Chapter 2
Atlas Park was enjoying seasonably hot weather, Drexall sat in the shadow cast by the titular statue of Atlas. It was the most central place in the city and all heroes at least passed through, some hanging around long enough to chat and exchange stories with each other. He was listening to two magical heroes arguing about some new concept in a magic journal. They made it sound a lot like science, another thing Drexall didnt know much about.
He leaned back on his elbows, puffing out. It was too hot to run around in so many layers. He needed to make some work clothes that breathed easier. He lazed there for another few minutes before pushing himself up with a groan. Hed come to Atlas to talk to City Hall and that conversation couldnt happen while he was hanging around under Atlass crotch.
Unlike veteran heroes, whose costumes or faces were well known, Drexall got no nods or greetings from others as he walked up the steps. That was fine. He still felt kind of like a pretender amongst them. His weapon wasnt even his, it still technically belonged to the Rusty Rivet. A stick and a temper didnt make a hero, but he did need that grant.
He pushed open the door to the blissfully air-conditioned interior of City Hall. The high polish on the marble floor reflected the domed ceiling above and the statues of great heroes in their niches along the wall. It was a quiet day, only Heroes used this branch of City Hall and most of them were out fighting crime or eating lunch. Drexall went straight to the desk and asked to be directed to the relevant FBSA office downstairs.
Repeating the instructions softly to himself, he descended a floor to where the FBSA had their speciality offices. He was looking for the E.L.I.T.E. office, who dealt with Heroes with a natural origin. Whoever had come up with these classifications had a simplistic way of looking at the world, thought Drexall. An angel could claim to be natural origin, because its powers were natural to its species. Hed always figured natural was meant to cover people like him, who were using weapons and tools to put themselves in the game.
A junior member of the department was available to deal with Drexalls request, but she was an industrious, busy sort, who expected him to keep up with her as she moved from filing cabinet to shelf to computer and back again.
How can we help you today, Cue Ball, was it? she asked, checking the titles of her files as they walked briskly back and forth.
I need to get my hands on some armour, but I dont have no money for Icons prices, he explained, sidestepping another, equally busy, office worker.
Hmm, she actually spared a precious few seconds to look at him before shelving the folder she was now holding. She returned to the computer and, still standing, bashed a few keywords into a search.
Thirty seconds later an eternity in which shed accepted two other files from a colleague, drunk a few gulps of her coffee and answered an email she swiped the results of the search off the printer and handed it to Drexall.
Here, this is the address for the meta-equipment dump outside the Walls. The owner keeps the better stuff repaired. He might be able to hook you up with something.
A dump?! Youre kidding me, right? Drexall looked at the address, it was a good thirty minute drive beyond the Walls. Hed need to borrow a car or van.
Hey, youre the one who doesnt want to pay Icons prices. Dont be picky, she said.
Drexall grumbled internally and gave her as much thanks as he could muster before stomping out of the busy office and back up into the hot day. He knew a few people he could borrow a van from, and headed to the monorail station.
Two hours later found him surrounded by the vomit-like smell of rotting metal, heaps of it shimmering in the heat. There were even pieces of Rikti technology, mangled beyond all use by salvage teams and FBSA alike. Drexall covered his mouth and nose with his hand, trying not to breathe in that unpleasant smell. He made his way to the low string of garages that served as office and workshops for the owner.
The owner himself was sat outside them, under a striped awning that on closer inspection was made from old capes. He was lounging on a lawn chair, fanning himself idly with an incongruously dainty fan patterned with what looked like daisies.
What can I do you for, cue ball? drawled the owner, his pock-marked face florid and shiny in the heat.
Drexall, who was mostly bald, was always called cue ball by a certain type of person. The type of person he could go drinking with. The type of person he understood.
The girls at ELITE sent me, Im trying to score some discounted armour, he said, gazing wistfully at the fan.
That so, you got a licence? asked the owner, not moving an inch. He wasnt going to stir himself for a fraud today, clearly.
Drexall took out his licence and showed it to the older man. His choice of hero name got a laugh. Once the licence was handed back, the owner pushed himself up off his chair laboriously, reaching for a crutch propped against the wall.
