A Once Crowded Sky (40 page)
One time while coming back from some war, Soldier’d been asked by a woman reporter if he’d done anything out there he was sorry for. Soldier hadn’t known what to say and instead just dished her the usual
jabber-on about service and country. The woman didn’t appear to have the guts to follow up after that, but the question stayed with Soldier, longer than it should’ve maybe.
He knew regret well enough when he sailed off, but not when he returned from war, not when there was hope this might be the last one. Then he’d be all right, even as they locked him up again—froze his bones and let him wait for the next time, or if the next time never came, let him die in that cold box content in knowing as long as he slept, the wars would stop, the boys’d be home.
Soldier crawls closer to their booth, still thinking of that dead hope, of what he’d done to bring it back to life. Soldier’d decided for them all that they didn’t get to have powers no more, that the world could go on better without their ridiculous flying about, their violence, lasers shot through fists seeming to kill some bad guy only to have him rise again, same as you’d rise again, until next time. That’d run its course, and it was done with. All that eventually led to nothing, led to more of the same, and Soldier’d decided to do what he could to break the stupid pattern.
Soldier’d betrayed Pen, shot at him, tried to kill him, and in killing him to kill the final chance that the wars’d keep on like they’d been. He’d aimed, and he’d fired.
And he’d missed. Soldier didn’t kill Pen, not when he should’ve. He didn’t succeed in getting rid of the powers, not forever anyway, not while Pen was still out there, ready to make the great sacrifice and bring back the great game. Soldier didn’t succeed in getting rid of any damn thing. As always.
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PANELS 1–9: Pen and Prophetier sitting across from each other.
PEN: Proph. No. This whole time? I didn’t see. Even after The Blue, when you used to call me about Strength. It was more of this? Even that first time. You set me up with Sicko, set me up with Soldier.
PROPHETIER: Of course. It was me. It was all me.
PEN: I didn’t see it.
PROPHETIER: Soldier was my masterstroke. A mentor who could train you, but whom you had to overcome, defeat. He was perfect. Well, not perfect, you still ran. When you should’ve been ready, you still ran.
PEN: I didn’t see.
PROPHETIER: I thought I’d done enough. I thought you’d go into The Blue. Show you were a true hero. It was what was written, what I saw. But you didn’t. You ran.
PEN: No.
PROPHETIER: But then I realized, without any help from any stories, I realized what you really needed. You needed a final triumph. You needed to defeat Ultimate. You needed the great epiphany that comes with seeing who was behind it all. You needed to defeat the last villain. That’s what was missing.
PEN: How could you?
PROPHETIER: So here we are.
PEN: All these people.
PROPHETIER: It was a story. I told it.
PEN: I don’t want to do this anymore.
PROPHETIER: You’re better. Even better than Ultimate. You’ve even defeated The Man With The Metal Face.
PEN: Don’t talk about him. You can’t. He was the best of us.
PROPHETIER: And you killed him.
Soldier breaks from his crawl and takes a glance up. Pen is there. The one person who could bring it all back, sitting there, having himself a conversation.
After he failed at the graveyard, Soldier knew it wouldn’t be too long before he’d find himself with the boy, the two of them being led back into the next astounding adventure. So he showed up at the diner, and sure as anything, there came the game, and Ultimate began his rampaging, tossing heroes every which way.
Soldier hadn’t taken any time to consider the situation. He had a weapon and people were getting killed. His hand went to his holster, his hips rotated toward the danger, and he fired, metal crushing into metal, spraying back and out. The bullet hit him, and he went down. And by all rights he should’ve stayed down.
Soldier puts his face back into the tiles. He reaches out and crawls forward.
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PANELS 1–9: Pen and Prophetier sitting across from each other.
PEN: I know it wasn’t him. It wasn’t Ultimate. I know.
PROPHETIER: It was Ultimate, you defeated him.
PEN: No, I saw it. In The Blue. I know he had my heart.
PROPHETIER: It was him.
PEN: I saw the heart. In The Blue. I saw us trading hearts so he could save me. What was in that thing, that’s not mine. That’s metal. It’s got nothing to do with me.
PROPHETIER: Pen—
PEN: It’s from that %$#&ing cat.
PROPHETIER: PenUltimate—
PEN: Star-Knight said he’d given it to you. And you used it to build that thing. You used it to kill these people. Christ, man. Why the hell . . . what the hell?
PROPHETIER: Pen, you’re doing good. Better than I thought. You’re talking like a hero.
PEN: I’m not the goddamn hero!
PROPHETIER: You are now.
PEN: Shut up!
PROPHETIER: You’re my hero.
Feet from them now, belly and face sticking to the floor, Soldier brings the gun to his head, wipes the sweat from his eyes.
Like the stories, The Soldier of Freedom goes on. Maybe they thought this’d be it, that he’d finally quit. But they didn’t know him well enough then. Everything he did ended up right here, in the middle of another fight, another desperate situation.
