Super Bad (a Superlovin' novella)

by Andrews, Vivi

  “It’s private,” Justice commented, as if sensing her lack of enthusiasm about their new digs. “And the connection to me is so many times removed, it will take weeks before anyone thinks to look here, if they ever do. We’re safe enough for now.”

  He dropped the duffle on the coffee table. Mirage flopped on the couch and tried to pretend she wasn’t staring at the bag, wishing she had x-ray vision so she could read her file.

  “Go ahead.”

  She whipped her head up to find Julian watching her watch the duffle. “Sorry?”

  “Your file. Go ahead and take a look. That’s why we brought it.” He unzipped the bag with quick, efficient movements and flipped the manila folder onto her lap. She slapped her hands on top of it to keep it from sliding to the floor.

  She didn’t look down, tried not to even feel the worn paper beneath her fingertips. This file had been her greatest temptation during her moments of clarity these last few months. She’d thought of stealing a peek a thousand times, but… “Eisenmann said it could set me back months. That reading about my actions before I could recall them went against all their protocols—could actually make me fabricate false memories and confuse things even further.”

  “Eisenmann isn’t here and his methods haven’t done shit for you. I say it’s time we try full disclosure.”

  Julian sat down beside her on the couch, but she was barely aware of his large, well-muscled body so close to hers. She couldn’t seem to focus on anything beyond the stack of papers in her lap. Damn, full disclosure sounded good. She wanted to know what her life had become, even if she had to read it like a book rather than living it in memory.

  “I could try using some of my gift,” he suggested, not sounding in the least hesitant, even though the last time he’d tried, she’d launched him across the room. “Just a little pulse, like I did at the bank, instead of a full-on attack on the defenses Kevin put in place. It might be enough to help you sort through what’s true on your own, rather than trying to force your brain back into shape.”

  Mirage pulled her eyes away from the still-closed file, though her gaze wanted to stick to it like taffy, stretching but reluctant to release. She studied Julian—the always virtuous Captain Justice—and though the sight of him was enough to make something clench eagerly inside her, she couldn’t make sense of the fact that he was sitting next to her, offering her whatever she needed, whatever it took.

  “Why are you doing this? What do you get out of it?”

  Julian’s earnest, helpful face closed down, his gaze shuttering. “What do you mean?”

  “I know you’re a hero and you’re supposed to just help people out of the goodness of your soul and all that crap, but why me? Aren’t there other people who need saving more?”

  “It’s not about who is most deserving. It’s about the good we can do.”

  “No. No, it isn’t like that. It’s a choice, who you choose to save and who you leave to the regular authorities. All supers make choices.”

  Her mother had been one of those choices. Supers had saved hundreds the day of the famous Midtown Bridge Rescue. Rescue—they didn’t even have the decency to call it a disaster. It was touted as a textbook example of superheroism at its finest, but her mother had still died. Some hero had screwed up. Made a bad call. Chosen someone else’s mother, husband, daughter or friend above Amanda Wroth. It was all choices. Was some other mother dying even now because Justice was here with her rather than on the streets?

  Julian’s eyes held a caution that said more loudly than words that he knew her mother’s story. It wasn’t exactly widely publicized—the tragedies that turned villains into villains rarely were—but Darla had probably told him.

  “Everyone deserves to be saved,” Julian said softly. “But we can’t save everyone. Not even with super powers. Sometimes… no, not just sometimes. It always has to be about the good we can do. If you let it be about the people you can’t save, you’ll make yourself crazy. If you dwell on the failures, the ones who slip through the cracks… no one is strong enough to bear that weight. Not even with superstrength.” His words almost seemed to be directed internally rather than at her, but Mirage felt something deeply buried and darkly bitter begin to unravel as he went on. “Superstrength without speed or flight or something else isn’t good for as much as you might think. Sure, I can take a lot of damage and give a lot back, but how often does a city need a one-man SWAT team when they have supers like Darla and the Nightwings who can do so much more?”