Youre a little fella, I might even have something half-way decent for you. Get too many of these barrel-thighed, six foot plus egoists in here to equip. I ran out of armour that size years ago.
Drexall grunted to indicate he was listening. The owner led him between the piles of junk organised by type and function. There was a hanger-like building behind the garages and when he entered, Drexall stared around, eyes widening.
For someone born and raised in Paragon City, the hangar was a museum to heroes going back at least thirty years. There was the Gold Hawks sky-skimmer, there was Raging Bulls immense mini-gun that took three other people just to lift, behind them was Black Venoms car.
Weapons, suits and vehicles were arranged with care, some missing pieces, others in a process of repair.
Drexall paused by a tall, slender suit of grey metal. He picked up the helmet, which had distinctive backwards facing scallops.
Are these all from the first Rikti War? he asked, having recognised the helmet. He couldnt remember that Heros name though.
The owner nodded, mopping his head with a dirt-stained handkerchief.
You know they still pull intact bits of armour out of the ruins around the Walls? he said, with a kind of twisted smile. Drexall could believe it, so many heroes had died and so much had been damaged that outside the Walls, between the city zones, whole sections of the city were still just rubble being slowly cleared and rebuilt.
Quit spacing out over there and come look at this, called the owner from beyond Black Venoms car. Drexall hurried over, still distracted by the memorabilia some. He joined the owner looking at two long racks of armour pieces.
After getting permission from the owner, Drexall walked slowly down the racks, picking up gauntlets and helmets, turning them over to inspect the state of the armour. This was all in nearly pristine condition, barely used.
So what are your powers anyway? asked the owner, chewing on a toothpick hed found in an upper pocket.
Ive got a stick that I hit people with, said Drexall, picking up a helmet and discovering it weighed enough to give him arm strain. He put it down again with a grimace.
Youll need high grade ballistics armour plating then. Its no use if you start farting lightening, of course. Its just metal and ceramics, grunted the owner, walking further down the rack to the five complete sets of armour. Like most of his stuff, hed sorted them by size, all of these should fit easily enough.
Drexall looked at the stocky green one as the owner clapped a heavy hand on the shoulder plates. It was a seriously ugly contender, with visible bolts and heavy duty buckles to keep the arm segments closed. His opinion must have shown on his face, as the owner chuckled.
Shes no beauty queen, but shes got it where it counts. This used to belong to a young Hero called Glorious. He was an empath. Stupid kid, muttered the owner, picking a bit of dust off the helmet. Drexall had never heard of Glorious, and thought it was a pretty girly name for a male Hero. But it took all sorts, after all.
What happened to him? he found himself asking, even though it couldnt have been anything nice.
Joined up with Alpha Team, got his lungs burned out by plasma fumes and died spitting blood all over the floor. You know how it is with empaths, they dont ever want to withdraw when their team needs them.
Drexall winced. He thought of Pixies laboured breathing and her gurgling, blood-splattering screaming when hed found her during that attack. The cold dread that had lived in his chest ever since shifted, like a monster preparing to come out of hibernation. He shook himself.
Think itll fit? he heard his voice ask.
Try it on, was the answer.
Forty minutes later, Drexall was carrying the suit into his flat in pieces. Sandra didnt work days, so Stacy was the nurse who helped him with a few of the boxes. Like her counterpart, Stacy didnt approve of him working such a dangerous job when he had such a sick child at home. She offered her opinion on it while Pixie just watched with curious delight from the sofa where shed been watching one of her mind-numbing kiddie shows.
Daddys a hero now, was all she said to Stacy, beaming like a little Cheshire cat.
Once Stacy had left, her shift over, Drexall unpacked the armour in the living room. The junk yard owner had given him some cleaning sprays and told him to get familiar with every bolt and strap the thing had.
Pixie watched him from her place on the sofa. Stacy had dressed her in her favourite dungarees and t-shirt today. She was small for a five year old, not being able to run around like other children gave her a fragile, too-thin look. The medications frequently interfered with her appetite so getting enough food into her for her to grow as a constant battle.
