They got kids in there sometimes.

Under the Superhero Protection Act, it was law that the hospital couldn’t force anyone under a mask to give up their identity or any information that wasn’t deemed medically necessary, but still. You could hear it in their voices. Lanky superheroes in homemade costumes with acne visible in the gaps of their masks, voices that tried to sound deeper and more menacing than anything that matched their fidgeting hands and bravely raised chins. The nurses were always kind to them.

But still. This was a new one.

The boy sitting on the exam table in front of Nurse Mendez glared at her defiantly from under his black mask, as though his leg wasn’t currently bent in a place legs are never supposed to bend.

“You know I saw you on the news earlier,” she said conversationally, writing down his blood pressure. “That was a pretty big fight you got caught up in. I’m guessing this happened when Mrs. Manhattan dropped you out of that window?”

His eyes narrowed balefully. “She didn’t drop me. I jumped. It was an escape.”

She looked up from her clipboard, meeting his eyes coolly. “From what I saw, the only reason you’re not in handcuffs right now is because she was too busy fighting Shard to bother with his sidekick, and you got a chance to limp away.”

“I’m not a sidekick!” He squeaked, voice cracking in the middle of the sentence. He cleared his throat and tried again, and she could see the flush in his neck of embarrassment and anger. “I’m not a sidekick,” he repeated. “I’m Lord Mayhem, and I’m a super villain too, and someday you’ll bow to me, and so will the rest of the whole entire world!” he hissed, puffing out his chest. He immediately deflated with a small gasp of pain.

“The whole entire world, huh? That’s pretty ambitious,” she said, making a note on his chart for the doctor to check for broken ribs. “And how are you going to do that?”

He perked up again slightly, though he didn’t puff up his chest this time. “I’m gonna be an inventor,” he told her importantly. “I’m gonna make all sorts of cool weapons and stuff so that no one can ever defeat me, not even the superheroes!”

“Ah, you like science, huh? I can relate,” she said, smiling. He regarded her suspiciously, but with interest. “Hey, it’s true, you wouldn’t believe how many science classes I had to take to get here,” she gestured to the hospital walls with her pen. “So you’re the inventor. Since Shard mostly just stabs things from what I’ve seen, I’m guessing you’re the one who built that thing that exploded outside the bank?”

He nodded slowly, eyes still narrowed. “It was an electromagnet.”

“Pretty impressive. Your parents let you build that inside the house?”

He looked away, glaring at the white cabinets instead of her. “Don’t have any,” he muttered.

Her heart sank. It always was the orphans, wasn’t it?

“Is there someone who takes care of you?” she asked, carefully neutral.

His head snapped back around, giving her a look that could cut glass. “I don’t need anyone to take care of me,” he spat ferociously. “I take care of myself.”

The nurse’s eyes flicked pointedly to his broken leg. “And how’s that going for you, kid?”

He hunched down on the exam table, his hands tightening into fists. She noticed his knuckles were bloody. “M’not a kid,” he mumbled.

She hesitated for a beat. But she didn’t really have to think about what she was going to do. She had known she couldn’t just walk away from the minute she walked into the room.

Her hand lifted the first page of the chart, scribbling something on the bottom of the second page, which she carefully tore around. She reached out to the boy, taking his fisted hand, which loosened in surprise. She tucked the scrap of paper into his palm. “That’s my number,” she told him quietly. “You don’t have to give me your identity to use it. You can call me anytime, okay?” He opened his mouth, and she raised a hand to cut him off. “I know, I know, you don’t need anybody. But you’re in a dangerous line of work here, and you might find it’s not such a bad thing to have a trained medical professional in your corner. Just don’t throw the number away, alright? That’s all I ask.”

He didn’t respond, didn’t even look at her. But he didn’t drop the paper either, and she counted that as a win.

“The doctor’s going to come in and take a look at you in a few minutes. Just sit tight and we’ll get you all patched up and ready to go take over the world in a jiffy,” she told him with a bit more cheer.

“Thank you,” he mumbled.

