[Dream Girl] logged on to group chat [The Rejects] at 12:35p.m.

DG: I know where all the missing socks go

Read by [Knife Kid], [Mr. Cynical], [Captain F.]

KK: lol wut

CF: that’s great, Lou

DG: don’t patronize me DG: don’t act like you have never wondered where your socks go

KK: I just KK: like KK: lose them?

MC: yeah I don’t really wonder where tf they “go”

Read by [Dream Girl]

DG: did I ever explain to you guys how I manifested my powers?

KK: here we go

CF: Lou, we have stuff to do right now! CF: kind of in the middle of something only ring if it’s important!

DG: I get my powers when I sleep

KK: I have a feeling she knows, Cap’n KK: she just doesn’t care

DG: obviously I get my powers when I sleep but have you wondered what I have to do to charge my powers? Well, I enter a completely different realm when I sleep.

KK: aaaaaaand she has no intention of stopping.

Read by [Captain F.]

DG: the realm in which I enter has no name, at least not one I know. I just know that it holds immense power. Whether it’s another dimension or universe is hard to say DG: but it’s something like an unnatural sort of void. Everything is just dark. Like when you close your eyes. It’s like being surrounded by pure nothingness, true void. DG: there is an indescribable power felt immediately upon entering this void though. And an eerie feeling, like there’s always something behind you that you just can’t see and when you turn around it’s gone DG: like when you’re a little kid and you have that feeling like there’s something in your closet or under your bed and maybe it’s your imagination, or just an anxiety about being in the dark but that doesn’t make it any less scary. DG: if anything the feeling is more potent because you’re spurring your own fear DG: and that’s how it feels, this void. It feels almost empathetic to your feelings, like it’s a living breathing thing.

Read by [Knife Kid], [Captain F.]

MC: okay I’m done with my thing and heading back to hq MC: so, Louie I’ll humor you MC: keep taking about the dream world or the void MC: what do you do in your void or whatever? Like what “charges your power”

DG: entering the realm at all charges my power, that’s how potent it’s magic is DG: at least I think it’s magic DG: maybe it could be explained by science but not by any human form of comprehension. This realm, goes beyond the realm of science fictions it’s so mystical

MC: what makes it mystical?

DG: it’s not always void. It shifts kind of like a dream. You know how I said it sometimes feels like the void is empathetic to my feelings?

MC: yeah

DG: that’s because it changes. Sometimes it shows me a memory like I’m inside of my own consciousness. Other times it shows me things before they happen or I guess as they’re happening in the city. But I never remember them when I wake up. I only remember seeing them as they’re happening or after they happen. Like deja vu

KK: so basically ur void lets u see the future and you squander it? Thanks Lou!

MC: Blaine stfu, kys

KK: wow

MC: /j

DG: anyways DG: I tried to remember the first time I entered the realm, back before Cap lost his memory and then regained it again. DG: And I did. I remembered falling asleep and being in this weird realm. Something was there. Something was guiding me like a voice only I couldn’t remember what it said. It just told me where to go. Helped me navigate the void DG: which I know sounds meaningless but it knew where to take me because it showed me this crack, like there was a tear in the void leaking light. DG: it was so bright and it became blinding the closer I got to it

MC: the tear in the alley on 5th Ave?

DG: yeah DG: it took me to that portal

KK: wait you mean the portal that we think is the source of like ALL of our problems?? KK: the one that has been reanimating corpses and giving people super powers and shit?? KK: that’s the source of your power??

DG: no! I don’t think so anyway? DG: would you shut up and let me tell my story

MC: yeah Blaine stfu what did I just say

[Knife Kid] is muted

MC: go on

DG: so it took me to that tear and I didn’t know what it was at first. Until I got closer to it and looked inside. And I saw Cam

CF: wait you saw me?

DG: and you were with Claire! She was showing you the portal for the first time.

CF: but I didn’t see anything on the other side of the of the portal. It was just

DG: void? DG: the voice told me to go through it. I remember because it was so loud.

CF: Claire said she heard something guiding her to it too. Like she unconsciously knew she needed to be there.

