I ran through the snowy forest carrying several blazing logs, but the fire didn’t burn me. We had a mutual understanding: I needed it to ward away the darkness; it needed me to keep it safe, but we both needed shelter from the cold. As I went, I picked up sticks and twigs that strengthened the flames. The sound of howls was getting closer.

The trees parted, revealing a cabin. Fear urged me forward, but my legs wouldn’t move fast enough. The wolves chased me into the clearing. I sprinted with all my might toward the building, but they nipped at my heels. I waved them away frantically. Gusts of wind trailed behind me, as if it were trying to keep the wolves at bay. Through the door of the cabin, I was awarded a brief respite. There was a wood-burning stove in the middle of the room. The hatch sat wide open.

The flames yearned for the safety the cast-iron promised. As if making its own promise, the flames could end my suffering. It would suffuse its warmth throughout the room. The cold, the darkness, and the fear that hung over me would all be gone.

I hastily threw the wood onto a pile of ashes in the stove as the wolves burst into the cabin. Slamming the metal door closed, a flash of light blinded me. I shielded my eyes from it, but when the brightness faded, the flames had lied; my fear was still there. The nightmare was over, but a different kind of cold, darkness, and despair revealed itself. I scrambled back to cower in a corner while a dozen blood-thirsty eyes bared down on me.

I lie in a hospital bed. A terrible pain in my chest demanded my attention, but the depth of my dream lingered as if the pain had come from it instead. Once again, I was wrapped in bandages. Loud whispers drew me away from my condition.

“I swear, if I lose my job for this, you’re all going to pay,” a female voice said.

“Don’t worry, Babe. We’ll be gone before anyone notices we’re here,” a man assured.

“You’re lucky we’re short staffed and I’m the only one assigned to this section,” the woman huffed.

“I’m also lucky that you’re so amazing,” he added. A pause followed, then the sound of footsteps disappeared into the distance. Dale stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.

“Jesse!” He said, rushing to my side. “You’re awake.”

“Yeah, and I feel like a pile of corpses,” I replied.

“Well, that’s because you’re here unofficially, and Leah can’t get you painkillers,” he explained.

“Ahh, that’d do it,” I nodded. I reached for my energy to heal myself, but as I gripped it, I felt its darkness. Oh yeah, I was broken in more ways than one. “I seem to recall taking a knife to the chest. What happened after that?” I asked.

“Heh,” a voice next to me chimed in. “I would have finished the job, but your friend tackled me. He broke my leg, my ribs, and punched me in the face. I don’t remember anything after that.”

“Holy death shroud!” I jumped, then winced, then reached for my chest. “You scared the life out of me.”

“I wish,” the man complained. He lay in a hospital bed a few feet away. One of his legs was propped up in a splint. His blonde hair was disheveled. I suspected he had above-average looks, but not in the condition he was in. One of his eyes was swollen shut, but the other was black in a different way; the way that suggested he was a member of the darkside.

“What are you doing here?” I asked with disdain.

“I brought him here,” Dale interjected.

“Why would you do that?” I complained.

“It seemed rude to leave him in the street,” he said.

“Rude or not, he should have been left in the street. He tried to kill me,” I said.

“You would have deserved it,” Bullseye said. “You killed my friends.”

“They had it coming,” I spat.

“Jesse,” Dale warned.

“What? It was self-defense. They tried to kill me, so I killed them first. Besides, the other two aren’t actually dead. They’re in my stomach, giving me indigestion.”

“And whose fault is that? I’ve told you time and time again,” Dale jokingly admonished. “You can’t just go around putting people’s souls in your mouth. You don’t know where they’ve been; you could get sick.” I gave him my best ha-ha-very-funny look, to which I received a disarming smile. After the joke, none of us knew what else to say. We all kind of just sat there, in uncomfortable silence.

“So…” I started awkwardly. “What’s your real name? I don’t want to keep calling you Bullseye, and don’t tell me it’s Turquoise-Frankenstein-Aerosmith-the-Third.” The evil creature possessing the human next to me rolled his eyes.

“It’s Ken,” he replied.

“Ken?” I asked incredulously. “What kind of demon is named Ken?”

“I’m not a demon. I’m ivitor.” There was that eerie demon language that caused the hairs on the back of my neck to rise. “Jufanta-rama’kulari was from the Oolar clan, they all have weird names.”