She opened the door, tucking the clipboard into its little basket for the doctor to see, then she paused. “Hey,” she called to the boy, who finally looked at her again, chin raised like he was ready for a confrontation. She grinned at him. “When you become a big time inventor, think you can come back here and design some new machines? Because we’ve got an MRI machine that’s getting up there in years and could definitely use some improvements.”

The boy looked startled. Then, he offered her a small, genuine smile, the first one she had seen all night. “Yeah, I guess I can do that.”

She nodded in parting, giving him a last smile in return. “Cool.” She shut the door and walked back out to the nursing station.

She had other patients to attend to. There were a few other injuries in the explosion that morning, mostly minor ones, thank god.

Another one of the nurses practically shoved past her when she got back to the front.

“Heads up, some guy in a costume blew up a bridge about ten minutes ago. We’ve got a couple ambulances coming our way, start prepping for emergency response,” he called, moving briskly towards the ambulance dock as he spoke.

She got back to work.

In a moon-white building in the red red sand, there stands a quiet room.

Quiet, but full of life.

The air system hums, pumping oxygen and CO2 through the building in a constant cycle. Vital signs beep, steady and strong on the monitors.

A woman hums softly, accompanied by the tiny breaths against her chest, as her husband digs through one of the cupboards.

Her song cuts off as something clatters to the floor. “Ben,” she hisses. “You’re going to wake her up.”

“Sorry!” he calls back in a whisper, eyes wide and looking a little frazzled. He holds up the electric blanket apologetically. “It was a little buried.”

He crosses the room to the bed as she gingerly adjusts the sleeping infant to let him tuck the blanket under her. As soon as the blanket is in place, they both wait with bated breath to see if they disturbed her.

Her tiny pink brow wrinkles, nose scrunching up, and then she settles, still fast asleep.

Her parents let out identical, silent sighs of relief.

Ben sits carefully on the edge of the bed. They rest quietly for one of the first calm moments of the whole day, watching the child sleep.

“You told the others no press yet, right?” Sophie whispers at last.

He nods. “Reporters have been calling. Emmett told them she’s healthy and strong, but there’s not going to be any pictures until you’re up for it.”

She shoots him a grateful look. “Good. Soon, I promise. But not right now.”

“They’re going to love her, you know. The whole damn planet’s going to.”

Sophie snorts. “Which one?”

He grins. “Both of them,” he answers immediately.

She laughs softly, reaching up to adjust the blanket. Her smile fades. “Do you think she’s going to hold it against us?” she asks quietly.

Ben frowns. “What?”

She shrugs, careful not to jostle the baby. “She’s going to be in history books. Students are going to learn her name in their classrooms. The first human born off-world. That’s...that’s a lot for someone who didn’t get any say in it. I know we’ve already talked about this, but I just...her childhood is going to be so different from everyone else in the whole species, and, and what if she just feels so alone -” she’s nearly in tears by this point, and Ben hurries to reach out and grasp her hand.

“Hey hey hey,” he sooths. “She’s going to have a fantastic childhood, you hear me? She’s going to be surrounded by a bunch of engineers who love the hell out of her, and once this place is fully operational and the colony arrives, she’ll have a whole town full of people who love her, and a whole planet to call her own, and a brilliant, spectacular mom who’s going to teach her so many nerdy things - ” she laughs wetly, reaching up to wipe at her eyes with their interlocked hands. “ - and someday she’ll write a famous autobiography about what it was like to be the first kid on Mars and we’ll all get rich off the movie rights, okay?”

She nods, smiling even as her chin quivers a little.

He snorts quietly, and she lets go of his hand to smack him on the arm. “You don’t get to laugh at me, I just had a baby, I’m allowed to be all sappy and teary today,” she whispers indignantly as he raises his hands to defend himself, shoulders shaking slightly with mirth.

“I’m not laughing at you, I swear to god,” he snickers. “I was just thinking - have you noticed how Emmett and Aparna have been looking at each other lately? She might not be the only baby here for long if those two would just figure it out already.”

Sophie has to cover her mouth to stifle her laughter. Finally, she lets her hand drop away, drifting back to take her husband’s once more.

“Yeah, you’re right,” she tells him, as the newborn stirs against her. “She won’t be the only one for long.”

