"No. I just didn't manage to save her." There was something odd in his face, gentle, and terrible, as he surveyed the old pictures. "Or your brother." 

She stared at him, pretty bloody certain that she didn't have a brother and never had. Her father had never mentioned it.

"I've suspected a long time that he would do anything for you," the hero said, "but I have never hunted you. I have never sought you out nor tried to harm you." 

"You're a paragon of virtue not hunting a child."

His eyes flashed. "You are the one who came to my house, to my daughter, and I'm supposed to believe you didn't know who she was?" 

"I didn't." 

He looked like he believed in her about as much as she believed in him, which was to so not at all.

“And what bit of this whole story are you leaving out?” she spat.  

Whatever suspicions he had about her, he didn't get to pretend that her father was the only monster. He didn't get to pretend that they went from the people in the photographs into what they were only because of her father.

It was his turn not to reply, and she scoffed, turning away with a shake of her head. 

However much curiosity might tug at her for the past, for the situation that was clearly a lot more complicated and personal than her father had ever let her believe, it wasn’t worth it to stay in a room with Victor Hart longer than she had to be. Not in the least because all that talk of child murder made her wonder what exactly he was going to do with her. Sure, he said he'd let her go, but...

Well. 

He spoke up again, when Gloria reached the stairs, not moving from his spot by the shrine.

“I know Cleo's going to try and help you escape. I suggest you don’t take the opportunity."

Gloria didn’t let herself tense, or flinch, or show any sign of weakness at all. She didn’t let herself even stop as she walked (outwardly calm) up the stairs. If her palms had gone clammy, well…

"Your father has hurt a lot of people," the hero said. "He will hurt more unless I stop him."

His voice drifted quieter, as if not entirely meant for her ears, as she stepped back into the hallway.

"I have to stop him."

She didn’t really feel like snooping after that.