"There was no long-term, and trying to cling to one would only spoil it all."
This article contains spoilers regarding the ending of Worm and plot of the sequel.
Amy Claire Dallon, or Panacea, is a parahuman with the ability to reconfigure biology with a touch, who was adopted as a child by Carol Dallon and New Wave.
Personality
Panacea felt a gnawing sense of guilt, as every second she took to herself was a second where she was not helping other people, but at the same time growing to resent her patients.[5][6]
Like her absent biological father, she held herself to a strong code that governed her behavior and use of her power.[7] She refused to kill using her power or interfere with human minds, even to heal them. Breaking these guiding tenets caused her considerable mental stress.
Amy felt extremely lonely; her adoptive mother, Carol Dallon, never really wanted her and treated her coldly and suspiciously,[8] while her adoptive father, Mark Dallon, suffered from clinical depression and found it difficult to look after her. The only person who consistently showed her affection was her sister, Victoria Dallon.
She also felt a strong attraction to Victoria, possibly as a result of constant exposure to her sister's awe-inducing aura at a formative stage..[9] Although she kept this a secret, fearing that it would ruin their relationship, it caused her to feel extreme jealousy towards Victoria's boyfriend Gallant.
As a result of these various sources of stress, Amy was "steadily crumbling" at the start of Worm.[10]
Reputation
Panacea is an admittedly powerful cape that has already drawn international attention.[11] As such she was targeted by various nefarious organizations.
Relationships
Victoria Dallon
Amy loves her sister dearly, this may have been influenced by the effect of her adoptive sister's emotional aura.[9] In a moment of weakness, she changed Victoria's brain chemistry to reciprocate her romantic feelings. She was prevented from correcting her mistake due to her sister's understandable revulsion to the idea.[12]
Her attempts to fix things only making things worse.
When she was placed in the Birdcage, Amy got her first tattoo in remembrance of her crime against Victoria.[13]
She eventually was able to fix Victoria,[14] but their relationship was irreparably damaged.
Tattletale
Following the Battle at the Bank, she had a deep-seated dislike of Tattletale stemming from her attempts to manipulate her.[5][10][15]
Amy did not like her at all, and considered her the sole cause of her life unraveling, to the exclusion of other factors.
Taylor Hebert
It is unknown if they actually trusted each other. Amy ultimately appreciates the fact that Taylor attempted to help her during her breakdown, even if she didn't succeed.[16]
Appearance
Amy is described as "mousy" with frizzy brown hair and freckles. Her similarity to the father is very obvious.[17]
As Panacea, Amy wore a robe with a large hood and a scarf that covered the lower half of her face. The robe was alabaster white and had a medic’s red cross on the chest and the back.[18]
Because of the Siberian's tests, she lost several joints of her fingers,[19][20], later she restored them[21]. During her time in the birdcage, she would acquire several tattoos as mementos to her life before the birdcage. She also had a growth spurt, and Taylor described the result as not attractive but not unattractive.
Abilities and Powers
Amy is a biokinetic with an innate understanding of, and the ability to modify, the biology of any living organism she touches. This is not limited to humans but encompasses all carbon-based life based on what is seen in the story. For much of her life, Amy primarily restricted her use of the power to healing. She was one of the greatest healers in the world.[22]
She has demonstrated the ability to render parts of a person's body numb and threatened to give Skitter time-delayed obesity or to make everything she ate taste like bile for the remainder of her life.
Her power was too slow to be much use on Leviathan.[23] It took her "some time" to modify tissues for transplant to avoid rejection.[24][25] Any changes she makes are not immediate.