A week without pain is a weak to be bold.

And by bold

I don’t mean stupid.

I’m not talking about driving too fast

Climbing too high

Jumping too far.

I’m not talking about forgetting your mortality

I’m talking about remembering it.

All those things

You should

But never do.

Like calling your friend-turned-enemy

Speaking those sharp words “I’m sorry”

When they cannot cut your petty pride.

Like saying “I love you”

A moment of truth

Of vulnerability

Because what is the point of armor

When a sword is nothing to you?

And maybe

Just maybe

When the week is over

You won’t forget the wind on your skin

When there was no need to guard your fearsome heart.

My little sister didn’t speak to me for fourteen years. I can’t blame her. I know she saw me as a traitor, as weaker. I was weaker. Part of me, ever a coward, even wishes she’d kept her silence to the end. I don’t know. Is it really better to see disaster coming at you? It’s not like you can truly appreciate your final moments of peace when you feel the hangman’s door ready to drop beneath your feet.

My husband knew - I told him as soon as he came home from work that night. We talked in hushed whispers over cooking dinner, checking to make sure the kids were still distracted by the TV in the next room. It was sheer selfishness on my part. As I said, I know myself to be a coward. I would never have had the heart to face this all by myself.

Lila was no coward. One of the fiercest people I’ve ever known, of course she’d love a world as tough as herself. I had no love for that planetary jailhouse. It wasn’t fair, what they did to us. We were third generation prisoners, our grandparents were the criminals. Why, then, were we the ones who had to pay? Why did it take so long for them to let us, innocents, come home to a world that was more than dust and dry, aching heat?

I started saving when I was a child, so desperate for a chance at something, anything more. When I was fifteen, Earth lifted the travel ban, and a ship came to take anyone born on the planet who wanted to go back to a home we should’ve had all along. I didn’t ask her to come, and she didn’t ask me to stay. She didn’t even come to see me off. I took my dirty jar of coins, and left my sister and the rest of my family in the dust.

I fell in love with Earth through ripped paperbacks and outdated magazines that had long lost their gloss. I didn’t know until I arrived how badly they’d failed to capture just how bright everything was. The cities were lights stacked on top of lights, children’s blocks in glowing towers with fireflies dancing in between.

As a poor immigrant, I ended up in the outskirts of the city. My jar of money bought me a single room apartment with a window that didn’t fully close, and crisp air swept over me all night. With no curtains, the light spilled in when I was trying to sleep.

Somehow, I never did get around to buying any.

It was the best place I’ve ever lived, and I mourned it when I moved in with my eventual husband, into his more middle-class apartment with multiple rooms and functioning heating.

My sister’s call came through while I was putting away groceries, and I sat next to fresh vegetables wilting in the summer heat as she spoke. She asked me if I could get out of the city. I told her I couldn’t, not on such short notice. She was quiet for a long time, and I watched a bird peck at the pots on the window ledge that already needed to be watered again. She said she was sorry. She asked me if I was okay. I told her I was married now.

Does he treat you well? She wanted to know. I said he treated me very well. Brought me flowers once a week, even when we both knew there were better things we could spend the money on.

I told her about my children, my boy and my two little girls. I told her the youngest one reminded me of her, absolute in everything she decided, no matter how nonsensical. This made her laugh. She said she’d never had children. She had other things to occupy her, all her love and time poured into training instead. We never spoke the word “revolution”, but it was there. We never said “war” either, but I think the word sat bitter on both of our tongues.

We said “goodbye”, though. I didn’t tell her I loved her. The words rose on my tongue, hot as a candle flame, but to speak them aloud and light the air felt like an admittance that we were in darkness. And I could not bring myself to face that. So I said goodbye, and listened in silence for her end of the line to click. It took awhile.

My children came home soon after. My son from school, picking up the younger ones from the neighbors. I made them sandwiches, and I cuddled with them on the couch to watch a movie instead of paying the bills as I had planned to do that evening.

When they begged for another hour up at bedtime, I said okay, to their delight. I even made them cocoa, and my husband and I sipped coffee.

I told him I loved him, and he kissed my forehead.

