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I sit on the edge of the building looking down on the street below, my legs dangling in the wind. It feels freeing to be up here, like no one can touch me. I can see Legion Tower in the distance, lights shining into the sky, a beacon for any capes that can fly. This must be what the Legion Pacifica feels like all the time, so far above it all, staring down at everything from the clouds. I can only catch a glimpse of that freedom before the end.
Sitting in my lap is a takeout container from my favourite restaurant. I figured, if this was going to be my last day, I might as well enjoy it. I eat the food slowly. I’m not sure if I’m savouring each bite or putting off what I came up here to do. Either way the food disappears too fast, and then it’s just me on top of this building, looking down on the city below. I let the takeout container slip out of my lap and watch as it plummets to the street below. It doesn’t go splat like I thought it would, it’s too light for that. The wind carries it about a block over before I see it hit the ground. I imagine it made a soft thump sound but it’s too far away to hear.
That’s not what I’ll look like when I fall. I’ll go straight down. I’ll hit the concrete with a crash. Maybe I’ll hit hard enough to crack it. There will be screams as people point at my body. Or maybe there won’t be, maybe no one will notice I was there at all. No one seemed to notice me while I was alive, why should my death be any different. I could make it easy on them. When I hit the ground I could just phase through it. Slid through the matter of the concrete, the sewer underneath. My momentum carrying me deep into the earth. Eventually I’d get too exhausted to keep it up and then I’d become solid again and the rocks would break my body down into nothing. No trace I was ever there.
How long would it take for anyone to notice I was gone? Would they even notice?
“Rough night?” asks a voice from a few feet above and to my left.
I jerk suddenly away from it as though I expected a blow, looking up to see who had spoken, who had caught me.
“Whoa, easy there.” says the girl. Her hands reach out to steady me but she doesn’t get closer. She looks like she’s trying to placate a wild animal. Slowly she sinks down from her place floating in the sky to sit on the edge of the building with me. She stays a few feet away, out of arm's reach, giving me space.
I know who she is. I recognize her even without the blue bodyglove and white cape tossed heroically over her shoulder. This is Dreadnought, mightier than a battleship, faster than a jet. She’s the most powerful superhero in the country, and more than that, she’s a trans superhero. She’s like me.
If this were any other day I would be fangirling so hard I could barely speak. Vaguely I think of the glossy media print I have back at home of her and the then soon to be new Legion Pacifica. I’d bought it in the vein hope that I’d some day be able to get it signed. But this wasn’t any other day and things like that seemed so trivial and pointless.
“Didn’t you retire?” I say and my voice sounds so far away, dead and lifeless. And I want to tell her how much it means that she’s sitting next to me, that she even noticed me. But I don’t, I can’t, because it doesn’t matter. I don’t matter.
“I went on sabbatical.” She corrects me and she looks it. She’s wearing skinny jeans, flats, and an orange t-shirt. Her hair isn’t long enough to be pulled back but her bangs are pinned out of her eyes. I see a brown paper bag from a women’s clothing store downtown that I was always too terrified to enter and I realize I must have interrupted her night shopping.
“I’m sorry.” I say and I don’t know what I’m apologizing for, for interrupting her evening. For being on this building? For not having jumped already? It’s instinct at this point. Apologize because I’ve always done something wrong.
“You don't have to be sorry." she says as she slides a little closer to me. It seems like she's asking 'Is this okay?'
My shoulders sink inwards. I make myself smaller as I sense her proximity. She has her answer and she stops.
"I’m D–” she starts and I cut her off.
“Dreadnought. I know.”
She smiles and I feel like this isn’t the first time her introduction has been cut off like this. “I was going to say ‘I’m Danny’.” Her voice is soft, comforting and I feel awful that she’s wasting that concern on me. “What’s your name?”
I open my mouth to speak, to say the lie that’s been drilled into me, the name my parents gave me, the one they expect me to respond to, the one that doesn’t belong to me. But I can’t. Normally it comes so easily, but up here in the clouds, sitting five feet away from Dreadnought, I can’t. So instead I say “Violet”
I see her eyes flit up and down my body, scanning me, can almost feel her reevaluating her assumptions about me.
I don’t look like a girl. My hair is cropped short, Mom makes me get a haircut if it grows past my ears, my shoulders are too wide, my hips too flat. I’m skinny and have basically no muscle which has always been a relief to me but I’m still several inches taller than I’d like. I stopped looking in the mirror in the morning because the pain of seeing the stranger staring back at me with his broad forehead and square cheek bones is too much to bear.