DG: and when I left the portal I wasn’t in my corporeal body. My body was asleep at HQ still. I knew I needed to get back to it so I did. And when I woke up I had the whole reach of my powers. I had gotten them from whatever was in that realm or maybe the realm itself I’m still not sure. DG: I go there every night to recharge my power and it still feels like there’s something there. Something is calling to me in this void and I have to find it but it won’t let me? Or I just can’t? Idk

DG: but lately it’s been hard to sleep. I keep waking up too early. DG: I think the realm is alive like it’s not just a place like it’s a being, some kind of life form that goes beyond human comprehension? DG: or its power makes it sentient?

MC: spooky

DG: that’s not the worst part. That feeling I get like something is following me? I don’t think that’s a coincidence. DG: I think there are other people here. DG: I think there are other things here.

MC: what like the “things” we’ve seen wrecking havoc in the city

DG: maybe.

CF: wait you mean the things that claimed to be demons?

DG: I had a working theory on that. I thought maybe it was possible they didn’t have corporeal forms when they left the dream realm and entered the city and that animating corpses or entering hosts was just enough to help them gain influence. I also noticed their powers didn’t differ from mine DG: I mean these things could do ALL the same stuff I could do because of the dream realm. Telekinesis, pyrokinesis, teleportation, etc

MC: yeah MC: magic shit

DG: yeah well DG: I thought maybe I could take some kind of preventative measure, track them down in the void before they left

CF: what like CF: you try to do demon hunting in the dream realm before they can make it through to the real realm

DG: yes DG: well that’s an extremely obtuse way of putting it but yeah

CF: that sounds extremely dangerous. I’d ask that you refrain from doing that until more research has been done

DG: and who exactly would be conducting this research?

CF: um

DG: yeah so sorry Cap, but I’m gonna have to ignore that little request since it wasn’t a formal order DG: besides I’ve finally been able to find a trace of something else out here for once DG: it took me a while, I guess you could say I hadn’t really been in tune with the realm but now I finally have been DG: I think that was part of the reason I wasn’t getting enough rest. It was rejecting me, the realm. It wasn’t happy with my work DG: it gave me this power for a reason. It wasn’t without consequence. It wants me to do something in return.

MC: I’m back at HQ MC: Louie where are you

DG: in my room probably

CF: Skip can you unmute Blaine I need his 10-20

MC: just pm him MC: Lou what do you mean probably?

CF: wait I can just unmute him

MC: JUST PM HIM

[Knife Kid] has been unmuted

MC: Cameron I stg if you message Blaine in the group chat rn

DG: so I’ve been trying to listen to what it wants. I keep trying to hear it’s voice like that first day and I haven’t been able to hear anything DG: but it’s been showing me more like it’s leading me somewhere.

KK: mom, Lou is being cryptic and I don’t like it

DG: and I’ve been listening. DG: though it’s been leading me somewhere, it’s been unsettling.

KK: where has it taken you?

MC: Louie MC: I just went into your room and MC: you’re asleep

CF: wait how is that possible

MC: idk MC: Louie? MC: where are you?

DG: I’m sleeping like you said. DG: I entered the void, felt like something was following me and looked over my shoulder to see nothing. DG: I followed where the realm wanted me to be.

MC: and where did it take you?

DG: ever wonder where your socks go when you lose them?

MC: oh my fuck Louie

She was gold.

All of his life Prem had been surrounded by the cold tones of silver. His family crest, a cool grey star to match the namesake of his father, the Silverstar. Their house had been decorated with delicate white curtains intertwined with sparkling silver threads. All of the rings on his hand, gifts from each of his birthdays since he was five, were silver. Even the plates they ate on were the cold, stoic metal.

But Aida was gold. As warm as the golden rays of sunlight that beamed through the parted morning clouds and bathed the forest in lively hues of yellow.

When they had been to the sand shores of the lake for the first time, as close as the two had ever come to seeing the ocean, her face had lit up with excitement. The sand was not white as the beaches of Olympia were said to be but rather they were golden sands.

The warm hues seemed to reflect from her smiling face as she watched the gentle lapping waters of the lake while he watched her.

She’s gold like the honey she stirs in her tea. He can’t stand the stuff—the honey or the tea. The golden, sugary substance thick like ichor is far too sweet and the tea is far too spiced. But the smell reminds him of her.

On cold mornings sitting across from her, he’s watch and listen to the clink of her spoon against the mug. And he could smell the strong spiced scent of clove and cinnamon and cardamom. The aroma is strong but nearly as jarring as the taste he samples from her cup.

