Belle Flower.
13
“Belle?”
“Hi Jason,” she says, her voice weak and shallow. “I need to talk to you.”
“Of course,” he says, sitting back on his bed. He glances over his shoulder at Deege just to make sure he didn’t wake her up and then he decides to leave the room — best not to talk to the old girlfriend in the presence of the new girlfriend. “So … what’s up?”
“Can we meet?”
“Are you in town?”
“I’m on the roof.”
14
“Hey,” he says, his voice catching in his throat at the sight of the first woman he ever loved. Belle Flower is blond, shortish, rounded. Every part of her — face, eyes, lips, chin, breasts, butt — seems to be rounded. She’s in a new costume: blue on one side, white on the other, and a long image of a blue tulip on the white half. She hasn’t bothered with her mask, and it’s clear she’s been crying.
“Hey,” she says, the wind taking her short, curly locks and sending them across her face. “Thanks for coming up.”
“Of course,” he says, stopping just out of reach. He decided to come up in his costume. “What’s going on?”
“No one else came,” she says. “Well, almost no one.”
“Who …?”
“Hello, Jason.”
He spins to see Becca Rokers, dressed as Fake Out, moving into view from behind a large ventilation shaft. “What’s going on?”
Becca moves past him to stand with Belle, who says, “This was supposed to be an intervention.”
“An intervention? For what? Are you serious right now?”
“Jason,” Belle says, gathering strength from Becca, who reaches over to hold her hand, “I think you’re a nice guy, underneath it all, I really do. So does Becca. And I’m guessing DG does, too, but you use the women you date. Becca, DG, even that reporter.”
“I didn’t use you up,” he says, clouds rolling across his mind. This is bullshit, he thinks, but part of him is soaring because it’s Belle who’s behind this, and if she still wants him …
“No, you didn’t,” she admits, taking her hand from Becca’s to hug herself. “But maybe you would have, if I believed in that behavior.”
Jason cocks his head to Becca. “She means sex,” he says, feeling poison dripping from his words. “Belle doesn’t believe in sex.”
“In premarital sex,” Belle corrects him.
“I don’t see a ring on that finger,” he points out. “So what’s the difference?”
“Jason,” Belle says, stepping forward, “you’re out of control. Ever since you broke away from Rapscallion, your behavior is becoming increasingly dangerous and non-heroic.”
“Non-heroic?” he asks, shaking his head. “For you and the morality squad up on the moon? I don’t want to be a Revolutionary, Belle. Never did. Never will. And you,” he points to Becca, “how the fuck did you get out of the Stockade?”
“I’m working with the Revos now.”
“Of course,” Jason rolls his eyes. “They need a new puppy to save with Deege down here.”
“Where is Duplication Girl?” Belle asks.
“None of your business.”
Belle shakes her head. “Dang it, Jason.”
“Careful with the language, Belle,” he says, wanting to find a way to hurt her like she hurt him. He knows these words can’t do it, but he also knows the emotional history that lies beneath them is like a dagger to Belle. He loved her. She loved him. He wanted things she didn’t.
“You make it sound like doing the right thing is something to be ashamed of.”
“Shit piss cock motherfucker,” he says. “Am I less of a person now than I was five seconds ago?”
“Hey,” Becca snaps, “she might play with kid gloves, but I don’t.” She waves her hand and the entire building disappears from under Jason, leaving him standing on a small ledge, looking down at the pavement below. He knows this is an illusion, but it’s still unnerving. “Where the hell is Duplication Girl?”
“Where do you think?” Kid asks. “She’s in my bed downstairs.”
“Are you sure?” Becca asks.
“Yeah,” he says. “I just saw her right before coming up.”
“So you won’t mind if we check in on her?” Belle asks. He hears something in her voice he has never heard before — fear.
“Of course,” he answers, taken aback. What the hell is in Belle’s mind to cause her to worry?
15
Belle can barely give voice to the words she has to say as she kneels by the bed, softly stroking Duplication Girl’s hair.
“She’s dead,” Belle whispers, as tears begin to roll down her cheeks. “What have you done, Jason?” she asks, and wonders how much sympathy she can muster for a good boy who’s become a bad man.
PART SIX
INTERLUDE
1998
1
“Good evening, Miss Flower,” the butler says at the open door. “Please do come inside.”
“Thank you, Winton,” Belle Flower says. She wears a pleasant summer dress, black and covered with a pattern of daffodils, her superhero costume nowhere to be found. “But it’s Miss Christensen, tonight. No need for masks and capes this evening, let us hope.”
Winton gives the young woman a polite bow, closing the door behind her, and leading her into the foyer of Flack Mansion. A grand staircase sits in the back left and a spiral staircase, covered in vines sits opposite it in the back right. Straight ahead is an entrance to an arboretum, and several hallways lead off both right and left walls.
“Thank you for coming, Miss Christensen,” Winton says. “I hope things are well between you and Jason.”
