“You are not so much as to breathe without my permission.”
When the sun rose the next morning and Matt awoke, Jane wasted no time in bundling him out of Morningstar and teleporting home with only the most perfunctory farewells. They arrived back at the apartment with Jane’s hand gripped firmly around Matt’s arm, and Matt continually doing that thing where he gingerly licked his lips and stared with bleary eyes at his surroundings with the expression of someone who’d accidentally eaten sand. The moment Will left, Matt excused himself to go lay down – but before he could move beyond the couch Jane cornered him, seizing on Matt’s hangover in the hope it might make him more pliable, and knowing she couldn’t wait.
“Any time anything changes at home, you tell me. Any time you get a threatening email, you tell me. You see anyone so much as look at you weird, you tell me.”
In the best detail she could muster, Jane explained to Matt what the Child had shown her, the ultimatum she’d been given and the unimaginable threat the paradox posed. As she explained, Matt remained silent, so Jane kept powering forward, laying out one by one the new rules he had to abide by. To Jane, the meaning of the Time Child’s warning was crystal clear. Matt was in danger. Sometime, somehow, that danger was going to catch up to him, and she was going to have to choose between saving humanity and keeping Matt alive. The solution, then, was obvious. Avoid all risk at any cost.
“You do not talk to your friends. You do not talk to your family. You do not play video games with a microphone. Stay away from the windows. Stay away from the doors. Hide, if you see any suspicious insects or birds. If I am not here, there is no outside world.”
Initially, Jane had expected Matt to be angry, to argue, to panic or question her story, to overanalyse every detail in an attempt to find a hole. But throughout Jane’s entire speech, as she alternatively implored and then railed about his safety, Matt simply sat on the couch, stony‑faced and silent, gazing up with his hands on his knees and his face locked in a blank, inscrutable expression. The lack of reaction, somehow, was more distressing than any pushback. It felt like hatred. It felt like Matt was shutting down.
“Do you understand?” Jane finally demanded, “Say something.”
For the longest time her boyfriend didn’t respond – instead simply continued to stare, his chestnut brown eyes looking beyond her, focusing on nothing. Eventually though, just as the frustration in Jane’s chest had built almost to the point of screaming, Matt’s lips twitched and he spoke.
“The Time Child said this?” he asked, his voice steady and quiet. Jane’s shoulders slumped in relief.
“Yes,” she answered with a long and pacified sigh. It was sinking in. “He did.”
There was a moment’s pause.
“And…” Matt said slowly. He seemed to be choosing his words with great care. “Are we… sure?”
The rush of cool relief that had washed over Jane mere moments ago immediately flared to boiling.
“Sure?!” she cried, throwing up her hands, “Sure?! I saw it! Waiting there, this-this-this thing, this darkness, this… time problem!”
She launched into another tirade, her shouts ringing out around the apartment until eventually the sound and fury were all spent and she stood there silent, looming over Matt, her arms hanging outstretched in an incredulous shrug. Matt’s face remained expressionless. Whatever gears were turning inside his head Jane couldn’t tell, but as the seconds dragged on it took every ounce of restraint she possessed not to grab Matt by the neck and shake him until his thoughts came flying out.
“Do you understand?” she repeated, hands on her hips as she towered over him, “This isn’t a game. You-have-to-stay-safe.”
Her boyfriend averted his gaze. “For how long?” he murmured, and to Jane’s shock instead of arguing Matt’s posture simply crumbled, and he slid slowly down into the couch until he was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling, tears welling in the corners of his eyes. Abruptly Jane’s heart dropped. The anger in her throat tightened and she stood, dumb, frozen and gaping at him, unable to find the words to help, to do anything but watch.
Matt was unhappy. Even she, who sometimes struggled to pick up on these things, could see that, this sinking gloom written over every inch of his body which had only grown worse in recent months. The sight of it tormented Jane, because no matter how hard she tried nothing she did seemed to stop it. She’d bought Matt a car, she brought home ice cream – she took him flying, she listened to his complaining, she told him all these cool stories about the crazy things she did every day. And while she was doing that, yeah, Matt smiled and seemed happy, or happier, or happy-ish, but eventually, every time, after a few minutes, the smile faded. Inevitably, day after day, Jane would come home or come out to find Matt sitting silently on the couch, or lying with his head on the dining room table, or sitting beside the window with his chin on his hands – just doing nothing. Saying nothing. Staring at nothing with this empty expression on his face.
