Dr Archeville Posted December 3, 2010 Share Posted December 3, 2010 Strangers on a Train: Avenger, Edge, Fusion, and Harrier's Vignette November 20, 2010. Midnight "Sssh, it's okay," said Jack, bouncing his son back and forth on his knee as Jack Jr. fussed and bit down hard on his special teething ring as hard as he could. Not sleeping didn't mean that a baby's shrill cries were any less frustrating for a parent to hear, and so he'd finally given Taylor a break by taking his son out for a trip on the commuter train. Hey, maybe the sound of the ride would lull him to sleep the way rides on trains had for Jack himself when he was little. In the privacy of the half-crowded car, with only mundanes around and no one who knew him, Jack opted to do something he didn't often do: he told his son about his grandparents. "You know," he murmured softly, "your granddad used to take me on rides just like this when I was a baby. We lived right by the old commuter line in Adamsburg, and when I was in a bad mood he'd pick me up and take me back and forth, all the way to Bedlam and back if he had the time. He said I'd liked the sound of the music the train made, click-clack, click-clack..." The baby gave Jack a look that was, as ever, hard to read. The grim avenger of evil sighed softly. Was he going to have as bad a relationship with his son as he'd had with his own father? The adult Jack Jr. was an argument against that, true, but the boy was cagey, and anyway he was from an alternate future. Jack had visited other dimensions plenty of times with Taylor to know just how easy it was for one decision to take things in very new directions. "Things go one way," he murmured again to the fierce-eyed baby, "and I'm here with you on the train. Things go another way, and I'm a monster living without hope, without love, on a dying world." He really didn't like to think about that vampire dimension. "And no you. It's funny how these things work out, isn't it?" He'd been a terrible son in his own mind, the sort who could drive his family and those who loved him to the brink of insanity. "Sometimes I don't know what your mother sees in me," he admitted. "I'm hardly a man at all sometimes, much less a good man. And here I am with a wife and baby, and life is...life is actually pretty good," he admitted. "Maybe the team don't get together as often as we should, but that's because things are quiet." He thought of Dead Head, and hoped his friend would forgive him for slipping away at Halloween. _It's not an easy thing, confronting a god,_ he thought. _Especially when you know your existence isn't what it should be._ And Dead Head had spent much more time doing good than he had, in the grand scheme of things, either chronologically or relatively. _If Dead Head doesn't deserve to exist, do I deserve to exist?_ It had taken him a while to realize that what one deserved didn't really matter. Dead Head existed, and did good in the world; Avenger existed, and did his best to do the same. And he'd been lucky, and found people he loved and who loved him. And he'd almost lost them both. Both to Heshem, and maybe Taylor at least to his own..."If she hadn't come back, what would I have done?" he asked no one in particular, leaning against the window he'd covered with his jacket to guard against anyone spotting his lack of reflection. "Disappeared into the darkness with you? Been a boss instead of a worker on the street..." He stroked the baby's soft, fuzzy little head for a little while, lost in thought. "Hunted down and murdered...nah." He shook his head. "Not really my style. Shouldn't be your style, either." He beamed at Jack Jr, getting a teeny little smile that couldn't hide the baby's teeth at all. "There are enough dead people in the world. People who don't deserve to be dead, either." He bent down and kissed the baby on the head, pulling him close inside his jacket for a cuddle. "Your grandfather would have loved you very much." - Her back aching, Joan entered the train with a sigh, though she did stop to give a nice smile to the dozing father and the bright-eyed little baby he was cuddling. She remembered long nights with a fussy baby too, and had nothing but sympathy for the poor man. _Nice to see fathers getting involved in their children's lives_, she thought as she carefully took a seat, mindful to spread her coat across her lap as she'd done for years now when she was sitting like this in public. Charlie was good about being with Lois, very good, but most men weren't as good as he was. _I should thank him more for that,_ she thought a little unhappily, taking out her notebook and looking over the coded jottings she'd made about corruption in the county sheriff's office. She'd gotten an informant on the inside, and he'd had a lot to tell her. _He's a good father, and a good husband._ She thought back to their last argument, a foolish thing over a political candidate he'd mentioned admiring, and had to wince a little. _And sometimes,_ she conceded, _I'm not easy to live with._ She wasn't one of those women who walked around with some kind of crazy self-loathing or anything, but she had to be honest with herself. _I'm lucky to have Charlie._ Unbidden, thoughts of what her life would be like alone came to mind, and she pressed a finger between her eyes