I spoke to my mother once in between all of the funerals and misery. She reminded me that my biological clock was ticking and I hated that. It wasn't even true; there were plenty of women having their first babies older than I was. I'd put it mostly out of my mind.
But after all of what we'd been through, it kept creeping back in. It was harder to pick myself back up after a fight, it was tougher to keep going all day, every day, and still come home with a little pep in my step. I stopped a robbery one night before the funerals and took a punch to the gut that had hurt for the next several days.
It wasn't as if I was certain my days were numbered. Just... it felt like something or someone was trying to make me realize that maybe they were.
There's a point in your life when you realize that you aren't as immortal as you once believed yourself to be. Everyone tells you that, but you're certain that they're wrong; you will be around as long as you want to be. Fuck the haters.
That isn't true. One day, you're not going to wake up but everyone else will. They'll find you gone or they'll already know you're dead because you did it in some terribly public way. The thing that matters most is what you do with that time that you still have before that day comes.
And I had no idea what I wanted to do with it. Worse, I wasn't certain what my group of lovers wanted, either. I didn't think we were involved in something casual; they loved me and I was pretty sure that Nate and Adam might have a side thing going on, too. Maybe even Adam and Edwin, though that seemed to be very much on Edwin's terms. I wasn't surprised; Adam had the sort of charisma that dragged people to him and kept them there.
But what about me? What was I going to do? And did it involve all of them?
Those questions swam in my head as I chopped carrots for dinner; something that felt as though it was a bit out of place for a superhero to do. But today was my day off; something that was being enforced now as a mandatory order. Before, we'd had a "day off" every now and then, but we'd inevitably been dragged into work for this alarm or that on the vast majority of them.
Now, when you were off your phone's alert system was de-activated in the system back at the Alliance building; meaning that you couldn't get an alarm or a call if you tried. If you were emotionally attached to another superhero, they might get called in on your day off but that was just something you had to live with.
Still, Edwin had made sure to give all of us the day off; all of us but him. But he had a staff, all of which had made it through the nightmare of Scribe's takeover. His hours were a set and done deal and when he left for the day, he was done. It didn't matter what happened.
Part of me wished that Izzy had lived to see that. She would have been the perfect person to take over nights or days or whatever for him, but that was it. What was done was done. As far as I knew, there was no way to bring people back from the dead.
Nishelle wrapped her arms around me. "Groceries are in the car. You give me a hand with'em?"
"Yeah, give me just a second." I forced myself into a Blitz for just a second, snapping through the carrots in record time. Then I followed her out to bring in bag after bag.
I didn't blame her or anything like that. We were feeding a very small army, when it came down to it. Adam could eat half a horse by himself, and Nate and I were no lightweights. After a couple of nights cooking for the group, we'd upgraded our little 2 gallon stockpot to one of the industrial 10 gallon ones. Sometimes, we even had leftovers.
Dinner went off without a hitch, though Nate turned up a little bit late. He yawned as he walked in, rubbing his hair down after pulling off his cap. "Terrible car accident up on I-9. Had to finish the paperwork before I left. You?"
When he asked, he meant all of us. Adam shrugged, but Nishelle stretched her legs out and answered. "A single Kipa's body was found in some mad scientist's lab. Looked like they were trying to revive it, but they weren't having a lot of luck. It's been taken in by the military, per usual."
"Where we hope that they'll never decide to go nuts with it or that no one will break down their fences and steal their shit," I said, plopping a huge pot of chicken and dumplings on the table. The legs shivered, but held. "Next thing we're buying is a stronger table."
"You didn't answer," Nate said, ladling his bowl full.
I paused and looked up at him. "It gets kind of heavy. I don't know if it's really what anyone would consider dinner conversation."
Those around the table went silent and I rubbed the back of my neck, looking anywhere but them. Even after all this time, I wasn't used to people dropping everything to just listen to me. And the eyes staring at me made me uncomfortable. Prison wasn't that distant of a memory, though I dearly wished it would be.
"I don't know quite where things are going or what I want to do," I started, then grew bolder. "It's confusing. I got out of prison not so long ago and the world literally turned itself upside