What did you have for lunch, Pixiesticks? asked Drexall, putting on a gauntlet to wave his fingers at her.
Fish fingers. Stacy says fish is good for your brain, because it has Mega 3 oil in it. I dont like oil, said the girl.
Its not like car oil.
Oils yucky and it kills birds. Clearly Pixie wasnt going to let her fathers assurances change her mind on this. Drexall regretted letting her watch some of those documentaries now, but at the time hed been so sick of twee kiddie shows about nuclear families with gender-stereotyping that hed not thought it through. Poor kid had had nightmares about the heat death of the universe for a week.
Grandma called, said Pixie, pointing to the flashing light on the answering machine. Drexall pulled a face.
Was she drunk? he asked. Pixie shook her head.
She was cross with you though. What does psychotic bitch mean?
Drexall wished he could reach down that phone line and tie his ex-mother-in-laws vocal chords in a knot. It was bad enough when the woman got a little wine in her, she called up to scream every kind of obscenity she could think of, but leaving loud abusive messages where Pixie could hear them was out of line.
It means she doesnt like me very much, he said dryly.
Is it because Daddy left? asked Pixie.
Drexall had tried to explain why his ex-husband had left them, but maybe the complexities were too muddy for Pixies five year old brain to understand yet. She knew Drexall had been a woman once, and given birth to her, but hed explained it to her well enough that she accepted he was a man now. She didnt understand why her other Daddy, who had loved Drexall and her, now didnt.
Sometimes Drexall couldnt figure it out either.
Grandma just believes everything in the world should be how she wants it. She gets real upset when it doesnt fit in.
Well then shes a psychotic *****.
Whoa! Hey now, none of that! Drexall put down the helmet he was fiddling with. He frowned at Pixie and pointed his finger resolutely, I dont want to hear you ever repeating anything your grandma says. What she says is bad and rude, and only bad or rude people say that kind of thing!
Pixie looked put out at being told off, it happened that rarely. She stuck out her lower lip and weebled a bit.
Drexall got up and sat on the sofa by her, pulling her into a hug. He told her he wasnt angry with her, he just didnt like to hear that kind of language from her mouth. Grandma was an adult whod never learned any better, but Pixie was a much nicer person already, even though she hadnt had long to practice being a person.
The storm of tears averted, the four-hourly alarm went off and Drexall helped Pixie walk into her bedroom so she could take her medication using the nebuliser. Once shed inhaled her medicine and the spittle from her coughing had been wiped off her chin, Drexall took her back into the living room with a promise to watch some of her shows with her. As usual he fell asleep during them, his daughter tucked against his side, avidly watching the adventures of the animated dog over the sound of her fathers snores. Another alarm came and went before Sandra turned up to mind Pixie while Drexall prepared to go out on patrol.
He tucked Pixie into bed and stroked her dark hair back off her face.
Are you going to rescue people tonight? she asked, hope in her face.
If anyone needs it, Ill do my best, said Drexall. He kissed her cheek before putting the oxygen mask on her. She held onto his arm as she drifted off to sleep.
Love you, Daddy, she mumbled.
Drexall sat there for a few more moments before tucking her arm under the covers and leaning over to kiss her forehead.
Love you too, baby girl. Sweet dreams, he said softly.
He turned on the nightlight even though the sky outside was still bright, and left the room. He told Sandra what Pixie had had for tea and the details of pressure on her oxygen unit as he made her a cup of coffee. With the hand-over complete, he packed the armour back into its boxes and carried them back down to the van and drove off, ready to start his nights work.
Don't ask me about joining Honourable United, I'm lazy. Ask Captain Cathode.
http://www.onthejazz.co.uk/honu/
"If I had a punch, I would so hit that guy." - Millenium (because drinking nail varnish remover is for real men)
Chapter 3 - Part 1 of 2
The night was a quiet one, in patrol terms. Drexall broke up a few gang fights admittedly by laying about himself industriously with a big stick and helped rescue a woman from figments of her own imagination. That had been a bit of an odd one. The woman in question, called Lucy Dreamtime, had been pragmatic about both her own powers and his appearance to rescue her.