to try and blot them out. _No baby girl. No one to talk to at the end of the day. And if I was still on the dating market..._ It was, she reflected grimly, an unfortunate situation to be deformed as she was. She wasn't just warped, she was warped in a way that some very perverted men found sexually appealing. _If a man liked me for my tentacles, I'd know he was a freak. And if he didn't like me for my tentacles..._ She reached down and rubbed her fingers along her side. _I'd be the freak. Just like I am now._ She knew plenty of people with permanent mutations who she didn't regard that way, but she knew she herself was something special. _Just think what everyone would say if they saw you. Look at you, Ms. Hotshot Reporter, got herself all warped and messed up because you decided to be a hero. Not so smart now, huh? Not so perceptive?_ She pictured people like Bombshell, a criminal who'd kept her good looks through decades of time and who knew what self-abuse, and repressed a red surge of anger. _She's a good guy now. I can't hold her past against her._ She'd figured that much out, at least, from talking to the Scarab. _It's hard, though_ she admitted to herself. _Criminals shouldn't be able to just shrug off decades in jail like nothing bad happened, then go back to their life like nothing happened. Bad people should pay for ruining society._ On further reflection, though, she supposed she'd been harder on Bombshell than she really needed to be. The real criminals were people like the deputy sheriffs with their smuggling ring, not people like Bombshell who'd stolen some valuable items some years earlier. _Not that I wouldn't bust her in a second if I could. But right now, she's more sinned against than sinning. And I've been one of those sinners._ She shifted in her seat, wondering why trains had to be so slow. _I could have gone home under my own power,_ she reflected, thinking of Fusion's grace and beauty as she whipped her way across Freedom City's skies, _but I can't live like that every day. I have to be able to do some things the way I used to, or close to it, anyway, or I'm admitting I really have been changed forever._ Joan didn't like to admit that sort of thing, not even when she knew it was true. She still pictured herself whipping through the sky anyway, or maybe running, just like she'd done before, in perfect control of a perfectly human body, sweat on her neck and muscles burning with the heat of a good burn, pushing herself to the limit. _Maybe I can get some action tonight,_ she reflected. _...or maybe I'll see if Charlie's in the mood._ - Mark gave a friendly smile to the relaxed-looking lady as he took a seat in the trainseat behind her, feeling more pleased with himself than he should. He'd gone out late at night, met a really cute college girl, gotten a little drunk, and then fooled around in her dorm room until her returning roomate had chased him out. _I guess it wasn't very heroic_, he conceded with a little self-reflection. _But it was nice to unwind._ Things had been so serious lately at home, and even sometimes at school, that just getting away and totally unwinding had felt really nice. Really, really nice, he thought. And at least this time he wasn't going to have any weird guilt like after his night with Marcie. He still remembered the look on Dr. Marquez' s face when he told him that story, the psychologist excusing himself to use the bathroom shortly thereafter. _I was really worried I'd offended him, but it didn't seem to bother him when he got back. Heck, he was smiling!_ Maybe all that hadn't been so bad in the end, he'd certainly had a chance to meet a much worse version of himself later, and that Mark hadn't been sexy at all! _I'm glad the other Daisy is doing okay,_ he thought, adjusting his clothes as he checked to make sure he hadn't spilled any beer on them. He really didn't want to get caught drinking underage, but no one had asked at that party he'd wandered into, so he hadn't told. He wouldn't have gone out if his mom was in town, but Martha Lucas had taken her sketchpad and gone upstate to get back to her art (to use her words) for a few days, leaving her eighteen year old son to take care of himself for a while. _She's really doing well in that therapy. I'm really glad she started going,_ he thought, remembering the deep unpleasantness of how things had been before the zombie invasion. _Man, who knew a zombie invasion could be so helpful? Hmm, better not mention that to Erin,_ he thought quickly. _Better to make it about how nice it was that his mother had been able to take care of herself when that monster had shown up!_ Come to think of it, she'd studied the same self-defense lessons that his father had tried to teach him, and maybe she'd even done better. _It's a lucky thing I've got these powers!_ Mark reflected; they'd made some kinds of self-defense redundant even as they'd made some kinds all the more crucial. _I can even dodge hits that Erin makes when we're in training, and that's not easy. I even ducked when Trevor was sneaking up on me once!