Chance, The Guardian

Chapter 1

Night Guardian issue 36 sat on the table. Studying it Chance moved closer. The image on the front was different to most of the superheroes he'd seen. All of them were normal people, but from the look of Night Guardian he wasn't like any of the others. With a slightly shaking finger he reached out to touch the face that looked so like his own. For a moment it was almost like the comic he'd been working on himself, of a Down Syndrome superhero, had become real, only it was a dream. Like all the other nights since his birthday he knew he wasn't in the waking world, instead somewhere entirely different.

After a moment of staring Chance sat down, turning to the first page. The artwork was better than his own, and one of the characters seemed so much like Christina, with the long blonde hair flowing down her back. From the looks of things she was in the dream world herself. Nibbling on his bottom lip he flicked back to the front page. Night Guardian was a superhero of the dream world, which made sense, considering where he was, but as he looked more closely... was that him? Had someone used him for their inspiration?

Unless it wasn't inspiration at all. Slowly, looking at the pictures rather than reading it, Chance went through the entire comic, and it was obvious Night Guardian was him. There were times in the waking world when everything was back to how it had always been, even though he'd done so much in the dream world. It was issue 36, so there had to be others, somewhere, and if they existed... he shook his head at himself. He was dreaming. Night Guardian didn't exist, and of course it was going to be him, because that was what he wanted more than anything else. To be able to show what he was capable of.

Standing, telling himself it was pointless, Chance turned, to find an entire bookcase full of comics. Pulling one of them off he found himself looking at another issue of Night Guardian. Issue 3, with an image that could easily have been taken from the 'party' he'd had for his sixteenth birthday. His family did their best, but there was no way for him to pretend it was a party like the others had, because he'd seen pictures of them on social media. How it seemed like Jason and Christina both had their whole year at their parties, while his... Mom said the comparison was the thief of joy, but it was hard not to. Hard to accept how things were. How they treated him, because of the way he was born.

Only superheroes never seemed to have an easy time of things. They all had to go through some kind of a pain to get to where they were. Chance flicked through the pages. There were pictures of Mom, of her parents, and Dad's parents. No Dad, because he was gone, died in an accident back when Chance was 10, and it was seeing them all together which reminded him of how things were before. Back before high school. Before everything changed in ways they never could have imagined.

Chance placed issue 3 back. His party was on the Saturday after his birthday, and by that point he'd already visited the dream world a couple of times. The first night was the one he didn't know, until he woke up, where he was, but on waking he could remember every moment of the experience. Of walking through a field, to find Dad waiting for him, even though it was impossible. How they'd talked about what might come next, because he'd found himself somewhere most people didn't. The dream world was like nowhere else, and everyone visited, only most didn't have the kind of skills he might gain.

Not that he believed a word, at least to begin with. It was a dream. Everyone wanted to be special in some way, and Chance was no different, no matter what some people might thing. He was special, to Mom, but it wasn't the kind of special anyone truly wanted to be. When he looked in the mirror it was a reminder of how so many people saw him, without having the slightest understanding of what it meant to have Down Syndrome. How each one of them was different to the other. How they were all capable of different things, and for some it was simply the stigma that stopped them from having a mostly normal life.