August 22, First Year

I'd been ready to head out for hours when Spackle finally came home. I was all suited up and had been pacing our flat while my roommate, Korrick, worked calmly at his bench. Korrick raised his head before I heard anything, as he always does, then I heard Spackle's front door slam in the adjoining unit. The connecting door was standing open - we only close it when one of us brings someone home - and I ran to greet my brother, and stopped short in the doorway when I saw him. "Jeezus, are you okay?" I said. He looked terrible - his face and hair were blood-streaked, he was so tired he could hardly stand, and his hands lacked the strength to undo the clips of his armor.

"Yeah kid, I'm fine," he said slowly. "Could y'all help me with this?"

I lifted the chest plate free, and I gasped - his T-shirt beneath the armor was soaked with blood. Korrick and I worked the other pieces off, and it was just the same; his pants, even his socks. Spack and I are used to coming home with blood on us, from taking into ourselves the wounds of other heroes, but this was unbelievable - there was hardly a spot on him that was dry, much less clean. His flesh was intact, but the blood bore witness to how much of his team's pain he had taken tonight. What task force could go so badly wrong, I thought.

Korrick set down a steaming pail, and I took a cloth and started to wash the blood off my brother's face. Behind him, Korrick dumped the clothes into the bin of bleach-water kept for that purpose, and matter-of-factly licked his hands before rinsing them in the pail. I wasn't sure I wanted to know, but it might be good for him to talk it out. "What happened, Spack?" I asked. He drew in a shuddering breath, and he told me.

A valued member of his SG was being called away to serve in some unspecified desert country halfway across the world, leaving his clanmates and his wife and young daughter behind. He wanted one last run with his brothers and sisters, so Spackle answered his leader's call and joined the group that set out to work the streets of Brickstown. The fellow fought desperately, heedless of any injury to himself, and his teammates were kept busy trying to draw fire away from him. He raced from one group to the next without pause, drowning himself in battle. It was obvious that part of his mind was already fighting for his life in that distant place. The clan leader GreyTiger and his team followed their friend without question, all day long and late into the night, while Spackle poured out all his strength to keep them balanced on the knife's edge. Even when he blacked out from the strain, as soon as his teammates got him moving again, the nightmare ride continued. They grew clumsy and silent with fatigue as the long night stretched before them; finally in the wee hours, a senior clanmember answered the call - a veteran force-field defender - and my brother could give up, hand over the welfare of his team and come home.

His speech was growing slurred as the adrenalin wore off. I'd gotten him mostly clean; I feared if I tried to get him into the shower, he'd go off his feet there - he was already swaying. I half dragged him to his futon platform in the window corner and wrapped our warmest quilt around him as the shivering set in. I've seen this happen before, and we both know there's nothing I can do about it, though it sickens me. Nothing in my power can spare him from a night spent drinking down the desperation of a hero who doesn't want to live. And Spackle has made it very clear to me in the past that he doesn't want me to suffer uselessly alongside him.

He huddled in the angle of the floor-to-ceiling windows he'd installed with his own hands, and stared up into the living night sky. I touched his face, but he was no longer aware of me, retreating into that dark place where he deals with his pain. He whispered senselessly as he communed with the mysterious power that flows through him and drives him. I left him there, turned away and went out onto the streets to serve. I fled from the pain that I could not appease, and in that perhaps I'm wiser - or maybe just less of a hero - than my brother.

...

I came home well after sunrise. I'd spent a pleasant night in the company of Pyronnus, a fire tanker I knew slightly, who understood completely when I told him I didn't want to think. We completed some assignments, just the two of us, and the simple pleasure of working well together was soothing. I was glad to accept the hospitality of his couch for a few hours before heading home.

I heard voices as I opened our front door. There on our couch, leaning back on Korrick's lap, was a hero I'd never seen before, a tiny catlike thing with sand-colored fur. I paused in the doorway, thinking I'd walked in on them, but Korrick beckoned me in. "Stay, may I introduce to you Tan Kitty," he said seriously. "Tan, this is Stay, my roommate and Spackle's brother."

