Cover by Vigil
''"In the stories, the girl gets saved from the evil villain by the hero, and they lived happily ever after. So why is it a villain had to rescue me from real evil? From my sister?"'
Silence is Not Consent is a Worm Alternate Universe For Want Of A Nail fanfic by Just Another Cat and Aleph.
In an Alternate Universe of Worm that diverges following the end of the Slaughterhouse Nine arc, with Victoria Dallon aka Glory Girl waking up in the aftermath of the Slaughterhouse Nine attack to Skitter standing over her, having been fixed by Amy at gunpoint.
Note that this story deals with some adult themes, with the main character dealing with the aftermath of rape, the trauma of it, and trying to recover from it. You Have Been Warned.
Silence is Not Consent can be found Spacebattles
, Archive Of Our Own and Sufficient Velocity.
Tropes include:
- Body Horror: The Wretch that Amy turned Victoria into before Taylor saved her was basically this.
- We get a vivid description of this when Victoria activates her force field during testing and gets a panic attack from seeing the Wretch.
- For Want Of A Nail: Taylor discovering Victoria and Amy before the PRT did and forcing Amy to fix Victoria at gunpoint, meaning Amy avoids the Birdcage and Victoria gets fixed two years early.
- A side effect of that is Victoria has to recover from the trauma of what happened to her practically on her own, and hasn’t had the years of therapy she had by the events of Ward.
- In-Series Nickname: Victoria, after rejecting the nickname Vicky due to it being what Amy called her, adopts the nickname of Tori.
- Offscreen Karma: Coil ends up getting taken down offscreen by Dragon and the PRT after the Undersiders provide Dragon with information.
- Parental Betrayal: Victoria considers her mother Carol to have done this by siding with Amy and taking her back.
- Posthumous Character: Dean and Battery. Victoria is still recovering from the death of the former, while Assault is still mourning the recent death of the latter, blaming Skitter specifically for her death.
- Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: Victoria’s opinion of the PRT and heroes does deteriorate over the story, especially after finding out that they are going to ignore her rape and let Amy heal people again.
- The Dreaded: For Victoria, it’s definitely Amy Dallon. She also serves as Victoria’s Trauma Button.
- Dragon briefly becomes this for the Undersiders.
- There Are No Therapists: For Victoria at least, considering here she avoids getting sent to the Asylum and doesn’t have Doctor Jessica Yamada to help her like in canon. Instead, here, the closest thing Victoria has to a therapist is Taylor, who frankly has her own trauma and issues to get through.
- Trauma Button: Amy Dallon is Victoria’s.
- Treachery Cover Up: The PRT letting Amy continue to heal after what she did to Victoria, though admittedly for reasons we don’t yet know.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Victoria’s general reaction to Taylor revealing the crimes she committed between taking down Lung and saving her.
