“Do you want to find a romantic soulmate, though, or are you content to settle like Seth?” asked Tatiana.
Ignoring Seth’s snort, Benj considered this thoughtfully. “I’d like to find mine,” he said at last, “both the platonic and the romantic. I just don’t want to actively go looking.”
Amory is perplexed. “Sitting isn’t so bad. Besides, you slept with him. What’s wrong with sitting?”
Normally, her son’s innocence is downright endearing, but this time, Tatiana turns bright red. Amory’s spoken loud enough that all of the other Mums sitting by her hear and snap their heads around, and somewhere in the back of her peripherals and a tiny bit to her right, she sees Benj’s head turn.
“Not like that,” she splutters, “Amory, sweetheart, I did not sleep with Mr. Gray.”
“This is getting out of hand. Our place looks like a jungle.”
“Well, how else am I supposed to have an excuse talk to the flower shop girl if I don’t keep making up reasons to buy flowers from her?”
“This,” he explains patiently, “Is to stop superhero discrimination. It doesn’t make sense for the Act to still exist – it’s been almost twenty years, and nothing has been solved. Crime rates have gone up, insurance has doubled, it’s making people turn on each other.”
He didn’t regret any of his decisions either in being a hero or a father, but he sometimes wished the world had been a little different, so that his children could grow up enjoying their powers instead of hiding and stifling them.
She struggled to keep balance in the face of this unforeseen complication, but she was suddenly hit by the staggering reality that they could be hosts not just to friends and family soon, but to death as well.
He felt older than his nineteen years, suddenly, but he was home now, and all the armor he’d put on was beginning to strip away. She was right. He was home.
It was a truth of war that they never mentioned along with so many others for fear that voicing it aloud would make it real. They knew death like the back of their hands but putting it to words gave it power and allowed fear to settle over their hearts. They’d been in this war far too long to let it.
renegadekarma 