It suits her, he thinks—comparing her to gold or to sunlight or spiced tea. Things he had lived so long without it seems, that he was lacking—gold like warmth. He needs her. He needs her warmth.

Caranic had become used to this position: sort of splayed out on some cold hard ground, covered in dirt and grime and blood, his body fractured with injuries.

It didn’t matter where he was, he would get out of this situation. If only he could get up.

“Get up, Caranic,” the voice inside of his head echoes again. It’s a familiar voice though it’s not his own.

The voice belonging to the one who presided over his every move, his unnamed patron that had put him in this uncomfortable position. The uncomfortable position not so much being the one where he finds himself crumpled on the ground, but rather the one where he finds himself in the command of a patron.

His patron deity, whose name still remains a mystery, grabs him by the hair and lifts his head from its comfortable respite of the cold, damp ground. It was not always comfortable, as his nose squished against the damp bricks restricting his air flow or the hard ground dug into the flat surface of his forehead. But he had grown used to it.

He looks into the eyes of his god, cold and silver, their lips lift in a plotting smile, a sadistic one. Caranic doesn’t so much as grunt at the feeling of being manipulated by his hair, though the roots cry at being tugged against his skin.

His patron, their eyes burning with rage not at him but rather those who he had allowed himself to placate with his brief and momentary defeat.

“You will rise, Caranic. I shall lend you my sword.”

There is an affection in how his patron says his name, in how they tangle his hair in their fist. They bring their face closer to him and he can count every long, dark eyelash and note the pulp of blue and grey that make their irises. They give him a hollow look, one that burns a picture of boiling hot rage, of consuming aggravation, of justified violence.

He would gladly take up their sword, if not for his own cause, he would take it up for them. The affection in their voice was auxiliary in comparison to the sweltering adoration Caranic had for his patron, though he would never vocalize such passions.

Perhaps he didn’t need to.

The fist grasping taut to his hair lifts him off of the ground and he rises with the movement, acquiescent and without so much as a wince. He can’t see his own face but he’s sure he looks nothing short of a dog, eyes shinning as they lean their face closer to him grinning as they force him to stand.

“Hiro.”

Vera’s look was serious, bordering cold to match the severity of this reunion. Their sibling stared back, their glare unshaken at the sight of the sister. This was Vera—this was Vapor.

Vera’s lips twitched up at the sight of stubborn older sibling, as virtuous as the day they were born, holding onto their anger even at the sight of their sister alive and well. This was her fault. It would be foolish to expect Hiro to be grateful after all she had put them through.

“It’s me.”

Vera tries to smile or she does smile though it’s not warm or genuine or comforting. It’s nervous. She’s worried that Hiro will punch her into next week or even worse just never say anything.

She’s remorseful but how can she convey that? How can she fashion any words of apology worthy of what she had put Hiro through to save them?

“Hi, V.”

Vera’s heart wrings in her chest at the sound of their words, though their face is still scrunched in delicate, amiable disdain and disgust.

“I’m—I’m sorry.”

A heavy breath escapes Hiro like a sigh. Their eyes glance down and their scrunched up face crumples more as if they mean to hold back tears.

“Who’s Luca?” Eureka asked. He couldn’t help it, he had to know, but he regrets the question instantly.

Angelo’s brow furrows instantly, his mouth shifting down in the frown. His jaw sets hard, his nostrils flare as he inhales. Silver eyelashes flutter as his gaze traces down.

Eureka swallows nothing, attempting to moisten his suddenly dry throat. He’s made a mistake.

They were just having breakfast, Angelo sitting across from him. Now his eyes cast down on the plate of food in front of him as if studying what he suddenly has no appetite for you.

“You talk in your sleep,” he tries to explain but the words get caught in his dry throat.

Talking is an understatement actually, it’s more like he screams in his sleep. It’s not as if Eureka can hear a brief utterance of the name. It’s more that Angelo writhes in sleep, shouting about Luca and how Angelo needs him to answer.

It’s so insistent that Angelo’s voice rises to a volume Eureka can hear his roommates cries through his headphones blasting whatever baroque music he’s chosen for the night.

Angelo doesn’t meet his gaze, his storm grey eyes unable to focus on anything. Tan hands rest on either side of his half eaten breakfast, flattening and curling idly.