Amy is capable of modifying brains. For a long time, she had a firm rule against it, fearing what may happen once she crosses this line.[26] Changes she does make are deep and not easily corrected compared to other master effects.[12]. According to Amy any attempt of neural diagnostics also puts her into the state of, at least, partial shared consciousness.[27]
Weaver compared her in power to Contessa, Glaistig Uaine or Labyrinth.[4] She had what Glaistig Uaine called the "shaper" faerie, which she claimed was on a par with her own and the Queen Administrator, and would "clean up after we are all done here, one way or another".[28][29] Her shard was a bud from Marquis'.[29][30][31] She was not related to Bonesaw.[32]
She was capable of modifying life into entirely new organisms:
- Scramble[33][34] and Relay bugs[35][36] to interact with Skitter's power.
- Atlas
- A coffin-like "cocoon" filled with clear liquid for an injured Glory Girl.[37]
- Pheromones that attracted stray dogs and cats.[38]
- An airborne plague.[39]
- A contagious parasite that counteracted Bonesaw's own parasite derived miasma-mist effect.[37]
- Khepri
History
Background
Amelia was born to a woman who had had a onetime tryst with the Marquis of Brockton Bay, her mother found out she was pregnant and raised her daughter from there. After her mother found out she had cancer she checked on the father; deeming him acceptable she sent Amelia to live with the father.[40] She was raised in Brockton Bay from there.[41]
During the Brockton Bay Brigade's battle against Marquis, the Brigade discovered his daughter hiding in the closet. Brandish and Flashbang adopted her to keep her safe from the media and those who would exploit her due to the high chance of her manifesting superpowers. This was requested by Marquis.[41] Amy's first memory may well have been coming to an unfamiliar home with strangers.
Amy was a quiet, unassuming kid without any particular passions. Despite that, as a kid of known superheroes she was welcomed in the circle of elite students. She had not displayed interest to this either.[42]
Panacea triggered two years before the story began,[43] when Glory Girl was injured by a gang, called the Chorus, attacking a mall.[10] She would visit hospitals for two or three hours at a time every evening, curing people. Sometimes she would visit again during the night because she couldn't sleep.[5]
Her power meant she was granted an honorary medical license.[44] She was not able to do as much as she could with her abilities due partially to rules governing the exploitation of minors.[2]
Story Start
She was called in to heal Lung after he was poisoned by an unidentified Parahuman and Armsmaster claimed credit.[45]
Glory Girl called Panacea in to heal a suspect she had injured in a fight. The two argued about Victoria's use of excessive force, but she eventually acquiesced. She helped her sister interrogate the man.[18]
Amy was present for the Battle at the Bank without her costume; she briefly incapacitated Skitter by interfering with the feedback she received from her bugs. At one point, Tattletale threatened to expose her secrets in front of Glory Girl.
Afterwards, she healed the Wards of any injuries they had and told them of her observations regarding Tattletale's power to help them in future fights.[5]
When Leviathan came to Brockton Bay, she was presumably held back at the secure location such as the Hospital.
Post-Leviathan
She healed a lot of injured parahumans in hospital following Leviathan's attack. One of them was Skitter, the girl who was part of the bank robbing team. Amy messed with her verbally while repairing her injuries and then left her alone despite the scared villains protestations,[46] She was there when the villain turned out to been a "hero".
Weeks later Amy was chosen as Bonesaw's nominee for the Slaughterhouse Nine. She was forced to break a number of her rules, and in her distress, she modified her sister's mind to be attracted to her.[47]
Panacea was hunted by the Siberian who bit off a joint of her finger for each time the beast women caught the healer. After Glory Girl was injured by Crawler, she encased her sister in a biological pod made from stray cats and dogs.[37]
She modified Glory Girl to the point she lost track of what she was supposed to look like. The result was possibly inspired by something she saw during her trigger event.[48]
Post-Slaughterhouse Nine
She voluntarily goes to the Birdcage.[49]
There she met her father and saw Lung again. She attended a meeting with the cell block leaders of the birdcage and shook hands with the Fairy Queen.
Together they figured out what was really going on with the Passengers.
Gold Morning
Panacea was one of the prisoners released from the Birdcage.[50]
Amy made victory possible by modifying Taylor into Khepri. Khepri largely left her alone,[51], although several people were sent to her for healing.
