Villains Don't Save Heroes!

by Mia Archer

  I had to trust that what I had with Fialux was strong enough that she’d be willing to listen and hear me out even if the temporary amnesia had temporarily wiped away all of her memories of us.

  At least I hoped it was only temporary. After all, I had no way of knowing how the med bay would work on a person with alien anatomy that had been scrambled to normal non-superpowered human anatomy.

  It could be that the amnesia was for good, or it could be that the amnesia was amplified by whatever Dr. Lana had done to her.

  Still, the way I saw it I really had no choice but to put all my cards on the table and hope she accepted my help. So I launched into an explanation of everything that had happened leading up to her memory loss.

  “Hold on a second,” Fialux said after I’d finished. “I don’t understand. Why would you be raiding the Applied Sciences Department at the University? And why would I come down to save you in the middle of fighting a couple of giant robots?”

  I stopped. Realized that perhaps I’d started the story at the wrong place considering she couldn’t remember everything that would explain why we were working together or why she was so concerned with saving me.

  So I backtracked a little bit and started the story with the class I’d taught in an attempt to lure her into a trap since that seemed to be adjacent the last things she actually remembered.

  She looked genuinely surprised when I admitted that Professor Terror was none other than the great Night Terror, and it was gratifying to know she really hadn’t known that was me standing at the front of the class all along.

  I continued with the explanation. I covered the fight with CORVAC. Discovering that Rex Roth had been manipulating her behind the scenes. I went into our tryst. How we flew into action together. How we’d been having the most wonderful time of our lives over the past couple of months getting to know one another.

  I finished and stared at her. My eyes darted between her own. She looked down and then back up. Bit her lip. And for a moment I wondered if the real Fialux was coming through.

  “I punched through a sphere,” she said, talking slowly.

  “Yeah,” I said, not daring to hope her memories might be coming back to her already.

  “And then you were there and you threw something and…”

  She shook her head. Finally she sighed. My heart sank at that sigh because I figured it meant nothing good for her memory suddenly reasserting itself like a bad soap opera where the writers had run out of ideas.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “But I just can’t…”

  I put a hand to her cheek. Stroked my thumb gently across her face. She closed her eyes and leaned into that stroke, and I figured that was a good sign. I figured that meant maybe there was some small part of her that remembered what we’d had even if the higher functioning parts of her brain weren’t picking up on those memories.

  She’d had that flash where she almost remembered, after all. That was something.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “Because I love you. And I’m going to do everything I can to help you. To save you and get you back to normal.”

  “And if I never do remember?” she asked.

  I sighed. I was reluctant to admit that was a possibility, but now that she was saying it I guess it was a reality I was going to have to face. There was a possibility that what Dr. Lana had done to her would be a permanent thing. That what I’d done to save her from Dr. Lana could be a permanent thing and I hadn’t even realized what I was doing. There was a non-remote chance that she really had lost her memories of the past couple of months for good.

  Which would explain why Dr. Lana looked so smug and satisfied with herself. Damn that woman.

  I was going to completely vaporize her the next time I ran into her. I was going to kill her in such a messy and nasty fashion that there was no way she’d be able to pull a creepy biological T-1000 and pull herself back together.

  But that was something to worry about it later. Right now I was more worried about Fialux. She was obviously scared and I needed to be there for her even if she couldn’t understand why I’d want to be there for her.

  “If you never remember then helping you will be its own reward,” I said. “I’m serious. I’d do anything for you, and that means…”

  I sighed again.

  What did you say in a moment like this? It’s not like there was a card for “I’m sorry your girlfriend lost her memory in a super powered battle with your new arch enemy and completely forgot about your entire relationship.”

  “I’ll do whatever it takes to help you, to save you, to make you better. Even if it means you completely forget everything we ever had.”

  There we were. It felt weird to speak a truth like that.

  This wasn’t me. I was a villain. I tried to take over the world. Sure I tried to avoid collateral damage, but I always told myself that was more because I didn’t want to destroy the world that I planned on taking over someday. Not out of any sort of misguided sense of compassion.

  But maybe there was a softy lurking deep inside me. And it took the world’s greatest hero relying on me to realize that. I loved her so much that I’d save her even if it meant losing that love that was pushing me to do this in the first place.

  She smiled. It was a hesitant smile. Almost as though she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe me. But the smile was there, and that was something.

  It wasn’t a smile that held anything close to the heat I’d grown accustomed to seeing from her. It was a flickering candle compared to the raging bonfire I’d gotten used to in the passionate whirlwind romance we’d had in the months since facing down CORVAC, but I’d take it.

  It was a start. It was a hell of a lot better than her trying to use superpowers she didn’t have any more to defeat me.

  “You’re completely serious, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “I am,” I said.

  I reached out a hand. I wondered if she’d take mine. She reached out. As though she was seriously considering it, but then she stopped at the last moment. Pulled her hand back. That look was enough to break my heart.