People like that made Drexall wonder if super-powers were all they were cracked up to be. He returned home with a few extra bruises and washed the painkillers for his arm down with a little beer. After Sandra left, he checked the baby monitor batteries in his room and Pixies. She was used to people moving around in her room at night and slept on, wheezing only slightly in her mask. Drexall quietly cleaned the flat, doing the washing and the laundry, the usual never-ending tasks. When his alarm went off, he went into Pixies room to wake her up for her nebuliser. She was always crotchety during night medications and he couldnt really blame her.
Once she was tucked back in to sleep, Drexall could finally think about going to sleep himself. Once in bed though, sleep wouldnt come. He shifted from one side to the other, his sheets too hot and then little noises bothering him.
Need to get the AC fixed, he thought to himself for the hundredth time, listening to its uncomfortable whirring. Everything in his life was broken.
He ground his heels into his eyes, trying to force himself to sleep but all that came were the memories of the Second Invasion. A burning tightness in his chest welled, a years old trauma.
It had been the summer the year Pixie was born, back when Drexall was still called Druscilla. Hed come off maternity leave and was back at work when the sirens started to wail. At first he and everyone in the office had just looked at each other in confusion and growing horror. There wasnt a native Paragonite who didnt remember that sound from the First Invasion. It took thirty minutes for people to decide it was real and their manager insisted they went down to the shelter.
Drexall had, with three other parents, separated from the others out into the back alley. Theyd split up then, two of them to a pre-school, one to a primary school and Drexall to the daycare where his baby was.
The streets were already emptying as he ran, breaking a heel and having to hop three steps as he yanked the offending shoe off. He threw it and its partner aside wildly, his ankle twinging unpleasantly as he stretched into a proper run. The fear came to him then, the one that had never left since. The daycare had only been six blocks from his office but the run seemed to go on forever as the sky darkened to a strange green like a storm about to break. A bomb landed on an abandoned delivery truck in the street, punching through the cab and cargo compartment with a pop of glass and grinding crunch of metal.
You never forget the smell of those things. As they geared up to explode, they had a hair-raising acrid stench about them, one that cut through the usual odours of the city. It was the plasma fumes starting to leak out before they ignited. Drexall remembered only the shadow of the dropship above, hed never looked away from the growing sign of the daycare centre. He remembered bashing through the door and recoiling from that awful stink of a bomb close to exploding.
The force of his maternal instinct overruled his self-preservation and he belted up the stairs. The bright, cheerful decorations burned onto his mind, forever associated with the smell. He could hear his childs screams along with the screams of other children. The glass paned door to the daycare smashed open when his stockinged foot hit it with enough force to shatter the panes.
The entire back wall was open, the Rikti bomb lodged in the rubble. He thought he saw the childminders arm in the rubble, but that might have been a figment of his imagination. He saw Pixie on the floor, blood frothing in her mouth as she screamed and tried to breathe past the pain. He seized her and one of the other children, a toddler, under his arm.
Hed left three other children there, all clutching their faces or chests, screaming and howling like the damned.
Drexall had barely reached the ground floor when the bomb exploded, throwing him off his feet. Hed just covered the children under his body as the masonry fell around them but, it was being in the threshold of the doorway saved them, nothing but dumb luck. The support above the door held under the crushing weight of the building collapsing on them.
Drexall remembered digging manically until his hands bled and he was able to shove a table aside and bring Pixie and the toddler into a stinking street. By the time theyd got out, the pass on that side of the city was over and whine of Rikti teleports could be heard a little way away. Drexall, a survivor of the First Invasion, ran from cover to cover, keeping himself and the children invisible from the sky as long as he could.
He couldnt remember the route he took any more, like his higher mind had switched off for the duration. All he remembered was Pixie and the toddlers blood coughed up on his blouse. The emergency room of the hospital was already filling up by the time he arrived. Both children were taken off him and hed had to wait. His injuries were less critical. He agreed but having his damaged daughter taken off him and left to wait in silence had been torture.
But what really kept him awake to this day, were the three children hed just left behind. Three lives not lived because they werent related to him or in arms reach.