After these events, Amy was reunited with her sister.[14]
Early-Ward
Amy tried to go to a family reunion that did not go well. When she tried to follow her sister she was almost attacked.[52]
Panacea was still assisting The Wardens by overseeing Riley's work, like the maintenance of Ashley's hands.[53] She is still uncertain where she is heading in the new world. While her sister was in the same building as she was, Amy ended up meeting a new friend.[54]
Post-Fallen fall
According to Dot, Amy provided help for other survived goblins.[55]
Amy continued making ill-advised friends, and brought some heat on the Breakthrough.
She was able to easily identify Chris Elman as Lab Rats successor. Chris convinced her to give him an opportunity to act.[56]
Once Goddess was subjected to sudden, but inevitable betrayal, Amy usurped her army of villains and departed with them as the Red Queen of Shin.
Post-Time Bubble Pop
Leaders of Earth Shin, while still being extremely wary of parahumans, allowed Red Queen to settle on the Alleghenian Ridge with strict conditions.
Amy used her powers to "fix" ex-villains that followed her to Earth Shin, as well as local warlords. And, later, victims of capes, which led to her slipping up and mutilating a kid from the new Parahuman Asylum.[57]
Using the situation resulted from power posturing of Shin rulers, Amy forced Victoria into private meeting.[58]
Trivia
- Panacea was the name of the Greek goddess of universal remedy, from which the word and concept "panacea" is derived. The panacea was said to be a substance that cured all diseases and granted eternal life.
- "Red Queen" is reminiscent of an event in the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It is referenced in turn by the Red Queen evolutionary hypothesis, which perceives the evolution as mostly a rat race.
- Amy and Victoria were considered early on as protagonists for a story called 'Guts and Glory'. The story would have alternated between each of their perspectives on a chapter by chapter basis and covered many of the same events that were covered in Worm.
- The character was named Annie in early drafts of Worm, but was changed to Amy prior to the publication of Interlude 2.[59]
- In early drafts of Worm, Amy triggered when Glory Girl was injured by the Slaughterhouse Nine[10].
Fanart Gallery
![Illustration by CyrixDrawsStuff[60]](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/parahumans/images/2/2e/AmyByCyrix.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/149?cb=20190629170127 "https://www.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/8ycuyt/fanart_amyamelia_portrait/ (1.73 MB)")
References
- ↑ “What’s holding you back? You’re capable of so much, of changing the world, of destroying it, but you’re so very small, Amelia Claire Lavere.”
His voice was almost mocking as he said her name.
“That’s not my name.”
“It’s the name you were born with." - Excerpt from Prey 14.10 - ↑ 2.0 2.1 Amy bent down and touched her sister. Glory Girl stirred and sat up. With Amy’s help she stood.
“You’re lying to yourself,” Tattletale said. “And you’re making things worse.”
“Just- I’m just keeping her complacent. I’m okay with it if she doesn’t forgive me for it. Don’t deserve it anyways. I do this, and then I’ll go somewhere I can be useful. Only reason I haven’t made more of myself and my power is because of the rules and regulations about exploiting minors with powers. Either go into government or don’t work at all, and didn’t want to go into government because they would have made me a weapon. And because I needed to be with my family.”
She smiled, but it wasn’t a happy expression. “Burned that bridge. But I’m sixteen now, I can get a job somewhere, start making a real difference with my power.” - Excerpt from Prey 14.6 - ↑ Marquis frowned. “My daughter, she would be… what year is it? 2010?”
“2011,” Lung replied.
