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Jimmy isn’t exactly a hero.
He’s never been properly been a hero, never been like Major, or Gem, or any of the more localized heroes in Empire City. He’s not a villain, though—he’s nothing like Xornoth, Major’s nemesis. Jimmy’s more of … he’s more of an antihero, something in between.
And for some reason, that makes heroes and villains alike despise him. He’s not even the only antihero—FailWhip is right there, and people love him. But somehow, Jimmy’s picked up the reputation of a bad omen, and where before he had been neutrally acknowledged in the city, now he’s outright hated.
He’s gone through a few different rebrands over the years. For a while he was Solidarity, the comic book superhero, but being a superhero is difficult for someone who accidentally causes chaos. As soon as it was clear he wasn’t welcome among the hero ranks, he tried out being a villain as the Codfather, but after a little while the villains told him (rather politely, for villains) that he wasn’t quite fit for being a villain, that he was too softhearted and should maybe try being a hero. So he went back to Solidarity, but there’s something wrong with his old superhero costume in the way that it just didn’t fit who he’s trying to be now (He’s still wearing it, though, because he doesn’t really have the funds for a rebrand). He can’t be a hero, he can’t be a villain, so he has to take up the grey space in between.
Jimmy’s just not very good at it.
His power isn’t an envied one. Jimmy has the unfortunate ability to influence fate, but without any influence. Like, fate changes around him without his input. Usually for the worse. Sometimes he’s lucky—sometimes a building falls on Mythics so that Pearl has a chance to superstrength-punch him into the ground and knock him out. Most times, though, a tornado hits out of nowhere and disrupts a battle, a house catches on fire and Gem has to flee the fight to save the family within, or on one terrible occasion, a meteor rockets down from outer space and lands smack on top of Aeor.
And that’s probably why the heroes now despise him. One doesn’t just kill the oldest hero in the city, the one who has a parade in his honor, the one who somehow won a Tony last year, and get away with still being on good terms with heroes. Jimmy had tried to tell them it wasn’t his fault, he couldn’t control it, it just happened, but it didn’t matter. Major especially hates him, threatens to arrest him every time Jimmy dares show his face around any intense fight.
He would love to just be a normal citizen. He’s always wanted to go to college, go on a date, just eat in a restaurant for once. None of those are options. He’s barely able to live in the apartment complex he lives in—it’s on the shadier side of town, and his landlord doesn’t ask where he gets the money from and why the building is considerably less structurally sound than it was before Jimmy moved in. It’s not like he can move into one of those superhero insured houses like Major and Gem and the new flower-type hero.
And he can’t get a proper job, either—it would blow his cover instantly. Which is why he’s still working on the antihero thing—he feels gross doing it, but robbing banks isn’t too hard and the few times a hero has tried to stop him the bank has just collapsed, so they don’t even try anymore. He doesn’t do much to try and help them anymore either—for the most part the villains leave him alone (unless he interferes with their scheme, in which case they make it clear to him that he needs to stay out of it), and the vitriol (and sometimes ice spikes or flying cars) that the heroes send his way aren’t always worth getting involved.
The other antiheroes don’t like him, either. FailWhip ignores him at every turn (when he asked why, the man had said something about Gem and leapt to the side as a car came barreling down the sidewalk), and the others don’t want to push their luck. Jimmy’s a dangerous partner in every situation.
Jimmy’s also a dangerous enemy, though, so he’s generally just. Left alone. He can’t stay in one place for too long, so he spends his days stealing around the city then returns to his trashy apartment, where he knocks on the door three times to make sure it won’t fall on him, then turns the doorknob (the key broke off in the lock forever ago) and lets himself in. He kicks off his shoes, leaves the lights off (which he’s done since the bulb exploded three years ago and he spent all night picking glass out of his arm), and fixes himself a bowl of cereal. Usually the milk doesn’t go bad, but on the off chance it does, he sniffs every bite before putting it in his mouth. He reads while he eats most nights, sometimes he scrolls through the news on his phone to make sure there isn’t anything dreadful going on that he feels the need to intervene in. Then he washes his dishes, makes sure everything is in order, and goes to bed on his mattress on the floor. He keeps his phone near his ear in case he receives an emergency alert late at night.
In the morning, he usually showers and throws on some jeans and a t-shirt and shoves his phone in his back pocket. He skips breakfast and does whatever chores need to be accomplished as quickly as possible, before heading home for lunch and eating whatever food he’s bought that day. He spends the rest of the day patrolling in his old superhero costume, mostly staying out of the way of anyone (and they generally stay out of the way of him). Then he heads home and the cycle begins anew.
He’s usually not interrupted. The evening it happens, he’s put out.