She bounded off the couch and came right up to me, looking me up and down with bright green eyes. She was all but lost in one of Spackle's old Longhorns T-shirts. "Glad to know you, Stay. Spackle's told me about you," she said.

"The pleasure is mine, Tan Kitty," I replied. She took my hand, and hers was hot to the touch with a grip like steel - probably a damage dealer, one of the many lights of Spackle's life, I would guess. "I'd love to chat, but I need to check on my brother - he wasn't feeling well last night."

"I know, poor thing," she said. "I took care of him. He's all right now."

I stared at her. She stared calmly back. Could she be serious? Normally it would be another day before Spackle came out of his self-imposed coma. I looked to Korrick, but he's no help, he was watching my confusion with great interest.

"Korrick came to my city last night and asked me to help your brother," she said. "He had severe spiritual damage. That's what I can fix, because I'm a mascot." She took both my hands and smiled fiercely up at me. "My duty is to keep the will of my men strong, their courage unbending, and their fighting spirit... up," she said with a wink. "And I'm very good at what I do."

She pressed her body into mine, looking intently into my eyes while one warm paw cupped my crotch and the other encircled the base of my tail. This was not what I wanted to think about at the moment, but it seemed somehow rude to unpeel a guest off my body. But she didn't force the issue; she gave my parts a final squeeze and let me go. "Go to him, Stay," she said. "You need to see for yourself." She hopped back on the couch and lay back on Korrick's lap again, stretching like a cat beneath the T-shirt.

I shelved my confusion and opened the connecting door. The room was full of sunlight from the south-facing windows, and in the middle of it Spackle was actually sitting up on the edge of his futon platform. He still looked exhausted, but his head was high and his face lit up when he saw me. "Mornin, kid!" he called. "Don't worry about me, I'm doin' jus' fine."

I sat down close beside him, the sunlight warm on both our backs. He'd put on another pair of cheap sweatpants from Super-Mart, and he was squinting at me, unable to see me this close without his glasses. I chuckled to myself that of all the heroes in Paragon City, this was the one I admired. "You know I worry about you, Spack, how can I not?"

"Well, don't waste yerself on me," he said. "You know I'll always be there for ya, kid. You know it." He ruffled up my hair. "So what do ya think of Tan Kitty? Isn't she something special?"

"Yeah, she sure is. I hear you had quite the night."

"Oh man, did we ever! You have got to try her, kid, she'll teach you some new tricks."

"C'mon Spack, you know she's not my type."

"I'm serious kid, she'll do anything! Heck, she did me once without even touching me!" He shook his head in awe, and I had to smile, he looked like he'd seen God.

"You're kidding, right?"

"I swore she couldn't do it, not after the first couple of times..."

"And she really managed it?"

"Yeah," Spack said wistfully. "That's how she won my shirt."

I laughed and hugged him tight. He smelled good to me, of sweat and sex and fur, and I was happy for him and happy, above all, to have him back in the world with me.

.....

In the moonlight, a pale golden figure walks across the room. She settles in the blankets, and touches the still form that huddles unmoving against the glass. She twines herself against him, sending the desert heat of her body to sink into his limbs and displace the chill that lodges there. Her hands cradle his face as he pleads with the darkness, waiting for the right moment, and as he draws breath, she breathes into him the fierce uncompromising desert sun. She calls to his spirit in a myriad of still small voices, speaking of laughing camaraderie, of group photos taken in a moment of triumph, of sharing battle stories with old friends, of the joy of riding a ravening stream of thunder across the battlefield, of those moments when comrades fight seamlessly as one, and most of all of returning home with the sweet exhaustion of a job well done. And as the hours pass, slowly the battered spirit responds to her calls, until he turns away from the lightening sky and looks into her face.