“I just thought maybe I’d bring it up. It seems like you have something you may want to tell him,” Eureka says.

Angelo’s eyes flick up to meet Eureka’s. His eyes are narrowed as if he’s confused about the image of the person in front of him.

Eureka feels nothing but regret about opening his mouth at the sight of Angelo’s anguished face as his plush lips twist into a frown and his brows crease together. His grey eyes look glossy as they search Eureka’s face, making his scarred face look more youthful.

“He’s…” Angelo trails off unable to get the words out.

Eureka knows. He knows what Angelo can’t say. He doesn’t need to know who Luca is or what exactly happened to him but he has a feeling Angelo can’t share what he wants to with him.

“I’m sorry it’s not my place,” Eureka looks down at his cup of coffee.

“No, I just,” Angelo says and Eureka can tell he’s forcing the words out.

“You would probably understand better than must, huh?” He says softly.

Eureka looks back up at Angelo. His silver eyes are cast down but he looks more present.

“Probably, but you don’t have to share.”

“Do you believe in destiny?” He asks.

His head drooping, dark curls falling into his eyes. The room was too dark to see, anyway—dark and damp. It smelled like rot and mildew and somewhere he couldn’t see, there was a steady dripping sound pattering an ominous rhythm against the stone floor.

His question—of course directed at the girl chained up and sitting with her back pressed against his—breaks the palpable silence that had fallen between them.

“My people don’t believe in destiny,” is her answer.

He knows her people have their own religion, that they’re taught something different than the church Riel had grown up learning from. Though the church never specified fate or destiny, everything was the will of God. Somewhere down the line that will became the idea of fate, of kismet, of some inescapable prophecy that shackled and imprisoned him.

Aida’s people had no such superstitions, apparently.

“Our god is a progenitor and a protector. He has no wisdom or divine knowledge to assert upon us.”

He knew very little about her god. He could recall from the stories he was descended from giants maybe or that he only had one eye. Riel couldn’t recall.

“How does he guide his people if he has no divine wisdom?” He finds himself asking as soon as the idea presents itself.

He’s not worried about offending her—she’s too patient with him. He’s sure she must be too exhausted to be frustrated with him.

“He trusts us,” she answers. “Though are blood boils, we are pure at heart.”

He makes no reply, let’s her words rest among the sound of dripping water on damp stone as he tries to consider.

He can feel her shifting, her back pressing up against his more for support. She slumps on him but he doesn’t mind. Her body heat warms him in this cold, dark chamber.

“Do you believe in destiny, Riel?”

He wasn’t prepared for the question though maybe he should have been. Aida is wise—so he’s noticed. It’s really no wonder her god trusts her to make her own decisions.

He makes no immediate answer, considering her question in quiet contemplation. After a moment her head tilts back to rest in his shoulder. He can feel the heat of her cheek against his neck. He doesn’t mind it.

He thinks of himself, how he imagined he’d be when he was younger. He realizes, he never thought he would make it to this age. After he lost his mom, it didn’t matter who he had become. There were too many variables, ifs and maybes—what could have, should have beens.

“I don’t know anymore,” he answers, in a low whisper.

The sound of her steady breathing is so close to his ear. He can feel the rhythm of it as her lungs inflate and expand her diaphragm. He thinks she’s finally fallen asleep.

“Did you ever?” She asks.

He leans his head on her shoulder. He can’t meet her eyes but he can feel her hair, the skin of her ear brush up against his temple.

“Maybe as a way to shift the responsibility of what I’ve become. I’ve been thinking about it—” he pauses.

She doesn’t say anything, just waits for him to continue his thought. She is so patient.

“If my god is real and he intended for me to be this way then—“

He can’t finish the thought, but he knows he doesn’t need to, that she knows what he means.

“Cruel god.”

He sighs, letting her words settle again until the idle sounds—the dripping sounds become too loud again.

“Exactly,” he says softly. “But if my god isn’t real, then destiny is something else.”

They fall silent again. She makes no response and he wonders if she’s considering his word or if she knows what she means.

“That’s a heavy burden, Riel,” is all she says, her words spoken softly and slowly.

He knows. He can feel the heaviness of it sinking, weighing down his heart. Every thing his mother ever said to him, every bully Prem ever fought for him, every person or thing he ever rotted from the inside.

