If I Could Be a Superhero [Open/Active]

[eba02]

Characters: Billy Kaplan, J, whoever else shows up?
Content: Billy needs a new cape. Guess who volunteered to go with him.
Location: Starting at the clubhouse and um. Going from there. Somewhere.
Time: Afternoon
Warnings: None so far

Comments

[inmyothertights]

Billy sidled out kind of guiltily. "Yeah, let's go before my friends all change their mind about allowing me outside."

He'd managed to leave only with his reassurance that he wasn't going to be on his own and that if anything potentially lethal - or, okay, severely ... slightly harmful in any way looked like befalling him he'd magic himself out of there as quickly as he could, but nobody had seemed very pleased about it and he felt kind of bad.

But he needed a new cape. None of his teammates really understood - well, no; Temeraire at least was pretty enthusiastic about capes, but he'd probably end up pressing for Billy to use something way more ornate than he needed or wanted. Everyone else just thought capes were dumb.

Not that J wasn't liable to spend the entire time making fun of him, but it was easier to take from someone who wasn't actually on his team and in the habit of making fun of his cape on a regular basis.

[eba02]

J laughed at that one, but Billy brought up a good point: he was a Healer, and the Tagruato guys were after the Healers. J would have to be on his toes and then some today.

Between Billy's body language and the tune J could pick up, it was easy to see something was bothering the young Healer. He slung his bat easily over one shoulder and walked with the teen. "Penny for your thoughts," came the casual offer.

[inmyothertights]

"Haha, uh." Billy shrugged, stuffing his hands into his pockets, shoulders slightly hunched. He had a lot on his mind, but not all of it was much he was all that willing to talk about. "Is 'Aah aaah we're all gonna die' worth a penny?" he offered. "Because that's pretty much a constant lately."

[eba02]

Billy got half a smile and a quirked eyebrow for that one. Unfortunately for him, he was walking with the one Agent who had absolutely no qualms about prying into other peoples' business. "'Fraid not," J replied easily. "They're givin' that one away for free nowadays. What else've you got?"

[inmyothertights]

Billy shook his head, but there was an amused grin on his face - or most of one, at least "Figures." He hesitated. He'd wanted to try to take his mind off this stuff ... but he hadn't even told any of the other Young Avengers about what had happened to Seymour yet. It hadn't come up. And to be perfectly honest, maybe half the reason it was weighing on him so much was that that made it feel like he was lying about it. He sighed, eye caught for a moment by one high, smashed window on the other side of the road, and then glanced back at J.

"I, uh ... I guess you can take your pick between I've made my brother run away and I fail healing forever," he said, affecting a resigned, sarcastic sort of casualness about it.

[eba02]

Resigned, sarcastic casualness worked pretty well on people with normal hearing. J, however, could hear beyond tone into tune, and the low dissonance reverbrating through Billy's tune gave him just as much cause for concern as his words did.

"Well when you put it like that," he raised an eyebrow. "I'll take healing for two hundred, Alex."

[inmyothertights]

Billy didn't reply straight away, instead taking a moment to decide if he wanted to say, actually, I'd rather not talk about it. And he didn't, not really, but he knew that he probably should.

"Uh," he said at last. Articulate. "You know I mentioned the guy tried to set me on fire? I ... me and Sora were trying to heal him. And he -" Billy winced. "I don't know, he ... didn't want us to - he wouldn't let us. And so we ... didn't." He'd slowed down a little, like he couldn't think about this and walk quickly at the same time. "Sora killed him. I helped ... I helped kill a guy I was supposed to be healing."

[eba02]

J was quiet, waiting for Billy to speak, listening to the indecision wavering in the air. He was starting to get the feeling that this would be bigger than he expected.

And then Billy started explaining things, and J slowed down to keep pace with him - and stopped completely, just for a beat, at Billy's final words. No wonder the kid was having such a tough time of it.

"You know," he said after a few seconds of silence, "somethin' I've learned in my line of work is, you can't help someone who doesn't wanna be helped. Just doesn't work out. And from what you're tellin' me, it sounds like this guy really didn't wanna be healed, 'specially if he set you on fire to make his point." He paused, finding it tough to think that anyone would want to be a monster, but...well, it took all types, and that wasn't what he was focusing on right now.

"Lemme ask you this: if things hadn't gone south, what would you and Sora have done?"

[inmyothertights]

That very question had been on Billy's mind a lot, in the days following Seymour's death; he'd been mulling it over ever since. But he still wasn't all that quick with his reply.

"... Yeah. He really, really didn't want to be healed. But ... we could've knocked him out, and then healed him - That's what we were trying to do ..." He hoped so, anyway - Sora hadn't seemed nearly as affected by the whole thing as Billy was, though. "It just ... got out of hand."

[eba02]

"Sounds like it," J agreed with that last sentence, still thinking about the ones that had come before it.

"Okay," he continued, "so if you'd managed to knock 'im out and heal 'im, then what? If he wanted to be a monster so bad, wouldn't he just go out an' get bitten again? D'you really think you could've kept that close an eye on 'im, kept 'im from doin' it again?"

He stopped, hesitated for just a minute. He honestly couldn't figure where he stood on this - it was heavy stuff to talk about - but right now his priority was getting Billy back on an even keel.

"I'm not sayin' killin' him was...this ain't a 'way to go,'" he clarified. "But...maybe it was the lesser of two evils. You know what I'm sayin'?"

[inmyothertights]

"Could've ... locked him up or something," Billy said, but he didn't sound convinced. Imprisoning super-criminals might have been doable back in the Manhattan he used to call home, but here ...

He looked at the ground and took a deep, unsteady breath. "... Maybe it was," he conceded, and if there ever was a disappointed-sounding admission that was it.

[eba02]

That first sentence didn't really need an argument - it was easy to hear that Billy himself wasn't convinced of his own words.

Didn't sound like he was too happy with them either, if that second sentence was anything to go by. J sighed and put an arm around Billy's shoulders, trying to be supportive if nothing else. "Doesn't make it any easier, huh."

[inmyothertights]

Billy gave a loose, hollow laugh and shook his head. "Not really," he conceded, hunching his shoulders a little at J's arm around them. He made a couple of exceptions, but Billy had never really been Physical Contact Guy. "I just - it's healing, you know? It's supposed to be easy. Save people, make people better, no gray areas, do the right thing, and ..." He sighed. Of course it wasn't always gonna be that easy, but he'd really liked living in a world where it was.

[eba02]

Oops. J moved his arm, making a note to self - Billy was not a touchy feely kind of guy. Alright, he could do that.

He managed half a smile. "It's those gray areas that just mess things up." Oh, he knew all about that. "But," he looked over at Billy, "sounds t' me like you're doin' the best you can. Can't imagine anyone'd fault you for that."

[inmyothertights]

"I'm trying to," Billy conceded. "It's just I guess it's harder here ... but what the hell kind of hero does that make me? I -" He winced a little, grimacing. "Geez. I'm sorry. I'm wallowing. This is supposed to be ..." he made a futile sort of hand gesture, "... capes. Lighthearted cape adventures."

[eba02]

"It makes you human under that cape," came the simple reply, "an' I don't see why anyone'd expect anything different." Why make things any more difficult than they needed to be?

"Right." That was a welcome change of subject if there ever was one, followed by a bit of a grin. "We're s'posed to be gettin' you a glorified bedsheet."