_ He wouldn't attribute either of those to skill, not when both of them were much better trained and better fighters than he was, but he wasn't the kind of guy to turn up his nose at a little luck. _That's how I got here, after all._ Glancing again at the lady with the notebook, Mark took out the sheet of paper he'd been carrying in his pocket, screwed up his courage, and suddenly began to write: "To the Office of Personnel and Management, UNISON: My name is Mark Mason Lucas, and I am responding to the advertisement your organization has been circulating about the employment of people with superhuman abilities for UNISON's food and development programs for undeveloped nations. I am very interested in working with your organization, and would like to set up an interview as soon as possible." Mark paused there, thinking about the shining costume waiting for him in his closet at school, about the pictures of the Freedom League and Young Freedom on his wall, about a family legacy of duty and heroism that stretched back longer than some families had been living in America. He thought of his grandfather fighting Nazis, then his father fighting supervillains...and then pictured the hungry faces he'd seen in pictures of Africa and Asia, thought about the people he'd helped feed and clothe right here in Freedom City. _Be a hero, Mark._ "My superhuman abilities encompass the manipulation of material reality, ranging from the creation and destruction of matter through the alteration of its basic subatomic structure. In the past, I have successfully created edible items equalling the volume and space of a 747..." - Invisible to the naked eye, Harrier kept pace with the train easily, his jets roaring behind him as he flew. He could see the humans inside, so normal and easy as they went about their lives, and couldn't help but feel a wistful envy for them. _Look at them. A young man writing a letter to his lover. A woman doing the same, perhaps? And a father with an infant, and all those others..._ He'd seen so much destruction and death in his time that the sheer peacefulness, the casual normality of the scene, was almost enough to take his breath away. If he breathed in his armor, anyway, which was certainly not the case given the way the metal inside rearranged his internal structure with every use. Vividly he remembered the agonies of that internal replacement, the terrible body alteration that had ended in an even worse violation of the soul. _But here...here such things are not so bad._ He was hated and feared by some, it was true, but they were honest emotions that could be easily expressed: the gunfire and screams that came his way, not to mention the occasional attacks from his fellow heroes, were proof enough of the goodness of this place. It was a beautiful thing to no longer be feared, even if that fear was replaced by hate in the eyes of many here. _They are free to make their own choices and live their own lives. If they choose to hate my appearance...well, perhaps that's wise of them._ Intrigued, he pushed himself and caught ahead of the train, landing at a nearby station and hastily taking cover before resuming his normal appearance, stowing his pike in its usual place at his belt. And just in time, too, as the train pulled in mere seconds after he crept out of the men's restroom. Sparing hardly a look for the people still looking around for the source of the strange noise, he hastily bought a ticket and hurried on board, taking a seat near the group that had intrigued him earlier. He'd spent a good portion of his tips for that night, but what did he need with money anyway? His apartment took up most of what he made, as did the food he bought, but between his antennaed TV and other items, he had no need to spend money on luxuries: he could afford to spend the savings he kept in his closet (along with a month's worth of canned goods and a very large knife) when it suited his fancy. _I wonder if I should give more of it away,_ he speculated as the train pulled out of the station. _There are people who need things here, even though none suffer as they did in Nihilor._ He felt pity for those who thought themselves suffering here, both for pain that was certainly honest and that they knew so little of the world. _My father, stabbed in a street fight over bread fallen from the supply ships of Steelgrave. My mother dead of the burning plague weeks later. If they knew anything of such a world, what would these people think?_ He looked from face to face, then back down at his hands when the hard-eyed man with the infant looked his way. _Perhaps it is best if I do not judge. Everyone has lived their own lives and their own experiences._ He thought of his own life, and all those many he'd taken. Burning cities and dead babies, the cruel laugh of the mocking god of entropy at the center of the universe...but then the baby up front laughed, and the father holding him smiled, and Murdock felt himself smile too. The young man had taken out a music player and was humming along as he listened to a tune Murdock had caught on the radio earlier as he'd flown over the train, while the woman was smiling a very warm smile as she whispered a purring conversation into her cellular telephone. _No. No, those things are proved a lie by the glory of this place. There is life, and joy, and easy pleasure. And I know a young woman who plans to pull down the temples of the dark gods. Life is good._ Link to comment
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