“Yes,” she says, blushing slightly. This is not the conversation she expected to have with the butler of the house and it makes her slightly uncomfortable. “Where is Jason?” she asks, and then adds with a nervous laugh, “Or is he trying to impress me by making a grand entrance?” she asks, pointing to the staircase.
Winton smiles politely. “It is not Jason who asked you here, Miss Christensen,” he informs her. “It was me.”
“But …” she absently pulls out her phone, looking for reassurance that it was Jason who texted her.
“Yes,” Winton says, pulling Jason’s phone out of his pocket. “Caller ID only tells a person which phone is contacting them, not which person.”
“Winton, I …”
“Relax, Miss Christensen,” he says politely. “I apologize for the subterfuge, but I thought it important that we talk.” Winton moves to the side of the room, where a painting of Sandra Flack hangs on the wall. “This was Jason’s adopted mother. Has he told you about her?”
“Only that she was murdered three years ago,” Belle says quietly. “The gardner, was it?”
Winton’s hands go behind his back. “The gardner was actually a super villain. Corazón Sangrante.”
“Bleeding Heart,” Belle says, confused. “But the papers said …”
“Yes, the papers,” Winton nods, “but you are in the business and you know who Jason’s adopted father is, and you know that the public does not know this. It is not uncommon, in cases where a villain attacks a hero through his private identity for these details to be obscured in the press.”
“So Corazón killed Mrs. Flack?”
“No, Miss Christensen,” Winton says. “He was, to use a rude colloquialism, a patsy.”
“Then who …?” she asks, but she already knows.
“I need to show you something,” Winton says.
“I don’t think …” Belle starts to protest.
“Have you ever seen this before?” Winton asks, pulling a golden amulet out of his coat pocket.
Belle’s will is drained from her body.
2
Fingers snap.
Belle awakens in a bedroom somewhere inside Flack Mansion. She stands at the foot of a bed, and she sees Winton standing on the right of the bed, near the window. Befor
e the command of “run” moves from her brain to her feet, she sees two people standing on the left of the bed: Eagle ’62 and Striped Star. He wears a United States military uniform with a camouflage design, but colored red, white, and blue, and she is in her traditional leather armor.
“I don’t …”
“Belle,” Striped Star says gently, “do forgive Winton for his dramatics, but we were delayed and he had to improvise.”
“What’s going on?” she asks, wondering what Jason could have done to bring both Eagle ’62 and Striped Star to Flack Mansion. She has known Jason for a year and knows he has been in love with her from the moment they met at a performance and training center run by yesterday’s heroes to create tomorrow’s capes. They have been dating a few months and other than the fact that he is 17 and wants to have sex with her and she is 20 and won’t have sex until she’s married, it has been a rather normal relationship. “Am I in trouble?” she asks weakly.
“Not at all,” Striped Star says. “Winton, in fact, thinks you have done a world of good for Jason.”
“Winton … why are you in conversation with Jason’s butler?” she asks, feeling defensive. “And why—?”
“Winton is more than a butler,” Eagle ’62 explains. “He was, in fact, me before I was me.”
Belle’s eyes go wide. “You were Eagle ’41?”
Winton nods. “But we are not here to discuss my life, but Jason’s life. This house,” he explains, “is one of deep secrets, and tonight you will learn one of its darkest.”
Winton pulls the amulet out of his pocket and Belle turns away.
“Rest your mind,” Striped Star assures her. “The amulet can put a mind to sleep and then allow its holder to walk through the relaxed memoryscape. The wielder can then leave with a specific memory, trapping it inside the amulet.”
“Playing with someone’s mind is wrong,” Belle protests.
“Would you rather Jason remember this?” Winton asks.
The amulet glows and a stolen memory from Jason’s past plays again in the room where the incident took place. It is the memory of the night Jason fell off the cliff. He is laying in this bed, his adopted mother at his side.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Jason says, “for adopting me.”
Sandra smiles at that. “So like your father when he was younger.”
“My …”
“Francis was always such a handsome boy.”
“Ma’am, I …”
“I told you, call me Sandra,” she says, and her hand reaches under the covers of his bed.
3
“Ma’am, I don’t think you should …”
“Your body does not agree with your mouth,” Sandra says, and her hand does not stop moving up and down beneath the covers.
4
“Make it stop!” Belle yells, tears on her cheeks.
“End it,” Striped Star orders Winton and the butler nods, rubbing the amulet and whispering an incantation. The image disappears.
Belle opens her mouth to speak but there are no words. The older heroes give her a moment to gather her thoughts but all she can say is, “Why …?”
“If it were up to me,” Winton says, “I would have ended her life that night. That was my intent, but this body does not work as well as it once did.”
“Francis found him,” Eagle ’62 says, “and stopped him.”
“He swore it would never happen again,” Winton explains, “and, as far as I know, it didn’t. Until the night of April 19, 1996, at least.”
Realization comes to the young hero. “You killed her.”
Winton nods. “This time, however,” he says, his voice low but steady, “it was Jason who found me. We fought and he … he slipped. Fell into a coma,” Winton frowns. “Francis saved him, but only by injecting him with the Peak drug that he was taking to make him Rapscallion. When Jason recovered, his training began.”
