The crisp night air was a relief on their flushed face. Oasis - no, SwordBright - crouched on the edge of their apartment building’s roof and took in the neighbourhood. They’d mostly insisted on going out patrolling to get away from Alice and her questions. They didn’t want to talk about the future any more than they already had, not when the past was catching up to them so brutally tonight.
It would have been an interesting data point for psychology, if Oasis had been in any way interested in the field. Their trauma really was encoded in their body, or in any case in the soft tissue of their younger brain. Reactions they had spent a lifetime trying to unlearn, such as freezing when a family member yelled at them, were now happening without their say so.
They wondered if the personality they’d had at fifty would come back to them gradually, or at all. They’d envisioned doing this with their middle-aged mind and reactions, not as the neurotic mess they’d been at twenty. Yet so far, confronted with Karry and Alice, that was exactly how they had acted. Perhaps it would take some time for their memories of the future to integrate in their younger mind? Perhaps their brain just needed to forge new pathways? They hoped so. It was unnerving, to remember being a different person.
It made them feel vulnerable, and frustrated with their own self. Over thirty years, Oasis had never quite gotten the hang of feeling like an adult, but at least they’d eventually stopped feeling like an incompetent. This situation had thrown them off balance, so maybe a nice bit of patrolling was what they needed to get their head back in the game.
Alice had vehemently disagreed, arguing that after casting a spell to roll back the universe thirty years AND confronting both Katarina and her within the span of a few hours, Oasis deserved rest. They didn’t argue that they were exhausted. But it was that particular flavour of exhaustion that made all of their nerves ending feel like they were on fire, and Oasis worried that they might actually be too tired to sleep.
Or perhaps Oasis just didn’t know what shape their nightmares would take tonight and wasn’t in any hurry to find out.
They checked their gear one last time, trying to re-familiarize themselves with what they’d been wearing as SwordBright thirty years past. They had their sword, of course. The sturdy cargo pants and boots they’d gotten from the army surplus. They had a nice bullet proof vest that had been given to them by the Toronto police department one Christmas not long after their official superhero debut, hidden beneath a t-shirt with the logo of the Canadian Superhero League. The bilingual logo, which was more of a political statement than one would think. Their beloved brown leather jacket was on top, with its assortment of pins and patches and the bright green sticker that said They/Them. They’d started wearing it mostly as a joke, but now they kept it out of a sort of morbid curiosity regarding which media outlet would flat-out ignore it. Finally came a thick pair of leather gloves and a cool custom motorcycle helmet. The helmet had been acquired through a series of Internet transactions they’d tried to make sure couldn’t be traced back to them, which had been a hassle but had since been proved worth it. Oasis had not yet received the questionably humorous “head injury of the month” award that featured on the locked CSL Facebook group. It was something of a point of pride for them, especially after they’d gotten shot in their first year on the field like an amateur.
They did have a professional superhero outfit provided by the League, with a cape and everything. But they hadn’t been consulted on the design of it at all, and it offered little more in the way of protection than their current getup anyway. Oasis mostly wore it on Occasions, like one would a military ceremonial uniform. It infuriated the League’s marketing department, but Oasis didn’t really care. Most people seemed to think that the helmet and jacket was cooler, anyway.
They fiddled with their gloves, a little annoyed at how they didn’t fit quite as well as the one that they’d had in the future, then took a deep breath. Truth be told, they were a little nervous. It had been years since they had patrolled, and they worried that they would be a little rusty with it.
They wished they could say that time travelling had given them some forewarning, that they now had advance knowledge of every crime that would be happening in the city. But they didn’t; it was hard enough remembering in which coffee shop they’d been a barista thirty years ago, let along what every petty criminal they’d ever met had been up to.
They did remember that some idiot would try and summon a demon in a couple of months, and that something something or another would happen at the Exchange Tower in maybe three years. The major events like that, they would probably be able to anticipate. Or maybe not. Asking Karry for help had already changed their dynamic, and every day from now would bring them away from the established time line of their past. Who was to say that any of their major super villain would show up at the exact same time, in the exact same manner?
So it seemed as if Oasis would just have to go about their patrolling in the usual way.
Their apartment was located near where Dundas street crossed the train track, so they gave it a quick once-over before moving up toward College street. Patrolling Toronto wasn’t an easy task, and SwordBright couldn’t fly or teleport or anything of the sort, so they usually just picked a direction and started walking. The PATH was useful for getting around, even if it was an underground maze of tunnels and shopping malls. Sometimes they took buses, or the subway. They weren’t worried about missing anything, to be honest. Their speciality wasn’t stopping criminals or robberies or whatever; it was super villains, which usually found him, or magical incidents, which weren’t easy to miss.
Everything else the police or firemen could take care of, and it was easier on everyone if SwordBright didn’t try to get in their way. This has been a lesson learnt early on; they weren’t bullet proof, and were better off not getting involved in situations that fell out of the scope of their superpowers. Most superheroes took a long time to come to this realization and scale back their eagerness to help others. For SwordBright, it had only taken being shot once.
After that particular incident, they had given their cell number to the police, and everyone had come to a polite agreement that they should call SwordBright if anything magical came up, and they’d do the same if they came across ‘regular’ criminals. Even though they still disliked the cops, at least their interactions had mellowed out since, and they’d even been given that nice bulletproof vest.
(Oasis was pretty sure that the officers who had presented it to them had been making fun of them, but hey. Free bulletproof vest. You won’t find that at the army surplus.)
They walked for about an hour up College Street. They took their time, the crisp night air helping clear their head. They didn’t expect any trouble to happen down here, not so early in the evening, but they liked walking around where the people could see them. The students near the University campus were always up for a high five or two, and it always cheered Oasis right up. Superhero-ing could be a lonely venture if one wasn’t careful. That was part of the reason why the CSL checked in with all of their members every month or so, even when there was nothing to report.
Oasis then veered South, walking another hour toward the harbour, but stopped at the foot of the CN tower, unable to go any further. For some reason, their heart started beating a mile a minute at the thought of going near the water. Chills rolled down their spine in electrifying waves, and their hand came to rest on the pommel of their sword without conscious thought. They tried to force themselves to keep going, but even the idea of it turned their stomach and paralysed them where they stood.
Lake Ontario…
Alice’s final resting place.
Nearby, the Stadium started vomiting people out in the street, some sports event or another letting up. The people were boisterously loud, cheering and jostling each other. The sudden noise cut through the relative calm of the night like unwelcome thunder. Once, this same stadium had been full of bodies, cowering from the Tyrant and his armies marching on the city.
Once, this stadium had been full of corpses.
Oasis turned heels and cut through a random street, heading any direction as long as it was away from the harbour and it’s ghosts.
Comments (0)
See all