Villains Wear Masks
Chapter 23: Accepting fate

“Once we finish, no one will ever be able to control either of us again. We will both be free to be who we want to be.”

~ X

“It is still unknown the number of victims of this heinous attack, but so far the estimate has been around fifteen. The families will have to be notified first before we can release their names. The cause of this attack by Mischief on Rossi Corp is still unknown, though speculation states he was there to steal something from the multimillion dollar company.

“The most surprising event disrupting the annual Rossi Corp Charity Ball was a man falling from the 110th floor of the building and on to a Schow Company car. Minutes later, however, a woman in red was seen falling out, shortly caught by a racing Momentum. The police have confirmed that the woman died, either from the force of the fall or from hitting the ground. Momentum was just a little too late to save her.

“Rossi Corp spokesmen have mainly stayed silent so far on the issue, but we are told they are cooperating with police on the investigation. Mischief is still at large, and if you have any information on his whereabouts, you can call the hotline on your screen. In addition, if you see any of the villains who are known to have broken out of Alcatraz during the breakout a day ago, you are to call the hotline we set out yesterday. After this attack, the police and the mayor have issued a citywide curfew in anticipation of the rising crime rates with the villain wave from the Alcatraz breakout. Citizens are urged to travel in groups or to not travel at all.

“In other news, X, the orchestrator of the Alcatraz breakout, is still at large. Sightings of the villain have placed him everywhere between here and Washington DC . . .”

“Xander,” Taylor turned down the TV as she walked in to the hospital room that housed Xander’s mother. He was staring down at his hands and sitting in the chair next to his mother, strangely still and relaxed. He didn’t turn at the sound of his name.

“Xander, you can’t stay here forever.”

His shoulders tensed, acknowledging her existence and his will to ignore her comment.

“You have to sleep at some point.”

His gaze lifted from his hands to the wall, a better response than before.

“You have to sleep somewhere with a bed, Xander. She wouldn’t have wanted you to run on fumes.”

Xander stood up and pinned Taylor to the wall in a millisecond, which was actually possible for a speedster like him. “You don’t talk about what she would’ve wanted. You hated her. You have no right.”

Taylor pushed at his hands and he let go, seeing the anger in her eyes. She could switch emotions just as fast as he could. “I didn’t hate her. Believe me.”

Xander chuckled darkly and looked up at the vigilante, “Well, you sure did a good enough job of faking it. You never bothered to even try and reconcile with her. If you didn’t hate her, she sure thought you did. Now it’s too late.”

“I’m not the one who couldn’t put the past behind them. Just because she’s dead doesn’t mean she’s free from blame.”

He couldn’t help but to flinch at the words. He couldn’t even admit what happened to her to himself.

Taylor scowled and narrowed her eyes. “Just say it out loud, Xander. She died. Mera’s dead. She’s gone and there’s nothing you can do about it. Stop sulking and wallowing in self-pity. Accept the truth”

“It’s my fault,” Xander’s eyes were no longer pointedly angry at her, but soft and scared. “I second guessed myself and didn’t try to run at Mischief. I wasn’t fast enough to save her. She shouldn’t have even been there. She had no way to protect herself and I should have stopped her from even coming.”

“No,” Taylor walked forward and seemed to tower over Xander, even though she was significantly shorter, “you don’t get to blame yourself. You don’t get to shoulder this alone. Mera was going to go whether or not you tried to veto the idea. That’s who she was. No boy was going to get her to stop being herself. It was her decision to come, it was her decision to help us fight.”

Xander rounded on Taylor, “So now it’s her fault she’s gone? Are you going to blame her for dying?”

“No.” Taylor paused. “All I’m saying is that you aren’t the one who deserves the blame. Mischief threw her off that roof. You can either blame him or the big fish. I choose to blame him, but stopping X will kill two birds with one stone. Direct all that anger at one of them, not at yourself, or me, or her. Yeah, maybe if one of us had done one thing differently, maybe if a butterfly had flapped its wings in Japan it would all be unicorns and rainbows, but the point is that didn’t happen. We can’t change the past, we just have to look forward from it. Are there things I regret not doing for her? Yes. Am I going to let that stop me from living my life, or am I going to let it fuel my determination for justice?”

