by Drew Hayes
“You were a kid once,” Alice repeated. Her hand worked its way carefully into his, intertwining her digits amidst those dexterous fingers as a fresh wave washed over their feet.
“Yeah. Did that help with your dilemma?”
Alice smiled and turned to face him. “Not really.”
“Oh well. Can’t win ‘em all.”
141.
Camille lay out on the deck, staring up at the stars and listening to the waves roll across the sand. The week had flown by, her memories of it a mental collage of swimming, games, and healing lots of people’s hangovers. It had been a good time with her friends, despite the fact that she’d spent less time with Vince than she might have otherwise preferred. He’d seemed distracted since the second day, spending more time than usual off on his own. The boy probably went on three solo runs a day. Still, that was just one fly in the ointment of a wonderful week, so she couldn’t complain that much.
There was a soft thud as the door behind her opened. People had been wandering out occasionally, letting the night air bring some clarity to their thoughts before heading back into the den of chaos. So far the night was on the tame side, but Violet had declared tonight reserved for her Centennial Club, so it wasn’t surprising that people were hesitant to pre-drink before such a booze-heavy endeavor.
“Hey.” Vince’s voice came slightly ahead of him, his familiar form drifting into Camille’s field of vision a few seconds after the word hit her ears.
“Hey yourself,” she replied. She noticed he was holding one of the many plastic cups that had been used to house beer, cocktails, and - on very rare occasions - water. “Careful; you let Violet see you walking around with a plastic cup, she’ll assume you’ve decided to drink. That makes you fair game for tonight’s challenge.”
Vince took a sip from the aforementioned cup and winced visibly. “Nick made me a screwdriver. Apparently the orange juice is supposed to mask the taste of the alcohol.”
“Oh. Does it?”
“Not with the amount Nick poured.” Vince motioned to the empty deck chair next to her. “Mind if I join you?”
“By all means.” Camille waited until he’d settled into a reclining position before asking her next question. “So, what’s weighing on your mind?”
“Am I that easy to read?”
“You’ve been a little distracted all week, which admittedly could have been you keeping away from the wild party crowd, but now you’re drinking alcohol. Last time you did that was when you were worried about losing your spot in the HCP over grades. So in summary: yes, you are very much that easy to read.”
“When you put it like that...” Vince trailed off and took another swig of his screwdriver. He shook his head after the gulp. “Sweet heaven this is awful. Want to try it?” He extended the cup to his deckchair neighbor.
“Why would I want to try something awful?”
“No idea. Seemed polite to at least offer.”
Camille accepted the plastic container but made no motion to sip from it. Instead she moved it from hand to hand as she looked out at the starlight-speckled dark sky.
“Sasha wants to get back together with me.”
“Oh.” Camille took a short sip from the cup in her hands. Vince had not exaggerated the awfulness of the vodka concoction. She put the drink back to her lips and took a much longer draw. “I’m guessing that’s confusing for you?”
“Very. I mean, I was in love with her last year when things fell apart, but once I saw how she felt about me, I really did my best to move on. I suppose deep down a part of me always hoped that she’d change her mind, but that part of me didn’t actually bother to figure out what I wanted beyond that.”
“So now that you can have her, you’re not sure if you want her?” Camille took one last guzzle and handed the now noticeably lighter cup back to Vince. With her small frame she knew she’d already downed more than was prudent, but if this conversation went the way she was anticipating, a little numbness might be worth the other effects of intoxication.
Vince laughed lightly and accepted his cup. “No, I think it would be accurate to say now that having her is a reality, not just a lonely fantasy, I have to face the real consequences of what making that choice would be.”
“Consequences like having back the girl you wanted.”
“See, that’s just it. The girl I wanted. The girl I loved. I still feel things for her, I won’t deny that, but after everything that’s happened, I’m not sure that I still want to be in a relationship with her. It’s hard to tell if I want to be with her, or I just want to be with someone.”
“That doesn’t sound like you at all.”
“Everyone gets lonely, Camille. I don’t think there’s any shame in admitting that sometimes the desire to just have someone to be with is there, even if you don’t have a particular someone in mind.”
“No, I suppose you’re right. It’s human nature, and even we not-quite-human freaks aren’t immune.”
“Freaks,” Vince said, tasting the word before washing it away with the remainder of his drink. “I hate that word.”
Camille realized her faux pas immediately. “Vince, I’m sorry. That was just a bad choice of words, I didn’t mean anything by it.”
He looked over at her and gave his reassuring smile. “I know you didn’t. You’ve never once treated any of us like we were different just because we used to be Powereds. I bet you would have been nice to us even if we weren’t Supers.” Vince turned back to the sky and put his hands behind his head. “No, I hate that word for different reasons. When I was traveling around I heard people talking about Supers a lot, and that was the most common word they used. Freaks. They said it with so much anger and contempt, this whole unacknowledged sentiment of hate directed toward people just for the way they were born. People think being a Powered is hard, and it is, but the world usually looked at us with annoyance or pity. People who could control their abilities, they were the ones who were despised.”
