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Chapter Text

“Mr Madison, we hired you to experiment with molecular structures; modifying existing materials into new materials with different properties by messing with their molecular structures. You were productive for the last couple years but now you’re not producing the results we want to see from the money we pump into your experiments.”

“With all due respect, sir,” James replied, locking his gaze with his boss, “It is becoming increasingly difficult to discover new materials when we have already created so many.”

“That’s not an excuse, Mr Madison. You were hired to create new materials. Now, you’re not creating new materials. We’re going to have to let you go,” came the curt response of his boss, not missing a single beat.

“Sir-” James tried again.

“Thank you, Mr Madison,” his boss dismissed him and James set his jaw as he stalked out of the room.

James was a scientist. A pretty well-established scientist if he did say so himself. He was well on his way to a Nobel Prize for his work in the field of Chemistry, developing new materials with his studies in Molecular Manipulation and benefiting mankind with better and stronger materials used in everyday life.

His job was to create what had not been created. With the rapid development of technology and scientific understanding in the early 2000s, it was becoming harder and harder to change the way molecules were arranged and come up with new materials.

James knew that it was only a matter of time until his studies became obsolete. He had assumed he would be reallocated to a different research department, not fired by the company. His scope of knowledge was so narrow and specific that it would be hard to apply to a job elsewhere. There must be something he could do. Prove he was still relevant to the scientific community. Prove he was still capable of coming up with new designs, new materials.

James hurried home to his and Thomas’ penthouse and headed straight to his personal lab. Being rich had its perks; he had top-quality lab equipment, a voice-activated AI assistant, and access to almost any scientific resource he could ever want.

“AUTO, give me a mindmap of original materials and materials I have discovered. I will find a gap in my previous research,” James called out as he entered the lab, pulling his lab coat on and adjusting his safety goggles over his eyes.

“Of course, James. Displaying mindmaps in alphabetical order of materials. Displaying item one out of two hundred and fifty-two items under ‘A’.”

James had a swivel chair by his lab table but remained standing, hunched over the table as he began scribbling down plans and notes. He missed the front door creaking open. He didn’t hear his lab door sliding open. He didn’t see Thomas until Thomas waved a hand between him and his notes.

James leaped back with a screech, knocking the swivel chair back. He would have tripped and fell had Thomas not grabbed James’ flailing arms and pulled him into the safe embrace of his arms. James gasped with the flight adrenaline of shock, then relaxed in Thomas’ arms.

“Didn’t see you there,” James mumbled as Thomas rocked him gently, arms snaked around his waist and hands clasped at the front. James tilted his head back to greet Thomas with a kiss on his lips.

”Thomas, please adhere to lab safety requirements and wear a lab coat and safety goggles. Please remove all articles of loose clothings such as your tie-”

“Thank you, AUTO,” James broke the kiss to interrupt the AI irritably, “I’ll take it from here.”

“Rough day at work?” Thomas chuckled, clear exhaustion in his voice.

“You too,” James teased as Thomas released him and walked across the lab to where the swivel chair had skidded to.

Thomas chuckled again, pushing the chair next to James and sitting down. Thomas fell silent; partially too tired to respond with words, partially waiting for James to talk about his day.

“I was fired today,” James broke the news with a sigh, turning to Thomas.

“Wanna talk about it?” Thomas asked, his voice soft.

“Nah, I’m good,” James smiled gently, “and besides, you’re tired.”

“I’ll never be tired of you,” Thomas told James, standing up and pressing a kiss to his cheek. Thomas grabbed his briefcase that James just noticed he had placed beside the lab table. “I’ll leave you to your work; you know where to find me if you need to talk.” Thomas continued to say as he headed out of the lab.

Thomas paused at the door and turned back to James. “Have you taken your dinner? Wait, don’t tell me… no. You haven’t. You want Chinese food. Wonton noodles,” Thomas guessed.

James’ smile widened. “I’ll never understand how you can read my mind so accurately,” James commented.

“That’s why I’m the world’s leading psychiatrist,” Thomas beamed, “or maybe you’re just predictable.”

“I am not predictable!”

“Tell that to your bowl of noodles when it arrives in five minutes!” Thomas hollered, sliding the lab door shut.

James shook his head and turned back to his notes, still smiling. He was lucky to have Thomas. After front row seats of his sister’s death, James was in a bad place for a while. Grief made him forget details of the accident; hazy memories despite the sadness that came with it. Thomas had been the one to pull him out of that, to bring the sunlight back into his darkened world. One thing led to another and now they were a married couple of two years.

”James, your noodles have arrived.”

“Thank you,” James responded, brought out of his trip down memory lane as the corner of the table slid open and a bowl of steaming hot noodles emerged.

James took a seat and pulled up the front page news on the large holographic screen across the wall of his lab. He began to scroll the headlines while he ate.

Another miraculous win by the greatest team in the world!
Have you seen this?! Despite all odds, they cliched another gold medal…

Senator Thompson says he does not endorse his own son.
Critics are divided by this political difference existing within such an influential family…

Statistics say that the number of existing superheroes and supervillains have decreased.
Since the loss of our most influential hero and villain a couple years ago, super-crimes has been at an all time low…

Ooh, a superhero news story, James thought, straightening in interest. He gestured at it with a hand and the full article appeared on the screen.

Statistics say that the number of existing superheroes and supervillains have decreased.

Since the sudden loss of our most influential hero and villain duo a couple years ago, super-crimes has been at an all time low. The need for superheroes (aka super-police) to stop these supervillains has decreased, leading to the retirement of our favourite heroes: Not-Batman, Flower Power and Monster have announced that they will be retiring from hero work soon. The mayor plans to thank them for their contributions with a statue of them (and other lost heroes) in Central Park.

New York City will soon notice a lack of flying humans in the air, destroyed buildings and civilian casualties. This is bittersweet news; the Supers in New York City has been a part of life for New Yorkers and an icon attracting tourists. Without them, life in New York City would be a lot quieter. Some New Yorkers have expressed their disappointment with the lack of danger in everyday life.

Perhaps the Supers will make a comeback with a sudden influx of new villains? No one knows. Powers are discovered out of nowhere. Maybe the next generation of supers will bring back the danger in everyday life that New Yorkers crave.

James slurped up the last of his noodles and leaned back in his swivel chair. Supers were such an interesting breed of humans. Specific mutated cells gave them abilities to affect themselves or the people or environment around them. This difference in their molecular structure was fascinating to a molecular specialist like James. Without Supers providing him inspiration, it would be even harder for James to discover new materials now.

However, maybe there was something he could draw out from past heroes. Something he could learn from their abilities and use that for scientific research.

“AUTO, pull up a list of all known Supers and their powers,” James called out.

“Certainly, James. Displaying list, with the most powerful Supers in history at the top of the list.”

BRAINIAC: Mind Control
THE FORCE: Molecular Manipulation
RED RAT: Shapeshifting
TERRAFORM: Control over Nature

James’ eyes lingered on the second entry, standing up with his hands pressed against the tabletop, leaning forward in interest. ‘The Force’ was a Molecular Manipulator. They would have been able to melt structures or rebuild structures. They would be able to create new materials from a given base, such as creating diamond from coal, both carbon-based. James couldn’t recall this Super so they must have existed before he moved to NYC.

“AUTO, bring up all information and articles relating to The Force.”

“I’m sorry, James. The Force entries has been locked by Thomas. You need a password to access them.”

James frowned. Why would Thomas lock him out from some random Super’s details?

“That’s easy, Thomas uses the same password for everything. Input password: TOMANDJEMMY.”

“The Force entries have been unlocked.”

The screen split into two columns. The right column contained bullet-point information while the left column was further split into two rows with the Super in a mask on top and out of a mask below.

James’ breath hitched as he stared at his own face blazed across the big screen. He was visibly couple years younger, his lips downturned in a frown, glaring at whoever or whatever was taking his picture. It wasn’t a very glamorous image but it was, undeniably, him.

“You are all going to die! Before you die, I will make you feel the same pain I felt when my sister died!”

James shook whatever that was out of his mind. That couldn’t be him. He wasn’t violent, he was a withdrawn and private person. It must be someone that looked like him. He was friends with a Hercules Mulligan who looked pretty much like him with rasher and violent tendencies. This must be Hercules, not him. James tore his eyes away from the picture and turned to the information on the right.

Super Name: The Force

Real Name: James Madison

James’ heart skipped a beat.

Abilities: Molecular Manipulation

Super alignment: Villain

Threat: Neutralised

He flew above the high-rise tower, an arm outstretched, laughing with twisted glee as it melted from the top and turned into quicksand-like concrete. Everyone would feel the same fear as he had felt. Everyone would learn how helpless he felt trapped and suffocated under debris. Everyone would experience the loss of a friend or family member before their very eyes, drowning in the concrete.

“Stop,” James whispered, eyes brimming with tears. This wasn’t him. This couldn’t have been him. He wasn’t evil. He didn’t want to hurt other people. The surfaced memories were like static ringing in his ears, drowning out everything else.

James felt his fingers digging into the molten plastic of the table top. Since when did his triple-reinforced table melt?

James pried his fingers from the melting table and stumbled back, staring at his trembling hands. His fingertips tingled unpleasantly.

Since he had the power to manipulate molecules.

“Stop, Force! Stop hurting innocent civilians!”

“My sister was an innocent civilian but none of you stupid heroes saved her!”

“STOP!” James screeched at the flashes of conversations in his mind, fingers clenched into a fist in his attempt to contain the strange warmth at his fingertips. His head throbbed with the inflow of information, sudden understanding of his newly rediscovered powers.

“Will my sister ever return? No? Then I’m never going to stop!”

“I SAID STOP!” James screamed, hurling himself away from the screen. In a moment of panic, he rammed his head into the wall and everything went black.

---------

James awoke in bed, a hand pressed against his forehead. The hand withdrew and someone sat by the side of the bed. James squinted at the person, willing his blurred vision to focus.

“James? You awake?” he asked softly.

“Thomas?” James recognised, groaning, attempting to push himself up and failing. His head pounded relentlessly. God, what had happened?

“I heard you screaming and rushed to your lab.” Thomas explained, as though he had read James’ mind. “The lab was in a mess; it looked like you had trashed it. AUTO had shut down. You were on the ground, knocked out cold. I carried you to bed. What the hell happened?”

“I don’t know,” James grumbled, “I was doing some research, and then there was something about molecules… I can’t remember.”

“You need to rest. I’ll be right here,” Thomas promised.

James closed his eyes and smiled as Thomas ran a hand through his short hair, tickling his scalp, easing the throbbing in his head. God, he hasn’t had a headache this bad since-

"James, you have to- have to let me go.”

“No!” James yelled. When the building collapsed, it missed him by a little bit so he was standing in front of the debris, holding up the collapsed ceiling from crushing him and his sister. His sister, however, was trapped beneath the debris, crushing her chest, making it hard to breathe.

“I’m- I’m going to die, James. Even if... the ceiling doesn’t… fall, there’s a sharp… metal beam crushing my back. You’ll… survive longer if you just- just focused on yourself.” she heaved back at him.

“I’m not letting you go!” James screamed, his fingertips burning with the weight of the ceiling.

“James, you can’t-” she began to say, but just as she predicted, the metal beam behind her snapped, drilling right through her spine and killing her instantly. James watched in horror as the life drained from her eyes.

“NO!” James instinctively released a hand from the ceiling, reaching out towards his sister. Something powerful shuddered through him, a strange ability that tingled his fingertips. The metal thing that had killed her became a pool of harmless metallic liquid, flowing down her dead body onto the ground.

The ceiling, no longer supported by both hands, smashed down on his head, knocking him out. The last thought James had before he blacked out was of his sister.

He had awoken a superpower just seconds after he could have saved his sister. He had failed her.

“James, you tensed,” Thomas’ concerned voice brought James back to the present. James opened his eyes with a gasp, Thomas leaning over him, frowned in concern. He was safe. There was no collapsing building. No sister to save. His sister was already dead. Thomas helped James sit up in bed, passing him a glass of water from the bedside table. “What’s wrong? You wanna talk about it?”

“I’m fine,” James assured with a weak smile. He tightened his grip around the glass as his fingertips began to warm again, tingling with unwelcome power. Thomas raised an eyebrow in disbelief but James kept silent and Thomas stood up, turning to leave.

“Thomas, wait, don’t go,” James finally spoke, his voice small. Thomas sat back down and placed a ‘I’m here for you’ hand on James’ shoulder. “I had a revelation.”