  “The Nightwings don’t do so much—”

  “The Nightwings do a ton. They just aren’t in the papers as much. I’m the poster boy for heroes, thanks to Kim. And I was fine being a face the heroes could stand behind, but my real usefulness isn’t in capturing the bad guys, it’s in convicting, interrogating. I’m Justice. I find the truth. It isn’t always pretty—in fact, it’s almost never what we want it to be, but we deserve the truth. You deserve the truth, Mirage. And I’m here because I want to help you find it.”

  She frowned. “I’m not good. I wasn’t just manipulated by Kevin. He got in so easily because I wanted a lot of what he wanted. Oh, not the bombs and destroying the supers, certainly not hurting my brother, but the rest of it. Creating justice out of injustice by any means necessary, that appealed to me. I’m not going to turn hero on you, Justice.”

  “Lucien did. For Darla.”

  “Lucien always had heroic tendencies. I never did.”

  “One thing you learn when you can sense lies is that no one is as good as they pretend they are. But you… you aren’t as bad as you pretend you are, either. We’re all in the middle, and even if you aren’t overcome by the need to save the day, you deserve a chance to find your way.” He tapped the folder on her lap. “Now stop stalling.”

  “Will you look with me?”

  He blinked, his chin drawing back with surprise. “If you want me to.”

  She nodded. She wasn’t entirely sure why, but she wanted him to know everything. Almost like he could be her impartial observer, the librarian cataloguing her life. She wanted someone to know her, to know it all, and her gut told her it had to be him. It couldn’t be Lucien anymore and she had no one else. The idea of trusting him wasn’t nearly as frightening as the idea that she could just vanish without him there, remembering for her what she had forgotten, remembering who she was. She couldn’t bear the thought that someday she might just disappear.

  Mirage wet her lips, concentrating so her fingers didn’t shake as she flipped back the cover. No more secrets. Especially from herself.

  The first few pages were background, a concise encapsulation of her childhood. Those memories were still solid, Kevin had used them, rather than tampering with them, and the familiarity comforted her, though Julian’s frown was concerned as she handed him the pages.

  “You moved around a lot. Did you ever spend a whole year at the same school?”

  She gave a wry smile, shaking her head in the negative. “Army brats and fugitives on the run. Always the new kid.”

  Her juvie record was nothing special, though it was a bit surprising that Trident had been able to get their hands on the files. Julian didn’t even raise an eyebrow, though he did frown as he read each page as she passed it to him. Theft. Accessory charges.

  “How old were you when you committed your first crime for your father?”

  “About ten, I think.”

  “And it never bothered you? That he used your abilities like that?”

  She shrugged. “He always had a good reason.”

  Then she flipped a page and it was on to the college years…and Kevin.

  From the moment she read his name on the page, cracks began to appear around the edges of her memories. Her hands shook as she tried to remember. How had it started? Had she really gone to a speech at one of the political action committees on campus and been swept away by his passionate words? Or was that just another false memory he’d wedged into her subconscious when she wasn’t look
ing? It was such a vivid recollection, his hands flying as he spoke, his passionate words digging deep inside her and resonating with every helpless frustration she’d felt since her mother’s death and her father’s descent into obsession. And his eyes. She hadn’t been able to look away. Hypnotized, like being trapped by a cobra’s stare.

  A shudder ripped hard down her spine, shaking her whole body. Suddenly Julian’s hand was there, covering hers, tightening over the fingers that had gone white around the paper she gripped so tightly.

  “Mirage?”

  She felt the tentative pulse of his power into her flesh, like a light static charge transferring from his skin to hers. She waited for the backlash, for the booby traps in her head to launch him, but for a moment nothing happened. She sat, so tense she ached, poking at the jagged memory, and then Julian gave another gentle pulse and the sharp, painful edges smoothed and stretched. The foggy, broken glass cleared and mended itself.