The question was rhetorical. They both already knew the answer. If Mera had been a badass, Taylor was the mega ultra-extreme badass. She wasn’t going to sit and sulk, she was going to go take her frustrations out on a bad guy.

“Did you love her?” Xander asked suddenly, not looking at her, but still registering her muscles tense at the words.

“Yeah.”

He hadn’t expected an answer.

“She was my first. My first everything.” Taylor looked down and started to pick at the hem of her shirt. He hadn’t even noticed she changed out of her superhero costume. She didn’t need spandex to be a daunting hero. “I couldn’t believe at first that the most popular girl at school wanted to be my friend. Sure, we were both on the cheer squad, but being her best friend was like getting to share the sun. Then, during one sleepover, it happened. She kissed me. At school she acted like nothing had changed, but when we were alone, we really were the only two people in the universe.

“When she started working for Ross, I was the first to know. She even let me sit in a couple of times. Eventually I wanted to set out on my own. White Knight only protected the upper-class neighborhoods, and Wild Fire only covered the in between. I wanted to help those who Wild Fire couldn’t get to. I wanted to help those in Oakland from the criminals who didn’t wear masks. I thought Mera would be ecstatic that I wanted to help. She wasn’t.

“Mera told me to choose. I had to choose between my first love and being a hero. She never understood why I would risk my life not being a super out there, but now I think she might have understood a bit too much.”

Taylor took a haggard breathe and looked up to the ceiling, tears rimming her eyelids. Xander never noticed she had the same eyes as Mera. Soft as honey. “I never hated her. Not even after that. I may have despised her a little, resented her even, but I never hated her. How could I? How could anyone hate Mera Deauxma? She was so goddamn hard to hate.”

With hard strokes, Taylor rubbed the tears out of her eyes. She wouldn’t let them fall.

“I loved her too.”

Taylor laughed, a genuine thing. “I think that was pretty obvious, lover boy.”

Xander looked down. “I think I can go home now.”

“Great,” Taylor smiled and put her hand on his shoulder, “tomorrow we can figure out how we’re going to exact revenge, but for now you need to sleep. You can’t run on fumes for much longer.”

“What about you?”

Taylor shrugged. “I’ll get some sleep at some point or another. It’s you I’m worried about right now.”

“She wouldn’t want you to run on fumes either.”

Taylor’s voice got caught in her throat.

“You go home too, then.” Xander lifted his eyebrows, inclining Taylor to take the first step out. “Tomorrow we’ll enact our revenge.”

X glided through the trashed office with a sense of utter calm and calculation. He was able to have access to the Rossi Corp penthouse with no complications because already more than half of the police force was on his payroll, curtesy of the Black Tiger gang. Anything to make his rise to power any smoother.

In a few hours X would be certain that no one would ever be able to stand in his way again. The PF-08-02 Mischief had stolen was already being converted into The Pill as he sat down at the new mahogany desk. No other unforeseen complications would have to be faced by X after the sun rose. White Knight was taken care of, Momentum was soon to be incapacitated, Wild Fire was preoccupied according to Mischief, and X had nothing to fear from a vigilante. X had all of the power.

Trevor Rossi was in the hospital getting treated for the shot to the leg Mischief had delivered. By the time he recovered, X would already be unstoppable. He chose the wrong side when he chose to keep that last bit if the serum to himself. If Rossi had been smart, either of them, they would’ve tried to join the right side, not keep the serum to themselves. They might not have known the dangers the serum by itself presented to X’s plans, but they jeopardized them all the same. Their mistake, their creation, was being dealt with before the sun creeped its way over the horizon.

X was unstoppable.

Taking back control over the city would be easy. Only villains wore masks, and X hid behind no mantel or false identity. He was X inside and out, and no one else. The city was always able to fall to a pretty face.