“A scientific revelation?” Thomas asked softly.

James just shrugged vaguely.

“It can’t be good if it made you trash your lab,” Thomas probed.

James shook his head. It was very bad. He just discovered that he was an ex-supervillain, motivated by the grief of his sister’s death. Somehow, he had forgotten all about that part of his past but Thomas had known about it and locked the information up, probably for his own safety.

“You’ll make the right decision,” Thomas said after a moment of silence between them, patting his shoulder, “You’re a good person, James.”

“You’ll make the right decision,” he told James, his arm around James’ shoulders. They were sitting at the rooftop of a skyrise building, their legs dangling over the edge. James was pressed up against his side, arms around his waist, watching the night lights of the city come to life. They were both wearing tight spandex, too dark to identify the colours of their super suits. He pulled James closer and patted his shoulder encouragingly. “You’re a good person, James.”

James blinked out of the flashback and looked up at Thomas with a small smile. “I hope so,” he whispered in response.

Thomas leaned forward and kissed James’ cheek before he stood up again. “I love you, Jemmy.”

“Love you too, Thomas,” James responded as Thomas exited the room and closed the door behind him.

James took a deep breath and composed himself. His sister was dead but he was still here and he had superpowers to explore.

James gulped down the water in the glass and balanced it on his right palm and wrapped his fingers around the base. With little effort, the glass was crushed into its fine constitution of sand, raining down on the bed. A wave of his left hand with some concentration and the sand gathered back, skittering like ants onto his right palm, melting and forming glass again without the 2000 degrees celsius usually needed to melt sand into glass.

His powers could be used for destruction but it could also be used for creation. That must be how he had churned out material after material during his prime of scientific discovery. James placed the glass back on the bedside table and lay back in bed.

He would use his powers for good this time.

------

James spent the entire day after cleaning up his private lab.

He didn’t remember trashing it but he must have when his head burned with pain because the lab was completely upside down. Not only had he melted his lab table, his apparatus were disfigured in ways that suggested their molecular structures had been rearranged. His cabinet of acids, alkali and other liquids had been dumped all over the floor, mixed and neutralised, losing their chemical properties.

James could fix the physical deformation of his equipment (it was great practise for his newly awakened powers to undo his doing) but he had to purchase new chemicals to experiment with. It wasn’t that they didn’t have to money to replace the chemicals but just because they had money didn’t mean that James enjoyed throwing it away.

James rebooted AUTO up to see that he was still on his Super profile page. This time, James’ gaze settled on the ‘Threat: Neutralised’ line. Exactly how evil had he been?

It frightened James to know that as a supervillain, he had lashed out in misdirected grief; that he was once capable of taking lives, justifying his own actions as lessons. It took courage for James to direct AUTO to show him news articles of The Force. He wasn’t sure if he really wanted to see this side of himself. As he scanned through the headlines, his heart sank deeper and deeper into despair.

The Force tears down another building! 50 dead, 300 injured. A new record for supervillains everywhere.

The Force believes that taking hundreds of innocent lives to complain about the loss of one innocent life is justified.

The Force: A troubled teen or a menace to society?

“Death doesn’t discriminate” - A lesson from The Force.

The Force has met his match!

James frowned at the last one, gesturing at the headline to read the full article.

The Force has met his match!

After a long reign of destruction, The Force finally has a superhero counterpart strong enough to stop him. We know Brainiac as the superhero sidekick who deals with citizen trauma in the aftermath of villain attacks but today, with our reporters daringly standing on the rooftop of the highest building in NYC to watch thr battle, we discover Brainiac's true abilities.

As Brainiac soared up in the sky next to The Force, we were treated to a short-lived battle as The Force hurled his molecular creations at Brainiac who dodged with much agility. Brainiac was seen to attempt conversation with The Force out of it but everyone knew it wasn’t going to work; The Force had internalised too much hatred to be talked out of his actions.

As expected, Brainiac failed and had to endure another round of dodging The Force’s attacks before The Force turned his attention to the civilians on the ground instead. He began to melt the concrete sidewalk, trapping and drowning civilians in the quicksand-like concrete. For a moment, Brainiac did nothing in the sky, watching helplessly as The Force attacked the city. Finally, Brainiac raised a hand towards The Force and the unexpected happened next.

The Force faltered, the fingers of his outstretched hand clenching into a fist, unable to use his powers anymore. It dawned on the city what had happened when The Force struggled to pry open his own fingers with his other hand.

Brainiac was controlling The Force with his mind!

Brainiac had The Force turn towards him, muttering under his breath. A moment later, The Force fell unconscious, falling through the air like a crashing plane. Brainiac caught his villain counterpart before he crash landed and carried him away beyond the view of our reporters.

What has Brainiac done to The Force? Stay tuned for updates.

James realised he remembered what happened next.

James awoke bound in ropes, his hands in fists inside boxing gloves and his wrists cuffed. He glared up at Brainiac who lived up to his name; with his fingertips not touching or pointed at the material of the gloves, James was unable to melt his way out of his prison.

Brainiac didn’t seem to be threatened by James, his gaze intense behind his magenta mask but his body posture relaxed.

“Force, I know you’re not evil,” Brainiac sighed, “You’re just misguided and grieving your sister’s death.”

“You don’t know anything about my sister,” James snarled at Brainiac, struggling uselessly in his cuffs.

“I know that she was innocent and so are the thousands of civilians you hurt everytime you attack the city,” Brainiac told him.

“That’s the point!” James snapped at him. Perhaps Brainiac wasn’t as smart after all. “Everyone has to feel the same pain I did when someone who doesn’t deserve to die, dies anyway because no stupid hero saved them!”

“Force, I’m a real life psychiatrist,” Brainiac straightened his back, “and I’m here to offer you someone to talk to. As a professional. Free of charge.”

“I don’t need to talk,” James spat, “I just want my sister back.”

“Force, you’re grieving,” Brainiac said earnestly, “and I can help you if you’d just let me in. I could control your mind, erase your memory of your sister and you wouldn’t have these violent tendencies anymore. I’m not doing that because I want to help you. You’re misguided, not evil. I can help you grieve healthily.”

Brainiac reached into a hidden pocket of his violet suit (who makes suits with pockets?) and pulled out a business card, tucking it in the neck of James’ own spandex suit. James tried to shake it off but it only fell inside his spandex suit instead, making Brainiac crack a smile.

“What about my sister?” James asked sharply. “What about justice for her?”

Brainiac paused, then rested a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll help you celebrate her life, not destroy your own in her memory.”

“That’s not-”

“Now, when I snap my fingers, you will sleep. When you wake up, you will be safe in your house,” Brainiac told James.

“How do you know where I live!” was all James could shout before Brainiac snapped his fingers and his vision turned dark.

“JAMES!”

Thomas shrill voice startled James out of his memory. That must be Thomas calling him for dinner. How long had he been sitting there, reliving his memory?

“Coming!” James yelled back, turning AUTO off with a clap of his hands. He pulled off his lab coat and goggles and hurried out of his lab to the dining room. Thomas was already sitting at the candlelit table, robots ready to serve, waiting for him.

“Look at you,” Thomas stood up, gesturing at James’ crumpled t-shirt and pajamas pants, gazing at him with nothing short of devoted love. Thomas himself was wearing a suit- indigo in colour, if he might add- handsome and glowing and a dream come true.

“I stayed home all day,” James defended his fashion choices with a chuckle. Thomas walked towards him, slipping his hands into James’.

“What I was about to say was: Beautiful. Perfect. I can’t believe I’m married to you. I’m the luckiest man alive,” Thomas told him, breathless with wonder.

“I love you too,” James smiled, “and I have a better way of showing it instead of saying it.”

“Yeah?” Thomas grinned, a quiet gasp as James met his lips with a soft kiss. They finally broke apart and Thomas led James to the table.

“What’s with the fancy-smancy?” James asked, gesturing at the candles and roses, sliding into his seat opposite Thomas.

“It’s been exactly three years since we’ve known each other and two since we got married,” Thomas beamed, “I could have ordered instant meals but I took the day off to prepare the food myself!”

“Thomas, you didn’t have to,” James laughed, leaning back in his chair as the robots moved forward to serve them their appetisers. It was way too much mac n’ cheese on a plate but James loved it. Thomas had put his heart into it. “Thank you.”

“Try it!” Thomas practically squealed, “I made the cheese by hand, from scratch!”

“Yeah?” James took a bite, the cheese rich and creamy at the same time, the macaroni soft in his mouth. “This is surprisingly really good!”

“Did you doubt me, Jemmy?” Thomas teased, wolfing down his own serving rather unglamourously.

“Did you doubt me, Force?” Brainiac yelled at James, swooping through the air and catching up with him. “Did you doubt me when I said I was here for you? When I said you didn’t need to hurt anyone else to make your point?”

“You don’t understand!” James screamed, facing a highrise building and making a cutting motion in the air so the middle of the building melted and it began to collapse in on itself.

“I understand that the more you use violence as an outlet for your pain, the more pain you feel hurting these innocent people! The number of lives you take away doesn’t decrease the guilt or impact of your previous actions, Force!”

“Shut up!” James screamed at him again, his waterproof mask only making his tears more visible as they dripped off the corner of his mask. A rough slapping action of his hand in the air and buildings began to fall like dominoes down the street.

“I don’t want to do this, Force!” Brainiac yelled, and James found his fingers curling up into a useless fist again.

“Stop controlling me!” James shrieked.

“I will if you’d just listen!” Brainiac told him, flying directly in front of him, “let me help you! We can have a session right here, right now. Just… talk to me, Force.”

James slumped in defeat as Brainiac wrapped him in a hug, resting his head over his shoulder, sobbing his eyes out.

“You’re alright, Force,” Brainiac assured, hushing him softly, rubbing a calming hand against his back. “You’re alright.”

“Something troubling you, Jemmy?” Thomas’ hand resting on his pulled James back to the present. Thomas had finished his appetiser and he had only eaten one mouth.

“It’s nothing,” James brushed it off with a shrug and a forced smile.

“That’s a fake smile, Jemmy. You can’t pull that on me,” Thomas said softly. “You can talk to me.”

“Why don’t you use your mind powers and guess what I’m thinking about?” James tried to lighten the mood, taking a large mouth of mac n’ cheese.

His request only seemed to worsen the mood as Thomas frowned, his usual uncanny ability to accurately guess one’s thoughts failing him. “I don’t…” Thomas pulled his lips into a line. “I’m trying, but I have no idea. It’s not about work. It’s not about me. It’s… I’ve never seen that expression on your face before.”

James looked down at his plate and took another bite, avoiding Thomas’ direct gaze.

“Will you tell me?” Thomas squeezed James’ hand, “Do you trust me?”

“Do you trust me?” he asked James, resting both his palms against the side of James’ head. “I can take away the pain without touching the memory but I won’t do it if you don’t trust me to.”

James gazed up at the person. He was leaning back against the armrest of a couch, the person leaning over him. The room was dark and he couldn’t see much other than the person’s intense eyes. Intense, but truthful and earnest.

“I do,” James whispered back, “I do trust you.”

“Do you promise to stop hurting the people of New York if I do this for you?” he asked again.

James hesitated.

“I just want someone to understand me,” James whispered back. The person shifted his hand and wiped away James’ tears, then leaned forward and kissed him on his lips.

“I understand, James. You have me now. You don’t have to hurt all these people to make someone listen to you,” the person promised.

“Okay,” James nodded, closing his eyes.

“I’m going to do it, James.”

“I trust you,” James whispered.

“I trust you,” James promised, “I’m just… not ready to share it with you yet.”

How could he tell Thomas that remembered being a villain when Thomas had gone through great lengths to protect him from that part of his past?

“No pressure, Jemmy. Whenever you’re ready,” Thomas patted his hand and pulled back. James couldn’t help but realise how he’d ruined the romantic setting Thomas had worked so hard to create.

The rest of the dinner just didn’t feel the same despite the main course being a very expensive and high quality steak with a side of lobster and the desert being vanilla ice cream that had a sharpness to it, almost like mint.

Thomas was trying to hide his disappointment but it didn’t take a psychiatrist to understand the smile that didn’t reach his eyes or his dulled and disheartened gaze. James retreated back to the lab after dinner, escaping the awkwardness between them.

James sank into his swivel chair with a sigh. A stress ball lay at the corner of his lab table. Normally, James would begin squeezing it, but James was not normal anymore. With a wave of his hand, James began to alternate the rubber ball between solid and liquid forms.