  She had gone to the committee meeting. A friend had dragged her along because the girl was dating Kevin. Jenna? Jamie? Gemma. Yes. Victory streaked hard through her blood as the memory became crisp and bright. Gemma with her square-framed glasses and earnest smile. She’d been desperate to see Kevin. They’d gone to his speech and Mirage remembered thinking how charismatic he was—in the over-the-top way of cult leaders and dictators. His rhetoric was persuasive, but she’d shied away from his extremism. Something had just seemed off. But Gemma had latched onto her arm and bodily hauled her through the crowd after Kevin finished speaking, bringing her forward to shake the hand of the deity himself.

  The handshake. Oh God.

  Mirage knew that most Mind Bender abilities were amplified by touch, but she hadn’t been prepared for the titanic force of Kevin’s powers. He’d rolled her mind before she could blink. There’d been no hope for her then. A small part of her, buried deep inside her mind, had remained pure, but everything else had belonged to him. As soon as he became aware of her powers, aware of who she was behind the fake name she’d taken to attend school, Kevin had thrown Gemma over and pulled Mirage into his inner circle. Gemma. They’d been best friends, doing everything together before Kevin came along, and Mirage had forgotten she even existed. Until now.

  “I remember.” She jerked her head up, twisting to face Justice on the couch, gripping his hand between both of hers, hard enough to leave marks if he hadn’t had the imperviousness of superstrength. “I remember how I really met Kevin. He rolled me, twisted my mind.”

  She told him the story, recounting every detail, reveling in the fact that there were details, not foggy gaps where her recollections should have been. Julian listened, intent and serious as he absorbed every word. Mirage could barely sit still. She bounced on the couch. She’d remembered. A real memory.

  “Thank you,” she breathed, after she’d waxed poetic on every aspect of the meeting, Gemma, and her real reactions to hearing Kevin’s first speech. That had been her thinking he was extremist, not Kevin making her think he was a righteous god with genius tripping off his lips with every word. For the first time in months, Mirage had a sense of self. An identity. Even if it was just in the memory of how she’d felt all those months ago. How she had felt. Not how Kevin had made her feel.

  She clung to Julian’s warm hands. “Thank you,” she said again, because the words just kept needing to be spoken. “I feel like me again.” The words almost made her cry. Or laugh. She was a bubble of fizzy delight wrapped in an aching pain that she had been so lost.

  Julian smiled and put his other hand on top of hers. “Do you want to take a break?”

  “God, no. I want more.”

  Chapter Ten: Too Cocky to Fail

  The clock read three-twelve and the black night beyond the windows made it clear it wasn’t afternoon anymore. Hours. They’d been going nonstop for hours. She’d pushed Julian relentlessly, working at recapturing her memories until she and the file were both exhausted, but he hadn’t complained once. She’d known the man was a hero, but that was above and beyond the call of duty.

  He sat on the floor beside the couch, slumped against it, and Mirage wanted nothing more than to tumble into his lap and wrap herself around him. My hero. He looked amazing, even at three in the morning. Tousled. Weary. Sexy as all hell.

  He wasn’t touching her anymore, but she still remembered. She felt clear, sharp, and downright giddy. There were still potholes in her memory big enough to swallow a semi, but everything that had been documented in the file, no matter how vaguely, she’d remembered. Her time with Kevin, the original thefts, stealing the Apocalyptum for him. The weeks in Area Nine, when she’d felt like she was in withdrawal, shivering and hungering for his presence. The day Lucien had broken her out and the fight they’d had when she told him she had to go back to Kevin. And she’d needed to return to him. She’d been an addict by then, needing a fix of his presence. She’d recalled Kevin’s arrogance, telling her his plans to use her brother to destroy the city. She remembered how her surface mind had cheered even as a deeper part of her consciousness began to rebel. She’d fought herself, trying to give Lucien clues to help him defeat Kevin even as ninety percent of her mind obeyed, doing everything in her power to see Kevin succeed.