He was his rot—the magic he cast—was him. Maybe he wasn’t always meant to be this person. But he also felt like there was no one else he could have been other than this. If things had been different, would he have been too?

He was being foolish. Things were different. People changed him forever. His mom, Prem, Rose and the other fiends—and Aida. She had made him different. She made him feel like himself again.

“You’re leaving?”

Prem’s voice seems to heighten in pitch at the words, like a song. It’s an eerie song if ever there was one, not like one she would sing.

He’s sitting down, looking up at her. She’s standing up, her dark eyes cast down to meet his.

When did she become such a beauty? He thinks this from time to time and the thought appears again as she’s giving him this hopeful, sorrowful look. The dark hair not kept in her ponytail and falls in a curtain along the left side of her face, sparks red where the light catches it.

“I’m retiring.” She corrects him.

His heart tightens it’s chambers and ventricles, restricting the flow of blood. He thinks he might faint, he thinks he’s forgotten how to breathe. He wonders if he’s ever been able to breathe right since he met her. Maybe if she leaves, he can finally breathe again.

He looks at her face, at that bittersweet smile painted across her peachy lips and lifting her cheek slightly. Long dark eyelashes flutter when she blinks. He knows the heart shape of her face so well he could repaint it, recite it, reshape it from memory. He knows every mole—the one under the left corner of her lip and the one on the bridge of her nose—he knows every wrinkle, every hair, every shade of tan and flush of pink.

He doesn’t want to breathe again. He doesn’t want her to go.

“Oh,” he says.

There’s something about the way she’s looking at him, standing above him. There’s something in the crinkle between her brows, something in the corner of her upturned lip, something in the way she softly clenches her hands at her sides and unclenches them.

She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know how he feels, doesn’t know that he wants her to stay. He doesn’t want her to go, he doesn’t want her to belong to anyone other than him. She’s his.

He’s never been so possessive, so irrational, so controlled by his emotions. There’s something about her that made his blood boil, that made his heart pound, and his skin flush. He was holding onto that something—whatever it was—but he needed to let it go.

She was leaving.

“To be or not to be——that is the question.”

Henry knew the words well. He knew this. So why was it so hard?

“Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to—to suf-to suffer the-“

Why was this so hard? Why did the lights in the room feel so bright? It was just an audition, there were no spotlights.

It wasn’t a performance. It wasn’t a real one anyway.

He clears his throat. Maybe Hamlet wasn’t the right choice.

“Whether ‘tis nobler to in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune—“

He started that line over, why did he do that? It didn’t matter. He wasn’t getting the part anyway. Why was he doing this? He should have chosen Macbeth.

“—Or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing——end them.”

He hated this. He wanted this to be over.

“To die, to sleep—no more.”

He’s not looking at anyone in the audience. Should he be? He doesn’t think so. This is a soliloquy—he’s talking to himself. It’s just him in this room.

“To sleep—“ No wait he already said that he’s confusing the line. He knows this.

“And by a sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.”

The words fumble out of his mouth. None of it feels right. Iambic pentameter has a rhythm of its own that he can’t seem to reign in. He should just give up now, his feeble attempts to tame this horse of a poem——monologue, soliloquy, whatever.

“Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To die. To sleep—to sleep perchance to dream.”

Fuck the bard. He was overrated. This whole thing was overrated. No one knows what he’s talking about.

“Aye! There’s the rub. For in that sleep of death what dreams may come—may come—when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us——pause.”

To die, to sleep, to speak. He wants to choose the first option currently, to lay down and never have to recite something like this ever again, to never be a public demonstration again.

Theres a dark joke here somewhere.

“For who would bear the whips and scorns—of time.”

He’s approaching the hardest part here, the part he always fumbles on.

“The proud man’s contumely,” he isn’t acting anymore.

“The pangs of dispriz’d love,” he’s just reciting the words now, trying to remember them.

“The insolence of office,” he can hear the lack of confidence in what he’s reciting but he stopped caring a while ago.

“And the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes, when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin. Who would fardels bare, to grunt and sweat under a weary life,” he says all that as a long string of words, taking a long inhaling breath after all of that.

Why was he doing this?

“But that the dread of something after death,” he says more slowly, more purposefully.

