Heartbreak Hero (#2 in The Super Trilogy)

4 - All Those Galaxies

To Anonymous: you made high school that little bit brighter and I'm honoured to have been able to call you one of my best friends for almost two of those years. I am so so sorry you thought this was your only way out. My only regret is not savouring your craziness while it lasted. 

Sleep well, brother <3

Elixir was waiting for me in the living room.

His dark green suit glistened like jade under the dim living room lighting – a stark contrast to the sharp blue eyes peaking out from behind his mask. His black hair was tousled from the effort of tying his mask, with inky locks peeking out from under the silky fabric. Arms crossed, Elixir wore a smirk enough to make any girl swoon, but unfortunately for them, he was taken. The "bad boy" superhero was head over heels for another super with enough sass and foresight to put any of his pursuers to shame: Athena.

"Ready?" Elixir uncrossed his arms when he saw me, motioning to the door.

"Am I ever," I grinned. Believe it or not, crime fighting was a great way to relieve stress. Of course, that's when the media isn't on your back all the time. Poor Gold Thrush, for instance, had reporters breathing down his neck, constantly chastising the actions he took against Obsidian Black or pressing for countless interviews. As for the rest of us, however, it was great. Us "little guys" had a lot of fun. Sure my friends were some of the most powerful supers in the city, but we didn't possess a whole lot of leadership. Dresden, who did, stayed out of the limelight, so the rest of us stayed relatively under the radar as well, appearing only on the occasional news channel after rescuing a cat from a burning house or yet another tourist from being mugged.

Tonight's grand escapade: to be determined. And with my luck, most likely a mugging. Boring? Yes. Mundane? Yes. But did it take my attention off of bigger, crazier matters? Totally. I knew Gabriel didn't exactly approve of this crime-fighting alter ego, but sometimes it felt like he was just shielding me from the world. My boyfriend had seen horrors I couldn't even begin to imagine; his own parents had been on opposite sides of good and evil, sparking a civil war amongst his family and the whole town. The star-crossed lovers had been shunned and along with them, Gabriel himself. A son of the Romeo-and-Juliette–dubbed couple, it wasn't a big surprise that he was outcast.

Eventually, I thought about IH. I thought about the Invisible Hand's reaction when he found out who Gabriel really was. He hadn't had the subtlest tactic of broaching the topic – more like he laughed out loud in Gabriel's face – but... 

"Did you know," Dresden broke the silence then. The two of us had made it out of my apartment and on to the street. We walked in the shadows, keeping close to the walls and sticking to the quieter avenues, hoping to avoid stirring up attention. "–that all those galaxies out there are just big fixer-uppers?"

"What do you mean?" I asked, suppressing a giggle. Lately, Dresden had been getting really pensive. 

"All these years, we've thought the galaxies were all fixed and organised and that they were never gonna change, but apparently they started out all scrambled and disorientated." 

"Personifying a galaxy," I mumbled to myself, "you're really far gone–"

"I overheard one of the astrologists at Blaze Labs thinking about it last year. All those galaxies and they're still rearranging themselves."

I nodded along silently. This was a whole different Dresden from the one I'd known last year. 92% of the time – trust me, I'd calculated – he was still his snarky, arrogant self. The other 8%, however, it was like he was the reincarnation of Socrates.