Why had he picked the toddler?
Why did three mothers have to know the pain of losing their child because of his arbitrary decision?
Drexall sat up in bed. He wished he could cry. Tears wouldnt bring those children back, but anything to release the awful pressure in his body, in his mind. Just something to show he did care about their lives.
But those injections of testosterone every month had silenced weeping. No tears came.
Not for those kids. Not even for his own child.
Not even for him.
Don't ask me about joining Honourable United, I'm lazy. Ask Captain Cathode.
http://www.onthejazz.co.uk/honu/
"If I had a punch, I would so hit that guy." - Millenium (because drinking nail varnish remover is for real men)
This is dedicated to the bravest men and women I know. Better days are coming.
COURAGE
Alright, Cue Ball, youll have some tenderness and swelling in your arm for a few more days. Take these if the pain becomes a problem, said the young doctor as he held out a small pot that rattled with dozens of tiny pills.
Cue Ball, a short, leather clad hero, took the pills with some bemusement that was hidden behind his large green goggles and face mask. No insurance forms, no sitting around for hours and hours while medical staff rushed back and forth amongst the bored, crying children and coughing adults in the waiting room. Just here you go hero, have some medicine. Cue Ball left the mediport floor, taking the express elevator down to the ground floor and the hospitals exit. His arm had been broken not thirty minutes ago, and a fist from a Devouring Earth monstrosity had laid him out cold five minutes after that. Thats when the teleport had kicked in, removing him from harm.
Once out of the hospital, he lifted the ubiquitous hero radio to his mouth, pulling down his mask briefly.
Sorry guys, Im way out of my league. Ill call out for back up for you in my place, he said. As if they needed that. Hed been star-struck when the Kung Fu Cat had offered him a place on her team, to give the newbie some training and taste of what was to come.
Devouring Earth were way out of Cue Balls comfort zone. Not to mention tolerance if one could break his arm just by swatting at the annoyance by its feet.
He unscrewed the pool cue that classed as his weapon and slung the two halves back into the document carrier on his back. The painkillers went into his pocket as he walked down the street towards the monorail station. He only paused in a deserted alleyway for a few minutes to take of his jacket, turn his shirt inside out to reveal the normal workaday fabric that lined it. His jacket was also reversible. The goggles and facemask went into now-inner jacket pocket and he zipped the lid shut on his document holder to hide the pieces of pool cue.
Nobody cared who he was, and that was fine with him, but he didnt want his neighbours knowing he was working as a hero. He wasnt sure which one of them had told his ex his new phone number. With a sigh he carried on his way home. The monorail from Steel Canyon to Skyway was nearly empty at 3am. There was a young woman in Cue Balls carriage who looked exhausted and bruised. He was fairly sure shed just come off patrol herself, but he didnt want to say anything just in case. She looked too tired to want to chat.
The monorail finally pulled into Skyway North and Cue Ball disembarked. A few newspaper sheets blew in lazy spirals across the ramps leading down from the station proper. It was amazing in the digital age that you still found those, or had they just been on their aerial journey for years and years. Cue Ball habitually took the paths that avoided the usual hanging out spots of Trolls, but avoided the back alleys where the Lost preached to the converted.
His apartment was high up on one of the sooty, square apartment blocks that spent most of the day in the shadow of the overpass that gave Skyway its name. At this time of night, most of his neighbours were asleep, though annoyingly loud dubstep was thumping behind the door of one of the ground floor apartments. The sound of it diminished as Cue Ball took the piss-smelling stairs up to the fourth floor where his own apartment was. The lift was still broken. A lot of residents were using their fire-escapes to go up and down to avoid the stinking stairwell, but climbing to the fourth floor when he could see how far off the ground he was through the gridding was just not going to happen.
He unlocked his front door and entered a tiny, but meticulously clean hallway. He closed the door then knelt to take off his heavy-duty boots and put them on the rack to the side under the coat hooks.
Hi Drexall, want something to drink? came the voice he expected from the living room.