“She would be seventeen. - Excerpt from Interlude 10.5 - ↑ 4.0 4.1 I could only think of one powerful individual who was on a par with the others she’d named. Contessa and Glaistig Uaine were easily twelves or higher on the power-ratings scale, and I could look to others with powers in that neighborhood to figure out who she was referring to. Panacea, Labyrinth… - Excerpt from Extinction 27.4
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Interlude 3
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 The Star
"Upright: Hope, spirituality, renewal, serenity
Reversed: Lack of faith, despair, discouragement"
Panacea
Panacea is hope, but for others, not herself. She is renewal, spirituality, and serenity when she finally does find herself, reinventing herself within the Birdcage. Her crisis is one of a lack of faith/uncertainty in her abilities, falling into the depths of despair, and hopelessness. - Major Arcana, bolded addition by Wildbow. - ↑ “You’re your father’s daughter. Both of you are bound up in rules you’ve imposed on yourselves. His rules defined his demeanor, the boundaries he worked within, the goals he sought to achieve and how he achieved them. They were his armor as much as his power was. I would guess your rules are your weakness. Rather than focus you, they leave you in free fall, nothing to grasp on to except your sister there, and we both know how that has turned out.” - Excerpt from Prey 14.10
- ↑ Wildbow on RPG.net
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Mrmdubois: Right, so the power kicked in when Glory Girl and Panacea where hitting or had just hit puberty. Panacea is introverted and would have spent most of her hangout time with Glory Girl anyways meaning she’d be getting blasted with this power…pretty often going by the way Glory Girl used it on her with no compunction during the assault/repair on the skinhead. Chuck in the changes in biology from growing up and awakening sexuality and it seems pretty likely to me that this was going to go weird places right off the bat
[...]
Wildbow: I wondered if anyone would pay any attention to that.- Comment by Wildbow on Interlude 21.y - ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 Wildbow on Spacebattles Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; name "SB1" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ “But I got them anyways, and I got international attention over it. The healer. The girl who could cure cancer with a touch, make someone ten years younger, regrow lost limbs. - Excerpt from Interlude 3
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 “I can find someone else to fix it. Or maybe, at the very least, I can show some fucking self-control and realize it’s my sister I’m having those feelings about.”
“You can’t. I- Oh fuck. You’re underestimating what I did. Please. If you never ever give me anything else, if you never talk to me or look at me again, just let me fix this.” - Interlude 11h - ↑ Amy gets a tattoo so she has a reminder of Victoria and the crime Amy committed against her, without having to dwell so heavily on it. - Comment by Wildbow regarding Story Arc
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 I watched the individual members of the swarm touch ground. The girl with healing powers had been placed deliberately next to a living pool of flesh with multiple heads of golden hair. The healer’s hands were covering her face, but she didn’t step away.
Her hands slowly lowered, and she laid her eyes on the monster, which was actively, ineffectually reaching out for her. - Excerpt from Speck 30.7 - ↑ “You sound like Tattletale. That’s not a compliment.”
“My ability to read people is learned, not given, I assure you.
[...]
I suspect you’ve never been around someone who actually paid attention to you.”
“Tattletale did. And Skitter.”
I startled at that.
“I meant on a long-term basis, but let’s talk about that. I imagine they were telling you ‘No, you aren’t. You can be good.'”
“Yeah.” - Excerpt from Prey 14.10 - ↑ Cockroaches 28.3
- ↑ ...it was Marquis, and I saw how similar he was to Amy. In hair type and even the way the hair fell across their shoulders, in face shape, and the cast of eye and nose. - Excerpt from Breaking 14.6
- ↑ 18.0 18.1 Interlude 2
- ↑ Siberian took her time, grabbing at Amy’s other wrist, then prying at her fingers. Three were already missing segments, and Siberian seized the index finger. Slowly, inexorably, she guided the finger to her mouth, her lips parting. Amy thrashed, but couldn’t free herself from Siberian’s grip. - Excerpt from Prey 14.2
- ↑ “No, I’m not okay.” Her head trembled a little as she turned to glance at the others. She returned her attention to me. “She bit off my fingers.”
[...]
"My fingers,” she moaned, as she looked at her hand. “I ran as fast as I could, but it wasn’t fast enough. She kept catching me.” - Excerpt from Prey 14.3 - ↑ Tattooed hands, with two fingers left untatooed, replacements for what she’d apparently lost in her fight against the Slaughterhouse Nine.
