how quickly the glamour fades
“What do you think the Captain does in his down time?” Wally asked, squirting a large amount of cheese whiz onto a cracker and eating it. He was still getting used to being the Flash, being in the Justice League alongside his uncle’s friends. They’d helped him grow as a hero and a person over the years and now he was one of them.
“I don’t know, Cap is always working,” Hal said, taking a bit of his pizza. “The guy never quits I’m telling you. If he’s not here, he’s putting out fires in the jungle or fighting space-magic-tentacle monsters or working with an apron at the soup kitchen. I don’t think he knows the meaning of ‘down time’.”
“We all have to take a break sometimes, even gods,” Wonder Woman said with a raised eye brow. She didn’t technically chastise him but Hal’s shoulder crept up to his ears anyway. “Marvel is the personification of the Gods’ will on Earth. He may not require physical rest I’m sure he must take moments to collect himself but it is, surely, none of our business.”
“I didn’t mean any disrespect,” Wally said hastily. “I’m still new here, trying to figure everything and everyone out with these big shoes to fill.” He cleared his throat and glanced over at the door Captain Marvel had exited out of a few minutes earlier. “I don’t know Marvel well, he was just a reserve member when I first met him and now we’ve moved into big leagues pretty much at the same time. I guess I’m trying to get to know my fellow newbie, he seems like a really nice guy, someone you’d want to talk to outside of work.”
“Yeah good luck with that,” Hal snorted and preemptively winced from the force of Diana’s glare. “What? Look, I love the big cheese as much as the next guy but he’s hard to pin down! He’ll smile and chat up here at the Watchtower no prob but he won’t go out for a drink, he won’t attend any of Bruce’s fancy parties. Barry used to practically beg the guy to come over and have some of Iris’ cooking and he turned him down every time.” A brief moment of silence as Hal coped with the sudden, casual mention of his best friend. “He’s friendly but not sociable.”
“Perhaps he needs time alone, away from all this,” J’onn said, walking in to stand by Diana. Without being asked, she reached into the cabinet and pulled out his favorite cookies. It could have been telepathy or simply years of love and experience. “As you mentioned, he spends much of his time battling the evils of the world, both the grand and the mundane. He may need solitude to cope.”
“Isolation doesn’t heal anything,” Wally grumbled, playing idly with the cheese whiz can. “The Titans taught me that there’s strength in community. I won’t begrudge the man some alone time but,” he sighed and set the can down. “I don’t know, he smiles like Dick does sometimes, when he’s keeping all the hurt inside. I think he could probably use someone to talk to.”
“He’s a god or something, it’s not like we can relate to him,” Hal sighed. “I’m with ya, Kid. I’d be over the moon if Cap ever decided to hang out after the battle was done but he’s just not that kinda guy.”
“Your kindness is appreciated, Wally but Marvel is entitled to his privacy. Should he ever need that listening ear you suggested, he of course knows he can come to us.” Diana smiled. Wally smiled back but still didn’t feel completely settled. There was something about Captain Marvel that never felt right, like he was only seeing a funhouse mirror version. His smiles were too perfect, his lines so cheesy, almost practiced. In a way, he almost didn’t feel real and that the real person was hiding behind this perfect cardboard cut out they all knew.
“Yeah, okay,” he frowned before perking back up. “Did you guys catch the game last nigh-”
“Don’t get me started squirt my team looked like they were sleepwalking, not playing.”
Hundreds of thousands of miles away in Fawcett City, a boy was cold and he was hungry.
“Achoo!” Billy Batson sneezed. “Ugh either someone’s talking ‘bout me or I’m coming down something.” He sniffled, wiping his nose on his threadbare sweater sleeve. “I don’t even know which is worse.”
It had been warm on the Watchtower when Bill, well Marvel, had finally left. The halls had been crowded and there’d been plenty of food and company. It would’ve been nice to stay but that wasn’t the way things worked. Cap didn’t need food to stay full or heat to keep him warm. He enjoyed the conversation but it felt so empty with the large wall he had to keep around his other life. It was safer this way, for him and for them.
The weather was turning cold and the shelters would have stopped giving out food by this late hour. Another night spent shivering and another night without a meal.
“It’s fine, you’re fine,” Billy chattered to himself as he slowly made his way back to the abandoned apartment he’d been sleeping in. “They don’t need to know about this, won’t care about another homeless kid. You’re lucky you get to know them as Marvel, you’re lucky to have Marvel.” He squeezed his eyes shut to fight back tears. It was an honor, a blessing to have the power to help people but oh did it hurt sometimes.
