#shadow 001

– You’re sitting on the bus, trying to parse everything that’s happened together in your head. It all just… feels like one big blur. So much has happened in the span between when you woke up, left the hospital, and now. Your mom’s number isn’t in your phone, and you know with everything that’s happened she has to be worried sick about you. You almost don’t hear what’s happening a few feet away from you on the train. 

There are a couple kids talking loudly enough to break you out of your trance. They’re gossiping loudly about a kid nearby, about the one in the dark robes, clearly wanting him to hear the nasty things they’re saying about him. How he looks creepy, how they bet he’s actually a murderer. You bristle, remembering when the same thing would happen to you, not too long ago. And it just… it makes your blood boil. 

Leg in a splint or not, you stand up and bark at them. 

“Oh yeah, well is that the kind of person *you* really want to be? Someone who just assumes who a person is by what they look like?” 

Plenty of heroes looked like villains. There were even rankings in papers that listed them off in order of how much people thought it suited them. It always left a bad taste in your mouth, but you’re not about to sit by and watch someone say stuff like that about a kid.

“Well you don’t get to choose who he is. Only he gets to do that. So go ahead – run your mouth, it says a lot more about you than it does him.” 

The two clearly seem embarrassed for a moment, but then they laugh at you before brushing you off, getting off by the next stop. Nothing about the situation feels nice, or makes you want to smile as if you’ve done something good. But you couldn’t just stand there and watch. You sit down across the darkly clothed boy, eyebrows furrowed.