My daughter, the little one, was the one to call me over to the window.

“Mommy! Look! The stars are moving!” Her eyes sparkled with awe.

We all went up on the roof to watch. I leaned against my husband, and gripped my daughter’s hand. The children thought it was beautiful. I hope that's what they remember, that it was bright and beautiful.

I wondered with every distant explosion whether that was Lila’s ship, shot from the sky.

There were many, many ships. More than I’d anticipated. I suppose I should have seen it coming. I was not the only one bitter, and not everyone was able to look past it and make their jailer’s home their own.

They filled the sky, blasts of shining gold and the glint of rockets, guns firing like distant rumbles of thunder.

The summer heat wrapped around us like a blanket.

If I just closed my eyes, the blazing ships could have been the red morning sun. I tasted dust on the wind, and it was my sister’s warmth against my side.

I wondered if when I opened them, I’d still see a world that shone.

He was a stranger when he first caught my eye. Our love is familiar, yet unique.

You have been me. Perhaps you fell in love with him as I did.

I hold no jealousy. I am glad we have this to share, Reader.

There are no words for what we are, yet words are the very foundation of what we are.

He made me things, such beautiful things, gifts that I shall hold dear all my life, gifts I hope my children will one day love as well.

I have never met him.

I know what he is afraid of. I know what he thinks is right in the world, and what he thinks is wrong.

He is one of my first loves, but I am far from the first to love him.

He will never know my name.

I like to think he loved me too, distantly, as a concept. Maybe he didn’t anticipate me. Maybe he saw me as a certainty.

He is not the only one I love, as I am not the only one to love him. I have so very many loves, but I doubt he’d hold them against me. I’m sure he had his own.

I’ve never visited his grave, a century old and God-knows-where. Why should I mourn? He lives in my hands and on my shelf.

I don’t think he ever wanted flowers from me. I trust my love is enough.

But that isn’t on the pages he left for me.

When first I saw him, he was a name stamped in golden ink, on a stack of well-bound pages at the very end of the shelf at a bookstore I’d never been to, surrounded by others I could easily fall in love with.

I don’t know how he took his coffee in the mornings, or if, perhaps, he preferred tea.

I know only what he felt was valuable enough to carve out of ink and bind with thread, preserved for me a hundred years down the line.

He loved me so much he gave me a story.

Perhaps he loved the story so much he gave it to me.

He is a stranger, long dead.

Yet he is no stranger to those that have fallen in love with him,

No stranger to those that have taken the time to study his gift.

We know him well. 

I am

In a room of buzzing people.

People

Bright and smart and beautiful

And every time they laugh,

I see their eyes light up

And their soul shines like a Christmas fire.

Warmth radiates from their happiness,

And I am reminded how cold my soul feels.

I am

A child

Small and afraid

Curled in the snow outside of a warm house.

I can hear a party within,

But the door does not open for me.

There is no cruelty

From the happy partygoers.

I am the one

Who cannot seem to raise my voice

And make them hear me

And I do not shine bright enough to be spotted in the snow.

I know I am not wanted

I know no one feels cold in my absence.

I know

I can pour every bit of strength I have

Into trying to glow

To keep those around me warm,

To make their lives brighter.

But

Their hands still shiver

And their breath still comes in icy puffs

And their eyes still slide past me.

I am a candle

And they are looking for a bonfire.

I will keep burning

For I have no purpose

But to try.

And when I am gone

And there is nothing

But melted wax and blackened wick,

They will place another candle

In my holder

And the world will be no darker for it

This is

A great relief

And a terrible pain.

Today

I do not want to create

I do not crave ink on my fingertips

Or clay beneath my palms

I crave

The pain of squeezing broken glass

Shards that splinter on the floor

That shine a ruby red

I want

Knuckles split and clenched

Teeth bared and sharp

A scream beneath my ribs

I need

To rend the world apart at the seams

To feel my muscles ache

As coarse fabric gives way beneath my fury

But

I know my rage abates

Dies like a glass knife

Dropped and never caught

So

I’ll make it a slave while it lives

Put it to paper

And demand it makes something of

Worth