“I take it,” Danny says slowly. “That’s not the name they call you at home?”
I shake my head cause I know if I speak I’m going to start crying.
“I get it.” she says and something in me breaks.
“How could you get it?” I spit the words like venom and then the tears come. They’re hot as they start streaming down my face. I know my eyes must be red, I look like a mess. “You got handed a perfect, flawless, and not to mention free transition out of the sky.” She looks like a supermodel; delicate features, flawless skin, a gorgeous figure, and if the fan sites are to be believed, she never needs to exercise and she can eat whatever she likes and it doesn’t show.
“Yeah, I did.” she nods and her eyes look heavy. I suddenly remember that a man died giving her that gift and I feel horrible. My eyes drift down to the streets below. “Whoa, hey.” she says, seeing where my gaze is turning. “Look at me, alright.” And I do. “You’re right. I got lucky. But you don’t need to win the lottery to be happy with yourself Violet.”
“It probably helps.” I mutter.
“It does. I will never be able to repay Dreadnought, the last one, for what he gave me but it didn’t fix everything either.” And I know she’s talking about her parents. Her emancipation hearing a few months back made every single news outlet.
“I know–” she starts, then stops, considering her next words carefully. “Violet, do you feel safe at home?”
“They don’t know.” I blurt out and I know it’s not a real answer. Because I can’t bring myself to say the real answer.
“That’s not what I asked.” she says and the worst part is, I know she understands. Maybe the specifics are different, maybe her parents hit her, or maybe they only screamed, or maybe they were like mine, cold and distant and manipulative. But the specifics don’t matter because I know she understands what it’s like to grow up in hiding, to grow up afraid.
But I can’t say it. Because if I say it, it’s like I’m giving up. I’m giving up on having a mother that loves me. And I’m not even sure I have that now but I want it, and as long as I don’t say what I’m really thinking, as long as I don’t put a voice to it I can keep believing it’s true. That my parents love me.
“It’s not that bad…” I say and something slips out after it, something I can’t take back. “...when she’s not home.” And the tears come again, heavy and wet and I pull my knees up and hide my face in them because this isn’t how I wanted to meet Dreadnought, I don’t want her to see me cry.
It was better before the divorce. And I feel awful even thinking that cause my dad used to scream and throw empty beer bottles and hit my mom. But he didn’t do any of that to me. The three of us, my brother, my sister, and I lived in a calm in this war our parents had with each other. Sometimes we’d get drafted, pulled onto one side or the other because they needed bargaining chips to hurt each other. Mostly, we were left alone.
And then she kicked him out. After nearly two decades of losing battles, she’d won the war. But she didn’t know how to stop fighting, and she didn’t try. She just picked a new opponent, me. Except I didn't fight back, I didn't yell and shatter glass bottles against the wall. So instead of her opponent I became her target.
When she wasn’t there things were okay. I’d curl up on my brother’s bed and we’d watch anime together. When she was there, things were bad. And when neither of them were there, things were so much worse. The house was empty, and alone, and the only silver lining I could find in that derelict house was that no one could hear me crying.
I feel Danny's arms wrap around me and I lean into her because it’s been so long since someone’s held me like this. And I don’t care that it’s Dreadnought, I don’t care that I’m not supposed to let people see me cry. I let her hold me as the sobs wrack my body. Everything I’m not supposed to feel when out there being the proper young man everyone is so quick to remind me I'm supposed to be, spills out in those tears. They’re loud and ugly and I feel like I’m gonna choke on them.
Danny doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t make shushing noises like I see moms on TV do with their crying kids. She just holds me, running her hand up and down my back.
“It’s okay.” I hear her whisper periodically and it’s almost enough to make me believe her. But then I remember what’ll happen if I leave the roof without jumping. I’ll have to make the long bus ride back home. If Mom is home she’ll demand to know what I was doing out so late. If she’s not, I'll be greeted by an empty house with no one in it that cares where I go, what I do, or who I am. I’m not sure which is worse and as I think about it, the sobs redouble.
I feel trapped without a way out.
“Would you have let me jump?” I ask. Looking down on the street below, the cars and people walking about seem so small from up here.
