Reflector - Cover

Reflector

Copyright© 2020 by Whisperclue

Chapter 4: Reflection and Resolution

He was surprised when Hellcat had them stop and change back into their civilian clothes until she explained that Sleuth would meet them at Jake’s condo. For some reason this bothered him. This was superhero business. He was already furious that Bishop had brought the fight to his personal oasis of normalcy. But that’s where Sleuth wanted to meet and they couldn’t very well show up in uniform. It was bad enough that billionaire Veronica DeVries would be slumming at a middle-class condo, but at least she changed her hair and wore clothes her society friends wouldn’t be caught dead in. She couldn’t seem to hide her bearing, but as far as disguises went it would have to do.

When they reached the condo, Jake found the door already unlocked and Kate snacking on a toaster pastry in the kitchen. The pleasing aroma of fruit filling wafting through the house told him she’d even used his toaster to heat it up.

“Oh, hey,” he said. “Come on in. Make yourself at home.”

Kate snorted then coughed on a piece of pastry that went down the wrong pipe. Served her right. After recovering, she set the snack aside and seemed to be looking for something in his expression. Whatever she saw caused her to grapple him in a hug.

“Hey big guy. How you holding up?” she asked softly.

Jake, stiff at first, allowed himself to relax into her embrace and hugged her in return. “I’ll be better when this nightmare is behind me.”

Kate released her grasp and stepped back from him, again searching his face. After a quick glance to Veronica standing behind him, she announced “I know it may be painful, but let’s go to the scene of the crime.”

Yesterday’s Jake would have made a joke about finally getting two women in his bedroom, but today he just nodded and led them down the hall.

Entering the room, he immediately noted that the bed had been made. Most likely the sheets were clean too. Before he could follow that train of thought, Kate took a running jump and bellyflopped onto the bed, ruining the blanket’s smooth surface. Rolling over, she beckoned to her friends. Straight-laced Veronica sat on the edge facing the door. Jake tried to do the same, but Kate pulled on his shoulder until the upper half of his body lay back, his feet still on the floor. Her lap made for a hard pillow.

“I now call the Jake Bryant fan club meeting to order,” Kate announced.

“Kaaaate,” Jake growled.

“Okay. I’m sorry. I was just trying to lighten the tension. And we really are your fan club,” Kate announced. “Anyway, Veronica why don’t you tell us what you learned from talking to Smackdown?”

Jake felt a pang of disappointment. When she’d wanted them in the bedroom he had hoped that Kate would point out hologram projectors, trick mirrors, or some other simple explanation.

Veronica didn’t take Kate’s cue, instead sitting silently with her shoulders slumped. He was again remined of that day at her penthouse months ago. He closed his eyes and braced himself for whatever was about to come.

“Veronica?” Kate prompted.

“Do I have to?”

Jake felt his insides clench and Kate’s tone softened in her reply. “It’s an important piece of the picture. It’ll be okay.”

“Your identity is safe.”

He understood the words, but for some reason he couldn’t get them to connect. “What?”

“Smackdown his harmless,” Veronica said miserably. “His threat had nothing to do with your identity, which he doesn’t know.”

“Then what—?”

“Smackdown saw you coughing coming out of the free legal clinic last night and realized you still had to breath. The idiot thought he’d stumbled across some great secret vulnerability he’d sell to the highest bidder,” Veronica said.

Jake had a flashback. Looking down on Earth’s curvature from the edge of the atmosphere, his lungs burning as he gasped for air that wasn’t there.

Kate ran her fingers through his hair, trying to calm him, and picked up the story.

“As soon as I got back to my place this morning I hacked Terri’s phone and your cellular provider. It was always possible that the whole thing was a setup, which is why Veronica questioned Smackdown. Now we have both sides of the story.”

“We do?”

“Yes,” she said simply.

Jake waited, but Kate remained silent. He opened his eyes and looked up into her face. Her eyes were filled with tears. “What?”

