One: Beginning

*minor mature warning*

***

The day Sage turned thirty, the person he hated most in the world pressed him up against a wall and fucked him silly.

Don’t ask Sage how it happened. He wasn’t sure himself.

Sage was just your average guy, by most people’s standards. He worked for a local advertising company. He was in the design department - not a team leader or even a particularly well-known employee. He was perfectly average, coasting through life with his nine to five workday, his two best friends who drank with him on weekends, and his cat named Miss Princess.

He also happened to have superpowers. Yeah – long story short, there were people in the world who had “genetic mutations” – which usually culminated in some kind of extraordinary ability. These people were typically recruited at birth to become ‘superheroes’ so that they could put their abilities to use for the common good. You either joined the government and did so, or, if you were like Sage, your only other options were to try to live a normal life or go in the complete opposite direction -

And become a villain.

Everyone, without fail, is tested for special abilities at birth. Sage was no exception, and from childhood the government had him and his family under strict watch. On the plus side, they paid a pretty hefty sum each month to keep his family well-fed and happy – their way of getting into Sage’s good graces, so that when he was older, they could smoothly adopt him into the Hero Force.

Yeah. Sage thought it was a dumb name too.

But, for the first half of Sage’s life, he had thought without a doubt that he would definitely become a hero and join the Force to do good in the world. It was as good as anything else, and it would ensure that his family was taken care of.

It would have been great. Except, once Sage really was older, the government told him, quite clearly, that his powers weren’t suited to saving people.

He asked what they were suited for.

The government didn’t give a straight answer on that one. They told Sage that they would continue to support Sage’s family, but he would just have to pretend to be a regular person.

Well, Sage thought, that’s fine. I don’t mind being a regular person.

But then the monthly stipend they were receiving kept gradually lessening. Sage’s family was, to put it plainly, the poorest of the poor. They lived in a one-bedroom house – Sage, his parents, and his grandparents. Once Sage was born, however, and the government began to help them, they were able to move into a bigger house. They were able to afford enough food to keep the pantry full all the time. They were even able to afford new clothes each year, and a car to get them around.

It wasn’t that no one in Sage’s family worked, or anything. They did. But Sage’s grandparents were too old, his mother was crippled from a car accident and unable to do any work that involved walking around for long periods of time, and his father only had a high school education and worked a strenuous factory job that paid almost nothing.

So when the government took away their main source of income, all those new things they bought had to be sold. They moved back into the tiny one-bedroom house, and Sage got a job using his other, non-super talent – drawing. All that, because Sage’s ‘power’ wasn’t good enough to make him a superhero.

But you know what it was good enough for? Stealing.

That’s right. Sage’s superpower? He could mute things. He could mute the sound he made. He could mute other people’s hearing. And because he could do that, he could sneak.

Sage delved into a life of crime when he was young, and stupid. His family needed money. He was going to get it for them. However, his many forays into banks, stores, and the homes of the wealthy had earned him something of a reputation.

They called him Hush, because no one could hear him coming. And for a while, Sage thought for sure the government was going to crack down on him, catch him in the act, slap him on the wrist. They knew his power after all, and they would be stupid not to connect the crimes to the person.

But they never did. There was never a pounding on his door; no police ever came to question his family. Sage thought it was weird, but eventually he got over it and figured the government simply had bigger things to worry about than his petty theft.

Once people started getting to know about him, however, Sage was ready to quit his brief life of crime. If his deeds accrued any more fame, he worried the government actually would step in and decide he was too much of a nuisance to keep around. Plus, he had gotten enough money that he and his family were doing okay. He had a new job, and he could support his family much better now. But because he had been so successful in pulling off heists, people started coming to him, asking for his help to steal, sabotage, or spy.

Sage turned down most of them. Any that wanted him to do something for the sake of making them wealthier, or for the sake of hurting an innocent – they were rejected without fail.

But when he was approached by people who were on their last legs, people who needed money, fast, for their family, for their friends…

Well…Sage really couldn’t say no.

And so, he had, quite accidentally, become a supervillain. He wasn’t the only one in the world, not at all. Many people with special abilities had rejected the government in favor of a life of crime. But typically, their reasons were not quite so gray as Sage’s. And because Sage wasn’t really a malicious villain, most heroes didn’t bother with him. He was left for the local police to scratch their heads over.

Except, somehow, Sage attracted a single hero. His name was Lich, and he was the only hero on the goddamn planet that gave a shit about what Sage was doing.

Sage hated his fucking guts. Everywhere he went, that guy was there, making his life harder. Honestly, if he were just a mild annoyance, getting in his way, Sage wouldn’t care so much. But this guy was a bitch – and a bitch specifically to Sage.

Why? Sage couldn’t guess. Lich wasn’t the most popular hero, but he had quite a significant cult following, because his power was necromancy. Yeah. Sage thought, of any superpower, that guy’s would probably be the most likely to be rejected as ‘useless’ by the government. But no. He was a hit for his dark aesthetics, charming good looks – well, imagined good looks, no one actually knew what he looked like – and rather taciturn nature. Every interview he was in was an instant crash and burn – he was monosyllabic at best, dead silent at worst, yet the fans ate it up like candy.

As far as Sage knew, Lich couldn’t raise the dead – or well, he could, he just wasn’t allowed to. You know. Cause heroes really aren’t meant to be raising grandma all willy-nilly. But he could speak to the dead and could make ghosts do his bidding. Many of his heroic feats had to do with helping ghosts to move on for their families, and spying or sabotage using ghosts as his eyes, ears, and hands.

And of all the villains in this godforsaken city – Sage was the one he chose to torment. A small fish barely worth the time of the local police and yet Lich had singled him out. Everywhere Sage turned he was there. If Sage didn’t already have a job that paid enough to support him and his family, he would be a lot more pissed about that. As it was, while he wasn’t exactly wealthy, he was in a good enough place that he didn’t need to resort to stealing to survive. It was all for other people.

Lich had much better things to be doing with his time, Sage knew, than following around some barely known villain that spent most of his days locked in an office with thirty other people.

Yet somehow – somehow it ended up like this. Sage didn’t know what…the fuck happened. One minute he was walking home, still dressed as Hush, when Lich appeared around the corner and got into his space. Sage asked what the hell he wanted, and when Lich didn’t answer, Sage rolled his eyes and then –

Then they were kissing. Up against the wall, in the alleyway. Lich had started it though. Sage had only had time to see Lich baring his teeth through his veil before he was shoving Sage up against the wall and tongue-fucking his mouth.

Something broke loose – something that Sage hadn’t realized had been building up pressure like a dam until it broke – and then Lich was hoisting him up and Sage was wrapping his legs around Lich’s waist and somehow his pants were gone.

And the rest…is where this whole mess starts.