Superhero Genre Enjoyer

He’s not dead, and a square of sunlight has fallen over his skeletal legs. The sheets shine brighter than white. Jasper curls in on himself. There are so many figures surrounding him. Prisoners wear lime green, staff wear gray, and guards wear black, but the man at the foot of his bed wears black and white, and both shades are iridescent. Elster. The magpie. The supervillain.

“You, young man, are lucky to be alive. You did not listen to my advice”. The voice, which Zachary recognizes from shaky cell phone videos and his own visions, commands like electricity. This supervillain told him to surrender when he was sent into combat, for his own good. He did not listen, and nearly died. Elster saved him.

Once, Zachary had a crush on this man. That kind of foolishness didn’t survive the his imprisonment. Instead, Jasper looks up at this fae creature with love and terror previously reserved for God.

“I’m sorry. I should’ve listened. I didn’t believe you. Please-“ He didn’t trust his visions. He was more afraid of what his handler and the guards could do than the divine terrible thing that sought him out in his dreams. Jasper is bleary and only mostly alive. He doesn’t care that he’s finally free. He sees nothing but the pale face ahead of him.

“Oh,” the villain says as an aside. He feels as exposed as during his vivisection. “He was much less broken while unconscious”.

“Of course you didn’t believe me. I am known for lies and deceit and destruction. But all you’ve ever wanted is to be good, yes?”

No, not all he ever wanted. He didn’t care about being good when he got these powers or watched that video of Elster winning a duel against Captain Cavalier again and again. He wants to be good now that he knows what it feels like to have a shock collar stabbed into his neck.

A collar which is gone, by the way. He’s lying in a nest of IVs and too tired to see straight, but there’s nothing holding him down. What will they do if he goes rogue again? Don’t they know he killed a man while in a similarly medical room? He’s a murderer, a monster. His teeth are pointed fangs.

“I want to be good. I’ve learned my lesson. I’m not like you”.

Other, less important people begin speaking. Jasper runs one hand across his face. There’s a raised symbol on his palm? A magical brand, his own magic explains. His body isn’t the hideous monster he remembers becoming, but Jasper still has pointed ears and bleached dirty hair. Two scar-like lines, alien markings, carve under his eyes.

He’s too much like Elster. Killers too powerful to be controlled. He certainly isn’t human anymore. Jasper ends up with both hands clasped on the back of his neck where the collar should be, breathing hard.

“Calm”.

He obeys. The charm effect feels like sunlight should. He lowers his hands and looks at the famous faces around him. He needs to write his sister, and Jackson, and everyone else he knew. They’ll think he’s a monster but he at least needs to say goodbye. He should be dead. A villain saved his life and branded his soul.

Elster draws his attention again. “Wanting to be good is an excellent thing to be. This room is happy to hear that. They want you to do good as well”.

Jasper laughs like a hawk screeches. There’s blood on his hands, and corrupting Darkness too. In the woods, he fought to kill. Just like he killed that guard. He wasn’t supposed to. His handler said so, and then everything was pain. Wanting to be good doesn’t matter anymore. Murderer. Elster killed eight thousand and he’s only got killed one, but that same word applies to them both.

A voice further away calls his attention. He knows it from press releases and cartoons, and more recently, politics. The hero Captain Cavalier has decided he deserved to live. Is the entire Horizon Guard here? Well, two of the team are dead, but he recognizes all four living founders.

Where Elster is all things elegant, the captain is blunt and courageous. “Save the tricks for once he can remember his own name, okay? Jasper, eyes up here,”

What an odd thing for Cavalier to say. His name is twisted too. Captain Jack Cavalier in the media, Jacob Kalisher among friends. He turns to look. Captain Cavalier is always right. That is what it means to be an American boy of his generation.

“You’re not like him. You’re 18, can’t breathe, and had to be tortured for a month before you threw a punch. You are no supervillain, and we all got you out of that place to keep the Department of Supernatural Resources from turning you into one”.

Maybe he wasn’t evil when he was first arrested in May, but that’s water under the bridge.

“You’re too late,” he says, while aware that he shouldn’t disagree with the embodiment of protectiveness. “I can’t be here. I’m a monster. You saw what I turned into, in the woods. I should’ve died. I killed someone. You should have let me die”.

“Remarkable how nearly all of what you just said is wrong,” Elster replies with a wicked smile.

The captain snaps at him in a language that Jasper neither recognizes nor understands, and Elster goes quiet as he speaks.

“You didn’t kill anyone. You attacked a guard who had abused you, but he lived. Prison staff realized that saying you were a killer would break you completely. You wouldn’t hesitate to hurt people, if you thought were already past saving. You were raised in that kind of culture”.

“What about the rest of it?”

“Being a monster? Well, I’m made of living clay and desperation, and I’ve killed hundreds of people. We’re all monsters and dead men here”.

“It was war. You’re a superhero,” he says, because it was. It’s not murder when heroes do it.

“Thanks to the media. I could’ve been a killing machine just as easily”.

“You’re still too late. I’m broken. You said it yourself. Why bother with any of this?”

Captain Cavalier then says something about redemption. Fighting against systems of punishment and conquest by creating a team of kids who were supposed to be villains. He’ll join a team and prove that anyone can do good. It’s too much like something from a comic for Jasper to believe it. Yes, the Horizon Guard should never have worked. But times have changed.

“Let me try,” Elster says, and commands Jasper to show him his branded hand. He expects the man’s superhuman strength, but it still frightens him. Elster digs a thumb into his palm to force his fingers open. Normal handcuffs could never. The brand pulses like a wound, but at least it doesn’t hurt. God knows what painkillers are in his IVs.

“You have unprecedented magic, and this brand means that while you live, I benefit from that power as well. Without it, you would never have woken up”.

He does not think I wish. He stares into the teal-purple-blue eyes of a walking myth and thinks of nothing but how mice walk happily into baited traps.

“Your old captors thought you were valuable. I agree. The difference is that I will not torture you into obedience. You are already broken and eager to obey. In addition, I find you interesting. Was that easier to believe?”

The captain doesn’t speak, which could mean he accepts this, or it could mean he’s preparing to go berserk. He can never speak when he fights. Jasper accepts this. He can’t free his arm, but it doesn’t hurt, and that’s an improvement over being bound and electrocuted at once.

“Are you my handler now, sir?”

“Not quite. “Handler” means too much to you, and “master” means too much to your century. You may call me by my own name. The Horizon Guard will see to you until you’ve recovered. I’ve never been known for my kindness”.

Then he leaves in flash of prismatic light. Captain Cavalier lets out a string of curses, which nearly everyone else in the room contributes to, but Jasper remains perfectly still. He doesn’t even lower his hand until his aunt speaks.

“He wasn’t lying about the brand. You were unconscious for over a day. We tried everything”. It sounds like an apology. Did she know this would happen if his family sent him away?

“It’s alright. It doesn’t hurt”.

Did you know? Was it your idea? Why is he the only one who tried to save me?

“Can I have a phone? I want to call my sister”.

He can borrow hers. They do.

………………………………………

Captain Cavalier was originally just legally-distinct Captain America, but now he’s a loving riff on ww2 era comics and the men who wrote them. He’s named Cavalier after Michael Chabon’s Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and named Jacob/Jack after Jack Kirby, inventor of Captain America. He’s also a golem. Of the classic clay variety, not iron, snow, or whatever Minecraft has added this update.