“It wasn’t a setup,” she said, her voice breaking. “She wasn’t tricked. She’s been cheating on you with a trauma surgeon from work. I’ve got more than two months of text messages, cell phone GPS intersections of when they met, the whole thi—”

Jake’s head spun and his stomach rebelled. He launched off the bed, bounced off the doorframe into the master bathroom, and barely made it to the toilet before losing what remained of his waffles. Someone darkened the doorway and he weakly waved them away.

The room still spun and he resumed hugging the sides of the commode. His world had turned upside down all over again. He’d latched on to the idea that it had all been a trick because the alternative was too painful. It was a knife in his heart he couldn’t Reflect.

He couldn’t have guessed how long he stayed in that position. Long after his head stopped spinning and his stomach settled, he remained on the floor hugging the cool porcelain. What now?

What now?

The life he’d mapped out was gone. In its place he faced a black, gaping chasm.

What now?

Eventually a leg cramp convinced him he couldn’t stay there forever. He grabbed the bathroom counter and pulled himself to his feet. The picture in the mirror wasn’t pretty. He ran some water in the sink and splashed his face. Marginally better.

In the bedroom, Veronica and Kate both looked almost as stricken as he did. They seemed almost afraid of him. He stood there stupidly, too tired to figure it out.

Kate broke the silence with a timid, little girl voice. “Do ... do you hate me?”

Jake blinked.

“What? No! I ... you two are...” Jake choked on his tears. “ ... all I ... all I have.”

Kate sobbed and flew across the room into his arms. A moment later Veronica joined him, both squeezing him tightly. Before anything more could be said, the sound of the deadbolt unlocking and the front door opening came from the living room.

Jake dropped his arms. Veronica followed suite, but Kate held on for several more seconds until she reluctantly let go at Veronica’s prompting.

“Stay here,” he said in a low voice. He closed the bedroom door behind him as he headed for the living room.

Terri was just setting down her purse by the door when Jake entered the room. His wife looked up in surprise. “Hey. I thought you weren’t going to be back until later. When did you get in?”

He couldn’t answer her because he knew his voice would break. Instead, Jake stood behind his recliner as if it were a shield and tried to get his emotions under control. He’d fought the Mind Hive; he could face his wife.

Terri took a second look at him when he didn’t respond and her face changed to concern. “Baby, what’s wrong? What happened?”

His wife approached him and he shoved out his arm to keep her back. Terri came to a halt, her expression even more concerned. Jake had no idea where to go from here. Terri looked at the outstretched arm in confusion, then must have seen something in his face. He had no idea he was so easy to read but she seemed to deflate a little.

“You know,” she said softly.

Jake still couldn’t trust himself to speak so he just nodded his head. His vision blurred momentarily and he angrily swiped the tears from his eyes with his sleeve. Terri looked as if she wanted to come to him, but after a moment of hesitation backed off instead.

Now it was his wife who was agitated. She moved to the couch and sat down, but bounced up only a few seconds later. Like a trapped animal, her eyes darted all over the room and she suddenly didn’t know what to do with her hands. They fluttered from her sides to her hair to her neck and then back to her sides. Finally, she fled to the kitchen.

Jake used the time that Terri spent stalling in the kitchen to get himself under control. His wife had dispelled any shred of hope that the heroines had been wrong. He told himself his heart couldn’t be any more broken, so he’d just have to power through the next 15 minutes. He could find somewhere to curl up and die afterward.

Eventually Terri came out of the kitchen with two glasses of wine. She held one out to him, but when he made no move to take it she set it on the coffee table and retreated back to the couch.

He still couldn’t bring himself to move from behind the relative safety of his recliner so he just gripped the top of the chair and waited for her to say something. Terri took a gulp of wine, made the briefest eye contact with Jake, then broke away and took another gulp.

Jake waited. It wasn’t a mind game or a power play. He was too close to breaking down again and if he did he wasn’t sure if it would be another trip to the porcelain god or if he’d just go crazy. He wanted to shout at her, to throw the coffee table through the tv, to grab the couch she was sitting on—one they’d made love on once upon a time—and rip it in two. So instead he held himself still and did nothing.