“The undiscover’d country from whose bourn no traveler returns,” he hasn’t been thinking about the words.

“Makes us rather bare those ills we have than—“ He hasn’t been thinking about them until now.

“Than fly to others that we know not of.”

He’s sure he’s forgetting the words, that he’s forgot a lot of them. It doesn’t matter. It’s the purpose behind them.

“Thus conscious doth make cowards of us all.”

Okay he’s forgotten again. How timely.

“And thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”

Okay maybe he hasn’t.

“And enterprises with great pith and moment—“

All the Shakespeare he’s ever read is getting jumbled together. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury.

“With this regard their currents turn awry.”

A tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing.

“And lose the name of action.”

He should have chosen Macbeth.

“When I looked into your eyes, I saw my future go up in flames,” Sam says.

Though only in his mind.

Rather, he wants to say as he looks at Hiro. How poetic that would be.

He’s sure Hiro wouldn’t take to something so romantic. That they would just scoff and punch him lightly (way too hard) on the arm in a playful gesture and call him an idiot.

And Sam wouldn’t protest, even though it’s true. Hiro changed him.

Every time he sees Hiro, their expressive face smiling back at him, it’s like he’s seeing them for the first time again.

He was just a recruit back then, crushed by the insecurity of this competitive field. He wanted to be a contracted superhero for as long as he knew he was powered.

Everyone kind of expected him to be too, except his parents. His parents didn’t expect anything of him really—they just wanted him to be happy. And being at the hero’s academy made him miserable.

They had been telling him for months to move on, to do what he wanted. What he wanted was to drop out and find something that made him happy. He didn’t care if he was being a coward, he didn’t care that he was being a quitter. Until he met Hiro.

Chivalry, they were called when the mask was on. And chivalrous they were. He had seen the news reports of the knightly hero on the rise, smacking down villains in guided armor with a flashy sword. Everyone was a fan and even Sam had to admit——he admired them.

But when he saw them for the first time, locked eyes in the academy’s mess hall, he felt something. The way that Hiro’s dark eyes looked back at him, he could tell they felt something too.

“I’m Takahiro.”

Sitting across from him, Sam stared dumbfounded, his eyes tracing over their face as if to memorize their delicate features, their pink lips and the way their dark hair fell across their brow.

“I’m Sam.”

He can’t remember the conversation but he remembers how it felt, how charming and effortless Hiro was—even then. The two of them seemed to fit perfectly into place, the rest of the mess hall falling away.

Hiro put up a good front. They were a clown, disguising real pain under dark jokes. The more they talked, the more Sam could see there was something weighing them down.

“Why are you here?” He asked, the elephant in the room crashing on the both of them as Sam bluntly materialized it.

Hiro looked unfazed, but made no answer.

“You graduated, so why are you back at the academy?” Sam asked again.

“There’s always more to learn,” Hiro said with a shrug.

Maybe it would have fooled someone else. Hiro was a performer first, a vigilante second. That’s why Sam was so bad at this—he couldn’t lie the way the others could. He wore his heart on his sleeve.

But to him, Hiro did too.

“Your debut was successful. You’re all over the news,” Sam argued casually.

Hiro looked him over skeptically, lips in a frown, brows drawn together. Then they smiled, somewhere between sheepish and sly.

“I’m looking for a partner.”

Sam laughed. “What—like a sidekick?”

“Most people don’t like that word.”

He shrugged. “I don’t mind it.”

Hiro chuckled.

Sam liked the sound of their laugh. It was deep but not exactly masculine.

“So you want to be my sidekick?” Hiro asked.

Maybe it would have shocked Sam if Hiro hadn’t been so cavalier, if he didn’t think that Hiro was partly joking, just testing the waters.

Sam looked away as he pretended to consider it. He had been debating for the past few months if he even wanted to be a hero anymore. His powers were hard to control, he didn’t have the personality for it, it was easier for him when some one else took the lead. Maybe being a sidekick was better for him.

He looked back up at Hiro’s expectant face.

“I’ve been here for the past week, watching all the heroes-to-be,” Hiro explained. “And I’ve seen what you can do.”

Sam could feel a flush growing under the surface of his skin as he thought about Hiro watching him train.

“What did you think?” He asked, trying his hardest to play it cool, even if his stuttering heartbeat betrayed him.