I wondered if there was a meaning there. She’d tattooed blood onto her hands, either consciously or not, but that little addition was like a ‘but not here, not with this excuse’. - Excerpt from Breaking 14.6 - ↑ I can’t do anything for the people with more serious brain lesions unless I attend to them directly. There’s other healers out there, I know they’re not as good, but maybe they can do something to fix that. - Excerpt from Prey 14.10
- ↑ Comment on Extermination 8.4
- ↑ She can regrow missing body parts. She can't conjure material out of thin air, however. Even donor material is tricky because the body is liable to reject it unless she invests the time to alter it on a deep level. This is time she wasn't able or willing to spare when Armsmaster was in custody.
Atlas was made from an abundance of raw material. One key hurdle that they didn't have to cross. - Wildbow on RPG.net - ↑ “Can you grow us wings?” Trickster asked, in a wry tone.
“I can’t generate flesh from nothing, and it’s slow to convert something into a part your body won’t reject.” - Prey 14.3 - ↑ “You don’t understand. I can’t cure brain damage.”
My heart fell.
“I- my- the last time I did it, the last time I broke my rules, everything fell apart. You’re asking me to do the exact same thing Jack was. To break my rules again.”
"They’re just rules.” Where was Jack?
“They’re the only thing holding me together.”
He’s getting away. This stupid girl. “You were willing to die if he took you hostage. I’m asking you to sacrifice yourself in a lesser way. Fall apart if you have to. But undo what Bonesaw’s started.”
“This is worse than dying,” she said, her voice quiet. - Excerpt from Prey 14.10 - ↑ “I checked you. I got a read of your system. Um. That includes the neural connections- [...] I get it now,” she said. “How you’re disgusted by me, how you feel betrayed, the hate, the pain. Crystal clear now. I felt it, realized what it was and that it was all real, and I pulled my hand away like it was a hot stove. I did use my power, but it was like pulling my hand off a hot stove.” - Excerpt from Breaking 14.9
- ↑ "There are others who stand shoulder to shoulder with us, but queen is the wrong word, Administrator. The champion, the high priest, the observer, the shaper, the demesnes-keeper
[...]
The shaper and demesnes-keeper clean up after we are all done here, one way or another. So it goes." - Excerpt from Extinction 27.4 - ↑ 29.0 29.1 Wildbow: Amy's power is related to Marquis'
Wildbow: Just broader
Gundor: Right
Wildbow: Minus the limitations that were put on the Shaper shard - Wildbow on IRC, archived on Spacebattles - ↑ "Is Panacea's shard a bud shard from Marquis or is she a first generation cape?"
Yes. - Wildbow on Spacebattles - ↑ * Marquis got the power that fit best at the time of his trigger. Panacea was more of a slow play in the midst of a promising situation. - Wildbow on Reddit
- ↑ I’ve mentioned that I went through a lot of drafts before settling on Taylor’s story. One of the drafts was ‘Guts and Glory’, and that’s the same point in time I came up with the Slaughterhouse Nine and Bonesaw (by a different name, same concept). There was involvement between ‘Bonesaw’ and Panacea, and I’m thinking that’s something I’ll want to touch on at some point. - Comment on Interlude 10.5
- ↑ Agitation 3.11
- ↑ Agitation 3.12
- ↑ Prey 14.3
- ↑ Cockroaches 28.3
- ↑ 37.0 37.1 37.2 Prey 14.10
- ↑ “I used pheromones to lure stray cats, dogs and rats to us, then I knit them together. Victoria didn’t have enough body fat to stay warm, and she was wearing out faster than I could get her nutrition.” - Excerpt from Prey 14.10
- ↑ “I’ve been turning every microbe that touches my skin into an airborne plague, Jack,” Panacea spoke, her voice low. “You should be dead now.” - Excerpt from Prey 14.10
