Chapter Text
Xavier wasn't ready. He wasn't sure he ever would be. The dream of becoming a hero, of standing for something, of putting his powers to use against the kind of corruption and cruelty the world seemed to endlessly generate, felt like something he'd never reach. The cape thing. Whether he could ever actually do it, or whether the whole idea was something he needed to finally let go of. That was the problem with his powers. That had always been the problem.
So it had been another day of drifting. He'd found his way back to the clearing again, the way he always did when he needed to think, which mostly meant sitting with his back against the same oak he always used and not really thinking anything new. Just the same thoughts looping over and over in his head and going nowhere.
The vines along the tree line were thicker than they'd been last week, their growth slow and steady. His power worked differently on plants than on people. On people, the effects came fast.
He was mid-thought, in the familiar loop beginning again, when reality seemed to bend at the edge of his vision, and then she was there—crumpling to the ground thirty feet away as if her bones had simply given up. He was on his feet before he realized it.
Vista.
It had to be. And she was hurt.
The heroine was face-down in the dirt and not moving. Xavier cautiously approached, scanning the tree line. Brockton Bay was a cesspool of scum and villainy. Being a young Black man in this city, Xavier knew to keep his head on a swivel on the constant lookout for groups of skinheads looking for a skull to stomp in.
He pulled the bandana from his back pocket and tied it around his face. It wasn't much, but it was what he had. The full costume was still a plan, still theoretical—something that would eventually conceal not just his face, but also his race. One less variable in a city full of people who made quick decisions about people who looked like him.
She had warped in without warning. No explosions, no sounds of a fight carrying over from somewhere else—just an empty clearing and then suddenly her, materializing mid-stride before collapsing.
He knew how her power worked. She could fold space like paper, turn a fleeing criminal's straight-line sprint into a loop that had him running towards the scene of his crime. Seeing her like this made his heart still and the back of his neck prickle.
His immediate instinct had been to run to her. He'd caught himself, ruthlessly crushing his instinct by being pragmatic. A potential villain tracking her might let a bystander play Good Samaritan—but healing her would mean using his power, and using his power meant outing himself. He retied the bandana tighter and kept moving toward her.
He knew a thing or two about the local cape scene. People’s identities were generally protected. If some cape got into a battle and someone witnessed their real face, they were generally expected to pretend they didn’t see and maintain the fiction. Nobody, villain or hero, wanted people going after their families.
Vista was still breathing—shallow and fitful, but breathing. Xavier worked saliva into his mouth as he crossed toward her and knelt down for closer examination. Her back didn't seem to be damaged, so he eased her over and immediately wished he hadn't. Her torso was a ruin. The light armor she wore had been shredded and beneath it her chest was criss-crossed with deep red gashes, the kind of wounds that came from someone who was more blade than body.
"Hookwolf," Xavier muttered. His stomach dropped as his adrenaline spiked. This was serious.
The cape world could be brutal. When the posturing ended and things got real, cape combat could easily become a life and death struggle. You put the other cape down hard and don't give them a chance to get you with whatever strange abilities they had at their fingertips. But a kid? A Ward?
Still, if anyone's reputation made it believable, it was Hookwolf's. And if Hookwolf had followed Vista here and found him crouched over her, it wouldn't end well for him... or Vista. The correct move was to heal her fast and let her powers get them both quickly to safety. Xavier knew that. A part of him had known it before he even knelt down and witnesses the severity of her injuries.
He still hesitated. His powers were strange, and not in the way that people found quirky or cool. Not in a way that would make people even remotely comfortable. There was a reason his debut had been so long in coming. But he'd been gathering more spit in his mouth the whole time he was examining her, and now wasn't the moment for second thoughts. He hoped what he had would be enough.
He spit on her torso. Leaning in closely to try to spit on any visible gashes while using his fingers to try and work and spread the spit into the worst of the wounds. He could see the tissue beginning to respond, edges drawing together, but it wasn't going fast enough! His mouth was going dry, his hands started to shake, and his heart began pounding unsteadily in his chest.
The costume was in the way! He pried at the armor playing with his fingers, couldn't get purchase, yet pried again. He tried to still is shaking hands. He was going to shake her apart if he kept this up. He stopped, reached down to his ankle, and drew the knife—the one good knife he owned, the one he'd been carrying for more than a month just to get used to the weight of it for his inevitable debut. Xavier felt a small bit of relief in having made that a habit.
He took a breath to calm himself and still his trembling hands before defly cutting through the lower part of her dress. Once he got to the reinforced sections of her torso, he faced more of a challenge. But his blade was sharp and steady and once he found a seam, he was able to carefully slice through it.
A brief glance at her crotch area showed no visible damage so he left her dark spandex shorts on, which was a relief to him. Her bloodied sports bra, however, had to go and was quickly cut open with his knife. He peeled back her costume, tossing the armored pieces to the side, revealing her bare, bruised and lacerated torso. He scrutinized her closely, his determined gaze sweeping over every inch of her exposed to skin to catalog each wound. If he was going to do this, he wanted to be able to do it all at once.
He was grateful she was unconscious for this part, for both of their sakes. An audience might slow him down, and he couldn't imagine her reaction would be to what he was about to do.
Xavier rose, his hands trembling once again as he unfastened and unzipped his pants. A cool breeze swept through, sending a chill through his penis as pulled it free from his boxers. He braced himself and aimed it at the unconscious Ward, trying to keep his eyes from lingering on her small, bare breasts. With a sigh of resignation and determination, he began to urinate on her.