Then he sees who’s interrupting him. Then he’s scared.
He’s almost gotten to his apartment when glass shatters nearby. Jimmy glances around, already rolling his eyes. His apartment windows shattered about a week into living there and have been blocked with cheap blankets ever since. He keeps moving, sticking to the shadiest parts of the street. Hopefully nobody will notice that he’s been here and he can just move on without any trouble.
But then he hears footsteps. Jimmy turns around, about to apologize for whatever it is he’s broken, but before he can he’s being wrestled to the ground.
He’s still not panicking, not as the person pins him to the ground, not as his costume tears a bit on the sleeve. He’s still more put-out than anything; he’ll have to stitch that up in the morning, just another messy addition to his outfit.
He does start panicking, though, when a gruff voice hisses, “Here’s the chloroform, get him quick. We can’t have a building fall on us.”
That’s when Jimmy realizes he has to get out of there. He writhes, heart leaping into his throat, he has to get away—
A cloth presses against his face and he automatically breathes, breathes in something sweet and chemical-y and feels his brain go all fuzzy. He barely registers his body going limp before he’s out like a light.
-
When Jimmy wakes, he wakes slowly, groggily. His head is pounding, his mouth fuzzy. He doesn’t know where he is, what he’s doing, what’s happening. Within a couple of moments, though, he realizes that he isn’t anywhere familiar, and he’s tied to a chair.
Great.
He swallows a few times, trying to get rid of the numbness. He’s almost a little excited—he hasn’t been involved in a kidnapping in years, not since he tried to rescue the mayor’s daughter that one time. He wonders what the villain’s evil scheme is, who the hero they’re trying to bait is.
He blinks, clearing his vision. He’s in a classic basement set-up, a goon by the door. There’s no video recorder, but there are other ways to ask for a ransom. His stomach growls. How long has he been here?
The door slams open, and in stalks—
Uh-oh. Oh no.
Xornoth, the most dangerous villain in the country, let alone the city, enters the room. Jimmy feels the blood drain from his face, and where before he had been lightly testing the ropes securing him to the chair, he’s now tugging at them a tad bit desperately. Whatever Xornoth has in store cannot be good.
Xornoth stands before him, stares for a long time. Jimmy looks everywhere but their eyes, examines their weird antler things that may or may not be part of their costume, stares into their wide grin of teeth just slightly too sharp.
That grin opens, and an echoing laugh comes out. Jimmy flinches, eyes falling to the floor then back up in time to see Xornoth raise a hand.
The doors on the side of the basement open again, this time ushering in a handful of scientist-types in white lab coats. Jimmy gulps when they approach him, eyeing the syringe in the hand of one of them. He jerks away as that man nears him, but not soon enough. The needle jabs into his neck, and with a feeling washing through his body similar to the chloroform, Jimmy is gone.
-
He’s not gone for long, though, because he wakes up as soon as he feels a burning on his chest. His eyes snap open but immediately close, a bright light above him. There’s a low mumbling of voices, the smell of rubbing alcohol in the air, and something tickling his nostrils.
Then his chest burns again, and he forces his eyes open and down to see—
There’s someone, someone unfamiliar, a surgical mask on their face leaning over him. In their hand is a tiny pair of scissors, which is inside of Jimmy’s chest. In a shallow dish set on Jimmy’s stomach, there are small bloody squares that seem to be his skin. Another scientist is using tweezers to pick up the squares and put them in biohazard containers.
Blood is steadily pooling from where the scientist has scissors in his chest, until suddenly a bit of it spurts up and the scientist curses, pressing a pad of gauze over the incision.
And Jimmy screams.
He jerks his arms only to find them restrained, he moves his legs only to find them restrained, he tries to sit up only to find his waist restrained. His superhero mask is stretching over some lump on his face, and that lump is pushing air into his nose, which must be an oxygen tube of some sort.
Both scientists over him step back, glancing around fearfully. A third from the background (which Jimmy just now registers, processes the others watching and washing hands and taking notes) steps forward, prepping another syringe.
No. No no no, he is not doing that again, he is not going to lose time again and turn up in some dark alley missing a kidney.
“No!” he gasps, trying to roll away. The container on his stomach shifts, threatens to tip over. “No, please, I’ll be quiet, I’ll stay still. Please don’t knock me out again.”
The woman freezes, and even behind her mask and glasses, Jimmy can see that she’s fixing him with a sympathetic look. “Mr. Solidarity, I don’t believe we can do that,” she says. “You’re a rather dangerous patient when not sedated.”
“Please?” he begs, going as still as possible. “Or at least—at least tell me what you’re going to do?”
