The rest of the group had, more or less, assembled by the time I got down there. Syrup and coffee were being passed around and I watched, just for a moment, at our little family being so incredibly normal. If we weren't superheroes, or if the world was a sane place, would we all still be connected like this? Would this be our typical Sunday mornings, maybe with a few kids running around after a handful of years?
Or would we shatter to pieces the second the danger and crazy was burnt from our lives? So many superheroes didn't know what to do with themselves after they retired. They went to odd ends or they turned into shells, just staring at relics of their past and wishing for those days to come again.
I never wanted to be those people. They often lost contact with those who loved them or the ones who had been their partners. Divorce was common, with so many drawn to the mystery and passion of saving the civilian world. Many drawn to that didn't want to deal with the broken-down person that superheroes often were afterward.
Was I condemning Nishelle to that if they voted no? She'd be swept away from the rest of us, ignored, and lost. Would she retire? Run somewhere else; maybe across the world to be some shining beacon for the treatment of women in her area?
I couldn't see her like that, didn't want to see her like that. I sighed and sank into a chair with the rest of them. Nate passed me a huge platter of pancakes. I could barely see over them, but that was fine with me. I was starving.
Once Adam joined us and was served a comparably enormous plate, Nishelle picked up a mug and tapped a fork against it. The musical clink-clinging was enough to draw everyone's attention away from their food. She set the cup down and began.
"I did something wrong. It's a technicality, but I still want to come clean. When I got control of myself again, Scribe contacted me. He asked if I would be interested in being his eye on all of you, when we were outside of the areas he could control. And I agreed to it."
She spoke quickly but not quietly. A few people muttered, but most of them simply listened. Nishelle paused, waiting for someone to interject. When it didn't happen, she continued. "I haven't passed him anything, not since I joined up with the rest of you right after the hospital. And I didn't know anything before that. He's tried to ask me questions, poked me for information, but I tell him the most banal things. Adam likes chicken. Nate took his clothes to the cleaners. Stuff like that. Meanwhile, I've been outwitting him this entire time for the benefit of the group."
"Like how?" Adam asked, spotting ketchup down his eggs. I made a face at him. Ew.
Nishelle cocked her head at him. "Like misguiding him about the type of car Cassie stole to bring you guys over here. I gave him a similar year, make, and model, but it was the wrong one. It's probably why the cops didn't pull you over."
"That's pretty good. Subtle," Nate said, approvingly. "Something that could be explained away by a simple mistake or by your saying you didn't know, that you were just guessing. It's smart."
"Thank you," she said. "But I have to know if you can trust me. I won't ask you to do it, but I hope that you will. I haven't betrayed anyone here. I don't intend to do it. But it's reasonable to be wary of my intentions until I've proven them."
Nishelle said the last of it with a shrug and sat back down in her seat. There were a few wary glances traded between people as I dug into my pancakes.
And then suddenly everyone was looking at me. I blinked at them, swallowed, and said, "What?"
"You know her best, Sosie," Izzy said. "I think it's sensible to leave it up to you."
"If anything, I'd think you'd consider my opinion incredibly bias. She's my girlfriend."
Nate nodded. "But she wasn't for a while. And Izzy has a point. Would she stab us in the back?"
"Pfft. No." How could they ask that? Nishelle might have made a stupid deal, but she wasn't some black-hatted idiot. She wasn't about to come murder someone from behind.
Now, if you pissed her off enough, she might torch you from the front. But that was better off unsaid. Besides, there wasn't a single person at that table who could claim otherwise. We'd all made mistakes, all done terrible things in the past that we weren't exactly proud of. It just went along with the territory and there was nothing that you could really do about that, unless you didn't intend to take measures to save people every now and then.
"Personally," Lexi began. "I don't think she fits with the general aesthetic of the group. We're more balanced without some baby-frying Pyro bouncing around with us. You saw what she did to that kid on the news."
Nishelle folded her hands in front of herself. "That was an accident. I was under Allison's control and unstable. I assure you that the Clarks did their best to correct my problems and that I am fully without her issues as of the moment. Though, it is entirely reasonable, again, for you to suspect me."
"Listen to this shit. Entirely reasonable, because I was a dumbass who pretended to be dead for how many years? Because I let someone else get into my head and make me do terrible stuff? That kid fucking died, Nishelle, and guess what? It