He wished he had someone to talk to about this but all he had was Tawney and the empty throne of the Wizard. There was the League but he couldn’t risk it, Marvel’s good standing was the only way they let him be active without giving away any details. They wouldn’t listen to him anyway, if they knew who their powerhouse really was. The illusion was hard to keep up sometimes but it was all he had.
All the way home, he hummed a tune he’d heard Black Canary humming while doling out portions of pizza and thought of the way Wonder Women’s gentle strong arms had felt around his shoulders and the sound of Lantern’s loud laughter and imagined that he wasn’t alone.
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I don't truly experience anything
- a poem of some sort, I suppose
aromantic - I've never felt this thing that others say define us as human.
this feeling that in media seems to be the one feature that qualifies an alien or a robot as owning a soul
this one feeling that everyone seems so obsessed over
the thing behind the curtains of everything
the thing that surely, no one could ever live without, right?
I've never been with a person, thinking about how I'd love to spend the rest of my life with them and them alone
I've thought I might have, several times, with my closest friends, the ones I feel comfortable around
but it's not the same
it's not how others describe it
I've never wanted to kiss anyone
the closest I've come to romantic love is platonic
but if it is
if it turns out I'm pan- and polyromantic
if I've only ever experienced romantic love, and never platonic
then I'm still one form of love short from everyone else
I'm still less
asexual - I've never wanted intimacy the way others seem to.
I've never seen a person and felt anything like what people have described
I've never been able picture myself in a sexual setting, and I've certainly never enjoyed it when I've tried
I've never experienced an orgasm, not even sure I could if I tried
I've never felt the need to do anything of the sort
I've felt the want to, sure, but even then, not really
because I've never wanted it for it, I've wanted it to feel included
I've wanted to know what everyone else seem to revolve their life around
I wanted to understand, and to stop being so alien to the people around me whenever I just don't understand something
agender - I don't understand it
really, it just doesn't make any sense to me
never has, and tbh I just thought we'd all agreed to just go with it, because that's what everyone else did
I've never felt like a girl
I've never felt like a boy
I have yet to understand what this "feeling" is supposed to feel like
I'm me
just me
my body exists, sure
and I guess it's keeping me alive, so I'll try not to damage it too much
but it has never really meant any more than that in any way that means anything
it's a house
and you can decorate it to your choosing
and sometimes you'd like to move, but then you look at the housing market at the moment and decide that actually
the house I have now isn't that bad
and of course, you can't tear down a load bearing wall, the whole house would collapse
but otherwise, do whatever you want with what you've got, and you'll be good.
I guess in that sense I've kind of seen trans people as claustrophobic people stuck in a small attic-appartment without windows
the housing market is still horrible, and so they start by making modifications
make a window
let the air in
maybe even make a terrace on the roof out the window
doing what make them feel better
and if that so means I'll have to stop calling their house and attic, because they've expanded so much it's really a proper house now, then sure, I'll change the mailing address, why not?
agnostic - I say agnostic, but really I'm just afraid to say atheist
because I've never been able to believe
I don't even think I've ever really grasped the concept properly
but I want to
I really really do
I want to believe that there's some higher power out there
that there's someone looking out for us
taking care of us
I so badly want that comfort that others seem to get from talking into the void and somehow still feeling heard
but I don't know how
belief is such an amazing thing
belief is unconditional trust, something I'd almost call stronger than unconditional love
it's trusting that someone else will do good without any guarantee beforehand
and yet even when it comes to my closest friends, I can't do it
because I only actually believe in them if I've seen proof of it before, and that's not belief, it's a conditional trust
and I'm so incredibly jealous of the ones who are able to do so
I wish I was religious
a human - ahuman
I sometimes don't think I'm human
and I it
so much
because these are the things that everyone else call "reasons to live"
these are the traits that everyone says define what it means to "be human" or "be alive"
and so if I don't
if I never experience the reasons to live
if I never experience what it is to be human
if I never experience the essentials of being alive
then what am I?
I have no reason to live, so I'm meaningless
I'm not a human, so I'm alien
I'm not alive, so I'm dead
I'm a meaningless alien, dead to the world and to myself
a non-human, walking around with no purpose or light
a nothing
existing in the background
and even then, not really existing either
because what is existence without purpose or life?
a - the greek prefix for no, and the letter that seems to pursue my very being
a-being
a-thing
no-thing
I'm nothing
I'm nothing, wanting everything
staring at the rest of the world as if through the pages of a book that I'm doomed to only ever read and never experience myself
I hate it
I'm jealous
I want what everyone else has
And I'm crying
Somehow
I'm crying
because even with all the everything that I just seem doomed to never feel
for some reason the universe never thought to add sadness to that pile
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