The woman sighs, but shakes her head, approaching once again. Jimmy can’t help but whine, a keen escaping from between his teeth, as he feels a cold square of soaked gauze rub against his inner arm.
“We may need to put in an IV,” the woman says, all clinical now that she isn’t talking to him. “I’m not sure how he’s resisting this stuff, but it would be easier to just flush it through his system every time he starts to wake up.”
“Jordan, want to set that up once he’s out?”
“No problem, I’ll just go grab the—”
Everyone looks in the same direction. Jimmy cranes his neck, sees a door. Sees Xornoth.
Xornoth comes closer, closer and closer until they’re bending down beside Jimmy’s face, their noses almost touching. Jimmy barely dares breathe (only breathes because the oxygen tube is forcing him to), eyes wide as he stares into Xornoth’s black eyes.
“Nothing unusual?” the villain asks, their deep voice echoing around the room and Jimmy’s head. Various scientists mumble answers, which seems to satisfy Xornoth as they continue to gaze at Jimmy.
“Good. Keep him awake, then. I want him to feel it.”
Jimmy can’t help but shudder. A man with glasses raises a pencil questioningly.
“Sir, if he starts—”
“I’ll handle it,” Xornoth says, straightening. One of their gloved hands falls to Jimmy’s cheek, where it rests, heavy and terrifying. A scientist sighs (can Jimmy really call them scientists, or are they doctors?), then the woman who had just been prepping his arm places down the syringe and instead removes the oxygen tube from his nostrils. Xornoth’s fingers straighten out his mask, patting his cheek once it’s properly in place.
Then they’re back at it, and Jimmy’s biting back whimpers and cries as they cut into him with precision.
-
He’s been locked up in whatever facility Xornoth has for what feels like forever. Most of the time he’s not really conscious. Most of the time he’s lying on the concrete floor of his cell, the hard bed that he has out of reach for his non-existent energy. He drifts in and out of reality during those times, body burning where they last peeled back skin, head aching and eyelids drooping. There’s no ransom, he’s realized by now—he wonders why he ever thought there would be. There’s no one to pay it.
He doesn’t even protest these days when they lift him onto a gurney and wheel him out of his cell, back into the sterile white room where everything goes bad and blurry. He’s not sure what they’re doing to him—sometimes he looks down at himself and sees tubes sticking out of every part of his body, some days they shock him and take notes on his reactions, sometimes they just take blood and skin and tissue and then wheel him back to his cell, where he’s dumped unceremoniously on the floor. The days blend together, the worst ones marked by Xornoth’s presence.
When Xornoth is there, fear bleeds through the room. They never say anything, though: just stand silently, a hand carding through Jimmy’s greasy hair. Jimmy keeps his eyes squinted shut whenever Xornoth is there, despite every instinct screaming at him to watch them.
Whatever they do to him, on whatever day, it’s always painful. The pain more than anything drains him, leaving him limp and aching. They give him food, stuff that seems like military rations, but most of the time he’s too tired and his hands are shaking too badly to unwrap them. He thinks they’ve been giving him supplements through an IV every once in a while, because otherwise he shouldn’t logically still be alive, but his head is hazy enough that he can’t think logically. None of this makes sense.
One day, as Xornoth massages his head and a scientist is peeling away a strip of skin from his calf, Jimmy whimpers, “Why are you doing this to me?”
It’s the first thing he’s said since … in a while, and he’s not sure why he’s saying it, just that the pain is so so much and Xornoth is touching him and he just can’t. He blinks back a tear, gasps when the skin from his calf pulls all the way off. The gauze that the man presses down on it stings.
“Oh, little bird,” Xornoth murmurs, and Jimmy flinches at the almost—affection in their voice. “You’re going to be very useful to me.”
That’s all they say, and Jimmy feels a drop of something cold sink into his stomach. He tried the villain life, it didn’t work out. He’s not sure what they’re doing, what they’re trying to achieve, but whatever it is won’t be good.
When he’s later thrown into his cell, he can’t fall asleep like he usually does. Every word that Xornoth said is repeating in his head, over and over until all he can hear is Xornoth’s voice.
The rations are on the floor next to him, and he can’t sleep anyhow, so Jimmy tears open the package with shaking hands and takes a bite of whatever the contents are. It’s tasteless, and dry, and takes far more chewing than he has the energy for.
He picks up the water bottle that always comes with the food, but he can’t manage to twist his wrist hard enough to break the seal.
He needs to get out.
He’s not sure why it’s this that gives him the realization—maybe being forced to accept the fact that he hasn’t got the strength to open a water bottle just breaks him. He has to get out of here before things get any worse. Not just for himself—Xornoth is the most powerful villain Jimmy’s ever heard of. If he achieves whatever it is he’s trying to do, it could spell the end for the city.