How had he fucked up their anniversary like that? Thomas had spent an entire day preparing for this one meal and James had to screw it over with his disturbing flashbacks. He owed Thomas their anniversary dinner and he would have to make up for it in the future.

James waved his hand too harshly in frustration and half the outer wall of the lab melted along with the stress ball.

James turned to the liquid wall, prepared to fix it before the unsupported building collapsed, then realised that the wall must not have been an important constructional beam because there was a hidden room behind the wall, accessible only through removing the particular wall James had just melted.

James stood up and slowly walked into the fully furnished room.

There was a glass casing display on a wooden table in the middle of the room containing a card and a book. An overflowing bookshelf was at the far right with a comfy couch in front of it. At the far left of the room was a miniature science kit more for amusement than for experimentation. The most stunning feature in the room was what faced him on the opposite side of the wall.

A light grey spandex suit was hung and protected in a glass casing. There were darker grey tones at the elbow and knee areas, in a flaked design mimicking debris or dust. The sleeves ran down into fingerless gloves. The suit was accompanied by a dark grey cape, mask and boots. It was simple but magnificent.

James pressed a hand against the glass casing, examining the suit close up, and was startled by a beep. A digital green box surrounded his hand against the glass. It must have used his fingerprints to identify him.

“The Force, welcome back. Would you like to change into your suit?”

It was a different AI system from the rest of the house that greeted him. James gathered that Thomas did not know this secret room existed.

“Um, I-” James began, but the AI didn’t wait for his response. Robot hands emerged from the glass casing and ripped James’ clothes right off him. “Hey!” James yelled at the robot, which (of course) ignored him and began pulling the suit on him.

It was a faster and less uncomfortable process than James had braced himself for. It was over quickly, the mask slapped onto his face and the robot arms withdrew back into the glass casing.

He might look good in the suit, but to see his own reflection in the glass was disturbing. He had killed in this suit. This was a suit that represented misdirected terror and destruction for the city. No one knew who was under the suit, and neither did James. Who was he? How could he have ever done what he did? Would he ever return to those violent tendencies, motivated to teach other people a lesson the unorthodox way? Was murder ever justified?

James turned and waved a hand at the science starter kit with its low quality beakers and inaccurate pipettes. The glass melted into a puddle of impure sand, which James quickly rearranged to form a miniature model of the city.

James approached the mini city and was seized by what felt like muscle memory or alien hand syndrome. A flick of his right wrist and the sand city tumbled into nothingness.

James backed in horror, gripping his right wrist with his other hand, both hands shaking hard. He had did it again and it had felt like the automatic response of an old, newly awakened trigger in his mind. It was only a fake city, but who knew what might happen if he was faced with the real city? Could he control himself, or was he ultimately just a slave to his own tendencies?

Maybe he had been better off never discovering his past identity. It had obviously been hidden to protect him, protect the city, and now he had unleashed the monster in himself upon the world.

James shuddered and turned away quickly towards the table in the middle of the room, lifting the glass casing over it and pulling the book and the card out. He lifted the card and squinted at the faded words.

Thomas Jefferson
PHD. Psychiatrist
11th Street

This was the card Brainiac had tucked into his suit.

James opened the door to see Brainiac in a simple jacket and jeans, looking up and smiling at him warmly. He looked over at his appointment list and turned back to James.

”Hi, Mr James Madison, right? Please take a seat. How can I help you?”

“I lost my sister,” James got right to the point as he sat down, “and you said you would help.”

“Force,” Brainiac breathed out, reaching over his desk to take his hand. “I’m so glad you decided to come.”

“Don’t… touch me,” James pulled his hand away, keeping his eyes trained on the floor. “Don’t touch me, Brainiac.”

James smiled at the memory, placing the card back on the table. He paused, a moment of realisation hitting him. Brainiac had been Thomas. He had remembered that they had met each other 3 years ago, 12 January 2015, on the streets, in civilian clothes and hit it off immediately. Through their relationship, Thomas had helped James cope with the loss of his sister. This room suggested they had a longer history as hero and villain that James hadn’t remembered.

Did Thomas remember? How does Thomas live with the fact that he was married to a mass murderer? Did Thomas really love him, or was he merely doing the city a favour by keeping James under his watch 24/7? Was James only a prize to a hero like Thomas, a neutralised threat, an indication or reminder to others that the good guys always win in the end? Was James just an example to scare other villains with?

James shook the thoughts out of his head, picking up the book next, flipping it to a bookmarked page.

12 January 2013

Dear Diary,

After a full year of #enemiestofriendstolovers like a fairytale come alive, Brainiac and I finally transitioned from our super names to our real names.

It happened so naturally. I had a session with him in his office, just talking. The memory of loss still hurts sometimes, but I try to talk to him instead of acting it out on other people. Brainiac never gave up on me, no matter how many times I trashed the city last year, so it was only right that I gave him a chance to get through to me.

I mean, he didn’t earn his PHD for nothing. He is a very good listener. He’s so caring and gentle and wonderful and I know he can read my mind because of his stupid superpower but everytime he gets me exactly what I want, it makes me blush. I can’t help it. I’ve fallen for him.

The Force, greatest Supervillain in NYC, falling for his Superhero counterpart. What a joke. But it happened and I don’t regret a thing.

We then went out for dinner together. I wasn’t technically his patient, since I was seeing him for free, so we didn’t have the whole doctor-patient drama.

We went to a fancy place because, well, we could both afford it, and Brainiac insisted he dressed up for it. So we walked into the fancy place with Brainiac in a suit and I’m just in casual wear and we ordered the most expensive thing off the menu and we held hands and just talked while waiting for the food.

I was feeding him because he was a messy eater and I couldn’t stand that, and he made a stupid joke, and I pushed him and his name just slipped out of my mouth.

Thomas. It just feels so right to say it.

Brainiac and Force. Thomas and James.

Thomas just laughed and called me by my real name for the first time and it just felt like the whole world stopped and for a moment it was just me and him, you know?

So I kissed him, our first proper kiss, and I dropped the fork I was holding and it stained his fancy pants but I have superpowers man so I waved a hand like a magician and got the stain out of his pants.

Then Thomas leaned towards me and he kissed me and he held the kiss and I just melted in his touch. He’s so perfect and he understands me. I want to spend the rest of my life by his side.

Love, James

James shut the book and slid it back under the glass casing with the card. He walked to the right of the room and dusted the couch before flopping down, closing his eyes with a loud exhale. He reviewed what he knew in his mind.

James was an ex-villain, The Force, that destroyed the city to selfishly force others to go through the pain he himself had undergone. Thomas was a hero, Brainiac, who had mind control powers and who was the one who wiped James’ mind and hid his history from him for as long as possible.

Was what he had with Thomas real? Had Thomas been lying to him from the very start, to get James to trust him? Nothing seemed real anymore. Not what he knew of himself. Not his relationship with Thomas. Not his own memories or his own capabilities. Everything was a lie.

Perhaps it was for the better. Perhaps Thomas had done it to protect the city from The Force. To protect James from himself. Still, his entire post-villain life being a lie, James didn’t think that seemed fair. Why couldn’t Thomas have just let him go after erasing his memories instead of keeping James by his side? Was James truly so evil that this was his punishment?

Maybe he just wasn’t understanding the full picture. James opened his eyes and stood up. He walked out of the secret room and sealed the wall back up with a flick of his wrist. He walked out of his lab and into their bedroom, where Thomas had already retired for the night.

“James?” Thomas called out softly, pushing himself up in bed, the room only illuminated by a dim nightlight. “What are you wearing?”

“Um,” James glanced down at himself. He had completely forgotten that he was still wearing the supervillain suit. Still identifying himself as a bad person. He was a bad person.

“Are you wearing a onesie?” Thomas lay back down in bed, exhausted, patting the empty space beside him. “That’s so cute, Jemmy.”

“Yeah,” James quickly agreed, kicking the boots off, unclasping the cape and removing the mask, laying them next to the door and sliding in next to Thomas on the bed.

“I’m sorry about dinner,” Thomas said, his voice distant, already half-asleep. “I should have done better for our three-year anniversary.”

“Thomas, it was my fault, not yours,” James insisted, propping himself up with an elbow facing Thomas, “but I’m ready to tell you what was bothering me now.”

“Yeah?” Thomas rolled on his side to face James, rubbing his eyes in an attempt to stay awake and alert. “What’s bothering you, honey?”

“I know what you hid from me,” James began slowly, “I understand. I don’t blame you. I just want to know if what we have between us, if it was ever real, or just an obligation you had to fulfil?”

“What did I hide? James, what are you talking about?” Thomas smiled. “Of course I really love you.”

“Really?” James couldn’t help the clipped tone his words emerged with. “Because if you really did, you wouldn’t be lying to me right now. Why didn’t you let me go after wiping my memory? Am I still dangerous without knowledge of my powers? Is this my punishment?”

“Wiping your memory? Powers? Punishment?” Thomas echoed, sitting up in bed, fully awake now. “Jemmy, is everything alright?”

“I found all the superhero stuff about Brainiac and The Force and our adventures between 2012 and 2014, Thomas, so you can stop trying to cover it now!” James raised his voice, pushing Thomas away when he tried to wrap him in a hug.

“What superhero stuff?” Thomas struggled to follow, “I’m not hiding anything, James!”

“ I know it’s all fake but I want to hear it from you! Be honest with me, Thomas!” James huffed and began pacing the room in his attempt to calm himself.

“Jemmy,” Thomas slid out of bed, “I didn’t hide anything from you. Nothing is fake. I don’t know what you want to hear from me!” Thomas raised his voice as well, but he wasn’t angry, he was desperate. “Let’s just sit down and talk-”

“Oh, talk! Because talking solves the problem everytime!” James stopped and turned to Thomas, arms akimbo.

“It does!” Thomas pleaded, “James I don’t know why you’re mad at me-”

“I wish I was mad!” James shouted, stomping across the room, “I just feel so betrayed, that you took away a part of my past from me, and I had to discover it myself and now you won’t even be honest with me despite my flashbacks and headaches and stupid powers and I don’t know what to do-”

“Headaches?” Thomas interrupted James’ rambling, wrapping him in a hug from behind.

James let out a soft sob, shaking his head, wanting to pull himself out of Thomas’ arms but also wanting Thomas to hug him, to assure him, to pretend that everything was alright in the world and their relationship was perfect again. That Thomas didn’t lie to him. That he wasn’t a villain. Wasn’t a bad person.

“Shhh, Jemmy, I can help with the headache,” Thomas soothed him, raising his hands to James’ head, pressing two fingers against and massaging his temples. “Relax, James.”

“Relax, James,” Thomas whispered, his fingers pressed against James’ temples. James rolled his shoulders back and took a deep breath.

“You sure this will work?” James whispered back.

“I promise this will work,” Thomas said, “Once I remove the memories, we can start anew. No more superhero nonsense. Just you and me. Normal civilians. Falling in love for the first time.”

“Okay,” James agreed, closing his eyes, “I trust you, Thomas.”

“Relax, James,” Thomas repeated in the present, his voice low, rubbing his fingers in circles against James’ temples. “I promise this will work.”

“No,” James yanked himself out of Thomas’ arms and backed away from him, “I don’t trust you. Not anymore.”

“What did I do?” Thomas asked, a broken plea in his small voice.

“What did you do? You put your hands on my head! You were going to use your superpower! You were trying to erase everything again! That’s all I am to you, isn’t it? A neutralised threat, a claimed prize? The Force can’t remember his past or Brainiac is a failed hero?” James shouted at him, frustrated tears brimming in his eyes.

“I don’t know-” Thomas began, but James interrupted him.

“You know what, Thomas? You can take your stupid powers and shove it up your ass! I just wanted honesty between us but I guess I can’t even trust you or your stupid motives anymore! All you heroes are the same, you think you’re doing the right thing but in reality you’re all liars and I hate you!” James screamed.

Thomas’ face fell as though he had been deeply hurt by that, but who knew how he really felt? He was a really great actor anyway, keeping James by his side for three years and more, making James believe he was loved. Their relationship had always been too perfect to be true. James set his jaw, narrowing his eyes at Thomas.

James made a crushing motion with his hand in the air and their coloured glass bedroom door exploded into bits of coloured sand. Thomas jumped and gasped, bewildered.

“James, I-” Thomas tried again, but James interrupted him again.

“I’m leaving,” James growled, “I want my own life. I want a real life. Don’t try to stop me. I will… I will… I don’t know what I will do, but I have superpowers!”