  To see the face of a woman who loved me, and to know she couldn’t remember any of the reasons why she’d been so head over heels for me…

  Well that was something that hit me harder than anything she’d ever been able to throw my way when she had her powers. It was something that was more destructive to me than anything Dr. Lana had thrown at me, for that matter.

  Though I suppose in some perverted way this was something that Dr. Lana had done to me. She’d done it to both of us. And I hated her for it. I was going to pay her back for this.

  Something weird was happening to Fialux, and it chased away the thoughts of vengeance dancing through my head. Her eyes watered. A single tear trickled down her cheek. And then the water works really started coming.

  I stared. To be honest I wasn’t exactly equipped to deal with this sort of thing. Interpersonal relations, at least the kind of interpersonal relations that didn’t involve intimidating people or trying to bend them to my will, or maybe even occasionally bribing them to my will, weren’t my strong suit.

  Inventing game changing technologies that I could then manufacture and use to take over the world? Yeah, that sort of thing was my bag. Dealing with a beautiful woman I loved who couldn’t remember me and now she was sobbing as she realized her whole world as she knew it had come crashing down around her?

  Let’s just say I’d never bothered to invent something that would help me through something like this.

  But I’d been learning. That was something. I knew more about interacting with people, with Fialux in particular, today than I ever had before. So I scooted closer to her. Let her bury her head against my shoulder. Which felt good.

  I guess I hadn’t realized how much I needed to feel her against me. How much I wanted that touch. It was a small return to normalcy in a world that had gone crazy.

  And color me surprised, pleasantly so, when she wra
pped her arms around me and buried her face against my shoulder. I hesitantly put an arm around her, wondering how she was going to take it, but when she seemed to welcome the contact I figured we were good to go.

  It was weird suddenly having to watch myself around a girl I’d been so close to. Having to be careful about anything I did, but the last thing I wanted to do was spook her and make the situation even worse than it already was.

  But it felt good to hold her against me. Even if she was crying. I’d take that, because I figured it was as good as things were going to get.

  For now.

  26

  Pain

  She just kept crying. To the point that I couldn’t really think of anything to say. How did you console someone in a moment like this?

  So I ran a hand through her hair. It was always so nice stroking her hair. It always felt so silky smooth. And it seemed like it was calming her down feeling that touch.

  I’d never been sure if that perfect hair of hers was a result of how she shampooed and conditioned it, or if it was simply that one of her many superpowers was perfect hair.

  And I guess I had my answer about her silky smooth hair now. After all, if she’d had all of her powers revoked then her hair must feel this good naturally. If perfect hair was one of her superpowers then it’d be all streaky and frazzled now, but she was as perfectly coiffed as ever.

  Damn. Some girls had all the luck. I mean obviously she didn’t have all the luck right now considering everything that’d happened to her, she’d probably try to punch me if I tried to insinuate anything she was going through right now was lucky, but you get my meaning.

  “There, there,” I said. “It’s all going to be okay. Natalie’s going to take care of everything.”

  She looked up at me, her eyes red. My heart broke seeing her like that. My heart wanted to reach out and break someone’s face seeing Selena like that.

  “Natalie?”

  I blushed. I needed to remember this was all new information for her now even though it had been old information for her this morning.

  “That’s my real name,” I said.

  “Huh,” she said. “Well in that case it’s only fair I tell you my name is…”

  “Selena Solare,” I finished before she had a chance to.

  She jumped, but I wasn’t sure why. As far as I could tell her memories went back to when I’d been teaching her class, but maybe there were holes in there I didn’t know about. Either way she should’ve been able to figure out I knew her name since I was teaching that class.

  Obviously I was going to have to sit down with her and go over everything. Try to figure out exactly what she did and didn’t remember.

  Just thinking about it made me want to hurt Dr. Lana. I mean I always wanted to hurt Dr. Lana, but the more I discovered, to my displeasure, that there was a hell of a lot about what Dr. Lana was doing that I didn’t understand the more I wanted to punch her face in over and over again.

  The fact that she could heal herself was only a plus as far as I was concerned. That meant I could punch her to my heart’s content, wait for her to heal, and then punch her some more for good measure!

  Thinking about hitting that oh-so-punchable face made my fist clench, and Fialux yelped.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “Sorry,” I said with a blush. “I was thinking about the bitch who did this to you and I got a little upset and…”

  “Not that,” Fialux said. “I meant what was that feeling?”

  I stared at her long and hard. What could she possibly be…

  And then it hit me. Or rather it hit me what had just hit her.

  It suddenly occurred to me that it was quite possible she’d gone her entire life being invulnerable. Which meant me yanking on her hair just now because I was thinking of all the nasty things I wanted to do to Dr. Lana might very well be the first time she’d felt pain.