-
Jimmy’s lying on the operation table, slipping in and out of consciousness. He thinks it’s strange that bad luck hasn’t fallen upon him yet. Maybe he’s too tired for his powers to activate.
There’s a tube in his right side, under his arm, and he’s not quite sure what it’s doing. Every five minutes or so, a scientist adjusts it slightly and presses a button, watches as a bit of blood shoots up the tube, then presses the button again for it to stop. There’s an IV in his bruised left arm, which is pumping something beige into his body.
It’s a quiet day in the lab, broken only by Jimmy’s occasional dry sobs as the tube is readjusted and the once-every-five-minutes beeping of the IV stand.
He just wants to go home. He just wants to go back to his trashy apartment where the lights are never on (this room is far too bright, always too bright) and he can eat cereal and peanut butter sandwiches and instant mashed potatoes. He just wants some time alone without any pain and his lumpy mattress and his stained couch and his blankets that smell like cigarettes and no one touching him.
There’s a loud crash from elsewhere in the building. The scientist doesn’t seem to register it, frowning as he squints at his laptop. He shifts the tube, pointing it more downward, and presses the button. Jimmy bites the inside of his cheek to keep from making a noise.
Another crash. This one jostles the tube set-up, the IV stand rattling. At this, the scientist looks up. After several moments of nothing, he returns to his work.
When the third crash hits, the man sets aside his laptop and strides out of the door to the lab. Jimmy’s grateful; he gets a moment’s reprieve, it seems.
He lies there, eyes unfocused. The IV beeps. Something rumbles distantly.
This is the perfect time to escape.
He’s not sure how or when he realizes that, but it gives him enough of a burst of energy to sit up (they don’t restrain him anymore unless necessary) and peel the tape off his arm. Carefully, his vision blurring, he eases the tube out of his arm and stares dumbly at it as a rivulet of blood weaves down his arm.
This is the perfect time to escape.
The tube in his side proves a little more difficult to remove, blood spilling everywhere as he grits his teeth and yanks it from his body. He isn’t sure what to do with the blood, so he ignores it in favor of pulling the scientist’s stereotypical white lab coat around himself, too foggy to discern the sleeves and wearing it more similar to a cloak.
Standing is the most difficult task yet, but he ignores the shooting pains in his body and the wobbly quality of his legs and manages to remain upright. He can do this.
This is the perfect time to escape.
He leaves without another thought, shouldering out the door and stumbling across that first room that he’d found himself in so long ago. There’s a door on the other side that he knows leads to the room he’s been kept in; but there’s a door to his right that he’s never been through yet many people have come from. He chooses this door, blinking back the heaviness of his eyelids.
Beyond this door is a hallway, and he begins to make his way down to the door at the end when he hears a crash just behind him. He freezes, pressed against the door.
“Give me good news, Doctor, or you may not return home tonight.”
“We’re making progress, sir, but it’s slow. What we have to do to suppress his powers limits any—”
“I don’t want excuses, I want him to be mine.”
One voice is Xornoth, one is vaguely familiar, but Jimmy can’t stand here listening for any longer. He has to get out.
At the end of the hallway is a door, a solid door with no windows and a red sign that he can’t focus on, but he knows somehow that this is a way out.
He’s not sure how he makes it down the hallway, not with his small amount of energy flagging with every passing moment. He keeps trying to send adrenaline through his body, imagining what might happen if they find him escaping, but he’s feeling worse than he ever has. The lab coat is stained red from his still-bleeding side, draining his resolve with it.
Still, he makes it to the door, shoves against the bar and pushing the door open, into darkness and a gust of wind and—
An alarm blares, loud and shocking and Jimmy jumps practically a foot in the air, and there’s the adrenaline he was missing—
There’s an empty lot illuminated by one streetlight, and it feels so insanely good to be outside again but Jimmy doesn’t have time to focus on that, he has to run. Closing the door behind him doesn’t make the alarm stop, so he limps his way across the lot as quickly as he can before—
The door slams open, and Jimmy looks over his shoulder to see Xornoth, the air crackling around them as red tentacles sprout through the asphalt, whipping around as they grow.
“Come back, darling,” Xornoth calls, anger tinging their otherwise calm words. “You’ll be happy soon, I guarantee.”
Jimmy flinches at the way his voice echoes and hurries on, tripping over the curb as he steps out of the lot and onto the road.