“I’m sorry,” Terri said finally.

Jake held himself in check.

“How did you find out?”

He thought about how to respond, or even whether to. The silence dragged on. Terri stared at the rim of her wine glass. Finally, he cleared his throat and kept his answer as short as possible so she wouldn’t hear his pain. “Last night.”

His wife blanched. “I’m sorry.”

Thirty seconds of silence stretched into a minute. Finally she seemed to gather the courage to look him in the face again, if not directly in the eyes.

“I still love you. It’s just ... it’s different,” she said. “I didn’t go out looking for ... for someone else. He’s someone I work with at the hospital. We would have lunch together at the cafeteria when our shifts coincided a couple times a week. We just clicked. It was all perfectly innocent.”

“Until it wasn’t,” Jake snapped back.

Terri took another gulp of wine. “Yeah. Until it wasn’t. We both felt a real connection. We just have so much in common—our backgrounds, the craziness of working ER. We just fell for each other. It wasn’t on purpose. It just happened.”

“At least it’s love, I guess,” he said quietly. “At least you didn’t say all the trite things like ‘It was just sex. It didn’t mean anything.’”

His wife returned to staring at her wine glass. “I’m sorry. I really am. I think ... I think it was just the strain of having such different lives. I’m there trying to help save lives, and you literally can’t be hurt. I needed someone who could understand my world.”

Jake couldn’t believe his ears. “You understand that’s bullshit, right? Before we were married, when you found out what I did—who I am—you told me that I was the perfect man for you. That after watching people bleed out and die time after time, you’d found someone who would always come home to you safe and sound. That you’d loved me more for who I was. And I loved you for who you were.”

For the first time, a few tears escaped the corner of Terri’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” he said disgustedly. “Me too.”

Terri said something too low for him to hear.

“What?”

“You’ll be okay. I know you’re mad, but you’ll get over it. You’re superhuman. You can’t be hurt.”

The room spun and Jake’s stomach fell through the floor. He held tight to the chair but couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t take it spinning off into space with him. He made a strangled noise and Terri looked up at him, their eyes locking.

He’d reached his limit. He had absorbed all the heartache he could take. Something unlocked inside him and he Reflected. Terri’s eyes grew impossibly wide. Her face lost all color and her wine glass dropped from nerveless fingers.

His former wife’s mouth opened in an O of surprise before wailing like a broken soul. It was the cry of someone who irrevocably lost a loved one, whose future had been uprooted, who was unloved if not unlovable. She pulled up her legs and hugged her knees to her chest, staring through a torrent of tears at a sullied past and an empty future.

Jake felt nothing. Empty.

A hand lightly touched his arm. He looked over and Veronica stood next to him. She carried one of his duffle bags. Kate stood behind her with a pair of suitcases. Terri didn’t acknowledge the trio as they walked to the front door. She was still bawling when Veronica gently pulled the door closed behind them.


Once again Jake sat on Veronica’s couch and inspected the city skyline. Forty-six stories made for one hell of a view. Veronica and Kate quietly shared a bottle of wine on the same couch they’d shared the night before and he sat in the smaller love seat at a right angle. They’d never strayed far since bringing him back. It was sweet of them, if unnecessary.

He wasn’t hurting. He wasn’t much of anything at the moment, other than empty. He’d Reflected all his hurt back into his soon to be ex-wife. Talk about the ultimate catharsis.

“I called Doctor Chi.” Veronica announced suddenly. “Lightspeed is giving him a ride from Grant City. He’ll go straight to your condo and make sure Terri isn’t suffering any long term effects.”

That hadn’t occurred to him, but he didn’t think he’d inflicted anything on her that she hadn’t inflicted upon him.

