Heroic Cognizance | Shazam

Chapter 21

"Guess you'll have to thank him if we ever get out of here," Hal snarked.

- - -

Another scene formed around them rather quickly, showing Captain Marvel pacing on a rooftop, rubbing the back of his neck anxiously. His golden boots walked back and forth across the gravel of the roof, the moon above him shining brightly in the cloudless night sky. Cap glanced up, chewing on his bottom of his lip as he stared at the sky.

"Hey, mom..." he said, pausing in his tracks and dropping his hand to grip his arm as an anxious child would. "I need a little help here..." he said, letting out a shaky sigh. 

"I- I- don't know if I'm just talking to myself, or what, and no one I ask will give me a straight answer." The demigod's eyes were full of pain as he stared at the moon.

"I don't know if you're really up there, or- or what- sometimes it feels like you're standing right beside me and I- I- I just don't understand it..." he dropped his arm. 

"Mom, I- I don't know what to do anymore. It feels like people just want me to forget about you and pops, to- to get over you somehow and I-" he shut his eyes, dropping his head to look at the two-story brick house across the street; the one with a white picket fence around the grassy yard and white panels surrounding the windows.

The one he lived in before his parents died.

"I can't do that..."

Marvel sniffed, raising his head and opening his glossy eyes. "Mom, send me some kind of sign, anything, please, I'm begging you," he said, his voice shaking as tears threatened to fall from his eyes.

A small huff of sad laughter came from his mouth as his gaze dropped to the house. "I'm gonna be thirteen tomorrow, and I can barely remember what you look like."

The man chewed on the corner of his lip again. "Sorry...I just... I know I shouldn't be acting like this... I got a job to do, and I can't do it right if I'm worried about myself," he glanced back up at the sky. 

"I just- is it selfish to want to know that you're okay?"

He let out a sigh, his shoulders slumping slightly. "Probably..." he shook his head, floating up above the roof. "Well, I'll...see you next year then. Tell pops that I love him..." he said, turning around and flying away from the old building with one last glance as the two-story house across the street.

The memory blurred and shifted, and Billy was sitting on the roof of the old train station, the place he, Freddy, and Darla had called home for so long before being adopted.