Voyeur (Patreon)

Been in a very bad headspace lately, trying to get back to writing, so here have a cleaned up old snippet. 

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Los Diablos felt smaller than he expected.

Daniel wasn't sure what he had imagined when he moved west, an endless cross-country journey of flights and hitch-hikes that had left him tanned and peeling. Not straight west, of course, deep south first, as far as he could, avoiding the desolate midwest where the ashes blew too thick. It was getting better, that's what they'd been saying on the news, but he didn't trust that narrative anymore. Once he had left Boston, the real world was little like what he had been told it was.

Bleaker. Tired somehow. And at the same time, kinder than he'd thought, taking mercy on a spoiled kid who didn't know how the world worked.

Who had only watched the movies.

Maybe that was the problem. Daniel kept expecting Los Angeles, but the Los Diablos that had replaced it was so different. The Hollywood glamor was gone; the city irrevocably changed. Broken apart and put back together again, like cutout poetry. Boston had been old and cramped, the people having outgrown it like an old overcoat, spilling out the sides. Ugly. Not where he lived, protected, guarded, kept safe from everything but the monsters that lurked within the walls.

That's what flight gave him. Freedom. 

The freedom to run away.

Or run towards.

Los Diablos had monsters of a different sort, but also heroes that hunted them. Kept the city safe. He'd been doing that since he got here. Tried his best. The last mugger had struggled so much he'd almost dropped him.

Maybe he wasn't cut out for that kind of thing, but anything else felt like cheating. He still had money, Josh had tucked away some, and not everything had gone to buy what was supposed to be their freedom. Not just his.

The wrong people died, and he just kept on living.

Maybe that's why he's here. On a rooftop, not too high. Too high and things go small. Insignificant. Los Diablos just another broken suburb, the people below unimportant and nameless. Too high, and it's so easy to get detached.

He promised himself that wouldn't happen to him. That he'd remember. Even if it hurt.

The funeral is not as big as it should be. Heroes should be treated better. A parade, or a salute. Not just people in black staring at two coffins. Sidestep. Anathema. Heroes. Dead.

He's not supposed to be there, of course; he's just a scrawny seventeen-year-old vigilante, and the people down there are real heroes. If he had pulled up his binoculars, he would have been able to recognize them, but it seemed rude somehow. Like he's not supposed to look too closely at their grief.

"That's better not be a camera." The voice is deep, and makes Daniel jump, not landing on the roof, but hovering an inch or two above it. The winds nearly sweep him off the edge, but he holds steady with some effort. 

"It's not," he says, defending himself, trying to ignore the fact that he's standing face to face with Sentinel. In a black suit and tie, like the others. "And I wasn't about to use the binoculars. I..."

"Calm down, kid." Sentinel lands heavily on the roof, the winds dying down. He takes a moment to straighten his suit out. "I recognize you. You're the one that's been taking on the Snakeheads recently?"

"Not exactly, they just..." Daniel tries to land, fails. "I guess I just don't like the fact that they keep robbing people."

"That they do. You got a name yet?"

"Daniel," he offers, together with his hand, even though his palms are clammy with nervousness.

"I meant your hero name," Sentinel laughs but shakes his hand all the same. Strong grip. His presence larger than his hands.

"No, I... it's hard coming up with something that doesn't sound stupid." He pulls back his hand. Opens and closes it. 

"That it is." A pause and he narrows his eyes. "How old are you anyway?"

"Seventeen." Daniel finally manages to land, looking away. Down below, people are singing. It sounds beautiful in a way that death is not. "What are you doing up here anyway? The funeral is..."

"I spotted someone suspicious." Sentinel looks down as well. "And honestly, maybe it's better that I'm not."

"They were your teammates, your... friends?" He doesn't quite bring himself to say the last with any surety.

"They were. And I should have been there. If I had..." A twitch of his face, maybe pain, maybe shame. "I could have done something. Saved someone."

"It's not..."

"I couldn't have known, I know. I wasn't even in town." A hollow laugh. "Doesn't make it hurt less. Doesn't make Charge any easier to deal with."

"The Marshal?" Daniel has read all about the exploits of Marshal Charge. Probably half lies. More than that.

"Yeah." Sentinel runs a hand over his tightly coiled hair. "Guilt is harder to deal with when others add to it daily. I think I'll steer clear for a while. Until the worst settles."

"Maybe that's why I'm here too."

"Guilt? You're too young for that."

"Sidestep was my hero." Daniel feels his face grow hot; it sounds stupid now that he said it out loud.

"That's why you're doing your vigilante thing? To be like them?"

"No." Don't float. Don't float. "My brother and I took the hero drugs together. He didn't make it."

"So now it's up to you." Sentinel sighs, but not unfriendly. "I get that."

"Aren't you gonna ask me why?" Daniel was used to that particular interrogation. Why. How. He had a good life, good parents, everything to live for. How could he have been so stupid?

"No." He turns back from the funeral and looks directly at Daniel. "You don't do that here. You don't ask."

"I didn't know." He feels his toes scrape the roof as a last resort. "Why?"

"It's always a painful answer. People know that here. It's not like back east."

"Oh, you know." Daniel tries to pretend that he's not hovering fully now. 

"You're still got the accent," an almost kindly smile. "Though I take it you've been working on it?"

"I have." For so many reasons. "I'm not going back."

"People who come here seldom have anything to go back to."

"It's not fair." Daniel looks down at the funeral again; the coffins are being lowered into the ground. "Heroes shouldn't die."

"You know the saying." Sentinel looks down as well. "You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain."

"What are you going to do?"

"Retire before either of those happen." The laugh is cynical. "Eventually. Once this settles down, and we've got a new team. I've seen too many kids die."

"I'm not going to. Not yet."

"Flying doesn't make you immortal. The closest thing we had to that in this town is down there in a box."

"I'm sorry." The reflex is immediate, words tumbling over Daniel's tongue. "I didn't mean..."

"It's fine. It's just..."

"Hard."

"Yeah." Sentinel falls silent. Below, the crowd starts to break up, slowly, unwillingly. "Tell you what, kid. Meet me back here tomorrow, and let's see how good you can handle yourself in the air."

"Really?" It's not right to sound excited, not at a funeral, but his tongue betrays him all the same.

"If you're gonna do this, might as well learn the ropes. And if you can't handle yourself, it's better you learn it from me."

"I can..." Daniel starts but is interrupted by a scuffle below. Looks like a fight, looks like...

"Fuck. Got to go and clear this up before someone gets killed." The wind sweeps Sentinel off the roof, nearly taking Daniel with it until he manages to adjust.

Adjust and land, slightly breathless, slightly horrified.

He brings his binoculars up to see what's going on there. Who's on the ground. Who's on top. Who...

Oh.

That's not good. It looks like Marshal Charge just snapped.