Camille nodded, not trusting herself to talk. Too many memories of her life before meeting Vince were trying to bubble up in her mind, aided a bit by the generous dose of vodka now working through her system. Camille understood how people hated Supers. She understood very well.
“Sorry, I guess I went off on a ramble there,” Vince said. “Anyway, I’ve spent the week trying to figure out what to do about Sasha, and all I’ve managed is to make myself more confused, so tonight I’m going the opposite direction and trying not to think. Hence my letting Nick make me a drink. I’ll try not to burden you with loss of stomach control this time, at least.”
He gave her a playful wink, and just like that the serious cloud that had settled over them was dispelled. Camille’s bad memories faded back into the recesses of her subconscious, replaced by the shining one of when she’d first looked up at the stalwart man now sitting across from her.
“If you do then you’re in deep trouble, because I doubt I’ll be in any shape to help.”
“Screwdriver already hitting you that hard?”
“No, but the many shots of beer I’m about to take will probably push me way over the edge. Let’s go tell Violet we’re playing along.”
“Is that a good idea? Neither of us is a really heavy drinker.”
“No, it’s a terrible idea, but I think we’re both responsible enough to be allowed one of those on occasion. Besides, we won’t try to do the whole thing, just what we can manage.” The small girl pulled herself up the chair and looked down at Vince, tapping her foot against the wooden floor of the deck.
“Yup, this is a horrible idea,” Vince said, grinning as he rose up and followed her back into the ruckus of the house.
142.
Owen’s punch sent Roy three feet in the air and twenty feet back. The younger man crashed to the ground in a rolling heap, his movement continuing until he wound up back on his feet. If not for his own levels of endurance to physical damage, that blow would likely have broken his sternum. Instead it jus
t felt like it had.
“You managed to deflect most of the power from that one,” Owen complimented. “Most people with our ability fight like they don’t understand the concept of injury. It’s nice to see that school of yours has at least been teaching you the basics of intelligent fighting.”
Roy patted himself down while his father talked, double checking for any serious wounds. Even with a step back and a strike against Owen’s forearm, that punch still had enough force to warrant concern. If Roy had taken it full force, well, he was reasonably sure it wouldn’t have killed him, but that probably would have been the end of their last day’s training. Hershel was slated to drive back to Lander tomorrow morning, so this was the final iteration of Owen’s Intense Battle Camp. It hadn’t been an easy week, but the results were already showing themselves.
“They teach us a lot,” Roy said after he was sure his bones were still in the correct number of pieces. “Plus I had a hell of a sparring partner last year. He showed me the value in not getting hit.”
“Not getting hit is a damned fine skill to master,” Owen said with a nod. “But, for us, it comes second to being able to take one.”
“Isn’t that the exact opposite of learning not to get hit?”
“No; knowing how to avoid attacks is fine, when you have that option. Let me ask you something about this sparring partner of yours: what is his power?”
“Complete control of his body, down to a molecular level.”
“Damn, that’s a pretty fine one. So I’m guessing he can do some interesting things with it.”
“He can speed up his perception of time, perfect memory, and I once saw him heal a cut on his head in a couple of seconds. All of that on top of the fact that he’s strong as shit.” Roy might have spoken higher of Chad’s impressive punching power if not for the offhanded blow his father had dealt him. The man was redefining Roy’s very concept of strength.
“Ten to twenty he also has a bunch of tricks you haven’t even seen yet,” Owen commented. “Things he can do that will help in a variety of situations. Probably even ways to subdue other Supers without injuring them. That’s why he knows how to avoid being hit; for him that will always be priority one. You and I don’t have variety. We do two things well. Hit, and get hit. That’s our bread and butter. That’s where we live.”
“I don’t get it, why the hell can’t I counter or dodge?”
“You can, when it’s appropriate. But what are you going to do when your team is staring down a fully-charged energy beam that fires directly at your group? You going to dodge? Because you might get away, or at least get by uninjured. Not all of your teammates will be able to do the same.”
“What would you do in that situation?”
“Same thing I’ve always done in that situation. I’d charge the fucking thing and take the full brunt of it. Because that’s my job, just like the healer would fix whatever it broke on me and the ranged guys would tear it up before it could fire again.”
“What if it destroyed you?”
“That’s why we train like this. Not just to push our limits, but to be aware of them. A strongman who doesn’t know how much he can take won’t last very long, not unless his endurance is so top-class it might as well be invulnerability. Every Super who makes it to Hero is intimately familiar with what they can and can’t do. It’s why different teams get different assignments. It’s why strategies are altered depending on the threat. Your sparring partner will have a myriad of options for how he handles his shit. You have two.”
“Hit and get hit,” Roy echoed, nodding his head with understanding at last.
“Exactly; so you better train like hell to make sure you can do both better than everyone else you know.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Roy said. He glanced at the sun’s position in the sky. He could probably push it a while longer, but the day was definitely beginning to lose ground in the fight against evening. From the discussion they’d just had, Owen would likely come at him hard: hard enough to put him down for a while. That might mean being here during business hours, which was not a particularly desirable outcome.