With that, James turned on his heel and grabbed the rest of his suit off the floor. He stalked out of the room, ignoring the trail of tears he left behind as he opened a window and jumped out, soaring above the bustling nightlife of New York.

James allowed himself to cry now that Thomas was gone. Where could he go? He had sold his own house when he moved in with Thomas. He couldn’t go to any public place in the suit he was wearing. James let his instincts guide him and found himself landing on the top of the highest building in NYC.

James sat at the edge and wiped his tears away with his arm. What was he to do now? Maybe he would sleep out tonight and return to Thomas tomorrow morning. Maybe they could talk again when Thomas was more alert. Maybe he could get Thomas to remove his identity for good; delete all historical records of The Force ever existing. Heroes could do that, right?

Except, the thousands of family and friends of the people he had killed would never allow The Force to disappear without paying for his crimes. How could he ever make up for what he did?

“Force?” came a hopeful voice behind him. James turned his head around to see a Super in black and gold stripes approaching him with her eyes wide. “Is it really you?”

“Um, yeah,” James turned his body completely to face her, hoping that his red eyes and nose were not obvious giveaways that he had been crying. Her expression fell at his response but she quickly corrected it with a gentle smile. “I guess?”

“When we saw the grey figure on the news soaring across NYC, we weren’t sure if it was you. I knew that if The Force really had returned, I’d find you here,” she bragged.

“How did you know?” James asked, slipping off the edge onto the roof and approaching her slowly.

“This is where you and Brainiac hung out regularly,” she explained patiently, “Even without your memories, you came here. This place means something to you.”

“How do you know I don’t have my memories back?” James puffed out his chest in an attempt to look threatening and evil but the Super only giggled.

“Force, my name is Pharaoh. I am the current leader of the Villains,” she introduced herself, reaching a hand out. James hesitated taking it. Would it be a show of alliance with the villains again if he shook her hand? He didn’t want to do bad things anymore; he didn’t want to be associated with them anymore. She seemed to understand and dropped her arm, still smiling.

“Hi,” James eventually said in response.

Pharaoh stepped forward, cocooning his right hand in both of hers anyway.

“If you had your memories back, you’d remember I was your chosen apprentice,” Pharaoh squeezed his hand. “I took over when you left.”

“Ah,” James simply said. That explained her disappointment when he didn’t recognise her.

She seemed even more disheartened when he didn’t have any recollection or memory flashback of her when she told him who she was. This time, she didn’t bother masking her disappointment.

“Well,” she said after a moment of silence, releasing James’ hand and heading to the edge of the roof where James had been sitting. She sat down and James followed, sitting by her side. “You’re very different without the grief and the anger,” she commented.

“I guess I am,” James laughed softly, looking down at his legs dangling over the edge.

“I miss the old you,” she added, turning to him. James froze and looked back up at her. There was something intense in her gaze now; no longer friendly. Her eyes were sharper, deadlier. Her lips were set in a business-like frown of disapproval. She commanded authority. Fear. Danger. “We all do, Force.”

James swallowed.

“You used to be this,” Pharaoh gestured at herself, “I learnt this from you.”

“I used to be a bad person,” James pointed out. “Misguided. Hateful. I’ve found proper help since. I don’t want to kill anymore.” James finished with a smile, hoping that was the end of the conversation of past him.

“Help from who? Brainiac?” Pharaoh scoffed, “He brainwashed you. Turned you into a goody two shoes. Made you think you were loved and special and important to him. Didn’t you just discover that everything with him was a lie?”

James turned away, his heart stinging with pain.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” James muttered.

“He used you. He destroyed you, tore down who you really are as an example, as a lesson to the rest of us. All the heroes are the same. They think they’re doing the right thing but in reality, they’re all manipulating liars who have morales just as bad as the rest of us!”

“That’s what I said!” James exclaimed, turning back to her with a new fire in his eyes. He had been made use of. Ridiculed. Living a lie. Every beat of his heart was a painful reminder that he had loved and devoted three years of his life to someone who didn’t feel the same way about him.

Pharaoh smiled, seemingly pleased. “See?” she nudged him, “we’re not that different.”

“I guess not.”

“I always knew that deep inside,” Pharaoh continued, “the real Force was still waiting. Brewing. Ready for the right opportunity to emerge and rule again.”

“Woah,” James stopped her there, raising his arms, “I’m not interested in taking over the world, or killing, or being evil anymore. I’ll talk it out with Th- Brainiac tomorrow when he’s more awake and-”

“Force,” she interrupted, her words pained, “don’t you see? He never loved you and he’s never going to love you.”

“You don’t know Thomas,” James told her with conviction, “He’s different. It’s just a misunderstanding. He loves me.”

“How do you explain that, then?” Pharaoh pointed. James followed her finger and squinted at the strange flashing lights in the night sky. “What’s that, Force?”

“Police helicopters,” James realised, his breath hitched in his throat as the bright white lights searching buildings grew closer.

“They’re after you,” Pharaoh leaned closer and muttered under her breath. “Brainiac sent them.”

“To arrest me,” James breathed out.

“Instead of coming after you himself and apologising, he sent the police after you,” Pharaoh shook her head, “that doesn’t sound like love to me.”

“No,” James agreed, shaking his head as well, but he drew his knees to his chest and hugged them. His voice grew small as he continued. “Maybe this is for the better. I have to pay for my crimes. Pay for the deaths I caused. This is right; I will serve jail time and give back to the community to make up for my past actions.”

“Brainiac betrayed you, Force,” Pharaoh placed a comforting hand on his knee, meeting his gaze. “Brainiac’s lying and betrayal hurt you. It’s okay to be angry at him.”

It did hurt. It hurt a lot.

James allowed himself a moment of vulnerability, biting his lip in an attempt to hold back his tears. The first sob escaped his lips and soon he was wrapped up in Pharaoh’s arms, crying into her shoulder.

“Shhh,” she comforted him, rubbing his back, “We’re here for you. We’re your family. We’ll never betray you.”

James didn’t want to be a villain, but right now, he was in a bad place. He just wanted someone to make him feel like he was wanted. Needed. Loved. He would take any of those emotions, from anyone at all. It felt nice to hear that someone actually cared for him; that they believed in him and were always here for him.

If only Thomas had been one of these people.

James finally sniffled his last and pulled away. The police helicopters were only a street away from them now. “Thank you,” James whispered.

“Force,” Pharaoh held on to his shoulder tightly, speaking seriously, “Brainiac wants to break you. He wants to prove that he still has the upper hand. Don’t let him win.”

“You think so?” James whimpered.

“I know so,” Pharaoh told him firmly, “Force, my power is magic based. I specialise in binding spells. I can bind someone to their word or bind something to them. Force, I can protect you from Brainiac’s future attempts to hurt you.”

“Yeah?” James glanced up at her. “He won’t be able to read or control my mind anymore?”

“I guarantee it,” Pharaoh assured, “as long as you want it, I can give it to you.”

“I want it,” James told her without hesitation, “I want to forget about him. I want to be distracted from thoughts of him. I just want to be free and do things my way without oppression from anyone, you know?”

“I do,” she nodded. “Roll up your sleeve.”

“I also don’t want him to be able to use his mind powers on me anymore,” James continued, rolling up the sleeve of his suit. “I don’t want him to be able to touch my mind or my memories. He won’t be able to control me anymore.”

“You got it, Force,” she nodded, “this might hurt.”

Pharaoh drew a quick symbol over his flesh with an ungloved hand. As her nail scraped his skin, it felt like a red hot iron rod branding his arm, burning into his skin. The pain was blinding.

When the finger finally left his arm, James blinked away the white specks in his vision and cleared his sore throat. Through the pain, he must have been screaming. James looked down to gaze at the ankh on his arm. The picture seemed to be trembling on his skin, infused with magic. The more he watched it, the more he was drawn to it.

“Give a moment for the magic to work,” Pharaoh said, her voice far away. Pharaoh rolled James’ sleeve back down for him, covering the hypnotising symbol, making him blink and look up at her.

She patted his shoulder gently, as though waking him up from a deep sleep.

“Now, listen to me, Force,” she said, and James struggled to focus on her voice. Everything seemed so detached; he was so far away from reality. All he could feel was the ankh, the binding spell on his arm. What had he bound himself to? James couldn’t think straight.

“The Force, you were the greatest villain of all time until Brainiac made a fool out of you. He betrayed you. Lied to you. Took away your real life and buried who you really are. How does that make you feel?” Pharaoh guided his thoughts.

“Angry,” James hissed, his narrowed eyes a little dazed, empty, “Hurt. Betrayed. Outraged.”

“The Force, this ankh represents life. It’s your life, you can do whatever you want with it. No one can tell you what to do. No one can stop you from getting what you want. What do you want?” Pharaoh continued.

“Revenge,” James heard himself snarl, as though it was someone else saying it, “I want to make Brainiac pay for what he has done to me. What he has made me feel.”

“The Force, I have given you protection against Brainiac’s mind powers. He will not be able to influence you or touch your memories anymore. How are you going to make him pay?”

“I will k-” James began, then bit his tongue and stopped himself. He blinked rapidly, attempting to rise himself from the sea of haziness. What had she done to him? He didn’t want to kill Thomas. He just wanted-

Pharaoh clasped her hand over the ankh, pain flaring through James’ entire body. Physical pain. It overwhelmed his emotional pain momentarily before Pharaoh unclasped her hand and the pain subsided. James was left heaving, fingers white after gripping the edge of the ledge they were sitting on too tightly.

Physical pain could be removed but how about emotional pain? The pain caused by Thomas. Thomas had hurt him. Thomas had no right to hurt him. He was The Force. He was powerful. Brainiac will pay for what he has done.

“How do you want to make him pay, Force?” came the low rumble of a faraway voice.

The Force curled his lips in a growl, mind enraged by the pain, blinded by the pain.

“I will kill him,” The Force growled.

“Who are you, and what is your mission?” Pharaoh prompted, her voice rising in glee.

“I am The Force,” he responded slowly, his voice a low gurgle, poison in every word, “and I am going to kill Brainiac.”

The ankh on his arm flared with magical light, registering what he had said, binding him to his word.

Pharaoh clapped her hands in glee. It had worked. The Force had returned. Forced to and manipulated, but nevertheless. She had been waiting for the day when villains would rise again. Now, with Force as their overpowered, mindless zombie to command, they could.

Both villains turned to the police helicopter as it finally leveled with them on the rooftop. The police did not seem perturbed by James’ empty eyes and evil snarl, raising a tranquiliser gun and a megaphone.

”The Force, this is the NYPD. We have you surrounded. Surrender now or we will shoot.”

James growled. No way was he going down without a fight. No way was he going to let Brainiac win again. He was in control of his own life. He made his own conscious choices. Such as this.

James reached an arm out and melted the guns, relishing in the horrified faces of the NYPD. it was followed by melting the helicopter, causing the air-borne police to fall to their deaths.

Pharaoh threw her head back and laughed gleefully, delighted at his actions. She slapped his back good-naturedly and stood up, gesturing him to follow her.

He did as he was told. After all, he owed it to Pharaoh for giving him this freedom to choose. This power in his veins. This anger in his mind. Now, he could be a proper villain again. He would be someone appreciated. Respected. Feared.

The spelled symbol on James’ arm glowed as James was brainwashed by his bound programming, absorbing power through the screams of terror The Force created.

TBC

Chapter Text

Thomas rushed to the window as James leaped out, running across the million shards of glass (he wasn’t sure if he was relieved or horrified to realise it was sand). He leaned out to see James soaring through the air and quickly flying out of his sight.

Thomas stumbled back into a chair and sat down, breathing heavily, a hand clutching his chest in an attempt to slow his rapid heart.

“AUTO, call the police,” Thomas commanded.

He had no idea what James had been going on about. Superheroes and supervillains? Since when did James have powers? How did James even find out about it?

“Hello, NYPD? My husband discovered he was a Super or something and he leaped out the window and flew away. I don’t know what to do. Can you help me find him? Yes, he was in grey. He’s The Force? What’s that? …Yes I will be careful. Yes, thank you.”

James was a supervillain? Thomas couldn’t believe it. His sweet, gentle and loving husband was capable of heartless murder? James seemed to think that Thomas had powers too, and that their life together had been a lie. What had triggered that mindset?

“AUTO,” Thomas called out, swallowing to steady his trembling voice, “Show me James’ search history.”