Xornoth growls behind him, and before Jimmy can even think to move, a tentacle tears from the ground and wraps around his torso. It lifts him off the ground and Jimmy flails, dry heaving as the ground quickly falls below him. He pulls at the tentacle with scrabbling fingers, desperately trying to find some way to get free. The limb tightens around him, cutting into his wounds—he hears something crack—he screams, vision flashing red then black then back to blurred—
The tentacle releases him and he falls to the road, skidding a little bit, searing pain hitting his entire body full-force. He tries to breathe through the agony, but the breath is stolen from him as the tentacle tightens around his ankle and lifts him back up until his hair is brushing the ground. He can’t help it—a sob breaks from his mouth. He’d been so close, he was about to escape… .
A driverless car speeds from nowhere and rams into Xornoth, driving him into the wall of the building. The tentacle drops Jimmy, who falls on his face and crumples to the ground as it withers and shrinks into the hole it created in the asphalt. The night goes still.
Jimmy struggles to his feet, head whirling with agony. His nose is stuffed up, something wet pouring from it, but he doesn’t bother with it. He has to get out, because surely Xornoth isn’t dead, surely he’ll be up in just a few seconds—
Jimmy’s not sure how he’s moving, but he is. More shockingly is that he knows where he is. He’s in a part of town he never goes to, afraid of being arrested or attacked or worse.
He’s in the high-end, public-funded superhero houses neighborhood. It’s across the city from his dingy apartment, he’ll never make it home … Xornoth will be coming for him at any moment… .
There’s one superhero Xornoth is afraid of, his mind blearily supplies.
He can’t go to Major. Major … Major despises him, has ever since the accident with Aeor. Aeor had been Major’s mentor, had taught him to hone and control his ice powers and helped him grow into his wings. Aeor had been everything to Major, and Jimmy had taken that away.
But there’s nowhere else for him to go, nowhere else where he’ll be safe, and what if Xornoth’s implanted some sort of tracker into him… .
Major is the primary protector of the city. His house is the grandest, in the center of the neighborhood, so it’s going to be a bit more walking, but Jimmy thinks he can manage it before he passes out.
He makes it, just barely. It’s a long walk, longer than he thinks it should’ve been, but he doesn’t have the focus to worry about it. He doesn’t have the focus to worry about anything but the pain.
It’s a beautiful house, one that Jimmy has been warned to stay away from countless times, but he stumbles through the garden of peonies and keeps his eyes down, as if under the impression that if he doesn’t look at the house, it won’t count as trespassing.
He leans heavily against Major’s intricately carved doorway, reaching up one hand to knock only to lose strength halfway through and just sort of pat his door. His arm falls to his side and he slumps, despair flooding him as he realizes it’s been too long, Xornoth will find him, there’s nothing to be done—
The door opens and Jimmy collapses, knees hitting the porch, head leaning against something soft. He looks up to see that he’s pressed against someone’s legs, then further up to see Major’s distinctive glittering white mask and angry blue eyes.
“Solidarity,” he says, tone bitter. “What are—” his voice changes as he properly takes in Jimmy— “Is that blood?”
Jimmy swallows, speaks, voice creaky from disuse. “I—I didn’t know where else to go… .”
He blinks, and suddenly he’s in a well-lit kitchen, white tiles bright against the dark wood of the cabinets. Major’s there, wetting cloths in the sink, and there’s a table beside him with a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Jimmy blinks at it, then down at himself. He’s shirtless, only wearing the shorts that they’d given him once they’d torn his trousers to shreds. His various cuts and bruises and missing patches of skin are on display, some scabbed over, others weeping blood. His arm and side are still bleeding as well, though considerably faster than anywhere else. More confusing than anything, there’s blood utterly coating his chest.
When he looks back up, Major is staring at him. “You’ve broken your nose,” the hero says after a moment. “That’s where all that blood is from.”
Jimmy doesn’t say anything. Any words might split his aching head in half.
Major dips his damp cloth into the rubbing alcohol, then pauses, hand hovering over Jimmy’s body. He seems to assess the damage, then kneels down and reaches for Jimmy’s side, gently patting the spot where he’d yanked out the tube.
“These injuries,” Major says once he’s bandaged that point with some gauze and medical tape, moving to Jimmy’s left arm to clean the exit point of the IV. “They’re strange. Clean, almost. Precise. And your arms… .” He holds up Jimmy’s arm, tracing along the bruises with a soft finger. “Burst vessels. IV points. These aren’t from a fight, Solidarity.”
Jimmy swallows. Major doesn’t miss it, steps away for a moment and comes back with a glass of water. He presses it to Jimmy’s lips, waits until he’s drunk a few sips to put it down. He moves to his nose, mutters a warning—Jimmy barely has time to tense before Major grips his nose over the mask and yanks, shoves it back into position as Jimmy lets out a hoarse cry at the burn. More blood spills out, and Major pulls his hands away in disgust before scrunching up a rag and shoving it under Jimmy’s nostrils. He holds it there until the flow slows, then adds a few pieces of tape over the mask to keep Jimmy’s nose in place before turning to other injuries.