“Well, thanks for the training.” Roy’s posture changed as he purposely took himself out of a ready stance. “Day is almost over, so I’m going to call it. Have a good one.” He turned and headed toward the exit, not really expecting to get out this easy, but still hoping for it.
“Wait, you’re leaving?” Roy couldn’t see Owen’s face, but the poorly-suppressed sadness in his voice made it far too easy to picture.
“Of course. Have to get up early to drive back, and we’re getting close to business hours. I believe it was one of your rules that I be gone by the time the doors open, right?”
“Yeah, I suppose it was.” Owen’s voice broke off near the end; for once the unstoppable man was unsure about how to go forward. “Look, I know you’ve got a life to get home to, one that hasn’t involved me for a long time, but I was thinking that we could try to stay in touch-”
“Pass,” Roy said, giving in at last and turning around. Owen’s face was more controlled than he’d expected, but his eyes told the story of a man barely holding it together. “Don’t get me wrong, Hershel and I both appreciate what you’ve done for us here. It’s not an exaggeration to say that if I make it as a Hero, it will be at least partly due to you. You taught me the truth about what I am.”
Roy walked back toward his father until he was only a few steps away. It was probably less than five feet of separation, but miles stretched in between each one of those feet.
“I’m truly grateful. So grateful I’ve kept civil this whole week. That’s it. That’s the end of it.”
“I understand,” Owen said with a heavy sigh. “I didn’t really expect you to understand any of this.” He gestured a massive hand back at Tartarus to illustrate the point.
“You think I don’t want to get reacquainted with you because of the gay thing?”
“Don’t you?”
“Fuck you,” Roy spat. “Mom raised me better than that. Look, let me ask you a question. You know the Hero, Globe?”
Owen nodded. “I met him once or twice. We never worked on the same team or anything.”
“One of the other people in my program, Vince, was raised by a guy who some people are speculating might be him. They think Globe faked his death, lived as a hobo wanderer, took in some street urchin Powered, and took care of him until his early teens. Honestly, I think it’s bullshit, but even if Vince really was raised by a psychopath murderer in hiding, I’m still jealous of him. Want to guess why?”
“I-”
“Because his father was fucking there. He taught him how to fight, how to survive, how to be a man. You should see the way Vince lights up when he talks about him. Might secretly be one of the greatest villains of our age, had no blood relation to the kid, and he was still a better dad than you. Even if he’d done a shitty job, at least he was punching the clock. You just fucking quit. That’s why I don’t want you in my life. You already made the choice to cut me out of yours.”
“Roy, you don’t understand how difficult things were. Even if the world didn’t know I was Titan, our community did. We hung out with other Heroes, every person in my world was suddenly looking at me like... I don’t even have words. And that’s to say nothing of the pain I saw in your mother’s eyes. I’m not proud of the choice I made but I thought it was best for the family to take me out of it.”
“Bullshit. It was just easier. You had a kid who would uncontrollably turn into someone else with strength, endurance, and shitty impulse control, and somehow you looked at that situation and decided he’d be better without anyone to teach him what it meant to be different. Better yet, to take away the person he looked up to and had wanted to be like. I’m not saying staying wouldn’t have been hard, but don’t you dare look me in the eye and tell me that you ran away for the family.”
Owen’s eyes tightened as he looked back at his son. “I guess this is it then.”
“I guess so,” Roy agreed. “Thanks for the training, and for the mantra. Hit and get hit. Protect the people around you. I think that’s a solid philosophy for people like us.” Roy turned and walked to the door, this time unhalted by any outcry from Owen.
“Hit and get hit,” Owen said softly as he watched his son walk out of his life.
143.
By the time Vince stumbled into his room at the beach house, he’d managed to put down a solid eight beers through the course of the evening. This placed him well behind the rest of the drinkers, who had completed Violet’s centennial club then immediately switched to a different drinking activity, yet still left him buzzed without pushing him into the realm of being a useless vomiting heap on the bathroom floor. It was that gentle place of intoxication where everything is pleasant and the nausea is more fun than worrying. He opened the door, expecting to tumble into his bed and allow the ever-increasing sleepiness to whisk him away from his overworked consciousness. Instead what greeted him as he stepped through the door was a soft pair of lips pressing furtively against his own, filling his mouth with a familiar taste.
Dimly he registered hearing the door close behind him as he was led firmly toward the bed, however Vince suspected sleep was no longer the primary objective. Not that it would have come easily anyway; the deft hands that were running across his body had wiped away his drowsiness and left tingles of anticipation in its place. With no small effort, Vince rallied his self-control and freed his tongue for the purpose of speaking.
“Sasha, I-”
“I know,” she interrupted, her breath heavy. She looked like she’d been readying herself for bed; a thin pink t-shirt and a pair grey sweats were draped across her body, creating an all-too thin layer of separation between them. “I know you haven’t made your choice. I know you aren’t sure what you want. That isn’t what this is about.” She pressed against him and worked her hand under his shirt, her nails trailing lightly as they rose up his back.