The AI came to life, the holographic screen lighting up the wall opposite him.

“Of course, Thomas. Displaying James’ search history with the latest at the top.”

Today

18:04 - News articles of The Force.

18:02 - The Force profile page.

Yesterday

20:42 - The Force profile page.

20:35 - List of known Supers

20:20 - Headline News

14:37 - Mindmap of materials

Two days ago

07:01 - Are diamonds a corporate scam?

06:50 - What should I get for a 3 year anniversary gift?

Thomas bit his lip at the last search result displayed but trailed his eyes up to stare at the many searches of ‘The Force’.

“AUTO, bring up The Force’s profile page,” Thomas commanded, “and bring me a glass of water.”

”Certainly, Thomas. The Force’s profile page was unlocked by James yesterday.”

A robot activated in the kitchen and began to grab Thomas’ water while The Force’s profile page appeared on the screen.

Thomas leaned back in his chair, breathing out slowly as James’ picture was displayed on the screen before him. He quickly scanned the information on the right column, his heart sinking at Threat: Neutralised. Somehow, James thought that had something to do with Thomas. Something to do with Thomas being a hero.

“AUTO, am I a hero?” Thomas called out, receiving the glass of water from the robot and taking a sip.

“Yes, Thomas. You were Brainiac, a superhero with mind control powers.”

“Really? How come I don’t remember that?” Thomas huffed in disbelief. “Alright, pull up Brainiac’s profile page.”

“I’m sorry, Thomas. You locked Brainiac’s entries on 11th January, 2015. You need a password to enter.”

Thomas finished his glass of water and handed it back to the robot.

“That’s easy, I use the same password for everything,” Thomas said, faltering slightly when he realised that must be how James unlocked The Force’s profile page. James knew the password he used for all his devices. “Input password: TOMANDJEMMY.”

“Brainiac entries has been unlocked.”

Thomas braced himself to see his own picture on the screen but it still startled him when it appeared. That was him, at the bottom left corner of the screen, a couple years younger, grinning at whoever or whatever was taking his picture. That was also him, at the top left corner in a magenta mask, not looking at the camera, yelling at someone.

Super Name: Brainiac

Real Name: Thomas Jefferson

Abilities: Mind Control

Super alignment: Hero

Status: Inactive

He really was a superhero.

How did he not remember any of this?

“AUTO, why don’t I remember-” Thomas began to ask when the entire building tilted to one side and Thomas found his chair sliding across the room.

Thomas scrambled out of the chair as the building tilted further and the chair smashed into the wall. He clambered towards the rising end of the penthouse but his furniture were all sliding towards him and Thomas was pretty sure he was about to be squashed to death. Did James attack their own building?

“THOMAS!” came a yell from the open window James has jumped out of. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!”

“I don’t know!” Thomas yelled back at whoever it was, dodging another chair that flew past him and smashed into the wall. There was a hand around his wrist and the superhero lifted him off the ground.

“Let’s get you to safety,” the dark blue clad superhero told him, soaring out of the collapsing building. Thomas looked back to see his expensive penthouse collapsing onto itself.

“My house!” Thomas wailed.

“Don’t worry, Angelica will reverse the damage,” the superhero told him. “We have to get you to safety first.” Thomas had no idea who Angelica was but he nodded as though he did. “What did you do to Force that made him so upset he began trashing the city again after three years of peace?”

“I- I don’t know,” Thomas sighed, gripping the hero tightly as they flew over a large body of water. “He remembered some stuff about being a villain, I guess, and apparently he thought that I had been lying to him about some stuff?”

“You don’t remember, do you?” the superhero sighed, “It’s alright. We’ll fill you in. Now we have to bring you back to hero headquarters. You’re going to have to come out of retirement to stop your villainous husband, Thomas.”

“James isn’t a villain,” Thomas snapped, “I don’t know what’s going on but my husband is the sweetest man alive and I refuse to believe that he’s willingly going around taking lives. Maybe someone else is forcing him to!”

“You’ll be scarred at James’ previous actions, then,” the superhero commented, then soared downwards and landed on the roof of a building. He placed Thomas down and together they walked down the Roof Access stairs into the top level of the building.

Thomas emerged in an open area, a bunch of masked and unmasked people staring at him.

“He’s back,” Thomas heard them whisper, “That’s Brainiac. He’s the most powerful hero in history.”

“Um, hi,” Thomas said, taking the chair that was offered to him and taking a seat in the middle of the circle the people formed.

“Everyone hush, he doesn’t remember anything,” the superhero that had brought Thomas here said. The hero spun a chair around and took a seat before Thomas. “Brainiac removed his own memories when he left. We’re going to help him get them back.”

“I did?” Thomas gasped, agreeing with the “He’s so powerful he used his powers on himself” whispers. No wonder he didn’t remember anything.

“You did, Thomas,” the hero removed his oxford blue mask, “now, does my face remind you of anything?”

Thomas squinted and frowned at the hero’s features, then shook his head.

“Right,” the hero leaned back in his chair, running a hand across his bald head, “What if I say this: Mr Jefferson, we have reasons to believe that you have a superpower.”

“Mr Jefferson, we have reasons to believe that you have a superpower,” said the superhero that just barged into his office, startling Thomas.

“Hi,” Thomas placed his papers down and stood up, forcing a smile at the masked hero, “as much as I love the heroes that protect our city, you have to make an appointment with the front desk before you can see me.”

“I’m not here for a session, I’m here to recruit you,” the hero told him, words brisk as though he was in a hurry. The hero backed out of the room, and grabbed a box from a nearby chair, then walked back in and presented it to Thomas, the box still shut. “Tell me what’s inside,” the hero told Thomas, his hand over the lid.

“I can’t see what’s in the box,” Thomas’ lips quirked into a grin, but the hero didn’t seem to find it funny.

“Use your mind!” the hero snapped, impatient. “Use your mind to see!”

“I can’t read minds,” Thomas pointed out, “no one can.”

“You can,” the hero took a deep breath and calmed himself. “You’ve always known of your uncanny ability to generally know what someone else is thinking. Use that. Stretch that ability. Read my mind. I know what’s in the box. Tell me what I know is in the box.”

“Okay, sure, I’ll try,” Thomas decided to amuse the hero and stared into his eyes, concentrating.

It felt like there was a firework in his mind, a spark of something new, something powerful. Thomas sank into the deep gaze of the hero and suddenly he was looking at more than the hero himself. He could see his memories, feel his emotions. Thomas sieved through the memories quickly, picking out the one with the hero placing a book in the box.

“It’s a book,” Thomas breathed out, pulling out of the hero’s mind, stepping back and blinking hard.

“Good!” the hero lit up with a smile, “What book?”

Thomas focused on his eyes again and this time, flew through his memories much quickly.

“Gulliver’s Travels,” Thomas recited dutifully, “by Jonathan Swift.”

“Really?” the hero raised an eyebrow. Thomas’ breath caught in his throat, unsure of his own answer. “Show me.”

Thomas reached for the box but the hero pulled it back.

“Make me open the box,” the hero told him. “You’ve read my mind, now control it.”

“I don’t know-” Thomas began, only to be slapped by a moving shadow, rising up from underneath his desk. It dawned on Thomas that the hero before him was Shadow, with control over shadows and darkness.

“Concentrate!” Shadow barked at him.

“Yes Sir,” Thomas automatically responded, staring into his eyes again.

This time, Thomas dug deeper through the memories, until he was face to face with some sort of central control area, able to spark a series of neurons in the direction of whatever he wanted to see happen. Thomas sent the mental image of Shadow opening the box into his mind and watched the flashes of light go down a particular direction that would mimic the mental command, telling Shadow’s arm to move and open the box.

Thomas pulled out of Shadow’s mind in time to see Shadow opening the box, grinning.

“You did it!” Shadow praised, tilting the box and showing him the Gulliver’s Travels book within before dropping the box on the floor.

“What’s going on?” Thomas asked as Shadow wrapped an arm around his waist and unlocked the window of his office.

“You’re coming with me,” Shadow told him, lifting Thomas into the air and flying out of the window, “welcome to superhero life.”

Thomas came back to the present to find himself hunched over on the chair, hands pressed against the side of his throbbing head, teeth gnashed together in pain. He sat up in his chair and lowered his arms, aware of the dead silence surrounding him.

“Well?” Shadow prompted.

“You’re Aaron Burr,” Thomas whispered, “You’re Shadow. You control the shadows and darkness.”

“Good,” Shadow encouraged, “what else do you remember?”

“I remember how to do this,” Thomas caught the eyes of two people in the crowd and concentrated. A moment later, they turned to each other and kissed.

“Good!” Shadow repeated, sounding thrilled. The crowd around him began to whisper enthusiastically, sharing Shadow’s excitement. “what else?”

“That’s about it,” Thomas shrugged. “I think you’d have to trigger another memory to help me get it back.”

“We don’t have time for that. Can you remove the block in your mind to access all your hero memories at once?” Shadow pressed him.

“I can try,” Thomas nodded, “does anyone have a mirror?”

“Here,” came a voice from the crowd and a handheld mirror was stuck in front of him.

“Thank you,” Thomas received it, focusing on his own eyes. He quickly sank into his own mind, sieving through memories until he came to a dark corner. It only took a little push to flood his mind with the repressed memories he had kept there, as though the memories never wanted to be silenced.

The rediscovered memories filled his head. Simultaneously playing memories soared through his mind’s eye. Awareness of who he really was, what he really was. Memories of him and James; fighting James, talking to James, falling in love with James. James was right; Thomas had indeed wiped his memory. But James was also wrong; everything that occured after the brain wipe was in fact, voluntary.

Thomas had fallen in love with James despite their contrasting statuses as heroes and villain. Thomas had fallen in love with James after their memory wipes. His feelings for James were real. It had always been real.

Thomas pulled himself out of his pounding head and back to reality with a gasp. He looked around wildly: that was Jonathan in the crowd, running a hand through his hair. He had just made Sara and Connor kiss. That was Ivan at the back of the crowd, grinning wildly at him. He recognised these people. He knew these people. They were all friends.

“Thomas,” came a voice by his side, an assuring hand on his arm.

“Aaron,” Thomas gasped at the dark blue clad hero, familiarity rolling off his tongue. “I… I remember.”

“Take a deep breath, Thomas,” Aaron told him calmly, “Tell me, who are you?”

Thomas swallowed and took a deep breath as instructed, looking at the familiar faces around him. They looked back at him expectantly. The pounding in his mind subsided as he rolled his shoulders back, hardened his gaze and straightened with the responsibility of a hero.

“I’m Thomas Jefferson,” Thomas stated with full conviction, “and I am Brainiac.”

----------

“Tell us what happened, Thomas,” Angelica, the hero responsible for reversing the damage caused by villains, asked. According to Aaron, Angelica was now the one in charge. They were in a room, just him, Aaron and Angelica. Thomas was sitting at the desk and Angelica was standing at the other side of it, leaving Aaron to stand at the corner of the room. “What made Force regain the memories and storm the city again?”

“Force thought that I had lied to him, that I didn’t love him,” Thomas explained, calling James by his super name to keep things professional. “He thought that everything I have done after the memory wipe was forced and obligatory; to mock the villains of the power heroes had over them.”

“Well, that’s fine,” Angelica shrugged, leaning back, “It keeps the villains in check. It was just as well that you had taken away his memories of his past.”

“It’s not fine,” Thomas snapped at her indifference, “I didn’t take his memories away because of what he was doing as a villain. Force was a misguided, grieving sibling. He only wanted someone to understand his pain.”

“So he destroyed the city every weekend to vent out his anger, to make his point,” Angelica snorted, crossing her arms. “Seems a little excessive to me when he could have seen a counsellor or something.”

“Which was why I volunteered to talk to him, because I’m a Psychiatrist,” Thomas told her, an edge in his voice, “I would appreciate it if you did not pass judgement on my husband considering the fact that you were only a beginner hero doing cleanups when I was running this place.”

Angelica uncrossed her arms and leaned over the table, glaring at Thomas in his seat.

“I am now your superior, and you will not challenge my authority, Thomas,” Angelica hissed in response.

“Sorry, Angelica, technically you don’t have authority over me because I can make you do whatever I want with my fucking mind control,” Thomas retorted, standing up and meeting her narrowed eyes with his own.

“Actually,” Aaron waved an arm between them, attempting to disperse the tension in the room, “Thomas removed Force’s memories, and his own, for another reason.”