He moves quickly and efficiently, cleaning and bandaging with the skill of one who’s done this before. Jimmy tries not to move too much, but he can’t help but jerk his leg away when Major lightly swipes a cloth over a particularly wide skin graft there. Major mutters something, then holds his leg firmly in place. He lets go before Jimmy can start to hyperventilate.
“Mind telling me what happened?” Major asks conversationally. When Jimmy doesn’t speak, he adds, “I mean, I’ve every right to arrest you. I shouldn’t have even let you in, but I happen to be a nice person. So you might as well share, if you don’t feel like waking up in a cell.”
Jimmy’s had too much of waking up in a cell lately. He swallows again, hums to make sure his voice works. “I … they hurt me,” he says lamely. His head is so foggy. He clears his throat and tries again. “They—they took me. And cut me. And took stuff. I—” a thought strikes him— “what day is it?”
“Uhhhhh, late Monday,” Major says absently, sticking some tape to Jimmy’s side.
“Date?”
“The 30th.”
“Of?”
“May.”
May. That can’t be. He was—the last day he can remember is the 25th of April, and he knows it’s been longer than five days, but surely it hasn’t been an entire month.
“I was … I was ki—taken. Late April,” Jimmy says slowly, the words falling like molasses from his mouth. Major freezes, looks up at him.
“You were kidnapped?” he asks incredulously. “That’s impossible. And nobody got struck by lightning or mauled by a passing bear? How?”
Jimmy shrugs. There are too many words involved in the answer for him to formulate it. “Xornoth?” he offers eventually. Major’s mouth curves down. He returns to patching Jimmy up.
“What would they want with you?” Major murmurs, almost to himself. “What would anyone want with you?” Jimmy tries to hold back a shudder and fails, the feeling of Xornoth petting his hair all too present. Major notices, and his mask shifts as he apparently raises an eyebrow.
“He … he wouldn’t stop touching me,” he says, and out of nowhere his eyes are burning. A tear slips down past his mask, dripping off his chin. “While the. The doctors hurt me. I don’t—I don’t wanna go back… .”
Major’s hands still. When Jimmy looks at him, his eyes are wide, wide and almost scared. Jimmy doesn’t think he can quite comprehend why. He just wants to sleep. His limbs are immobile, weighing him down. Everything hurts down to his bones, an ache that he doesn’t think will go away.
“I’mma sleep, ‘kay?” he slurs, then his chin hits his chest and he’s out.
-
When Jimmy wakes up, he’s hungry. Hungry and thirsty and exhausted and hurting, but he’s also alive and doesn’t feel like he’s dead.
He’s in a bed for once, and this certainly isn’t his cell or anywhere else he can remember ever being. The room is plain, undecorated apart from a dresser with a TV atop it. The only light is the sun filtering in through the window, bathing the room in an almost grey-orange hue.
He’s under a blue duvet in a very nice bed, and his left arm that lies on top of it is wrapped in bandages. It’s tough to take a breath in, something constricting his chest. He tries to sit up, gasps and falls back when pain lances through his chest.
“Good to see you’re finally awake,” a dry voice says from his right. Jimmy glances over, sees an open doorway and Major standing in it. Right, he’d escaped.
He’s free.
Major leaves, comes back a few minutes later with a glass of water and a peanut butter sandwich. These he sets on Jimmy’s lap, then reaches under the bed and retrieves a few pillows which he props under Jimmy’s shoulders and neck, helping him to sit up.
The water nearly spills, but Major flicks his wrist at it and it solidifies into ice just as Jimmy’s knee bumps it. Once he’s completely sat up, ribs twinging, Major waves his hand over the glass and it returns to water.
Unfortunately, Jimmy’s hands are still shaking too badly to grasp the glass on his own, so Major rolls his eyes and steadies his hold, allowing Jimmy to tip the water into his mouth. It’s easier to hold the sandwich, so Jimmy takes the food into both hands and bites into it, eyes almost rolling back into his head at how heavenly peanut butter tastes after so long without proper food.
Major leaves again, returns carrying a chair that he sets down beside the bed and plants himself in. He props a hand under his chin, watches Jimmy with those icy blue eyes. Jimmy’s almost halfway done with the sandwich already, tearing it apart so quickly the sandwich might as well be a blur.
Major’s hand latches around his wrist and Jimmy flinches away, drawing his arms close to himself. He—he doesn’t want to be touched, it feels bad, it burns, it’s scary. Major draws away as well, hands in the air.