The door opened and his little pet walked in. His project. The one who gave him everything he needed to plant himself in this city again.

But, he didn’t convert April Watson alone. If it hadn’t been for her background, for the people in her life and the way they unconsciously treated her, she wouldn’t have fallen for his charms. If only he could’ve given his thanks to White Knight before he made April choose.

Sometimes your mistakes and miscalculations came back to haunt you. People didn’t know that they did wrong until they were confronted by the things they did.

X smiled at her. “How are you feeling?”

April’s smile hesitated on her face for only a moment, “Better, I think.”

“Free?”

She released a breath. “Yes, that’s a word for it.”

“Don’t worry. In no time you’ll never have to feel trapped again.” He knew the right words to use.

“Yes.”

And she believed him. She had no one else left to believe in.

Xander took a moment to stand in his doorway when he got home. He hadn’t gone back since his mother collapsed, he’d been sleeping at John’s. It felt weird to enter the home now that he was totally alone in the universe.

It was now more evident than ever that he was alone.

It was when he took that first step into the threshold that he noticed it. Xander had lived in this apartment his whole life. He could walk through it blind and not hit a single piece of furniture. There was a shadow that wasn’t supposed to be there, and darker too, like it was sucking the light from the doorway into a blackhole.

Xander reached for the light, but he was stopped by a voice.

“I would really appreciate if you kept the lights off.”

The voice was softer than he expected from the darkness of the shadow. The figure stepped away from the wall and Xander could make out pale skin and long, dark hair beneath circling shadows. Chances were this girl was a villain, but even with the shadows she looked harmless.

“This won’t hurt a bit, I’ve been practicing,” suddenly the girl thrusted her hands out along with a trail of darkness. It hit Xander right in the chest, faster than a bullet.

Everything Xander had been feeling, bottling up inside, repressed, it all rose to the surface and filled his gut. The hidden thoughts and undeniable fears. It encompassed him for a moment, one horrible dreadful moment, before it all went away again. Xander opened his eyes, but instead of his living room he was met with stark white walls and white shoes surrounding him.

Did this super have the power to teleport people?

Where was he?

“What happened next?”

Xander looked up and his faced blanched. Because, sitting right there in front of him was the girl who had just died in his arms. A couple of years older with rimmed glasses and a lab coat, but it was still her.

“Yeah, did you run at her really fast?” That came from a thicker blonde guy two seats down from Mera.

“No, no,” now a guy on the other side of the circle of chairs with a devious smile was responding, “I bet he called over his other superhero friends. The fire dude probably.”

“Or maybe that vigilante girl. She sure sounded hot.”

“At least there was one normal freak in his delusions.”

“Yeah, come one. Super villains?”

“Guys,” Mera spoke again. It sounded like heaven to Xander’s ears to hear her voice again, even with that tone of voice. “Let Xander tell us what happened.”

“I saw you die.”

The circle laughed at Xander’s expense. It was like they’d heard this before and thought it was incredulous.

Mera nodded solemnly. “We’re back to that now, are we? I’ll just have to schedule more appointments one on one. For now let’s go back to the girl in your apartment. Was she a super villain?”

There were snickers from the circle.

Xander turned to them in his own incredulous state, “You live in a world of heroes, how are you being so naive?”

The one with the devious smile chuckled. “You always give me a laugh, Mendez.”

“You guys know supers are real. We see them on TV every day. You know about superheroes and villains.”

“Yeah,” the guy raised his eyebrows, “because you never shut up about it, Momentum.” The name was an insult. “You and your superhero fantasies. Can’t accept that you live in the real world with normal people.”

Xander’s eyes widened and he backed away step by step to the edge of the circle.

“What, are you going to speed away? I’d like to see you try.”

Xander tried just that, but it was like his speed had been dampened, there was nothing. All he ended up doing was tripping over his empty chair and onto the floor. As everyone in the room laughed, Xander realized what this meant.

He was no longer a superhero. Somehow, someway, he was normal.