Bloodwynd in “A Crisis at Zero Hour”

It had occurred to me almost from the moment I joined the Justice League that I was not interested in superheroics. This is not to say that I was not interested in what superheroes do, but that I was not interested in participating in it myself. The team dynamics unsettled me, the constant suspicions, and I never truly felt a part of it.

Instead, I opted to hold my own council. I looked for a more human scale to this business. My powers, such as they are, appear somewhat grotesque to me, when I am not careful. I wonder if they are not inherently a source of potential abuse. I know where they came from, how they were conceived, and as such my sense of duty can at times seem overwhelming, and I have spent much of my life attempting to calm myself.

Last week something terrible happened. It was the kind of thing that could not be undone, only punished, and yet I found myself wondering what else might be done, so I used my powers in an unconventional fashion.

I brought the man back, and I listened to him. It didn’t take any prompting at all, whether from the emotion of the situation or my fanciful outfit, perhaps the fact that we looked so much like each other. He trusted me. This is what he said:

“I refused, at first, to admit that I had made a mistake. The first instinct anyone has in situations like that is to dig in, in the rash hope that if you believe something strongly enough that you can convince others, through sheer force of will, that everything is absolutely fine. Of course, now I realize people believe what’s convenient in the moment. They’re generous when they’re sympathetic. What I was doing there at all, I wasn’t even thinking about, at the time, but now I can’t stop.

“I was desperate. I made a bad decision. Wasn’t the first time, but sometimes bad decisions are all we have, and we were all in the middle of a series of bad decisions at the time, and most of them were also the right ones, and...Still, it was a bad decision, and I wish I could take it back. I wish I could have just talked it out with someone, but some things people don’t really want to talk about. They voice their frustrations. But they rarely have answers. They have anger. But anger isn’t always enough.

“If given the option, that situation would have turned everything around for me. I’m serious. Never again. I know, vows are easy to make. And they’re easier to break. Sometimes you have to break them just to survive, just to have a chance. But sometimes you have to keep them, to survive, to have a chance. Suddenly nothing was more important than the chance to look back and say, Never again.

“I can’t look at what happened and hate. Hate was never really in me. Desperation. Panic. Fear. But not hate.”

Then he was silent. He asked me what happened next. I told he I honestly didn’t know. If there is a relief to the idea of being a superhero, it’s that the job ends at saving the day, even when you’re too late, as I was that day. It becomes someone else’s responsibility, a network on which we are meant to depend, although perhaps there is room for improvement. I looked at the man and I apologized, even though, again, I was too late. He said, after a moment, that maybe it was okay, that maybe I would get it right the next time, that as long as there was the will to do the right thing, that perhaps, in the end, more people would choose that option, and I would no longer, with all my useless power, feel compelled to apologize. He didn’t say another word. He was dead again.

And I was alone. This is how I prefer it. But there are times I think perhaps I am wrong to prefer it that way. There is much good to be done. This business of superheroes often seems as if it accomplishes nothing so much as giving those of us empowered to participate an excuse to parade ourselves. And yet, sometimes the responsibility humbles me.