“We wanted to be together,” Thomas broke eye contact with Angelica after a moment of silence and sat back in his seat. “We couldn’t be together as a hero-villain duo, so we agreed to remove both our memories and live life as normal civilians.” Thomas looked to the ground with a sigh. “I don’t believe he remembers that I wiped my own memory too, and that he thinks he’s just a villainous prize I like to own as a hero.”

“So why did he recall his memories if you squashed them down so hard they shouldn’t surface?” Angelica asked, as accusing as before.

“Look, James- The Force found hard evidence of his villainous days,” Thomas pointed out, “If someone told him ‘You used to be The Force, a supervillain’, he wouldn’t believe them. But the brain can’t ignore hard proofs like multiple newspaper articles especially when it triggers such an emotional part of his history.”

“So how are you going to ensure that he doesn’t remember being a villain this time when we capture him again?” Angelica probed.

“I’m not taking away his memories again,” Thomas stated in his end-of-discussion voice.

“What?” both Aaron and Angelica exclaimed.

“In fact, I’m going to return him all his memories.”

“What about his past? His violent tendencies?” Angelica threw her arms in the air in disbelief.

Thomas huffed. Angelica hadn’t been absorbing what he had been saying.

“I’ve already said that James isn’t a villain. He’s not evil. I’ve worked with him on methods of dealing with grief, both in and out of my suit. I don’t believe his motivator now is still his sister’s death; he’s learnt to deal with the grief healthily. I don’t know what might be causing him to lash out at the city now; he doesn’t do it just because he’s angry. James has strong morals and beliefs. If he, as a scientist, spoke up against human testing of experimental drugs, I doubt he’d be attacking the city needlessly right now.” Thomas explained.

“So you trust that giving him all his memories back, with all the villain scheming and destruction, will make him a better person?” Angelica scoffed.

“In fact, I do,” Thomas snapped back, “Where did you learn to be so cynical, Angelica? Why do you only see the bad things for what it is at face value instead of what it’s an outlet for?”

“Oh, sorry I’m not a world famous psychiatrist earning the big bucks,” Angelica shot back, “at least I’m not cheating by using my superpower to make me better at my job like you and your evil husband does.”

“Are you suggesting that I didn’t earn my PHD the honest way?” Thomas growled, his voice low. “Because I can assure you, I earned my PHD the way everyone does before I was even aware of my superpowers.”

“Back to the question,” Aaron redirected the conversation. “Angelica’s concerns are valid. How do you know that giving him back his villain memories will not make him turn back to violence?”

“Because he isn’t violent for the sake of being violent! He isn’t evil just because he wants to be evil!” Thomas raised his voice into a shrill. “His memories are what makes who he is and by giving it back to him, it will make him a better person!”

“A better person,” Angelica scoffed again.

“I JUST WANT MY HUSBAND BACK!” Thomas finally stood up and screamed at her, ignoring the tears that brimmed in his eyes, glaring at her with all the ‘you have no right to judge’ vibes he could send.

“Thomas,” Aaron said gently, sympathetically. Angelica never faltered in her return glare but Thomas could tell from the shift in her breathing that she was uncomfortable.

Thomas sank back into the chair with a sigh, his forehead resting on his crossed arms on the table.

“You don’t know how it’s like to fall in love with someone aligned with the enemy side,” Thomas swallowed, refusing to let his shaky voice become an outright sob. “Now that I have my memories back, all six years of history with James, I want him to remember too. That my love for him was real. That I wasn’t lying, or faking my feelings for him. That I truly love him for everything that he is, for his troubled villainous past and the sweet, gentle man he is today. I just want my husband back so I can love him and tell him how much he means to me.”

There was a moment of silence between them. Thomas closed his eyes and allowed the tears to pitter-patter onto the ground.

“Thomas, I’m sorry,” Angelica finally said.

“Whatever,” Thomas muttered, wiping his eyes with a hand.

“Well,” Aaron said, always the peacemaker, “the villains have been out there ruining the city for a few hours now and James is with them. It’s a good time to stop them.”

“I’m going to get my husband back,” Thomas stood up and turned to leave, avoiding Angelica’s gaze completely. He was stopped by Aaron, gripping his arm before he could step out of the room.

“Not in that, Thomas,” Aaron told him, gesturing at the silk pajamas he had brought Thomas to headquarters in. “You need to wear your supersuit.”

“How? My house and my secret super room was destroyed…” Thomas trailed off, mind racing as Aaron gave him a knowing look. “I have another set here,” Thomas gathered, nodding.

“I knew you’d could read my mind,” Aaron offered Thomas a small smile. Thomas returned the smile before he exited the room, on his way to find his suit.

----------

Thomas didn’t realise how much he missed flying.

Angelica was leading the heroes’ V-formation with Thomas and Aaron right behind her. Thomas was spinning and twirling and whooping and occasionally overtaking her.

The 2AM city was quiet and Thomas wasn’t worried about disturbing civilians with his antics in the air.

“Stay in formation,” Angelica reminded him, but Thomas only laughed in response. Angelica dared not command at him after her lapse of judgement in the room.

He was feeling much better now, dressed in familiar violet spandex with magenta-coloured gloves, cape and mask. He wouldn’t let Angelica know that he had forgiven her, though. Let her continue to feel bad.

“Hey,” Thomas nudged Aaron, bumping against him in the air as they flew towards the destruction, “have you ever wondered why all Supers, hero or villain, can fly?”

“I know, Thomas, you’ve told me a million times,” Aaron rolled his eyes, but there was a smile on his lips and Thomas let out another hearty laugh.

“It’s because when our cells mutated, in addition to our powers, it also gave all of us the ability of flight!” Thomas told him, voice rising in excitement. “James told me that!”

“I can tell that you’re excited to be back,” Aaron observed.

“I LOVE BEING A SUPERHERO!” Thomas announced to the world, then turned back to Aaron, settling in the air with his chin on his hand, crossing his legs and winking at him.

“You are not a french girl, Thomas,” Aaron deadpanned, “and I do not have any art supplies. You’re the only hero in history with pockets in your suit.”

“Tell me I look good in purple,” Thomas eagerly asked him.

“It’s violet.”

“It’s a shade of purple!” Thomas insisted, gesturing at his superhero suit.

An explosion to their right startled the heroes, alerting them that the villains were closer than they had thought.

This part of the city was awake and had descended into chaos. After hours of unrestrained destruction, the city was in ruins. There were mini tsunamis and hurricanes created by the elemental villains. There were fires and explosives placed by the pyromaniac villains. And there was James, at the back of the villain crowd in his grey suit, making slicing actions in the air and chopping the buildings up.

Thomas immediately grew serious, breaking from the formation and heading towards James.

“Thomas! Where are you going?” Aaron asked in a low voice, following him out of the formation.

“I see him,” Thomas whispered back, allowing Aaron to follow him until they were a distance away from the other villains but close enough to catch James’ attention.

“James!” Thomas hissed in a low voice, “James, it’s me, Thomas! Let me explain!”

James turned around to face him, and there was something not quite right about his eyes, something a little jerky in his movements. It made Thomas suspect that something was wrong immediately.

“Brainiac,” James hissed, his lips twisting into the ugliest snarl Thomas had ever seen. They were in the stratosphere, where 99% of water vapor was. That proved to be very useful for James, forming large chunks of hailstones in his outstretched palm.

“James, listen to me,” Thomas pleaded, “I didn’t lie to you. What we have between us is real. I really do love you. Let me show you.”

James just let out an uncharacteristic angry scream and hurled the hailstones at Thomas and Aaron. His actions were wild and uncontrolled, blindly using his powers without the fine-tuned calculations Thomas remembered from their past fights.

“It’s not James,” Thomas quickly gathered, swooping upwards as James hurled a snowman-sized ice block at him. He was briefly relieved by the fact that not many civilians would be out on the streets at this timing but Thomas quickly focused back on the battle at hand.

“What do you mean?” Aaron called back, dodging James’ attacks with not as much practised agility as Thomas.

“Look at his eyes, Aaron,” Thomas told him, “they’re full of unrealistic blind rage. It’s not natural. He’s being controlled.”

“Look at his arm,” Aaron pointed, and Thomas cast his gaze down to see a glowing ankh inked into James’ arm, visible through his light grey suit.

“He’s being spelled,” Thomas whispered, floating closer unconsciously. He reached out, wanting to cup James’ cheek in his hand. The hollow eyes, the ugly snarl, the tremble through his entire body. Someone was using James, manipulating his pain for their own interests, most probably one of the other villains.

“I will hurt them, James,” Thomas swore, his voice dangerously low, “whoever did this to you.”

“Not if you DIE first!” James screamed into Thomas’ face, raising his arms to the sky.

“Thomas!” Aaron warned, but the avalanche was too big for Thomas to dodge at such close proximity.

Snow crashed upon his head, weighing him down, hurling him towards the ground where he would be splat open like a raw egg.

At times like this, Thomas wished his superpower was a physical offensive type.

As he neared the pavement, the few civilians on the street fleeing from the descending avalanche, the shadow cast by the avalanche came to life and grabbed him, pulling him out from underneath and tossing him back into the sky.

Thomas regained his bearings next to Aaron, whirling around to face James again. “That was a close one,” he remarked.

“Too close,” Aaron agreed, before the men darted in opposite directions to avoid another hailstone thrown their way.

“Why are you attacking me, Jemmy!” Thomas yelled at James, who turned and focused his wild anger on him.

“You lied to me! You hurt me! I will not be oppressed by heroes like you anymore! I will KILL you!” James screamed back, preparing another large snowball in his outstretched palm.

“I didn’t hurt you, Jemmy!” Thomas shouted back, “Everything between us is real! It was a mutual decision to remove our Super past! Let me explain!”

“You’re still LYING!” James screamed, his voice shrilling at the end.

“He’s beyond reason, Thomas!” Aaron warned, “use your mind powers on him!”

Thomas raised a hand towards James, staring into his soul-sucking empty black holes.

For a moment he was sieving through James’ mind, swimming to the central core signal area where he could deposit the memory proof that he had not been lying, only to hit some sort of block, casting him out of James’ mind.

Thomas toppled backwards in the air, as though he had been physically hit by the mental block.

“What’s wrong?” Aaron yelled, and Thomas turned to see his arms outstretched towards James, shadows binding James’ arms by his side so he could not attack them while Thomas was in his head.

“Whoever cast the spell on James was smart enough to lock me out of his mind,” Thomas gasped, “I can’t influence his thoughts.”

“That’s right!” James cackled, “No more LIES!”

James twisted his hands within his binds and the outer layer of the shadowy tendrils were coated with ice, quickly freezing and hardening. Aaron was thrown backwards with the force of the frozen shadows shattering.

“You have to bind his fingers into a fist so he can’t use his powers!” Thomas tried to explain, but James was faster than their rebound and both heroes found themselves enclosed head to toe in large ice cubes, trapped.

James threw his head back and laughed.

Thomas shivered in his ice cube. Maybe it was from the cold. Maybe it was from the way James truly looked evil in that moment, with wild, unfocused eyes and a twisted grin, celebrating Thomas’ demise.

James had never been truly evil. He had been cold and calculative but his actions were always meaningful in its twisted way and there had always been a sense of honesty in his eyes. James did what he did because he believed it was the only way to get his message across. He didn’t take pleasure from watching people die, but from the lesson he was teaching.

Now, despite knowing that he was spelled, to see James attack and hurt with the intention to kill without any real meaning or lesson behind it was… disturbing, to say the least.

The ankh on James’ arm glowed and James seemed to puff his chest out with a sudden spike of power. He twisted an outstretched palm sharply to the side. Ice spike shot through the ice prison, narrowly missing Thomas in many places. Thomas’ yelp of surprise and fear made the ankh glow even stronger and James grinned at them with the fear and control he held over them, withdrawing the ice spikes from their tiny prison.

The ankh must be absorbing fear and helplessness, giving villain-James more power. Thomas swallowed his fear, hardening his gaze. He would not give the spell more control over James.

“Do you like this Force, Brainiac?” a voice asked from behind. Thomas jerked up in his ice cube, hitting his head, turning around to see another villain floating behind him. Her suit was black and gold in a typical Pharaoh fashion and Thomas made the link to the ankh immediately.

“You!” Thomas slammed a fist against his ice prison, “You did this to him!”

“Pharaoh,” Aaron recognised, seething her name through gritted teeth. “I should have guessed.”