The Soldier of Freedom is here, and he’s ready to do some killing to end some killing; crouched in that tidy damnation, he plays the game better than any other man has or will. And in the game, one bullet missed or taken don’t matter all that much. A man comes back from that. He forms a new plan, sucks in his lip one more time, and he goes on until his guns’re empty and his job’s done. Soldier has to end the game, but first he’s got to play it, win it.
Of course he hates it all: the barrel, the clip, the gun, the sniveling villain, the suffering friend, the helpless victims, the infinite echo of blows that bounce comfortably back and forth across the rock-valley between the beginning no one recalled and the ending that never came. It all makes him sick.
And, yeah, he doesn’t know why—all those years, all those dead—he didn’t just give up and die, take Carolina or California, do the deed himself. Pull the trigger. It was probably some sense of his own failure, an understanding that there was always going to be a need for him no matter what he does. As long as the battle kept coming, The Soldier of Freedom’d be all right. As long as there was another war to go off to and to come back from, it’d be all fine. As long as there’s another villain explaining his dastardly plan, another kid willing to listen and fight, there’ll be a need for him and his. He’ll be the hero forever. That’s his own hell, and he didn’t need no bullet to get him there.
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PANELS 1–9: Pen and Prophetier sitting across from each other.
PROPHETIER: You’re right. It wasn’t Ultimate. Not the original. I re-created him. Using my father’s tools. I needed something to create a threat. So I built him, like he built you.
PEN: You can’t do this.
PROPHETIER: I’m saying you’re right. You figured it out. I did it. It was me. I’m the villain.
PEN: Do you know what happened to Anna, to my wife? These people? All these #$%&ing people? You can’t do this.
PROPHETIER: It’s done. It’s over.
PEN: My wife!
PROPHETIER: Your wife was hurt, yes. Of course she was hurt, or else why have a wife? The hero loves to have that love taken, to have it become vengeance. Is it a coincidence that we’re all orphans? I mean, of course. What else do we come back from?
PEN: Shut up.
PROPHETIER: Everyone comes back. Even you.
PEN: Just shut up.
PROPHETIER: You’re done, Pen. I’m done. You walked away. Now you’re the hero.
PEN: Shut the #$%& up!
PROPHETIER: It’s time to go. It’s time to go on.
PEN: #$%& you!
PROPHETIER: I brought The Blue. The threat. Star-Knight. Soldier. All for you. For you.
PEN: You’re just a #$%&ing moron who used to see into the future! This is my #$%&ing life! This is mine. You don’t bring me back. You don’t bring me anywhere. It’s mine. It belongs to me. I get it. It’s mine.
PROPHETIER: Pen, it’s done. Everything’s done. I saw your pain, and I saved you, Pen. Like you saved me.
PEN: I’m going to kill you.
PROPHETIER: I know, Pen. I was ready for that.
PEN: I’m going to kill you.
PROPHETIER: This adventure, it’s our purpose; it’s what we do. And that’s fine, Pen. It’s lovely. And if you kill me, that’s fine. If that’s what you need to be a hero, that’s fine. If telling you the truth of what I’ve done brings you to that point, all the better.
PEN: For what you did. I’m going to kill you.
PROPHETIER: That’s fine, Pen, that’s fine. Overcome, a last villain. Soldier. Ultimate. Prophetier. It doesn’t matter to me. I love you that much. I’ll die for you, Pen. To show you the way. I’ll die, and I’ll return, and I’ll show you again how to come back from where you’ve fallen. I’ll show you where the stories lead.
PEN: I’m going to kill you.
PROPHETIER: I’ll take you there, Pen. And you’ll see. It’s paradise, Pen.
PEN: For what you did to my wife. For Anna.
“It’s paradise,” Prophetier says, and smiles, and Soldier stands, levels the gun to the man’s head and pulls the trigger. Prophetier slumps forward onto the table, dead as anything, and Pen looks up, his eyes meeting Soldier’s, looking at the man through the gun, and Soldier again and again pulls the trigger.
PenUltimate #1
Another one dead in front of him, Pen looks up. It’s not hard to recognize the once-shaped shoulders, the once-steady arm. Soldier pulls the trigger, and Pen moves.
Years ago, his face pulped by Ultimate’s blows, the boy gazes out the window, watches the struggling lights of Arcadia City as they begin to weaken under night’s first fog. Sitting at the edge of a chair at the top of the ever-impressive staircase, he hesitates for a moment before heading back down to the gym, falling and squaring his shoulders, locking his palms out—he catches himself at the top arch of the push-up and imagines that contagion of smoke, the dark world forming, waiting for the shine of a hero who can bend his elbows, bend his nose into the salty stick of the rubber floor and go up again with every intention of coming back for more, of once again coming back down.