Cue Ball Drexall hung up his jacket and walked through the living room to where it connected to the kitchen with an open doorway. Sandra was already in there, halfway through making a cup of coffee for herself. She was a tubby woman, wearing the blue shirt and trousers of a professional nurse. Hers was soft blue though, with cute motifs stitched onto the pockets and collar. It was to make the uniform less intimidating to the children she cared for, apparently.
She been okay? asked Drexall immediately. Sandra took a bottle of lager from the fridge and popped the cap off before handing it to him.
Good as gold, as ever. She still wont say if shes in pain, though, she said. Drexall took the bottle and took a reassuring swig before turning and setting it on the coffee table. He went into the larger of the apartments two bedrooms. It was dimly lit by a lamp that threw star shapes onto the wall. His five year old daughter, officially named Geraldine Kimberley Skinner, was asleep in her bed. To her left was the large respirator that led to the mask strapped over her face, and to her right was the dormant nebuliser unit.
Drexall sat down on the edge of his daughters bed and pushed a bit of dark hair off the plate of the mask. He bent his ear down to her chest to check the sound of her breathing. Sandra was an excellent nurse, but he just needed to hear for himself that she wasnt gurgling or crackling as she inhaled with damaged lungs. Satisfied with what he heard, he sat up again and leaned over to kiss the bare skin on her forehead.
He returned to the living room and sat down with a heavy sigh in the armchair. Sandra had settled her impressive frame into the two-seater sofa at 90 degrees to him.
Are you going to carry on being a registered Hero? she asked, watching him toy with the beer bottle without actually drinking from it.
Apparently I can get a grant from City Hall for doing it. Its more than Id make on all three of my jobs together, he muttered.
Sandra sipped her coffee, probably hiding a disapproving look. Shed given him what-for when hed told her about how hed lost his rag with all this gang nonsense finally and beaten a group of Skulls armed only with a pool cue and his famously fiery temper. Hed had to call her from the Police Station, having been arrested for Vigilantism Without A License. The police had been pretty good about the whole thing, basically telling him to get his *** to City Hall to register or next time theyd throw the book at him. One particularly annoyed looking detective had told him in no uncertain terms that unlicensed justice was just a trip away from being a gang-member so hed better sort his **** out.
Theres a reason for that. Drexall, the Hero game is for people with powers. If you get killed, whos going to look after Pixie? asked Sandra after a while. Pixie was the name Drexalls daughter preferred to be called. Geraldine was his ex-partners mothers name, and neither Drexall nor Pixie really cared for it all that much.
Shouldnt you be going home? asked Drexall, frustrated.
Sandra was used to both his ineloquence and his frustrations and ignored the tone. She finished her coffee in dignified silence before looking at her watch.
Actually yes, but not because you dont like to answer difficult questions. Ive got another patient to mind across town, she said.
Drexall saw her out and took her cup into the kitchen to add to the washing up. He pottered around the house for a few hours, cleaning up the usual detritus that built up over a day. His arm ached nearly continuously and he decided to have an early night. He ran a bath and flung his clothes into the laundry pile.
Normally he never took baths, preferring the brevity of a shower, but he hurt so much all over he needed to soak. Baths gave a man too much time to sit and think about his situation. Drexall hated that. He also hated to see his own body. Throughout the day, other concerns crowded out the knowledge. Caring for Pixie was his primary concern, surviving as a licensed Hero his secondary. But at the end of the day, when he had to take his clothes off, there was no escaping the harsh truth.
Drexalls name on his birth certificate was Druscilla, an unfortunate product of his mothers delight in vampire fiction. For years he had been an odd, maladjusted, angry little girl, treated for personality disorders by unimpressed child doctors. His mother couldnt understand the nature of his dysfunction, his father eventually decided to let his daughter behave and dress in any way that would let the child feel comfortable in her own skin.
The increasingly boyish dress and mannerisms just puzzled both parents, and confused strangers. They had to home-school the girl, the violence Druscillas behaviour and mannerisms had provoked in her classmates became so threatening her mother was convinced she would be killed. It wasnt that Druscilla never tried to conform, she did, but both parents could see it buried their child under a mountain of anguish and torment.