“Force wanted me to do this to him, Brainiac,” Pharaoh smiled, flying past him and standing next to a blindly raging James, placing a hand on his shoulder. “After how upset you made him, he wanted to feel less. To stop thinking of you. He wanted you to stop messing around in his mind. I simply... pushed his wishes a little further.”

“So you amplified his vulnerability and brainwashed him a heartless killing machine?” Thomas yelled, outraged.

“He has the power to destroy the world!” Pharaoh gestured wildly as she spoke, “As the current leader and his former apprentice, I’m thinking of what’s best for him! I couldn’t let him waste it by spending his life as a goody two shoes! I simply allowed him to become the villain he could be!”

“You’re making use of him!” Thomas shouted, “You’re hurting him!

“No, according to The Force, you're hurting him,” she smirked, “you broke his heart and lost his trust. He hates you for making use of him. After we’re done with you, I’m going to make The Force hate something else and he’s going to destroy the world! Villains will rule!”

Thomas leaned against the back of his ice cube prison, wordless, the cold finally seeping through his suit and biting his flesh.

“Thomas!” Aaron hissed, but Thomas didn’t turn to him. What was the point? James was spelled and he couldn’t do anything about it. He was going to die by his own husband’s hands and it wasn’t even James’ conscious choice to kill him. What a shitty way to die.

“Force! This man hurt you!” Pharaoh shouted, pointing at Thomas. James turned to him with wild, blazing eyes. “He used you! He took away your freedom! What are you going to do?”

“I’M GOING TO KILL HIM!” James screamed, lifting his arm, and a football field sized avalanche appeared on top of them. Pharaoh smirked and flew away, leaving Thomas and Aaron at the mercy of James.

“Thomas!” Aaron hissed again, “We’ve dealt with Pharaoh and her spells before. She’s powerful but arrogant. James must have left before he could teach her the importance of fine-tuning their powers because she doesn’t work hard enough for the results she wants. She has never practised her powers beyond binding someone to her will and turning them into a mindless fighting zombie!”

“James is a mindless fighting zombie,” Thomas echoed, his voice as dead as James’ eyes.

“Thomas, this is not the time to surrender!” Aaron raised his voice, “Pharaoh’s spell is simple! James was bound to an emotion amplified, with simple motivations and exaggerated consequences. To break it, you just have to avoid the motivators and the emotions. Trigger something else. The other emotions will overwhelm the spell, breaking it!”

Avoid the motivators? Zombie-James’ motivation was the fact that Thomas had lied him and that he didn’t want to feel controlled anymore. His bound emotion was anger, causing him to lash out at Thomas and Aaron. What could he even do to counter that? He’d have to make James feel happy… or, or something, and give him examples of times when James was in control and when Thomas hadn’t hurt him. Sadly, he couldn’t access James’ memories. How else could he get through to James?

James’ loud screech and off-the-mark hurl of his powers at another hero startled Thomas out of his thoughts.

“Haven’t you always said James isn’t a bad person?” Aaron urged, “this spell is forcing him to be something he isn’t. If you can just get through to the real him, it’s going to be easy to push the real him to the surface.”

When his powers didn’t work, there was only one thing Thomas was good at; that James had a love-hate relationship with.

Talking.

“Jemmy,” Thomas spoke up slowly, looking up at James through the distortion of his thick ice prison, “remember our third date in 2015, when we went to a cat cafe because I really wanted a picture of myself drinking coffee and stroking a cat at the same time like a stuffy old man?”

There was a pause, and Thomas knew James was reliving the memory despite the way his teeth grinded against each other in spelled rage.

“SHUT UP!” James demanded.

“You are allergic to cats, but you decided to come along because you wanted to see me fail in my mission?” Thomas forced out a convincing chuckle, as though he had forgotten about his dire present situation, “You were right. None of the cats would stay still on my lap long enough for me to take a picture. Remember the tabby cat, and how it was tired of me gripping it down so it wriggled hard and a bunch of cat hair flew everywhere?”

James puffed out his cheeks like he had a mouth full of cat hair, then had a coughing fit right there in front of them, as though the description of the memory triggered a sensory response.

When James finally made his last wheeze and turned back to them, Thomas swore he could see a fondness in his dazed eyes before anger smothered over it quickly.

Aaron must have seen it too because he whispered loudly, “It’s working, Thomas!”, which only made James clench his trembling fist.

“You can talk but you’re not getting out of here ALIVE!” James crowed, eyes flashing, raising his arm again, ready to finish them.

“Hey Jemmy, remember when we were still dating and I invited you to stay over at the penthouse, but AUTO was down for repairs and we didn’t have automatic temperature regulation?” Thomas kept talking, “It was a cold night and I only had one blanket. Remember I gave you the blanket because you were shivering, but the next day I was the one who caught a cold?”

“That’s because you were stupid,” James snapped harshly. Maybe it was the spell making his words twisted and full of menace, but the fact that James had not ignored his rambling and was in fact listening to it made Thomas smile and Aaron gave him thumbs ups from his ice prison. “We could have shared but you insisted on wrapping me up like a cocoon. I’m not a stupid caterpillar. I don’t become a fucking butterfly.”

“That’s because you already are a butterfly, Jemmy,” Thomas told him earnestly, pressing a hand against the icy prison, staring intently into James’ furied eyes, hoping to get through to him.

For a moment there was a light in James’ eyes, a blush dusting his cheeks, the first sign of his true self rising beneath the spell. Thomas was drawing the real James closer to the surface, but not close enough yet. The light was quickly extinguished by a painful grimace; the bright white ankh on his arm turned red hot as James was reminded of the words he bound himself to.

“I might be a butterfly,” James growled, his voice low, “but you’re a fucking flower and I’m going to kill you.”

Thomas briefly wondered if that was an off-handed compliment. James was standing right in front of Thomas’ ice prison, glaring at him, doing nothing despite the twisted pain in his arm. He seemed to be actively delaying their deaths in favour of listening to Thomas’ stories. Thomas wouldn’t doubt that the real James was in there, fighting against the spell.

The avalanche above them cast a dark shadow over their icy prisons and out of the corner of his eye, Thomas saw Aaron crouched in his prison, waving his hands from side to side at a corner of his ice cube. Straining his peripheral vision a little, Thomas could see the shadows forming a little saw, cutting its way through the thick block of ice.

“That’s right, I’m a flower,” Thomas grinned, continuing to distract James, “I’m a rose and if my petals were to fall, I’ll have them fall for you.”

That brought a scowl to James’ face, but he seemed amused, and it made Thomas’ grin widen. James struggled with a retort, successfully distracted from his goal of killing them. Thomas realised that he had James’ attention and he needed to step up his game quickly to break the spell before the spell took control again.

“Jemmy,” Thomas kept his voice soft, “Remember when I proposed to you?”

“It was the most terrible day of my life,” James proclaimed, “I almost died!”

Thomas chuckled, “Tell me about it?” He placed his right hand on his chin and that elbow in the palm of his left hand, gazing up at James. Maybe getting James to stimulate his own memories would work even better.

James’ expression relaxed ever so slightly, casting his gaze away.

“We were at the park and you bought us vanilla ice cream,” James began, his voice still rough but with a tenderness within. “You were slopping the ice cream and being all messy and sticky but I knew that would happen so I brought lots of wet wipes. You ate two ice creams and I told you that was enough, then you asked me why I hadn’t finished my first ice cream; if I really wanted it. I said yeah, I do, so I took a big bite of ice cream to prove it and choked on the ring you hid in the cone.”

As James recited the memory, his eyes struggled to focused and when he turned back to look at Thomas, Thomas was sure he was looking at the real James beneath the slightly glazed look. Just a little push and the spell would be broken.

“In hindsight, that was a bad idea,” Thomas remarked, laughing softly.

“It was uniquely Thomas,” James’ lips twitched with the beginning of a smile, before his smile was robbed by a flinch of pain.

“Jemmy, what’s wrong?” Thomas asked, but he could have guessed from the way James pushed up his sleeve to show his skin sizzling, boiling beneath the binding symbol.

“I want it off me,” James gasped, the rage quickly re-entering his eyes. “It hurts! I want the pain to stop!”

“James, Jemmy, look at me,” Thomas pleaded. If James gave in to the pain, to make the pain subside, Thomas would lose all the progress he had made.

“STOP!” James screamed, hurling himself away from the heroes and clawing at his arm, caking his fingertips in blood. “MAKE IT STOP!”

“Jemmy, do you remember our wedding?” Thomas desperately tried to distract him again, pressing himself against the ice. But James wasn’t listening to him anymore, hands pressed against the side of his shaking head, trying to get rid of the spell’s control over him, blood dripping off his elbow.

“Uh oh, Force,” Pharaoh appeared next to him once more, “looks like you went against your bound promise.”

“MAKE IT STOP!” James screamed again, painful tears streaking across his face. He tried to use his own superpower to solidify his melting skin but against a spell, it only worsened his situation. The heat became more intense, affecting the rest of his arm and not just the bound area. Chunks of flesh began to bubble and fall off.

James was in pain. Thomas would take away the pain but he couldn’t access James’ mind. All he could do was be useless, helpless in his ice prison, watching his husband get tortured without any means to help.

“MAKE IT STOP!” Thomas echoed, directing his scream at Pharaoh, banging his fist against the ice prison.

“You know how to make the pain go away, Force,” Pharaoh gave James a thin, evil smile, ignoring Thomas.

James raised his non-deformed arm, no sign of the real him anymore in those crazed, sunken eyes.

“JAMES, NO!” Thomas couldn’t stop himself from screaming, mind racing. There must be something he could do. He couldn’t access James’ mind. James’ pain was caused by Pharaoh’s spell. He could access Pharaoh’s mind.

Thomas glared into Pharaoh’s silted eyes, quickly weaving through her thoughts into the core area of her mind and successfully sending a ‘MAKE IT STOP’ into her mind before the avalanche crashed down onto his ice prison and shook him out of Pharaoh’s mind. Thomas closed his eyes, preparing himself for impact and death. He didn’t know if that short command worked but he hoped it did. If he had released James from the bind, at least he wouldn’t have died for nothing.

There was a swish, swish and Thomas opened his eyes to see Aaron’s shadowy tendrils chopping open his prison and grabbing him by the ankle, pulling him out from underneath the avalanche and throwing him back into the air again.

Aaron must have escaped his prison before James dropped the avalanche on their heads. He was currently busy, both arms outstretched at Pharaoh, the latter struggling in her shadowy ropes. James seemed disoriented, wobbly in the air, shadows wrapped around his burnt arm like a bandage, a hand pressed against his head.

Thomas rushed up to James, steadying him in the air before he turned to Pharaoh. “You,” Thomas growled, advancing towards her, receiving a smirk in return.

“You’re smart, making me remove the spell from Force. He might have gotten off this time, but mark my words, he has violent tendencies and he will be back. No one can stop him when that happens, not even you. He’s a villain at heart and you can’t do anything to stop it,” Pharaoh bragged.

Thomas seemed surprised, then pulled back and smiled a dangerous smile.

“Have you ever wondered what I can do with my powers?” Thomas asked innocently, tugging his magenta gloves off and holding them neatly, keeping it in his pockets.

“Yeah, you read minds, you control minds, what else?” Pharaoh scoffed.

“You see, I can control people from a distance, but my powers are stronger when I’m touching my subject,” Thomas explained, placing his hands on the side of Pharaoh’s head.

“So?”

“So, the way my power works is, I send my subjects a picture of what I want them to do and they do it,” Thomas continued, “but in reality, I can control more than thoughts and actions.”

“What do you mean?” Pharaoh huffed, like it was a waste of her time.

Thomas’ smile widened. She wasn’t very bright. She hadn’t understood his threat yet.

“I never had the choice between a hero and a villain. Right now, I feel pretty villain-ish: fueled by anger and lashing out my frustrations. I need a subject willing to test the extent of my powers,” Thomas spoke in a light tone despite the anger brewing inside of him.

Aaron gasped. “Thomas, no,” he said, placing a hand on Thomas’ shoulder. “You’re a hero, you have to be the bigger man-”

Thomas rolled his shoulders back, shrugging Aaron off roughly.

“Looks like you’re my chosen subject,” Thomas congratulated and narrowed his eyes at Pharaoh, allowing the anger to boil over.

Pain. A knife twisting in the guts. Skin bubbling off the skeleton. The slow death of suffocation. Every bone in the body being broken multiple times. Eyes being clawed out. Pain. More pain.