Nothing was wrong, he told her. He was just bummed out, he had to see it through, he was waiting for all of this to pass. Soon life would go back to normal. And while she understood being worried for his safety, sure, every time Matt voiced this sentiment Jane felt this bubbling sense of frustration, because it was like he was saying he hated how things were now. And despite the ups and downs, despite the threats – and come on, that was only one aspect – the truth was their lives were actually pretty awesome. Jane had absolutely no desire to change any of it, and she couldn’t understand Matt’s fixation, his obsession on being… what, boring? Nameless? Some mundane college kid going out and drinking with his dumb friends?
It made no sense. They were famous. They were in the Legion of Heroes. And yeah there was danger, and yeah it was hard for Matt to go and see people, but he had her, didn’t he? And money and clothes and a great home and video games and literally anything else he asked for. And yet Matt’s unhappiness persisted, this constant, recurring melancholy, this burden she kept returning home to find rebloomed despite her every attempt to exorcise it. And in brutal honesty, it was the only real problem she had left right now. Him, his safety, his wellbeing. It was the only blight on her otherwise perfect existence, her intoxicating daydream life.
Growing up, every kid at some point wants to be a superhero. Or, if they don’t, they were braindead – at least that’s how Jane saw it. Who wouldn’t want to be able to go anywhere, do anything, fly in, save the day, soar over legions of adoring fans? And now Jane could. And she did. And it was electrifying.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Granted the fans weren’t always adoring. The mantle of Dawn had a few rough patches she hadn’t really thought through back in elementary school, unpleasantness which was as much a part of the job as the glory. Critics, for one. With millions of eyes watching her every move, just by sheer numbers there was always going to be someone being mad. You could save a puppy in a river from drowning and some braindead moron would pop up on TV or social media saying “that’s ableist, some of us can’t swim” or “I don’t even like dogs.” Jane viewed such critics with justified contempt and derision, sparing them and their mouth‑breathing braying neither effort nor thought. It was ‘criticism’ equivalent to the shrieks of whinging children pissing themselves for attention. But it hardly mattered. Compared to the abuse Jane had endured growing up for just being an empath, the criticism she faced now as Lady Dawn was laughable. Nowadays people actually attempted to justify why they hated her. And the second their negative opinions got voiced, a second horde of jabbering word warriors would automatically leap to her defence, snapping back unsolicited counter‑tirades like a stray pack of verbose guard dogs. Jane neither sought out nor paid any of it any mind. Online arguments were for idiots. Leave the petty men to their petty wars.
Then there were the competing demands for her time and attention, which were much harder to dismiss and pretty much constant. Thinking about being a superhero growing up, Jane had only ever really imagined the big-ticket items – title fights with supervillains, terrorist threats, rescuing people trapped in landslides, that sort of thing. In reality though, for the most part, those clear-cut problems weren’t that frequent. It was the smaller things, the constant crises on the borders of disaster, which took up most of her time – minor issue after minor issue, with pressure for the Legion to intervene being constant. Constant and blurry. Standoffs and labour strikes, protests, threats yet to crystalise, economic or environmental problems, dubious arrests, issues with no clear‑cut solution or cultural clashes where concepts of injustice conflicted with local tradition or law. Problems, muddy and misrepresented in their thousands. Everyone was a victim. Everyone deserved immediate help.
This pressure then created this constant argument, both inside the Legion and outside it, about what precedent intervention set. Okay, so they flew in to prevent violence at one striking factory. Were they now going to stand guard for all of them? That was impossible, the Legion simply lacked the time and manpower – but then if they weren’t going to intervene in everything, how did they choose? Did they stick to bigger strikes, implying those workers with smaller employers didn’t matter? Or did they only help a particular cause or industry, implying they didn’t care about the problems faced by the other groups? Who they helped always said something about them, either intentionally or otherwise.
Giselle’s policy, as head of the Legion, was to not let perfection be the enemy of good. On this, Jane wholeheartedly agreed, and although Giselle was occasionally a bit more watchful of the political aspect than she was, they were both strongly pro-intervention. The point of wading in wasn’t just to provide physical assistance, but in many cases to remind those involved that the eyes of the world were watching and that they needed to shape up and fly right. It also, on the flip side, acted as a deterrent to others considering similar misconduct. If a thousand suns of blazing fury could descend upon you every time you shot at unarmed protestors, you soon thought twice before racking your shotgun.