“Now you have clans?” I asked with doubt in my voice.

“Yeah, we do. Actually, whether you like it or not, we’re a lot like humans; we just look different,” Ken said.

“Grim reaper’s scythe you are,” I scoffed. “You’re nothing like us. You’re scum that makes deals to steal people’s souls.”

“Jesse,” Dale warned again.

“You’re one to talk. You eat souls,” he shot back.

“I told you, it was an accident. They jumped into my energy of their own accord. Now I’m infected by their filth,” I shouted between clenched teeth. I waved my handless arm then gestured to my chest. “This would have been nothing to fix with my powers, but your buddies are clogging my magic pipes. Now, I’m stuck shooting spikes and farting poison. Plus, since I can no longer heal, your stupid friends have ruined my business.” Ken’s upper lip quivered with anger.

“Alright that’s enough,” Dale said with an angry dad voice. “Jesse, can’t you see the guy’s hurting? He just lost his friends. It doesn’t matter what he is, he’s still a person. You don’t have to be cruel.”

“He’s hurting? Look at me.” I replied. “I’ve spent the last several days getting attacked, being knocked out, and receiving fatal wounds. My powers have been the only thing that’s been keeping me alive. I’m a healer, not a fighter. I’m supposed to be giving people a second chance, not fighting demons, and he’s no person, he’s just a monster masquerading as one.”

“We’re not demons!” Ken shouted. The door swung open.

“Would you guys keep it down?” Leah whisper-shouted. “I don’t care who or what you guys are. You’ll both be dead if you don’t stop yelling.” She skewered us with her fierce eyes, and Ken and I averted ours. The door slammed as she left, the action a classic ‘do as I say, not as I do’. A moment passed before I started back up.

“You can call yourself whatever you want, Ken. You’re villains, and I’m the hero. I will defeat you,” I said. He didn’t respond, so I blazed on. “Actually? I’m not just a hero, I’m a superhero. If only my powers weren’t stolen from me.” Ken couldn’t hold back his frustration.

“They weren’t stolen,” Ken said. “And we’re not villains. We wanted to get away from the constant struggle to survive on the other side of the wall; we just wanted to finally get a moment to rest without our lives being threatened.”

“Oh yeah?” I mocked. “You’re doing one electric chair of a job. All I’ve witnessed so far is body-snatching, unprovoked violence, and death threats.”

“It’s hard,” Ken replied hesitantly. “As soon as we’re capable of thinking, we learn the hard way that power is everything.”

“I don’t care what you’re taught, that’s not how things work here,” I admonished. “You don’t go attacking people just because you want more power. Power isn’t everything here.” Ken looked down, properly cowed.

“Maybe you should listen to your own words, Jesse,” Dale commented. I turned to him, astonished by his audacity.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“Ever since you came back all beat up, you’ve been different,” he explained.

“No I haven’t,” I defended.

“I’ve seen the look in your eyes when Al shares her energy with you. You’ve been using your magic to show off, and when you heal yourself, it’s like – like some drug you’re addicted to.”

“What are you talking about? You think I wanted to use magic all day? None of this has been my fault, but I’ve been forced to fight.”

“Whether you were forced to or not. It’s not about that. It’s the look in your eye,” he said. “It’s like you can’t get enough power.”

“Of course I can’t get enough,” I told him. “I have to protect all of you, and I need more strength to do that.”

“No, you don’t get it,” he continued. “It’s changing you and I’m worried about who you’re becoming. I saw when you were fighting Al, when you fought in the suburbs, when you told your story about the prison. You were smiling.”

“What’s wrong with that? I was saving the day. Why wouldn’t I be happy?”

“No – you were enjoying it.”

“I’m the hero! I was vanquishing evil.”

“The hero?” Dale questioned. “You didn’t look like a hero from my perspective. Heroes don’t grin like that when they’re ‘vanquishing evil.’ You looked more like a villain.”

“Oh give me a break, Dale.” I complained. It was like he was trying to have an intervention, but was starting to get on my nerves. “I didn’t ask for this. I was forced to fight husk Cara; I was forced to fight Jascia in the suburbs; I was forced to go to prison; I was forced to fight five demons; and every time, I came out on top. It doesn’t matter if I was smiling and even if I did enjoy it, which I didn’t, I saved the day multiple times, and that’s what a hero does.” Dale shook his head.

