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“And did you see the look on her face?”

Sana’s voice was punctuated by a peal of laughter that rang out into the empty night, louder than anyone had the right to be at 3 AM in a residential district. That was the nature of his Russian wildfire, careless of whose peace she set ablaze. She would not be tamed and Kam, having made the mistake of trying to dampen her spirit one too many times before, was well aware of the backlash. He, like the rest of Destiny City, simply had to wait for her to burn herself out.

He was her knight and favorite armpiece, escorting her through the streets after hours, and protecting her from everything she didn’t know existed. Her ignorance was one of the many things that drew him to her, time and time again. She never asked him to power up, she never chided him for being drunk in public when the Negaverse could be watching. She was life, untainted and beautiful.

“Are you listening to me?”

This time her words were punctuated by a soft blow to the ribs, playful but attention-grabbing all the same.

“Ow,” he grumbled at her irritably, letting his eyes slide down to meet the honey colored pools staring up at his face. She was safe and comfortable with her fingers entwined in his, but her face dared him to ignore her again. What had she been talking about? “I was listening, I swear. She totally deserved that.” He finished his words with a sly smirk that softened Sana’s accusing glare, but he knew it didn’t convince her one bit that he had actually been listening to her story. It wasn’t his fault - he’d been there, he’d seen it, they’d done it a thousand times before and he was still a little drunk. These were all things he felt excused him from blame.

Luckily, they’d toed this dance before. She couldn’t stay mad at him any longer than he could at her. She relented with a sigh and leaned into him, rolling her eyes out of the view of his eyesight. A triumphant smirk stretched his lips and he turned his gaze up the skies, walking with her in silence for a few minutes, disturbed only by the sound of her heels on the pavement.

“Sing me a song,” she asked after a moment, growing uncomfortable with the lack of noise around them.

“What kind of song?” There was no use fighting it, even if he didn’t feel like it. She didn’t answer him, but simply shrugged, showing her refusal to decide what ballad he owed her. His fingers untwined from hers as he mulled it over and raised his arm to hook across her shoulders, pulling her close to him so that she wrapped her arms around his middle. Then he leaned down and, very gently, began whispering a chorus line into her ear.

“I love bad bitches, that’s my ******** probleeem, and you know I like to fu-”


“You’re such an idiot!” The embracing arms pulled back and shoved him hard in the ribs, sending him stumbling back away from her and cutting off his trashy rap song abruptly. One of his large, wide palms came up to press against the offended point of his torso as he doubled over, but he was already laughing too hard to be angry. The sound of his belly-deep chuckling brought a curl to the corners of her lips, even as she stamped a foot down and crossed her arms in her best faux pouty huff. “Hmph!” Her face turned away from him and she began a pointed march down the street, alone, since they were a scant few blocks away from home now.

The burly man watched the sway of her hips as she left him in her dust, taking a moment to compose himself and catch his breath. She wasn’t really mad, he knew the difference between her playful grumbling and the truth wrath of Sana Zharkov - but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to make him work to get back in her favor. With a look of concentration plastered on his normally smug face, he closed the distance between them in a few breaths and caught her by one hand. There was a moment where she tried to resist, pulling with all her strength in an attempt to wrench her fingers free stubbornly, but he was too determined and she was much, much too weak. He used the grip on her hand to pull her toward him, throwing her off balance so that she only remained upright by letting herself fall into his arms. Her palms flattened against his chest but the knuckles curled, digging her fingertips into his shirt in a way that suggested flamboyance was getting him nowhere.

“I don’t know what you think you’re-” she began, but he silenced her by pressing a gentle finger to her lips. Both of her perfectly sculpted brows rose as she pursed her lips behind the offending digit. His other hand pressed into the small of her back, holding her close to him as he began a soft croon, kinder than his harsh rap jest had been.