  It boggled my mind to think of someone whose experience was so different from the rest of the world that she didn’t even know what it was like to feel pain, but here we were. I had to remind myself that she was a stranger from…

  Well, to be perfectly honest I didn’t know where she was from, how she got here, or how she got her powers in the first place. All I knew was I loved her, and I figured that was enough. She would tell me her secrets in time.

  Though that time might never come now what with this new stumbling block. Damn Dr. Lana and her stupid plots to screw with my life. All because she was jealous and knew, deep down, that I was going to take over the world before she did.

  “That was pain,” I said.

  “So that’s what that feels like?” she asked.

  Her face screwed up in a frown. As though she’d just smelled something unpleasant and not as though she’d just experienced one of the prime motivating factors for all living things in the history of life.

  “I don’t know that I like it. How do you deal with it?”

  “By cocooning myself in as much advanced technology as possible to try and avoid it,” I said. “I suppose everyone else just deals with it. Life is pain, as a wise man once said.”

  “A wise man?” she asked.

  “Bill Goldman,” I said. “But that’s not important. What is important is I’m here for you. And you might not have your powers, but we can fix that.”

  “Do you really think so?” she asked.

  I hated that look on her face. So trusting. As though she thought I really could pull it off. That I really could find a way to defeat Dr. Lana and figure out how the hell she’d stolen Fialux’s powers.

  I wasn’t anywhere close to sure that I could pull it off, I’d been bowling a big fat zero lately when it came to fighting Dr. Lana’s schemes, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell Fialux that.

  So instead I lied. Hey, it’s not like lying was something that was difficult for me. It’d been one of the main tools in my arsenal once upon a time.

  Although this would mark the first time I’d ever lied to someone because I was trying to make them feel better about their situation in life rather than trying to dupe them into doing whatever it was I wanted them to do in the moment.

  It was a change, but for some reason it felt like a good change. I know there are some people who think lying is bad no matter what, but they’re full of shit.

  She wasn’t crying now. At least not forceful sobs like a moment ago, but there were still some tears trickling down her face. So I decided to be a little forward. I reached out and pulled her against me again.

  For a surprise she let me. Which I figured was a good sign.

  “You don’t have to worry about anything,” I said. “Night Terror is going to take care of everything. Were going to track down the woman responsible for doing this to you and I’m going to vaporize her…”

  “What was that?” she asked, looking up sharply.

  Oh. Right. That whole memory loss thing.

  Sure my Fialux, the one I’d been dating this morning, still wasn’t exactly a fan of me killing other people. She still considered it to be one of the pillars of her heroic holier-than-thou attitude that she tried not to kill anyone directly, although I had pointed out that she was so reckless with the way she “fought evil” that sometimes people got killed without her even realizing what she was doing.

  Somehow pointing out that little bit of hypocrisy on her part still hadn’t exactly made her happy about the idea that I was okay with killing people if they needed killing, but at the same time she’d come to accept it.

  Sort of.

  I think vaporizing Rex Roth when he’d been doing his very best to try and mind control her into doing his bidding had gone a long way towards convincing her there were people out there who only improved the world by being removed from it.

  I had to keep reminding myself that this wasn’t my Fialux though. No, this was the Fialux who’d confronted me. The one who hadn’t been happy about all of my lessons blaming heroes for all of Starlight City’s woe
s. Even if she may or may not remember that class.

  No, this wasn’t the Fialux who’d watched with satisfaction as I vaporized Rex Roth after he’d made one desperate last-ditch attempt to control her mind.

  This was the Fialux who’s repeatedly handed me my ass in a gift-wrapped package that she then dropped off at the local constabulary which ended up costing me a small fortune in legal bills. Seriously, my shark of a lawyer had been able to buy a new boat with what I paid him while I was trying to defeat Fialux, and he was a man with expensive taste in boats.

  “It was nothing,” I said.

  “Because it sounded like…”

  I cut her off by pulling her head against my shoulder again. Started running my hand through her hair. I’d never get tired of doing that.

  And if it distracted her from the more murderous side of my megalomania, the more murderous side of my desire to help those closest to me, then all the better.

  But we were going to have to get around that at some point, because Dr. Lana really wasn’t long for this world, and something told me Fialux wasn’t going to be happy about it if she hadn’t regained her memory by the time we got to that point.

  Not a comforting thought. My future filling up with bridges I was going to cross when I came to them, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that any one of them could collapse out from under me the moment I was right in the middle.

  27

  Proof

  I gave Fialux a wide berth for the rest of that day into the next. Things got a little awkward after she realized she’d basically been crying on me for the better part of an hour.

  I was pretty sure from the medical readouts I was looking at, from the way her heart rate fluctuated wildly and all her other stats were going a little wonky, that she was still having one hell of a cry in her room. I’d moved her back to the rustic cabin buried deep under Starlight City suburbia.

  I figured the room had all the same safety features as the recovery room, so why not let her enjoy something that might calm her down?