“Apologies,” he says after several moments of silence. “I meant only to stop you before you got sick. You—well, you don’t look as though you’ve eaten in a while.”
Jimmy manages a raspy chuckle. “They gave me food,” he says. “I just wasn’t strong enough to open it.”
Major looks away. “You said,” he says slowly, voice unreadable, “that they—that Xornoth touched you. May I ask details?”
Jimmy feels the blood drain from his face. He really doesn’t want to talk about it, and now that his head is somewhat clearer than it’s been in apparently weeks, he remembers it clearer than ever. He self-consciously straightens his mask, probably getting peanut butter on it. “I—um—”
“I just need to know if they’re presenting a different danger than before,” Major continues. “I understand if it’s difficult to talk about, but if Xornoth is now sexually harming others, immediate action must be taken.”
Jimmy blinks a few times, processing that. Was Major implying—? “No, not—not like that,” corrects Jimmy, setting the remaining half of the sandwich down on the plate. His hands are trembling, and he clasps them together in an attempt to stop it. “I don’t think so. They would just—I would be on the table, and the scientists … cutting into me, or—or taking blood, or something, and they would just … pet. My hair. Or cheek. I didn’t—I don’t like—” he cuts off with a shudder, stomach turning. The sandwich before him no longer looks so appetizing.
When he looks back up, Major is staring at him. Major’s not wearing his usual blue-and-white skin-tight costume, he notices, the one with the intricate M on the chest and the white knee-high boots. He’s wearing skinny jeans and a t-shirt and a blue jacket, like a normal person. And suddenly, despite the grand house and fame and power, Major just seems like anyone else Jimmy might meet on the street, and he wonders if the man has a layman identity like he does himself.
“Thank you for telling me that,” Major says, standing suddenly. “I don’t know when you’ll be well enough to walk—”
“Oh, right—” Jimmy fumbles with the plate, sets it on the mattress as he flips the covers back and swings his legs over the side of the bed, despite the pain that spikes through his body. “I really ought to—”
“What do you think you’re doing?” demands Major, gesturing for him to lie back down. “You’ve been tortured for a month, your stick legs barely look strong enough to not be blown over in the wind, you haven’t stopped shaking since I brought you in. Now lie back down and recover before I make you.”
Jimmy looks down at himself, at his bandages and hospital-style shorts. His entire torso is wrapped, but he can see how starkly his ribs stick out. He really has been slowly starving to death, hasn’t he?
Aside from that, he feels suddenly embarrassed. He’s practically naked in front of Major, who is the city’s foremost hero, two-time winner of the Nobel Prize, already has a documentary and four biographies written about him, and is ostensibly attractive to men and women alike with his tall, muscular frame and his windswept blue hair.
He really needs to leave. He’s getting antsy, anyway—now that he can be outside, he desperately wants to be. Not to mention, he’s regaining strength—slowly, but surely. At any moment, disaster could strike.
“No, I really—I’d like to be home, if it’s all the same to you,” he stammers, flexing his feet and holding back a wince. “Not that I’m not—I’m very grateful, thank you so much—I just don’t want to impose any longer, and I—my rent is due—yeah.”
Major seems to be about to protest, but he pauses, and then shrugs. “Fine, I don’t care. Let me get you something to wear.”
Major exits, and Jimmy bites back a whimper as he stretches his trembling arms. His various bandages pull, his nose burns every time his face twitches, every limb aches to the bone. He has to get out of here, though—he’s likely recovered enough strength for his bad luck to strike. He has to leave before he does anything to make Major hate him even more.
Major returns with a pair of jeans and a plain grey shirt. “We’re about the same height, but they might hang loose,” he says distractedly. “I burned the thing you were wearing, sorry. It was gross.”
Jimmy doesn’t even remember what he was wearing. Probably not his superhero-turned-antihero outfit, that had been pretty much torn to shreds over the course of his captivity. Major tosses the clothes on the bed and turns around respectfully.
Jimmy doesn’t bother taking off the shorts, bloodstained as they are. He’s not got anything on underneath, and he’d prefer to not be totally exposed in the house of someone who hates him. Pulling the jeans on is rough, and he has to take frequent breaks as his vision repeatedly goes fuzzy. The shirt isn’t as bad, but he can’t quite get his arms up without a grunt of pain as it pulls on his injuries. His vision fuzzes again, but when he blinks the world back into focus his arms are in the sleeves and he can just pull the shirt down.
“I might have some shoes,” Major says thoughtfully when Jimmy gives him the go-ahead to turn around. “And of course you can have a pair of socks. I once didn’t wear socks to a fight and my boots came off and everyone saw, so I had a group that gathered sock donations for me. I gave most of them away, but I’ve still got a few pairs.”