“I understand you’ve been through a lot today, but you’ve been complaining that you’ve been saying that everyone else is at fault. You may have been fighting, but at no point did you take responsibility for your part in it.”

“What are you talking about?” I snarled. “I had no part in any of it. I’ve just been cleaning up everyone else’s messes.”

“You know the saying, ‘with great power comes great responsibility’. There are consequences to your actions. You admitted that you got lazy in your fight with Cara and as a result, Jascia was brought into the world. She wouldn’t even be here if not for you, and people suffered because of it. You told Shawn how to use magic just so you wouldn’t have to deal with him. You know how he is, you should have known that he’d do something like starting that house on fire, endangering all those people. You’ve been flaunting your powers. It's your own fault that you got attacked, your prison buddy got kidnapped, and you’re missing a hand. Every step of the way, you haven’t been paying attention and you’ve put people in danger just because you’ve been trying to look cool.

You think you’re a superhero? Superheroes save people because it’s the right thing to do. They don’t use their powers to get attention, get recognition, and they don’t half-ass their duty, like you have. Also, they don’t eat souls and kill people.” I could not believe he’d blame me for everything.

“Where is this all coming from? You know me better than that. I’ve just been doing what’s necessary,” I claimed. “Stop making me out to be the bad guy.”

“I do know you, Jesse,” Dale said. “That’s why I have to be the one to tell you that you’re not acting like yourself; like the healer you keep claiming to be. ‘I’ve just been doing what’s necessary’, is a classic bad guy line.” Et tu Dale? He saw me as a monster, just like everyone else in the world. He’d betrayed me like a double-crossing backstabber right before an action movie’s climactic fight scene.

“You know what Dale? I don’t need this. You’re acting all high and mighty, but what have you done? Where have you been in all this? You can cast all the blame you want, but you haven’t been putting yourself in danger like I have. You don’t have powers; you’re useless or have you forgotten already? You let yourself get kidnapped and I had to be the one that saved your pathetic life.” Dale’s mouth dropped.

“Useless? Pathetic?” He said somberly. “You haven’t been paying attention at all have you? I’ve been alongside you this whole time. I was there when you came back bloody and exhausted from your fight with Cara; I helped you carry people out of the burning building; I knocked out Jascia at your apartment before she could hurt anyone else; I convinced Al to go help you at the prison; I brought you here; and the whole time, I’ve been joking with you. I know that’s how you’ve been trying to cope.” He got up and walked to the door. He didn’t turn back to look at me when he said, “I did all that because my best friend needed help.”

I stared at his back, unable to say anything as he walked out of the room. When he was gone, I looked up, still speechless, and caught a reflection in the TV’s glass. It wasn’t some man that I didn’t know that stared back at me, but I did see a stranger.

I saw myself, but it wasn’t the me that I expected to see. It wasn’t empathy in the black eyes that met mine, there was only anger and contempt. What hero would have an expression like that on his face after watching his best friend give a speech like that? The harsh features on my face drooped. I was so tired. I was filled with pain, but it wasn’t the wound in my chest, the hand I was missing, or the tortured souls inside me; it was an old wound. The pain of regret and self-loathing. I’d hurt someone close to me, again. I’ve been right all along, all I did was hurt the people around me. I let Dale get too close, but I knew he was right.

I blamed everyone else for the situations I found myself in, but how could I not share that blame when I was in the center of all of it. Shawn wouldn’t have tried to bring Cara back to life on his own if I had explained things properly, and I was the one that brought Jascia into this world. Shawn also wouldn’t have endangered all those people if I hadn’t been in such a rush to get rid of him. I handled the whole situation at the prison poorly, starting with the moment I met Bucket. Also, I probably could have avoided killing those inmates and the other two wouldn’t have gotten stuck in my soul if I’d just been paying attention. I’d still have an apartment, too.

There’s a lot I had to think about, and possibly atone for. Once it was all done, I could distance myself, and nobody else would have to get hurt because of me. I couldn’t do any of that from a hospital bed, but at least there was one thing I could do to set things right. Ken eyed me with an odd expression on his face.

“Ken. What’s Atom’s real name?” Ken turned his head sideways suspiciously.

