Ideal (Patreon)

Chapter 40: Ideal

I would have picked Batman, but, wonder of wonders, my choice didn’t matter in the end.

Someone in the League decided to take a softer hand. So I didn’t get a quick, military, debrief from the one person on the plane who might have a better poker face than I do. Instead, I received a two hour appointment with Black Canary, so elongated because of the amount of information I needed to convey, with the understanding that future sessions would be continued at her discretion. 

Not mine, hers. It made me feel like punching through a load bearing wall. Of course, that would only make the pitying stares even more intense. 

The rest of the team was treating me with kid gloves already. They were trying really hard to be inclusive and nice to me. If not for my newfound telepathy, I might have even believed it. Said ‘mind reading’ was nothing more than a hassle. I had to focus constantly on keeping my thoughts in my own head, and whenever my control lapsed, I picked up on the surface thoughts of whomever was closest.

They were walking on eggshells around me, because I might feel hurt, or be damaged. Only Raven and, oddly enough, Superboy felt genuine. It soured every interaction I had with the team, and I was forced to keep my façade of polite interest up at all times. The only time I let my emotions through was when I booked the training hall this morning, and shredded every scenario and practice dummy I could get to.

In Morthol, I’d been unprepared. Combat in Ivalice had a structure to it, one that all encounters after it lacked. I had blanked under the constant pressure from two trained assassins, taken off balance by the combination of unexpected attacks and that damn language that fried my brain for a second each time it was used.

Looking back there were several spells that I could have employed to turn the tide, to triumph. But instead I defaulted back to an older paradigm, from Ivalice, from my time on the Kotetsujou, where I had to rely on strength of arms instead of my growing might in magic. I threw myself into training with a vengeance.

Which probably explained why, now, I was watching a replay of that session in Black Canary’s office.

“That’s one impressive attack,” she said congenially as my Ankh of decay ripped through a score of enemies. I glanced over to where she was reclined on a nearby couch. Her features were placid, but the tenor of her thoughts betrayed concern.

“Thanks,” I said. Actively unbothered. “I copied it from Dr. Fate, but I feel like my version is a bit too destructive.” 

A flash of vampires shrieking as their skin and bones evaporated into thin air. I did not allow myself to shiver.

Canary laughed. “Probably a good idea,” she said. With a smile, she crossed over to the couch that I was sitting on. I tried not to let it bother me. “Now,” she continued, “this isn’t so much a formal session. We’re going to go over you various abilities and where you got them. If there’s anything you want to talk about or get off your chest, just say so and we can explore that topic for a bit.”

I nodded.

“There’s no rush,” she said. “The two hours is more of a general guideline. You or I might be called away after that, or want a break. I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to make it to the mountain every single day, but I promise that if you want to talk I’ll make time for you.”

I allowed myself a sigh. “That’s nice of you,” I said. Canary just smiled again.

“Is there anywhere you’d like to start?” she asked. 

I thought about starting at the beginning. The memories hurt, but in a distant way. It had been… a long while since I’d so much as thought of home. It startled me to think that I might have grown past it without even noticing. At the same time, I wasn’t exactly eager to share my life story with an unknown, no matter how nice Canary seemed at first.

I shrugged, “I, uh, don’t know?” I said. “The places I’ve been too, they all start blurring together after a while. There’s nothing that really stands out as something I’d need to talk about or anything like that.”

Canary nodded, “It can be hard finding a place to begin, especially with something this large.” Reaching out, she paused the recording on a frame of me kicking away a training dummy, the metal bending under my foot. “Just for convenience’s sake, would you mind starting with your super strength? We can just pick up the conversation where we left off it you want.”

“Right,” I said. Of course they would want to know about that. The question, as always, was how much to share. “Well, that was the plane right before I came to this one,” I said. “No, I stopped over on Nirn for a minute or two first.”

“Mmm, what made you skip that plane?”

I gave an awkward chuckle. “Honestly? It was the lack of plumbing. I landed by a small town on the edge of a swamp. Since I’d just spent the last few weeks of my life cooped up in a metal box on wheels, I decided to leave it for later and find a place with, you know, actual technology.”

Canary laughed. “I don’t blame you. I can’t even imagine living without hot water. A metal box though?”

“Well, a train,” I said. “They had a lot of steam powered technology there. Armored trains were how they traveled between cities.”

“Sounds dangerous,” Canary said.

“It was a bit.”

“And that’s where you contracted the virus you told me about?” she asked. “Infections that grant superhuman abilities aren’t exactly unheard of on this world, but you suggested it was common. Is that world plagued by epidemics?”

I gave another nod. Here was the difficult bit. Still, I couldn’t count on not slipping up in the future, so I decided to tell her the full story, or at least, most of it. “I didn’t want it to sound like a big deal back then, but it’s actually… a bit more complicated than that.”

“Oh?”