- ↑ Marquis[...] hooked up with a groupie that had freckles, then they parted ways. A while before canon, said groupie finds out she has cancer, goes to Brockton Bay to find Marquis, and after verifying that he's not an utter monster and he has resources to take care of her kid, gives him custody. Panacea was not born in Brockton Bay. - Wildbow on reddit
- ↑ 41.0 41.1 Interlude 15.x
- ↑ Amy had been the odd one in more than I had. Purely average in appearance, quiet, she hadn’t been passionate about hobbies or about anything in particular. She’d liked movies from Aleph and when she was twelve she’d break her usual reserved, quiet composure to get way too excited if she checked the change slot of a vending machine or pay phone and found a quarter. And yet when we got to high school, she was automatically included in the group of popular students. - Gleaming 9.2
- ↑ Do you understand what it means, to cure some of these people? I feel like every second I take to myself is a second I’ve failed somehow. For two years, it’s been this… pressure. - Interlude 3
- ↑ Interlude 2
- ↑ Interlude 10.5
- ↑ Extermination 8.8
- ↑ Like a flame at the end of a long fuse, leading to a stick of dynamite, her power traveled from the side of Victoria’s neck to her brain. It was barely a conscious action on Amy’s part.
[...]
“Anything stupid. Like what? What did you do?”
Amy’s voice was a croak as she replied, “…make it so you would reciprocate my feelings.” - Excerpt from Interlude 11h - ↑ Funny how parallels appear. Almost as if Panacea had been recreating something from something she saw in a trigger event. - Comment on Speck 30.5
- ↑ Wildbow on RPG.net
- ↑ Extinction 27.3
- ↑ Others… who was I leaving behind?
There was a group still in the settlement. They hadn’t all moved through the portal. I reached for their names. Right. Tattletale. Rachel. Imp. Panacea. I’d taken the others, collected the wounded. - Excerpt fromSpeck 30.5 - ↑ - Excerpt from Daybreak 1.7
- ↑ Eclipse x.4
- ↑ Interlude 3 II
- ↑ “My Red Queen has fixed a few of my kind. Big ones, weird ones. She could fix you. She can make you just as wonderful in shape and strong enough you don’t need the body.” - Excerpt from Gleaming 9.8
- ↑ Interlude 10.y II
- ↑ Amy shook her head.”We’ve taken one hundred and fifty dangerous parahumans who, believe me, could have gone to the Birdcage, and we rehabilitated them. Addictions removed, impulses tweaked, emotional balances adjusted.”
[...]
“I checked over all of the prisoners from the prison on your Earth and the leftover parahuman warlords from here. Put things in place, mental checks, emotional controls, whatever they needed. Chris handled information gathering, interviews, collected a handful he thought would be useful to keep around as…”
“Lieutenants?” I asked.
I saw Chris shrug.
[...]
After I was done with the capes I started on other people. Victims of capes. People like, um, like the people at the Parahuman Asylum. There’s a facility in your Earth’s Europe. Not really like the Asylum, more like a big farm, where they do their best to get everyone set up to contribute to society and give them therapy, medical care, and anything else they need. For some it’s just somewhere warm and clean with animals to cuddle.
[...]
“Her name.”
“Her- oh,” she said. “Hunter.” - Excerpt from Breaking 14.6 - ↑ Breaking 14.9
- ↑ Some names have changed since. I recall that Amy would have been Annie if I hadn’t changed my mind a few minutes before Interlude 2 went live, in Worm. The nature of the story would have involved a stronger relationship between Amy/Annie and Brett/Gallant, her finding her way, and ultimately led up to her incarceration. It was too dark, though, and there wasn’t anything to salvage it. All those people who talked about what would happen if Amy had gone to the wrong prison? The other drafts (which are unfortunately handwritten) went into that, and it was ugly, with her basically going full-on Class-S threat. - Wildbow in Snippets: Before Worm
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedAmyByCyrix
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