Major does end up finding him shoes, an old pair of gardening shoes that have a hole in the left toe. Jimmy’s more than grateful for them anyhow.
“What part of the city do you live in? I’ve got a car parked about a block away, I can get you near to your house.”
“Um, yeah, that’d be—that’d be way more than I expected, thank you so much,” Jimmy says with a yawn. “I—you really don’t have to.”
Major fixes him with an unimpressed look. “Right. Because you’re going to walk all the way home when you take eight minutes and forty-two seconds to even get dressed by yourself. And you’re going to manage to do it without getting kidnapped again.”
Jimmy looks away, his face turning red. He doesn’t want to admit it, but Major’s right. One step outside of Major’s protection and he would be whisked away.
It’s a long walk to Major’s car, one that has Jimmy gasping for breath and limping heavily. His head spins, his eyes squint in the evening light, his arms end up clenched around his body as he shivers. Major, walking casually, hair pulled up under a beanie, rolls his eyes and shucks off his blue button-up jacket, tossing it to Jimmy. Jimmy shrugs it on, a noise of pain slipping out as it rubs against a cut.
He stumbles over a curb and nearly falls, Major catching him around the waist before his face hits the pavement. The man rights him, helps him over the curb, then moves on without saying a word.
Jimmy’s about to pass out by the time they make it to the car. It’s older, nondescript, windows tinted so darkly that it’s practically impossible to see into. Major unlocks it with a click of a remote, and Jimmy seats himself gingerly in the passenger seat.
When Major turns the key in the ignition, the clock flickers on.
6:28PM.
It’s late in the day, then. Jimmy had slept all through the night and most of the day. Not that he’s surprised, but this is a huge change from his seemingly randomized hours in the cell. He can get up and go to bed whenever he likes now. He won’t be woken by a door slamming open and his body being lifted.
Once Major has driven to the main part of the city, Jimmy breaks the stifling silence by pointing out directions. He considers for a moment directing Major to the wrong place entirely, but his energy is far too low for that. He can let Major drop him off in the neighborhood, just won’t let him know which complex he lives in.
The quality and upkeep of the buildings deteriorate around them, farther and farther until Jimmy feels at home. They’re about five blocks from his place now, so he lets Major drive a bit more then directs him down the neighboring street, stopping outside a random apartment complex that looks to be in about the same condition of his building. Major looks up at it for a second, taking in the bags of trash in the side alley, the dead grass in the front yard, the multitude of potholes in the road, the kids in too-big shirts running up and down the roads with a football in hand.
“Don’t villains usually live more … underground? Metaphorically and literally?” Major asks slowly.
“Oh, I gave up the whole villain thing a while ago,” Jimmy answers, rubbing his eyes through the holes in his mask. “I don’t make a great hero either, so I’m trying out sort of an in-between right now.”
Major snorts. “Yeah, I think hero’s a bit out of your range,” he mutters. Jimmy once again realizes just how surreal this is: he’s in a car with the top hero of the city who also happens to be the man who hates him more than anyone, both of them wearing masks, him wearing the hero’s clothes. He starts to pull off the jacket, but Major waves him off.
“Don’t bother, I was about to retire that one anyway.”
Jimmy nods uncertainly, unbuckles his seatbelt. “Um. I’ll be off, then. Thank you, for … everything, I suppose.”
Major nods, his eyes following Jimmy as he swings open the car door and gathers enough strength to stand. “Oh, and, Solidarity?” he throws out. Jimmy leans forward to hear him over the engine. “Next time I see you, I’m putting you behind bars. This never happened, all right?”
“Right. Yeah. Never happened.” Jimmy nods to himself a few times, looks up at Major before turning away, easing the car door shut behind him.
When Jimmy enters his apartment thirty minutes later (the lock’s never worked so he doesn’t have to worry about lost keys), he kicks off Major’s shoes, stumbles to his bedroom, and collapses onto the bed. He needs to change his bandages, he needs to throw out his milk and eggs and bread, he needs to purchase a new phone, he needs to email his landlord and pay his rent. But he’s exhausted, he’s so bone-tired, and he hurts so much, and he just wants to sleep. So sleep he does, drifting away almost as soon as he’s pulled his covers that smell faintly of cigarette smoke over his chin.
Across the city, Xornoth steeples their fingers as they watch over the shoulder of a woman in a lab coat. The woman is excited, explaining something, a breakthrough, but Xornoth isn’t listening. Their eyes are fixed on the information on the woman’s laptop.
Their little bird will soon be caged once again.