Unbound

Then his troop leader surprised him by squaring on him fully. “It’s hard living in the past. Hard to even call it your past if you’ve never put it behind you.”

JJ peered into his shot glass. “This thing still empty?”

Warren motioned, took the bottle from the bartender’s hands, and started pouring it himself. “You’ve broken even so far, but that’s just treading water, and today proved it.”

Because today, for the first time in the three years he’d been a full-fledged agent of Light, JJ had almost lost.

Obviously, he’d experienced death before. One couldn’t live long in an underworld of heroes and demons and not be touched by it, and he told Warren that now without words, using only a shrug and a jerk of his head to throw back another shot. God, but the whiskey was good…sharp and warm, and lingering in his belly as if his glyph glowed there. It made him feel alive.

“Death’s not important,” Warren said in reply.

“I know.” Holding out his glass, JJ accidentally caught his reflection across the bar; eyes spent, face sunken on his wide frame, his normally tan skin sallow, like campfire dust mingling with sand. He was built like his dad, though even wider and taller and stockier. His sheer size had drawn such unwanted attention that the troop’s physician/magician, Micah, had whittled down his frame once already, but the pain of even that minor transformation was like mainlining mercury. In the hours before he healed, it was as if he’d been skinned alive, then stitched back together, tighter. Even now, if he thought about it too much, he could imagine himself bursting at the seams. JJ refused any additional reduction after that, and Warren hadn’t pressed.

Looking at his bleached, military-cut hair through the smoked mirror, he wondered idly if he should shave it to the skull. Would that whittle him down even more? Could walking through the world with less friction smooth out the journey?

“Death also isn’t meaningful, not even a violent one,” Warren continued, impervious to JJ’s thoughts of journeys and friction. “It’s what you tell yourself about death that’s critical. Thoughts shape actions, and actions expose your state of mind.”

“Shit.” JJ jerked the bottle from Warren’s hand, because if he had to listen to a lecture about the past and death and the detonated fate he’d narrowly avoided, he wasn’t going to do it sober. Unfortunately, it took a lot for a superhero to get truly shit-faced, a fact JJ currently lamented. “So is this the speech where you tell me my parents didn’t die because of me, that there was nothing I could do at the time, and that I need to put it behind me? Because I swear I’ve heard that one somewhere before.”

And it was bullshit. Besides…

“What more do you want from me?” he continued before Warren could answer. “I do the best I can at all times. You can’t tell me I don’t.”

“I wouldn’t. But your level best is different than your potential best.”

“I don’t know what the hell that means.” His voice was too sharp, his body too rigid. Dial it back, JJ told himself, even while downing another glass. Boy, the more you drank, the smoother this shit got.

“It means the heroes of your past should fortify the present. You’re engaged in old battles, son. So, in answer to your question, that’s what I want. For the first time in your life, look forward, not back. What happened tonight should show you what a gift the future really is.”

JJ licked his lips slowly, knowing exactly what sort of gifts his future held. Things like metaphorically throwing himself in front of oncoming trains to save countless others, most of whom had gotten themselves into bad situations through faulty logic, poor planning, or pure stupidity. In fact, the majority of the mortal population was spoiled and ungrateful, and continued to piss away the life he fought for them to have. He also didn’t say he’d give a limb just to be able to work a regular Joe’s nine-to-five, and to come home to nothing more complicated than a pair of squabbling kids and a lukewarm meal. Instead, I have to beware if I go on something as simple as a fucking picnic.

Warren misread his silence. “Don’t you care anymore, Jay? Don’t you still believe you can make a difference, son?”

JJ snorted. Sure he cared. He had no problem helping others—he knew no other life than that—but lately it’d occurred to him that making a difference meant having to always put his own needs and desires second. Or, in a city of two million, was it dead last?

Warren dropped a hand on his shoulder. “I think you’re burned out, son.”

“Maybe,” JJ conceded, rolling his glass between his palms. “Though I’ve never heard of an agent burning out after only three years.” Some superhero.

“It’s been three years since your metamorphosis,” Warren said, referring to that critical moment when a troop member turned from mere initiate into a full-fledged agent of Light. “You’ve been fighting for over twenty.”