“No.” she says quietly. “You’re not going to die tonight Violet.” The words are somehow comforting. “But I can’t watch you twenty four hours a day. If this is what you really want, you’ll find a way to do it. It won’t be tonight,” She sounds so certain that I laugh, it comes out as a hysterical sob. “But sooner or later you’ll find a way. The best I can do is make sure you have other options. That you know there are people who can help. You have to reach out. I can’t do that for you.”
The knowledge that someone cares what happens to me, someone doesn’t want me to die. That they see me, is such a relief. But I don’t trust it. Some voice deep inside me that sounds way too much like my mother reminds me that this is Danny’s job. She’s Dreadnought. This is what she’s supposed to do. She doesn’t actually care. She’s just reading off a script.
And as that feeling of self loathing fills the pit of my stomach like acid eating away at me. I slip from her grasp.
Phasing through Dreadnought isn’t like phasing through anyone else. With everyone else there’s a slight electric charge, like licking a nine volt battery but I slide through them easily like I’m moving through air. Going through Dreadnought feels like passing through dense liquid. I feel her grab for me but her hands pass right through.
I don’t know if I meant to do it. I don’t know if I made the conscious decision to die and not even Dreadnought was going to stop me. One moment she was holding me and the next I’m falling through the air.
In that moment a thought comes to me, ringing loud and clear in my head.
I'm not ready!
I’m not sure if I want to die, or if I ever did. Maybe I just wanted the pain to stop. But it's too late, I'm falling. I can't take that back.
I can hear her diving down after me, matching my momentum so she doesn’t hurt me when she grabs me out of the air. For one terrifying moment I’m afraid she won’t be able to. That her arms will slide right through me and I’ll fall through the street, never to be seen again.
But then I’m wrapped in her arms again and she’s lowering us both slowly to the ground.
When she touches down I clamber to my feet, out of her arms. I already feel like enough of a freak, I don’t need to be carried like an infant.
“Violet,” she says and I look up expecting anger but her face is etched with worry, with concern. For me. “Why did you do that?” she asks me.
“I-I-I I don’t know.” I whisper and part of it is true but I also know I’m lying, to her and to myself. “I think,” I say so softly I’m surprised she even hears it “I just wanted to know someone would catch me.” I feel weak for saying it. I feel weak for even thinking it. It’s like I’m admitting my mother was right.
I told my brother I wanted to die once and he got this look in his eye. A few hours later Mom came into my room and started shouting at me for scaring him. Saying that’s not an okay way to get attention and if I keep pulling stunts like this she’s going to ship me off to my grandparents.
It’s like she’s in my head, reminding me that despite climbing up onto the roof of a forty story building, despite actually jumping, I’m not really suicidal. I just want people to pay attention to me.
Danny reaches out a hand to touch my shoulder. “It’s okay to want people to care about you.” she glances past me out towards the waterfront. “You should come to Cynosure.” It was mobile island fortress/resort that Dreadnought had confiscated after her battle with Sovereign. I’d heard the big media announcement that it was being turned into a refuge for queer kids but I’d never felt like that belonged to me. They had to be busy I would tell myself, I didn’t want to take up resources that would be going to queer kids who actually needed it. In the back of my mind the real reason I’d never considered it loomed.
I don’t deserve help. I don’t deserve anything.
“I don't know...”
“It’s not going anywhere.” Danny says. “There’s a ferry that leaves twice a day at noon and midnight but if you’re in a bad place and you can’t wait, go to the waterfront and call the front desk. We have a couple of flyers on standby for emergency transport. And…” she pauses for a moment, unsure of what she’s going to say next but decides to say it anyways. She pulls a pen out of her pocket. “Can I see your hand?” she asks and automatically I hold it out for her. She writes a number across my palm.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“My number. If you really need someone to talk to, give me a call.” Any other day I would be jumping for joy. Dreadnought, freaking Dreadnought just gave me her phone number. All I think in that moment is Wow, I must really look pathetic.
“Violet,” she says and I snap back to reality. “Are you going to be okay if I leave you now?”
“Yeah,” I say, my tone is falsely cheery. She just saved me from jumping off a building. I don’t want to inconvenience her further.
But she seems to hear how fake my voice sounds cause she says “Are you sure?”
My facade cracks. I scrunch my eyes tight to stop the well of tears from spilling forth again and I shake my head violently.
“That’s okay.” she said. She pauses for several moments before saying. “Do you want to see Legion Tower?”
I look up. She’s not serious is she? God, I don’t deserve this.
I nod yes and I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything more in my life.
She puts her arm around my shoulder with a smile. “Let’s go.”