“I know I’m not supposed to say I’m sorry,” the finger on her lips brushed gently over the curve of her cheek, tucking back a stray hair from her messy updo, “I know you’ve had more loves than Mata Hari.” The hand at the small of her back applied pressure as he used his body to tip her backward, holding her weight up solely by himself, so that she dipped into his supportive arm. “But you know you’re the star of my life story,” as he brought his verse to a close, his fingers slid gently under her chin and tipped her face up so that he could brush her lips with his own, whispering the final words against them, “and I’m so sorry.”

Her lips pressed back against his own and she melted against his embrace, happy and pleased, caught in her lingering buzz and the thrill of his never failing romantics. She was dimly aware of the feel of concrete beneath her feet again as he stood her upright, though her eyes didn’t flutter open until his lips receded, leaving a chill in the wake of his blazing warmth. Just as she was about to speak some tease, it died on her tongue. Somewhere behind them came a scream, gut wrenching and startling. She felt Kam’s muscles tighten beneath her palms as both their heads jerked instantaneously to the path they’d just been walking.

“Go inside, Sana.”

“Kam, don’t, don’t be a hero tonight.”

When the dreadhead looked back down at her, she was staring up at him with wide, pleading eyes. He didn’t want to be a hero - not tonight, not any night, but the scream had been so.. afraid. She didn’t know the way it tugged at his heart, or his sense of justice, to know someone was in danger. He couldn’t explain his curse.

“Go inside,” he repeated, with a no nonsense tone, “I promise I’ll be right there.”

Though she looked half afraid, she turned and retreated from the comfort of his arms, knowing that he watched until she got across the threshold of his condo. As soon as she disappeared, he turned on his heel and all but ran in the direction they had just come. His heart was pounding with every step, threatening to overwhelm him as he wondered silently to himself what disaster he was walking up to and what kind of luck they had that it had happened minutes after they passed, to some other unlucky soul. Just as he was about to cross a small intersection of side streets, he saw exactly what he’d been looking for and ducked back behind the wooden fence that lined the sidewalk.

Ahead of him was a lieutenant - some tall, willowy punk decked out in green. At his feet lay a woman, unconscious, still wearing the outfit she’d walked out of the club in. Whatever the man had come to do, it was done, and the dimly glowing light in his outstretched palm told of the disaster. Kam was too far away to know if he’d gone straight for the starseed or if, by some luck, the woman had only been a victim of the drain. The power of Gehenna lurked just beyond reach, like a tidal wave crashing beneath his skin, and he fought it at the same time that he felt his body yearn for it. This lieutenant was no match for the raw power of his wonder but that woman could still be alive. There were worse things waiting for her than if the Negaverser chose to simply spare her and walk away. He couldn’t trust himself any more than he could trust the punk standing triumphantly over her body.

Kam leaned his head back against the fence and grit his teeth against a groan of frustration.

Don’t be a hero tonight.

Sana’s words echoed back to him and, with frustration written plainly across his face, he turned and left the scene behind him. The truth was that Kamboja wasn’t a hero at all. Whatever man Gehenna had been, he paled in comparison. The Knight’s conviction and strengths hadn’t transferred to this life, this husk of a man. He left the victim behind and fled, like a coward, to the arms of a woman who would comfort him with her ignorance.

Kamboja woke in the real world gasping.

For a moment he seemed unsure of where he was, or how he had survived the red sea. He sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, letting his feet brush the chilled, hard wood of his bedroom floor. It was a comfort, an anchor to reality. His bared skin was peppered with a cold sweat, where droplets ran together in small rivulets down the slope of his back. The sheets around him were dampened, twined between his legs where he had fought the crashing waves in his sleep. For a long moment he sat there, taking slow, ragged breaths until the terror began to subside.

Next to him, Sana slept, peaceful and undisturbed by his thrashing nightmares. He glanced over one shoulder at her where she lay, stretched out like a renaissance painting in the moonlight from the nearby window. She truly had no idea what demons he faced or what terrors really waited in the dark of a Destiny City night. He envied that about her as much as he sought solace in it.

Beyond her the stars twinkled innocently in the piece of the night sky he could see from his bedroom window. Mars was not visible there, but her brothers and sisters whispered her message.

He had failed.