“Uturion,” He said. I took a deep breath and hesitantly forced myself to do what had to be done.

“I’m – sorry for killing your friends. While it really wasn’t all my fault, I probably could have handled the situation better.” I sighed, realizing I wasn’t doing a very good job. “Look, I know you hate me, but I promise I’ll try to do right by you. Jufanta-rama’kulari and Uturion are still alive, but they are stuck in my soul. I don’t know how to get them out, but I promise I’ll find a way.” I said. Ken searched my face for some sign of deception. “Tell Dale – tell him he was right, and I’m sorry – and tell him I’ll find a way to fix things – and tell him not to worry about me anymore.”

I gingerly got out of bed, and was glad to see that I wasn’t naked. I was wearing a hospital gown, a slight upgrade from bloody, hole-filled prison orange. Thankfully, Dale and Leah left the shoes they gave me in jail on. I wasn’t sure I would have been able to put them on myself in the state I was in.

I managed to walk over to the window and even though I knew it would be an arduous climb down, I was still happy to see we were only on the second floor. Ken watched as Iremoved the screen, and reached out the window to touch the side of the concrete structure.

Pulling a stream of Atom’s power from my core, I directed it through my hand and created a staircase which jut out from the wall. Lifting myself through the window, I ignored the pain as much as I could. When I made it to the pavement, I pressed a hand against the hospital once more, and the steps receded into its surface.

The pain in my chest was extremely uncomfortable, but it was also somehow comforting. I’d forgotten the last time I’d felt pain that lasted longer than a few minutes. With all the evidence piling up, supporting my concerns that I was some sort of monster, the pain was somehow reassuring. It made me feel normal – human.

I made my way through the parking lot and onto the sidewalk. My mind wandered from thought to thought with each step. My family dying and Selena’s mysterious disappearance, my strange guardian-mentor-trainer-kin relationship with Al, my friendship with Dale, my actions the past few days, my business, my perception of myself, my inept student. Each footfall coaxed more thoughts from my brain.

It’s hard to gauge how long I walked, but something drew me from my musings. A car was following me. I turned to look at my tail, but the driver was none other than Detective Why-won’t-he-leave-me-… Detective Max Glau. I hung my head. Without resistance, I dragged my feet to the back of the car, and got in.

“So you’ve finally given up?” he asked, turning to look at me. I didn’t respond; I just stared out the window. “What? No witty retort?” I continued to gaze up at the second and third stories of the buildings around me, wishing I could see the stars. “Suit yourself.”

He took his foot off the brake and pulled onto the street. There were no stars among the buildings I watched fly by, but the glow of streetlights left trails like comets. I rolled down my window to feel the night chill on my face. It was late and the streets were empty. Everyone was safe in their homes; kids were tucked in and their parents fast asleep. When the car finally stopped, it wasn’t the police station we were in front of.

It was a random gravel parking lot. I thought maybe the obsessed detective had finally had enough and was planning to kill me himself. I’d killed his partner after all, I deserved it. The man turned back to me, but I just continued staring out the window.

“I don’t get it,” Glau said with spite in his voice. “Every time I’ve arrested you, you acted like a clown; running your mouth and telling jokes, but as soon as the handcuffs were secure, the whole act ends. You always look guilty like you’re carrying a heavy burden. What’s your problem?”

My gaze drifted from the scene outside to look at Max’s face. It was red with rage, but his eyes showed his true feelings. His expression was a mask hiding his sorrow, searching for answers that I didn’t have. My vacant expression fell to the floor.

“The court ruled temporary insanity, that you were overcome with grief after seeing your family burned alive, but I don't believe it. I was there, I saw the aftermath of what you did. You may have everyone else fooled, but from the moment I saw you, I knew. I could see it in your eyes, and I still see it now.” He wanted to tell me that I was a monster, but the words went unsaid. His demeanor cracked, and he choked back a sob. “Why did they have to die? Tell me, what really happened that night?” A single tear rolled down my cheek, but I forced myself to respond, even though the word was barely audible.

“Alright.” I hesitated before I continued. “I’ll tell you what I remember, but you probably won’t believe me.”

“Tell me anyway.” Glau demanded.

I took a deep breath to compose myself and nodded. There was a long pause before I finally gained the courage to tell him the story that I never told anyone else, of the night my life was ruined.