All this Jane, Giselle and Charles Farrington, the acting but in reality new head of the Ashes, discussed at length at the Legion’s many formal and informal meetings. Jane hated meetings, disdaining innately the idiotic notion of heroics by committee, and she relentlessly hammered Giselle to change the Legion’s response structure, to simply triage problems up to the appropriately powered person and do away with any stupid discussion. If there was something that needed doing, just do it. The more time you gave people to wring their hands, the more concerns they found to gripe about.
So the public feedback was dumb, the endless debates frustrating and the politics of it all exhausting. But the rest? The rest was exhilarating. Jane was out there helping people. Really helping people. Saving lives. She’d shoot across the sky, land on the ground and suddenly everything would fall silent, and the same ‘oh crap’ expression would flash over the faces of anyone bearing guilt. People cheered as she flew past. They gave her free things just for visiting. Kids pointed and waved and sometimes even chased after her, and adults no longer recoiled when they saw her ‘E’. The kids, especially, Jane loved seeing the excitement of. Jane always made time for kids.
So everything in her life was where she wanted it – except for Matt. The dangers to him just kept on coming, and Jane didn’t know how to stop them or make him less miserable. Her entire life Jane had prided herself on not caring about people, then she’d somehow gotten tricked into caring about someone, and suddenly it was torment. Every day, her thoughts niggled with fear of Matt dying. Every day, she stressed over the unhappiness he was clearly hiding. The solution, surely, was so simple. Listen to her. Let her fix it. Stay safe.
Jane let out a long sigh, staring at Matt lying on the couch.
“I don’t know how long,” she said, echoing his question, “Until this black hole thing passes.”
“The paradox.”
“Yes.”
“Which could be…?”
“I don’t know. But we can outsmart this,” she said, pleading, “We can. The only way I’ll have to choose between you and the world is if I’m at risk of losing you, which can never happen if you’re never in danger. So please. I need you to listen. I need you to take this seriously.” She paused, her jaw clenched. “Every rule you break, every tricky little bit of misbehaviour, brings you one step closer to being killed. So just… stop, okay? Leave it be.”
“Stay up here in my little gilded cage,” Matt replied, bitterly.
“Better a cage up here then a bullet down there,” Jane retorted, perhaps harsher than she meant.
Matt sighed. “Do I even have a choice?”
“No,” she said, “I’m making the choice for you. It’s for your own good. The Time Child said-”
“Oh yes, what did the Time Child say?” Matt asked, sounding sour and sarcastic. Jane’s eyes narrowed.
“He said,” she scowled, fixing Matt with a glare, “That he killed his own grandmother. And that I’d have to choose whether or not to lose you. The implication, I would’ve thought, is pretty clear.”
“Oh yeah?” said Matt, his voice flat, “What’s that?”
“It wants me,” Jane snarled, grinding her teeth, unable to believe this sullen hostility. She was trying to save his life. “To let go of you. To let you die. But I’m not going to do that. I am never going to do that.”
“I love you too,” her boyfriend replied, the words droll and devoid of affection. Jane rolled her eyes, feeling the heat rising beneath her temples.
“Mope all you want,” she snapped, “I’d rather you alive and unhappy.”
“Just non‑stop romance.”
“Shut up,” Jane spat, “Idiot. Stupid, goddamn- I’m trying to save you!” Matt let out a deep sigh. For a few moments didn’t say anything.
“I know,” he replied eventually. All the resentment had leaked from his voice, replaced, to Jane’s discouragement, with more depression. “I know.” Matt rubbed his eyes. “I just… another day. It’s a gift that keeps on giving.”
Jane made a face. She reached down to shift his legs aside, then dropped down onto the couch beside him, leaning close to try to catch his eye. Matt didn’t exactly resist, though nor did he respond to her approach with any enthusiasm. She pulled him upright by the shoulders and tried kissing him a few times on the cheek.
“We’ve just got to be careful,” Jane insisted, “No more phone calls. No more stupid stuff. No more… anyone, unless we know them.”
“No more life outside the twenty‑third floor,” Matt murmured.
“Exactly,” said Jane, and she wrapped her arms around him, holding his soft body close – pleased Matt finally understood.