5
“Does he know?” Belle asks Winton in the kitchen after Eagle ’62 and Striped Star have left.
Winton shakes his head. “I was planning on telling him when he turned 18,” he says.
“I just … how can things like this happen?” she asks.
“Kids are abused all over the world,” Winton answers.
“That’s not what I mean,” she says, shaking her head.
“Oh,” Winton says, nodding. “The cover-ups.”
“Yes!” Belle says, banging her fist on the island counter. “Sandra should have been in jail! You should be in jail! The cops should have been—!”
Winton sighs and rubs his eyes. “The Revolutionaries think highly of you, Miss Christensen, but even the most idealistic of capes sometimes make questionable decisions. They never knew about Sandra’s abuse because Rapscallion never told them. Should I have told them?” he asks. “Perhaps. Perhaps I am so far gone from who I used to be that I thought too much like a butler and too little like a cape. Perhaps that is just an excuse,” he admits. “But what if this had gone to trial? What if Eagle ’41 was put on trial for killing a woman who sexually assaulted a 14-year old boy? Do you really think any jury would find me guilty?”
“That doesn’t make what you did right!” Belle insists.
Winton puts the amulet on the countertop and slides it across the marble to the young hero. “Jason’s memories aren’t the only ones in there. Some of Sandra’s memories have been taken, too. Abuse,” he says sadly, “is a cycle that not even the Amulet of Anamnesis can break, it seems.”
“So Jason will … Jason will …”
“Let us hope it never comes to that,” Winton says. “I leave the amulet with you now. Perhaps I am too close to the situation. Perhaps you are too far away. When you are ready,” he says, walking to a door that leads to the pantry, “the Witches of Avalon City will train you how to use the amulet.”
Winton opens the door to the pantry, but instead of food and kitchen items behind the door, Belle sees a bridge of light leading to a glimmering white castle.
6
A week later, Belle shows Jason the memories that Winton had taken from him.
Without discussion, he breaks up with Belle and takes someone else to that night’s Pearl Jam concert.
He never discusses any of this with Belle.
He breaks Winton’s nose.
He decides he will stop being Rapscallion’s sidekick as soon as he can make it on his own.
PART
SIX
9/11
continued
16
“You don’t think I killed her, do you?” Jason asks, backing away from the bed.
Belle Flower knows she is done with all of this. She wants to be a Hero. To do Good Things. To Make A Difference. But time and again she is confronted by the dark things done by good people, and as she kneels by the severed head of Duplication Girl on a day when the world has gone mad, she wants to take her costume off and never put it on, again.
She thinks of the decisions made by Winton, by Rapscallion, by Eagle ’62, and Striped Star and knows she wants nothing to do with it.
“I’m done,” she says, standing up.
Belle knows she should call the cops because that is exactly what she was mad at the others for not doing, but here, confronted by the horror of a murder she doesn’t honestly think Jason could have done, she hesitates.
Why?
If she believes in the system, she calls this in and lets the local police deal with it. They’ll kick it up to the FBI’s Cape Division, or maybe the United Nations given that Duplication Girl was technically built in a lab in Copenhagen. She could call the Revolutionaries, but they’re off stopping an alien invasion, and any other heroes are dealing with the attacks in New York and Washington.
Her eyes look at DG’s lifeless face and the blood-soaked spot of bed and rug. She looks to Jason’s stunned, horrified face. She guesses there is cocaine in his system and his semen inside of DG. Even if he’s innocent, he’ll be wrung through the ringer of the press.
“What do we do?” Becca asks.
Belle Flower looks to Jason. She wants so badly to call the cops, but she doesn’t know if she wants to do it because she hates him or herself. Not calling the cops crosses a line that she swore she would never cross.
And yet, she does.
“We handle this in-house,” she says.
17
The Fort is empty.
The Revolutionaries are somewhere between the Earth and Mars, fighting the interstellar army of the Loshow K civilization. Mars, apparently, is burning from their failed attempt to stop the warrior race.
Belle is glad they wouldn’t let her go with them.
She moves quickly, teleporting Jason’s entire bedroom to a secure evidence lab here on the moon. Becca puts her skills to the test, hacking into the Grand Vegas’ security system, looking for clues. As for Jason … he tries to step in and help but he just gets in the way, and so both Belle and Becca push him away.
18
“What’s going on down on Earth?” Vincent Vogelsung asks as Kid Rapscallion wanders into his cell unit.
“Terrorists have hit New York,” he says, sitting against the wall of the igloo and staring across the short, white floor to the glass cube that contains the former Five of Clubs/Penthouse Man.
“The subway?” Vincent asks, coming out of his chair to move to the wall, as if being a few feet closer to the bad news will get it to him quicker.
Kid shakes his head. “The World Trade Center,” he explains, his eyes on the floor.
“A bomb?”
“A plane,” Jason shakes his head, having just seen a quick recap after Becca shooed him away. “One for each tower.”
Used to Be: The Kid Rapscallion Story Page 11