“What did you do?” Kate asked, using her hands for emphasis. “Your power absorbs external forces—kinetic, energy, telepathic. Those I get. But feelings aren’t forces or external. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Veronica cut in with her executive voice. “Be that as it may, something happened. Let’s table that for now. Given time, we’ll figure it out. In the meantime, we’re getting off track. Jake, the other reason Dr. Chi is checking on Terri is to cloud her memory about your superpower. Your secret identity should still be intact.”

Jake’s eyes widened. “I never thought of that.”

“It’s ... he did the same thing for me when I divorced Dominick.” The pain in Veronica’s voice belied her calm features. The room fell into another uncomfortable silence.

Finally, Jake voiced the fear he’d wrestled since the night before. “I knew the calling made relationships rough. The hours, the dual identity, the danger, the sacrifices. I thought Terri and I’d beaten the odds. Is it worth it? Look what it does! To all of us.”

“That’s not true,” Kate replied, standing in agitation. “Look at White Knight and Flare. The Stellars. Lion and Vine. Polar and Shadow. Even Deadeye and Medi-droid. They work just fine.”

Jake snorted. “So you’re saying I need a powered girlfriend. Are you volunteering?”

“No,” Kate said matter-of-factly. “We are.”

“Uh ... whaaaat?” Jake’s brain felt like it had slipped a gear. “She’s out of my league and you’re a lesbian.”

Kate looked amused. “Bisexual, actually. Always have been. Then I met a certain guy,” she leaned over and thumped his chest “and developed a major crush. Other men just didn’t measure up. So I’ve only dated women the last few years. Disastrously.”

Jake could only gape at her in surprise. How did he not know this?

“I fell for you the day you came here to check on me,” Veronica confessed. “I’d spent 18 months of marriage being verbally and emotionally abused by Dominick and was at rock bottom. He tore me down to make himself taller, but just by showing you cared you demonstrated just how small he was. Not only was he smaller than you, but you reminded me he was smaller than me.

Veronica sniffed and wiped at the corner of her eye. “I concluded my only chance at lasting love would be with someone who wouldn’t need to feel jealousy over my powers. In other words, another hero. I never would have sabotaged your marriage, but since it happened anyway I hope you’ll give me a chance.”

“While you were in the shower last night Veronica and I had a heart to heart,” Kate added. “Can you imagine how ugly it would get if Sleuth and Hellcat seriously competed over you? So we agreed to try and share.”

“Sh-share?”

Veronica’s expression turned worried. “Jake? Is this too much? We’d agreed we wouldn’t spring this on you until you were ready, but Kate here just advanced the timetable.”

Kate pouted. “Last night I as good as told him I wouldn’t lie to him. He asked. I had to answer.”

The room fell silent. Jake didn’t know what to say. Part of him still felt numb, empty after the confrontation with Terri. Now on top of that his brain felt like it had suffered whiplash.

“I’m sorry Jake,” Kate said softly. “Too much, huh?”

“It’s a lot to take in,” Jake admitted.

“No more surprises,” Veronica promised. “You take all the time you need.”

Jake nodded his thanks, but Kate seemed to have other ideas. She traded couches, scooting right up next to him, lifted his arm, then leaned in under it until it was draped around her.

“What?” she responded to Veronica’s dirty look. “He can think and snuggle at the same time. And he’s got two arms, you know.”

Veronica looked at him hopefully and Jake chuckled. He lifted his arm in invitation and she wasted no time in curling up on his other side.

Jake leaned back into the couch with his closest friends pressed tightly on either side. He couldn’t begin to process the changes his life had undergone in the last 24 hours. How could this possibly work? At first his worries chased themselves around his head, but after a while they faded under a blanket of contentment. The vast emptiness inside slowly receded. His power had found a new force to absorb. Love.

This is a good spot to end things with Jake, Veronica, and Kate, at least for now.

Please leave your comments and let me know your thoughts. I have a mainstream writing career elsewhere (and never the two shall meet) but I wanted to give back something to the SOL community from which I’ve gotten so much reading pleasure over the last few years. This has been a great exercise for me, and I have a LOT of thoughts and details about the setting that never made it into the story due to pacing reasons. Check out my blog for some behind the scenes info.

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