Then the First Rikti Invasion occurred when Druscilla was 16. Her parents were among the staggering death-toll. Sent to a Childrens Home for two years, Druscilla struggled fiercely with the other youngsters. She made few friends and was constantly in trouble for fighting and screaming temper-tantrums. As soon as she could, she left to enter the world of work. Her experience in the Home told her that shed better work hard at being female, no matter how awkward and stressful it felt. She found a job as a secretary, wore skirts and heels and make-up, playing up a mental picture of what she thought being a woman was all about. But she felt dead inside.
Until shed met Thomas at the office.
He seemed to actually like her oddness. She was able to become more and more like her true self with him, relaxing the fake walls of exaggerated femininity. The freedom their relationship gave her was like paradise. Thomas made it possible for her to dress and act how she wanted, how she needed to be. His acceptance of her oddness lessened the tight bonds of anguish that poisoned her soul.
They decided to marry once they realised Druscilla was pregnant. That was the first time she met her mother-in-law, who was quietly complaining to one of Thomass sisters about the unorthodox wedding dress black with orange embroidery and the celebration afterwards inspired by heavy metal and computer games. Druscilla hadnt liked the woman much, but she did her best to get on with her. Her mother-in-law made no bones about how she didnt care much for her daughter-in-law either and was only trying for Thomass sake.
Perhaps Druscilla and Thomas could have made it together if it hadnt been for an unexpected encounter at their local bar. They had been playing pool together, one of the things they liked to do as a couple. Thomas had often commented that his wife was also his best friend and favourite person to hang out with. Hed popped away to the toilet, leaving Druscilla to contemplate existence at the bar when a statuesquely woman sat down in the stool next to her.
She had impeccable hair, nice shoes and wore a pencil skirt and light, silky blouse. She was everything effortlessly feminine that Druscilla could not pull off and secretly hated. The woman struck up conversation with her and had an unusually husky voice that she fluted from deep to high whimsically.
Drexall couldnt remember most of what theyd talked about, except one question. The woman had tilted her head at him and looked him right in the eyes.
Darling, do you have a **** problem?
He couldnt say at the time, but the answer screamed in his head, yes, I dont have one. He couldnt remember that womans name, shed mentioned shed been on a business trip and hed never seen her again. Now, he knew why shed asked him the question. She was a kindred soul, someone trapped eternally between the sex of the body and the gender of the soul. A ten minute conversation with a stranger had thrown up the pieces of his life and overthrown every truth hed thought hed ever known.
Only his body was female. His mind and soul was male.
With the support of his husband, Drexall had started the long, emotional procedure to help the rest of the world see him for what he really was. Thomas had been supportive at first, but as the changes started to manifest, when his wifes voice started to break and her beard started to grow, he became more and more uncomfortable. It was an awkward, sad realisation that Thomas started to see a strange man instead of his wife. He complained that shed changed, said she was unreasonable and selfish. He left to take a break and went home to his mothers.
It wasnt long before he applied to have their marriage annulled, cutting Drexall out of their shared accounts and any financial support. Theyd been half-way through a vicious custody battle when the Second Rikti Invasion hit. The question of custody had to be put on hold when Pixie was injured, inhaling hot plasma fumes from a bomb explosion, scorching her lungs.
Drexall didnt have the time or money to fool about with lawyers fees, he had a sick daughter who needed caring for. His own treatment had to be put on hold. His daughters came first.
Knowing hed made the right choice where his daughter was concerned didnt make looking in the mirror any more comfortable. Man down to the waist, woman from there onwards. It was just depressing.
Drexall was ridiculously pruney by the time he got out of the bath and dressed for bed. The sky was starting to turn a lighter shade with dawn as he set his alarm for when Pixie would need her next dose on the nebuliser, and threw himself face down on his bed to get some desperately needed sleep. Maybe tomorrow would be less ****.
Don't ask me about joining Honourable United, I'm lazy. Ask Captain Cathode.
http://www.onthejazz.co.uk/honu/
"If I had a punch, I would so hit that guy." - Millenium (because drinking nail varnish remover is for real men)