  She knew now that the fractured pieces of her memories hadn’t been caused by Kevin. She had done that to herself, because it had been the only way she could break free of him. The only way she could defeat him was to shatter her own mind. It had worked. He was a vegetable. But so was she. Until tonight.

  Her time at Trident was a bit hazier, but she remembered her birthday now. She remembered some of her therapy, having the same conversations over and over again with Lucien and Eisenmann, watching their faces close off more each time she couldn’t remember her own answers. And she recalled pieces of her escapes—the urge to break into Nightwing, the bank, making herself invisible as she evaded the police.

  “At least now we know your compulsions are just echoes of previous commands,” Julian said without opening his eyes, his head still tipped back to loll against the couch cushions.

  Mirage’s fingers twitched with the urge to brush his blond curls back, but she fisted her hand instead. “There are still a bunch of gaps. We can’t be sure.”

  Now Julian did open his eyes, the strain in them visible. “I’m gonna have the world’s worst power hangover tomorrow. Let me have my false sense of victory.”

  “I’m sorry. We should have stopped hours ago.” She’d just been so excited, she hadn’t been able to quit. And he’d never let on that he was pushing himself past his limits with the pulses of truth compulsion.

  “I could have stopped us, but I wanted to see how much we could learn. Besides, it was fun seeing you get all worked up over every new memory.” His weary smile filled with something she couldn’t quite identify. Affection? Did Julian actually like her?

  It was weird to think that they might be friends. If he’d just been trying to get into her pants, she would have understood it more. She certainly wanted into his. And, since her relationship with Kevin, she knew better than most that you could be physically attracted to someone who repulsed you on other levels. But for Julian to actually like her. For him to push himself beyond his limits just because he enjoyed seeing her happy…

  Something strange and unsettling shifted in her chest, carrying with it the realization that she liked him too. Even if he was a do-gooder hero. He had depth she never would have associated with the public caricature of goodness that was Captain Justice. He was real and he was good in a quiet, driven, determined way that had nothing to do with being smugly self-righteous.

  God, she didn’t just like him. She liked him a lot. Too much.

  Julian cleared his throat and Mirage blushed, averting her eyes as she realized she’d been staring at him too long. At his lips in particular.

  She didn’t think she’d ever wanted a kiss so badly. He was the key. She’d trusted him and the pieces started coming together, those jagged shards of jigsaw p
uzzle glass finally fitting into place with smooth perfection. But the desire was more than that. More than just an extension of the joy that made her want to throw her arms around him and sing. She was actually falling for Captain Justice.

  “It’s late,” he murmured. “Which bedroom do you want?”

  Whichever one you’re in. She wasn’t ready for tonight to end. Yes, her energy had long since drained past empty, but she wanted to hold onto this feeling—this clarity accented by the keen edge of want. She was terrified if she went to sleep, she’d wake up blurry and muddled again. Maybe if she wasn’t alone… With him, she was more focused. Had been since she met him, but tonight was a whole new level. Tonight she was herself again, and whether it was her real desires or grateful euphoria, she wanted him.

  “Mirage? Do you care which bed?”

  She jerked her spine straight, realizing with a jolt that she’d been leaning toward him, leaning in for a kiss he obviously didn’t want to give her. “Ah, no. Whichever is fine.”

  “We’ll do more in the morning.” He grimaced at the clock. “Or afternoon. See if we can trigger some more memories.” He reached out, almost as if he would pat her knee, but pulled his hand back before he made contact. He lurched to his feet, not entirely steady, but when she stood to help him, he took a quick step away from her. “Good night, Mirage.”

  “G’night,” she echoed, watching him make his way toward the left bedroom with careful steps. “Thank you,” she called after him, though she’d already thanked him dozens of times tonight. He waved to acknowledge the words without turning before the door clicked shut behind him.