“Thomas, stop,” Thomas heard, but the voice was far away and he was deep in Pharaoh’s head sending her PAIN. The more she screamed, the more Thomas felt his heart leap. God, he could see the appeal of being a villain now.

More pain. Surgery without anesthetic. Acid poured down the throat. The brain being clawed out through the nostrils. PAIN!

“Thomas, remember our marriage?” came an annoying voice distracting him from his revenge. “It was at the beach because you said it would be romantic but it was really hot and sticky. Then you said we could all cool down in the sea, and you carried me, in my expensive wedding tux and ran into the sea. You wanted to take one of those romantic couple photos splashing in the water but you forgot to tell the photographer to take pictures of us, so we both ruined out attires for nothing.”

Thomas blinked, drifting out of Pharaoh’s mind as James spoke. There were arms wrapped tightly around his chest, pulling him back. James. Why was James stopping him from getting their revenge? Didn’t he see that Thomas was making the one who hurt him pay?

Thomas focused back on Pharaoh, but her eyes had rolled up in their sockets as she kept screaming and shaking and he couldn’t access her mind anymore. Why had he pulled out in the first place?

Aaron pulled a distracted Thomas off of Pharaoh and wrapped her entirely in a shadowy prison. Thomas turned to Aaron, outraged. Aaron shook his head and pleaded something, but Thomas couldn’t hear him over the white noise in his mind. Aaron didn’t get it. Maybe he needed to feel pain as well. Aaron seemed to realise Thomas’ plans and another shadow quickly turned Thomas away, making him face James instead. James pressed himself tightly against Thomas.

Thomas’ breath caught in his throat as reality slowly filtered back around him and the anger began to subside.

“You stripped down to your underwear, Thomas,” James’ soft voice coached the white noise out of Thomas’ mind, “You said it was now a pool party. I didn’t want to be in the water anymore so I got out. Five minutes later I sneezed because I was still in my wet tux and you declared the pool party canceled and told everyone to go home and then you just picked me up and drove me back to the penthouse and made me snuggle in bed with hot cocoa. Do you remember, Thomas?”

“James,” Thomas said dumbly in response.

“It’s me, Thomas,” James pulled away and looked up at him. Clear, thoughtful and honest eyes and a soft smile on his face. Thomas’ gaze trailed down his arm to the burn wrapped by Aaron’s shadow bandages. He bristled but James placed a gentle hand on his chin, guiding Thomas away from his arm and into his eyes. “I’m okay,” James assured.

“James,” Thomas repeated breathlessly, dragging him back in a tight hug before holding him at arms length to look at him again, making sure he was not dreaming. “You’re okay.”

“I’m okay.”

“You’re okay.”

“Yes, Thomas,” James laughed softly, a beautiful tinkle that made Thomas hug him again.

“I’ll make sure she gets locked in one of our maximum security prisons where she can never hurt anyone else ever again,” Aaron informed them, drifting away with Pharaoh. Thomas barely heard him, his entire focus on James.

“I remember,” Thomas breathed, returning to the conversation on hand, “I remember our wedding.”

“Our wedding that you cut short,” James teased lightheartedly. God, it sounded so good to hear James tease him again.

“Maybe we should have another,” Thomas quickly suggested. “I love you, Jemmy.”

James’ breath hitched in his throat and his lower lip wobbled, pushing himself against Thomas.

“What’s wrong?” Thomas asked immediately, wrapping his arms around James, protecting him.

“Thomas, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I know you love me. I don’t know what got to me, I shouldn’t have been angry. I know you hid my past to protect me, I shouldn’t have questioned you-” James rambled.

“Shhhh, you had every right to be mad, to question me,” Thomas told him gently, wiping his tears and placing his hands against James’ temples. “Which reminds me, I haven’t done this yet.”

James slacked in his grip, nodding, accepting defeat. “Do it,” James whispered, “Take my memories away. I understand. I’m the villain. I’m a danger to the public. I’m better off without knowing my powers.”

“I’m not taking your memories, silly,” Thomas kissed his forehead, “I’m giving them all back to you.”

They were in the penthouse, by the window. James was sitting on Thomas’ lap, both of them quiet as they stared out the window and gazed at the stars in the night sky. Thomas was in his pajamas and James in a comfy turtleneck sweater.

“Have you ever wondered what life would be like if we weren’t a hero-villain duo?” James broke the silence. Thomas turned to look at him, a soft smile at his lips. He took James’ hand and gently rubbed his thumb in circles, an indication for James to continue. “If we were just normal civilians, falling in love. We could have a normal relationship. We wouldn’t have to hide. We wouldn’t have to lead double lives.”

“Why can’t we be normal civilians?” Thomas hummed thoughtfully.

“Cos… cos you’re Brainiac, Thomas. You’re the leader of the heroes. And I’m Force. I’m the scariest villain there is.”

“But what if we weren’t Brainiac and Force?” Thomas raised a questioning eyebrow as James turned to him.

“You can’t seriously be suggesting what I think you are,” James said.

“You read my mind!” Thomas laughed, “We could live a single life, Jemmy. We could be happy.”

“But what about-” James began, only to have Thomas kiss the rest of his sentence away.

“But what about us?” Thomas countered, raising an eyebrow. James sighed, turning to look at the stars again.

“We won’t be able to remember each other,” James pointed out, “we might not find each other again.”

“We’ll find each other again, Jemmy,” Thomas leaned down and kissed his neck, “We’re meant for each other.”

James was silent for a moment before he shifted and turned his entire body to face Thomas.

“I love you,” James tightened his grip on Thomas’ hand. Thomas took that as approval, lifting James’ hand and kissing between his knuckles before letting go.

“I love you too,” Thomas stared into his eyes, pressing his fingers against James’ temples. “Relax, James.”

Thomas released James, who breathed out as he took in three years worth of information about his past. Just like Thomas, the weight of who he really was and what he had done hardened his gaze, no longer having the innocence of his post-memory-wipe. Yet, underneath what all his experiences had molded him into, there was a softness in his gaze that he looked Thomas with. There was gentleness in the smile that lifted at his lips.

“So it was a mutual decision, and not because you wanted to use me as a prize or an example at all,” James gripped Thomas tightly.

Thomas nodded, running a hand down James’ short, prickly hair, soothing him.

“Thank you,” James whispered.

“I trust you,” Thomas said earnestly, taking James’ hands and placing them at the side of his own head. “I want to show you something.”

Thomas breathed out, laying a mind-wiped, sleeping James back on the couch. He looked around, getting up and clapping his hands to activate AUTO. A blinking clock at the corner of the holographic screen showed that it was 11 January 2015, 23:00.

“AUTO, pull up everything in the system with the key words ‘Brainiac’ and ‘The Force’. I want you to lock all of them so we can never find it again. Password… just use TOMANDJEMMY. It doesn’t matter what the password is if we can never find these information again,” Thomas commanded.

When that was done, Thomas raced around the house, grabbing everything that belonged to James and stuffing it in a backpack. Finally, he grabbed his magenta mask and slapped it over his face, slinging the bag across his back and picking James up from the couch.

Thomas opened the window and soared out, carrying James to his own house and resting him on the bed.

“See you soon,” Thomas whispered to a sleeping James and kissed his forehead before leaving him.

He placed the bag of James’ stuff down in his sitting room and searched through James’ house, removing everything that had to do with being a supervillain. Once pleased with his work, Thomas soared back to his place and flopped onto the couch.

He was tired, but he was not done. Thomas dragged himself off the couch and cleaned up his own place, removing everything that had to do with being a superhero, including the mask he had on. Finally, he went back to his room and opened the closet, turning towards the full length mirror at the back of the closet door.

“This is it,” Thomas muttered to himself, then stared into his own eyes and buried his own memories of the last three years.

Thomas blinked, startled back to the present. Why had he been staring at himself in the mirror? He must have spaced out. What was he doing?

Clearly getting into bed, if his pajamas was anything to go by. He had work tomorrow anyway. He had to get up early.

Thomas closed the closet door and climbed into bed.

James began to pull away, but Thomas pulled him back.

“Keep watching,” Thomas whispered.

Thomas leaped out of bed as AUTO screamed it was 08:30.

He had to be at his office by 09:00.

Quickly he ran around the house, grabbing his papers and changing into office-appropriate attire. A hurried fluff of his hair and Thomas was out, making a mental note to grab a croissant or something on the way to the office.

Thomas hurried down the street, weaving through the morning crowd with agility he didn’t know he had. He looked up- he was two blocks away from the office- and crashed into someone else.

“I’m sorry!” the man cried, reaching out to help Thomas up.

“No worries,” Thomas assured, staring down at his coffee stained jacket and the spilt cup of coffee in the man’s hand.

“I’m so sorry!” the man apologised again, wiping Thomas’ jacket with a hand rather ineffectively.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Thomas pulled his jacket off and slung it over his shoulder, turning to look at the shorter man properly for the first time.

His hair was a little longer than a buzz cut, but still the prickly soft kind. His eyes were wide and apologetic, maybe even a little panicked, unsure what to do. He was wearing a turtleneck that he seemed to have slept in, if Thomas was reading the crumples properly. It didn’t make the man messy or unorganised; in fact, Thomas found that cute.

“Thomas,” Thomas reached a hand out, beaming.

“James,” the man blushed and took his hand shyly.

“I was going to grab a croissant, care to join me?” Thomas offered, his expression falling as James hesitated. “It’s okay if you’re rushing for time, I don’t want to impose or anything,” Thomas quickly added.

“No, I would love to, I just have to tell my boss I’m going to be late because I met my handsome prince,” James reddened further with his attempt at flirting.

God, how adorable could this man be?

James giggled as he withdrew his arms. “I remember that,” he said, averting his gaze, as uncomfortable as always with compliments.

Thomas held his precious husband close, his arm around James’ waist. Thomas was vaguely aware that there was still a fight going on in the background between other heroes and villains, but the background explosions and yells of both heroes and villains didn’t matter.

Their fight was over. It was just the both of them, James and Thomas, Force and Brainiac, against the world.

James giggled again, breaking the magical bubble of invincibility around them.

“What’s wrong?” Thomas asked again.

“No, I just… I just realised that we’ve never formally introduced ourselves in costume. I mean, when we met the first time, it was just you flying after me trying to stop me from destroying the city,” James explained.

“I see,” Thomas frowned, adopting a solemn expression as he released James from his grip and floated a slight distance away.

“May I introduce myself, dear enemy,” Thomas spoke in a mock-serious tone, bowing before him, “my name is Brainiac and I can control your mind.”

“Hello there,” James imitated his seriousness, but he couldn’t wipe the smile off his face and it made Thomas’ heart melt just to see James genuinely happy after everything they had gone through. “My name is The Force and I can do this.”

James wriggled his fingers and snow began to fall from the sky, romantic and beautiful. Thomas looked up, holding his hand out and letting the snowflakes fall onto his palm.

James waved his hands behind his back and Thomas smiled at the Will you marry me? custom design of snowflakes resting in his palm. Thomas looked up at James and raised an eyebrow.

“I’ll handle the venue this time,” James grinned.

“Of course,” Thomas agreed, taking James’ hand and kissing between his knuckles before twirling James back into his arms again. “I would love to marry you again.”

He looked down at James’ toughened but sparkling eyes framed by his dark grey mask. Thomas frowned and lifted a hand, tugging the mask off James. James smiled, then raised his dark grey gloved hand and pulled Thomas’ magenta mask off as well. There. Now they could gaze at each other, nothing separating them; just honesty, trust and pure devoted love between them.

“No more secrets,” Thomas whispered.

“No more secrets,” James agreed.

Thomas closed his eyes and leaned down, pressing his lips to James’.

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The biggest party of the year!

The entire city of New York was invited to Brainiac and The Force’s (our favourite Super couple) renewal of their vows after the recent attack of the city by the villains.

The entire city had free food for a day while the masked Supers had a private party in the air. It was perhaps the most interesting exchange between the Supers, as heroes and villains attempted to get along cordially.

The star couple were dressed in tuxedos with bow ties matching the colour of the masks they were wearing. They were pressured by the civilians and their fellow Supers to display their favourite party trick for the city. Brainiac showcased his ability to read minds while The Force, to everyone’s surprise, apologised for his past evil actions and vowed to use his powers for good. He has promised to build, free of charge, new places for people to live. His plans were met with cheers from the city.

Unsurprisingly, the two Supers announced their retirement and will be living among us as regular civilians (beyond Force’s promise to the city). We wish the couple all the best in their future endeavours and a lifetime of happiness!

END