“It wasn’t so much a virus as it was an extinction event,” I began. “Infected people didn’t really die, they were just… taken over by the virus. Like zombies—” I gave a wince at the comparison. “—but with greater strength and speed. If you survived that initial period, and I and several others did, for some reason the virus subsides. As you can see, I was left with all of my mental faculties, but with a bit,” I punched my palm, “extra besides.”

“How were you infected, if you don’t mind me asking?” She said. “This was after you learned about magic?”

I faked an uncomfortable glance to the side. “I was bitten,” I said, rubbing my arm. Little details helped sell the illusion of honesty. “It was pretty bad, but I’ve since healed.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. I smiled some when she put a hand on my shoulder. “We don’t have to go any deeper into that if you don’t want. I’m guessing it’s difficult.”

“A bit,” I said. “But it got better.”

“Oh?”

“There’s cure now,” I said, with a small and believable looking smile. “I helped make that happen. I would have liked to have stayed longer. Afterward, however, that wasn’t exactly an option.”

“After you finished the cure?” Canary asked. “Why is that?”

“They… didn’t have magic, of any sort. If I remained, I was worried they’d start to treat me like… like a goddess or something,” I said. “I didn’t want that. They had enough problems without adding theology to the mix.”

“Hmmm. Do you regret it? Exposing yourself, using your magic to help them?”

“What? No!”

Canary smiled, holding up her hands. “Just checking,” she said. “It’s easy to burn out, in the business.”

I eyed her. “You mean, being a superhero?”

“Well, more like, saving people,” she said. “It’s a hard job, and almost always a thankless one. It seems like you’ve been bearing up under the stress very well. But if you feel like it’s too much, well, I want you to know you can talk about it here, with no judgement.”

I appeared to give the matter some careful thought, but inside I was reeling. Was it some kind of trap question? It was then I remembered that Canary hadn’t said anything about confidentiality. Given that she was going to report on my abilities to the League, anything she gleaned about my mental state would likely reach them as well.

When I could delay no longer without it becoming noticeable, I shrugged. “I haven’t really felt that?” I said. “Maybe it’s different for me, since I can just leave for a while if the stress gets to be too much.”

“Are you a drifter by nature?” Canary asked. “It seems like you enjoy bouncing around.”

The question brought me up short.

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, it looks like your first response, when you feel threatened or uncomfortable, is to leave,” Canary said. “Not only the situation, but even this entire dimension.” She laughed. “If Red Tornado was human, you’d be driving him off his rocker, since it’s his job to mind you while you’re in the mountain. He’s been having some trouble deciding how to supervise you.”

“I don’t—”

At first, I thought she was wrong. After all, I’d just come from a death battle against two vampire assassins, and I hadn’t ditched that fight until—

Which is when I realized that I left the moment I felt cornered. Which is when I realized fighting for my life didn’t make me uncomfortable. Which is when I realized that, quite literally, I was more afraid of social situations than I was of killing or being killed.

The realization floored me. If not for my power, I would have been gaping like a fish as my thoughts roiled in my skull. Even still, Canary noticed my unnatural stillness. She called my name once, and I forced myself back to the present before she started to think that something was seriously amiss.

“Oh, it’s… um.” I shrugged. “I never really thought about it that way. I guess I do like… hopping around. I don’t like leaving unfinished business though.” The words felt heavy on my lips and I scrambled to move the conversation forward.

“Are we going to need to measure any of my abilities? I haven’t exactly had the chance to. I guess in part because I change location so much…”

“We can get to that later if you want,” Canary said. “Right now I’d just like to hear your own estimations of where you stand.” 

***

The ‘debriefing’ was exhausting. Two hours and change of twisting my emotional responses on demand. All the while, my thoughts kept looping back to that first stretch of conversation, the revelation I’d found about myself.

I needed to talk to someone, someone who I could trust. Raven, and to a lesser extent Kaldur, sprang to mind, but I couldn’t trust anything in the mountain to go unnoticed, especially with a robot watching the video feeds. The pressure of that little panopticon continued to weigh on me as I tried once again to get in touch with Kent.

It was nearing midnight; I must have called him half a dozen times at least, and each time it went straight to voicemail. I was forced to continually squash the spark of panic in my chest. It didn’t mean anything. Kent himself had told me he’d likely be incommunicado for days or even weeks at a time as he ventured farther afield in search of a new host for the Helmet of Fate. That didn’t stop the worry, or the thought that he might still be safe and close by if I hadn’t rejected the offer out of hand in the first place.

Kent was a grown man, I told myself, and one of the most powerful sorcerers I’d met in my travels. He could take care of himself.

With a click, my seventh call connected to his voice mail. I sighed as the familiar message played out over the speakers. 

“… Leave a message after the tone, or however these newfangled contraptions manage it.

BEEP”

“Hey, Kent. It’s Taylor,” I said. I’d neglected to leave a message on my earlier calls. “I guess you’re out of the country or something? I’d like to talk when you get back. Give me a call when you get this, okay?”

With that, I flipped my new cellphone shut. For now, I would have to work through this new ‘self-discovery’ all on my own.