Hiro smirked, dark eyelashes almost fluttering as they blinked. “You’re fire powered. That’s rare and—I imagine—really hard to control. A lot flashier than what I can do.”

Sam scoffed, crossing his arms and looking away slightly abashed. He knew he hadn’t done anything flashy with his powers since he was a dumb teenager.

He would kill to be powered like Hiro—super strength. Easier to control, less likely to destroy everything in its path—useful.

“But you’re not flashy are you?” Hiro said leaning in closer, their elbows resting on the table.

Sam looked back over at Hiro. Their tone was still casual, still bordering flirtatious.

“You don’t mean to steal the show, but you do anyway,” Hiro continued.

“That thing you do with the fire barrier? Ingenious,” Hiro praised.

Sam was certain the flush had fully spread, heating his face and the tips of his ears in visible bright red.

Hiro smiled at him then and there was a sincerity, as if the mask had slipped away. He could see through Hiro. They weren’t some great hero—not yet but he could see one day they would be. Under the performer, they were real, realer than most.

“You’re radiant, Sam,” Hiro said and there it was.

The look in Hiro’s eyes looking back at him. It was so bright, as bright as the flames he conjured, maybe even brighter and it ignited all his doubts and reduced them to ash.

Hiro held out their hand. “So what do you think? Wanna be my ‘radiant shield’?”

He was stunned, utterly so. His heart pounded hard and painfully and alive in his chest. He knew.

He knew he wanted nothing more.

“A radiant shield, fit for a knight.”

“You have to kill me?” Aida asks.

Riel, the man in front of her stands still as a mountain for a moment at her question. Then he nods.

She’s afraid, she knows she is. Her heart is pounding in spite of herself, pushing her boiling blood through her body, but the anger she used to feel when she looked at him has subsided.

“I must,” he says simply. His eyes are averted, slowly having drifted away from her’s and down to the cold ground.

She looks up at him where she sits bound by chain on the floor. The iron they’ve locked her in keeps her confined, her magic too weak to travel through shadows to escape.

“Why?” She asks, finding her throat dry and gravelly.

She doesn’t know why she asks him. Why does she need the reason? They’re enemies she knows this. But the way his eyes can’t meet hers, the way his own words seem foreign to him, his own thoughts even—she can’t shake the feeling he’s hesitating.

His eyes flick up to look at hers. She can see in the way his face scrunches up in disdain, the way his eyes flicker that he’s playing up his anger. He bares his teeth.

“Because I want to,” he punctuates through gritted teeth. His fists clenched at his sides, his back curling to look down at her as he spits the words.

The muscles of his arms tense, wired cords wrapping around his arms and the ink of painted snakes begin to rise from his skin.

“Because you have to,” she responds. It’s not a question, it’s a statement of truth. It’s a revelation because there’s a twitch at his left cheek, his brows furrowing as if she’s said something to confuse him further.

He shakes his head, frustrated. “Same thing!”

The snakes are taking shape, rising off of his tan arms and molding into something solid. Her heart stutters at the sight, knowing how hard they are to fight off when she’s at full strength.

But she’s been trying to escape for hours, maybe a whole day, she’s unsure. She’s tried calling to her shadows, tried plunging herself in them to no avail, her magic has worn thin. She’s grown exhausted and sleep deprived. The only thing keeping her awake now are her nerves at the sight of Riel and what he promises to do to her.

“It’s not the same. I don’t think you want to, I think you believe you must,” she says, her final attempts to stop him. He shakes his head and closes his eyes as if to shake her words from his ears.

“You’re stronger than me, you would have done so long ago if you really wished to.”

He takes a step back, his palms hovering over his ears. His snakes tend to him, swirling around him confused at his lack of command.

“No,” he says, stepping back and trying to ignore her words. “You’re just saying things!”

She may be, but she knows it’s true. She’s felt his strength many times. He was the only one who had been able to cut her, the only one who had been able to best her. Not even Ashld had his strength, his speed, his attentiveness, his reaction.

Though she was certain some of his magic was gifted to him by fiends, he was a strong mage. She could sense his presence by the feel of his magic—his magic, not whatever the fiends had given him.

“It’s true, Riel,” she says softly. “You’re strong. Stronger than me, stronger than them.”