“I’m not going to thank you.”
He leaned back in his crummy, uncomfortable seat. It was much less comfortable than his typical luxurious armchairs, but right now, this was the only place he wanted to be. The silence was awkward and horrible and prickled his skin. “I didn’t expect you to.” But he wanted her to. Normally, his voice is so booming. And everyone listens and he doesn’t have to care about whether they might not agree or not. It didn’t matter.
This did.
From the corner of his eye, he could see how she made a face of pure, utter revulsion. There was an empty seat in between them, almost as though someone should have been sitting there. A certain someone they both knew.
Leaned back as he was, all he could see was the white fluorescent lights glaring down at him, framed by a sterile white ceiling. After five seconds he couldn’t bring himself to look at it anymore. He leaned forward, folding his hands together, turning his eyes on the no-slip floors of the hospital. It was blue. Some sort of light shade he might be able to identify in a better state of mind.
But deep inside of him, as there always was, he felt resentment. “I didn’t need to call you, you know. Nobody else in my position would’ve. If it had been anyone but me…”
“You didn’t need to beat him into a coma, either,” she spat.
Silence, again. Horrible, dreadful, murdering silence. Someone walked past with a tray of syringes and instruments. They smelled like chemicals, and he didn’t need super-senses to know it.
“But he’s alive,” he said, almost meekly. The thought that he could ever be meek with anyone—especially someone as inconsequential as a civilian—made his blood boil. But a single glance at the hard-faced woman that sat beside him was enough to melt any such feelings.
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Her face formed into another grimace. By this point, he was starting to seriously consider that she had never smiled a day in her life. “Alive. Alive. That’s all you have to say for yourself?”
“Yes,” he said, simply. The word didn’t feel right in his throat. It was like a toad, ready to hop out at any time. “Yes,” he croaked again, “that’s it.”
She paused again. It was like every word out of her mouth was especially measured to make him feel as small as humanly possible. If he could be called human to begin with. He glanced up at her, and when he found her eyes trained squarely on him, he turned back to stare at his feet. Oh, god, he was still wearing his costume’s boots. Bright purple, with green stripes. Like someone had thread a pair of poisonous serpants over his feet. That’s how they felt at least.
“If it had been anyone but you,” she said, surprising him so badly he actually jumped in his seat, “he would have been dead.” A flicker of hope ignited in his chest, but when he met her gaze again, they held nothing but loathing. “Considering how he talks about you, I would not have held you above such actions. But that doesn’t make this any better, does it?”
“No,” he said. Was that all he could say now? ‘Yes,’ ‘no,’ nothing else? Where had his drastic conviction and endless evil gone? That greed to swallow the heavens?
Poof. Gone. All because he saw the man he longed to see dead in a bloody pile on the floor, unmoving. Practically dead to the world. It would have been so easy, too. Only she knew who he was below the mask. If he just didn’t do anything, and then went home to her, that same evening…
“Do you think it’s a kindness to not be evil?”
His face snapped up to face her. “I’m sorry?” Two words he had only ever spoken once. Twice, now.
Her face was filled with ill-hidden flames. It was like sitting in front of a campfire, knowing the pyre was seething without having to poke at it with a stick. “I will never thank you. You are a blight on the world, and so is every single henchman that works under you. I don’t know what pitiful penny ante plan you had to make the world a better place, but if it means doing this to the man I love, there is nothing I can do but hate you.”
His hands curled into fists. “It was never meant to go this far. I was only…”
“Shut up,” she growled. “You and your excuses.” She closed her eyes briefly in contemplation. “Has anyone ever talked to you like a normal human? Like you could make mistakes?”
He didn’t answer. What could he say that he hadn’t said already?
“You’re all the same,” she muttered, maybe only to herself. And then, for once, she leaned back in her chair. “He’s lucky he chose you for a nemesis.”
He blinked. But before he could say anything, a man approached the both of them.
“Miss Wildflower? Mr…” he checked his papers again, “Doctor… Petroleum?” The both of them nodded to him. “Regarding the patient, he is-