Ambulance
< < Thursday. Noel Aquino was stuck on an all-night stakeout. Ricky and Angela had the house to themselves.
It almost wasn't big enough for the two of them.
Angela sighed. After Tuesday's condom wrapper episode, Mr. Aquino was probably going crazy, imagining her and his son fucking like rabbits.
Not likely. After two hookups that ended badly, neither was in a hurry to try again. But it wasn't about the sex.
They were beyond sexual awkwardness. After "finishing" Tuesday, an arctic wind had come out of nowhere to chill their whole relationship.
The chill had a name: Noel.
No, Angela, you can't lay all the blame at Mr. Aquino's feet.
Maybe things had gotten a little... weird -- Noel calling her by his dead wife's name, showing up at her work and telling her to dress more conservative because of the way it made him look at her -- but that was probably just a side effect of her real problem.
The sapphires were calling. Responsibility. Duty. Heroism. And not feeling like crap all the time.
Angela was feeling the itch.
Ricky was treating it like a disease.
In the time since the Labor Day Incident, they hadn't really talked about it. It was too big. Too raw. And she'd been in no condition to decide such things. She'd been in no condition for anything.
Ricky had been just amazing in those first few days. She didn't even remember most of it, just fractured moments. But he'd been there the whole time. Somehow knowing just what to say or not say, just how to hold her, just when to leave her alone, just what she needed. Gentle, supporting, nurturing. Loving.
But with that grew in Ricky a need to protect the fragile girl he'd found.
While paradoxically Angela found herself drawn back toward a life of duty -- and danger.
Without a word, they'd found themselves chafing. It didn't help that Ricky's dad was on his side.
They all knew that she couldn't be a superheroine anymore.
And they all knew she would go back to it anyway.
How could you be in love with someone who thought the complete opposite about something so important?
It was an argument they didn't need to have out loud.
But after two days of silence, they did anyway.
It started when Ricky came out of his room for another glass of water and saw Angela sitting at the kitchen table, staring dully at her bottle of Xanax. She'd been there since taking her last dose. More than a half-hour earlier.
"Angela, if you don't stop staring at that bottle I'm going to throw it away."
"No you won't," came her monotone reply. "I need it to make me better."
"It's not working."
"Would you rather have me like I was Monday?" Her 'episode'.
"No. Of course not. I was just wondering if maybe you went back to see Dr. Ward, if you told her it was affecting you like this, she could give you something else."
"She told me this is what it would be like." That wasn't exactly true; Dr. Ward had said Angela might feel "a little tiredness." This went way beyond that. But after the wringer Angela had been through, she was mostly glad for her disconnected state.
She didn't look up at him. "You know she's seeing me as a favor to your dad. I don't even know if she's supposed to have patients outside the department." Dr. Ward was the police department's staff psychiatrist.
"Then maybe you should see someone else."
"Ricky, I don't have any money."
"My dad will pay for it." Ricky seemed awfully quick to spend his dad's money when it came to her.
"Ricky, I'm fine. Really. You can't expect some pill to just magically make me all better."
"I know, it's just..." If she was normal, maybe they wouldn't be struggling. "I don't like seeing you like this."
"Then don't see me." If he was going to be like this, she was better off sitting alone.
"Angela..."
"Look, I'm sorry I'm not 'in the mood.'"
"It's not that." Wasn't it? "I just don't think you see what the meds are doing to you."
"It's not the meds." Not *just* the meds. "I feel so useless."
"You're not useless. You just haven't figured out what you want to do with your life."
"You mean, what I want to do that gets the Aquino stamp of approval."
Thud.
The source of their conflict was out in the open now.
Ricky frowned. "It's not about approval. It's about being sensible."
"It is sensible."
"Tell me how. Tell me why you want to do this to yourself."
"You make it sound like being Sapphire is some kind of torture."
"Isn't it? I know what they put you through."
Actually, he didn't. She hadn't shared everything with him. Some things were too terrible to think about. Truth was, it *had* been torturous at times.
But having this power and just letting bad things happen to good people when you could do something about it, that was worse. That was self-torture.
"It won't always be like that. And anyway, I got through it."
"If being doped into a trance can be called 'getting through it.'"
"Why are you doing this?"
"Because I can see what being Sapphire does to you, even if you can't."
"You don't know."
"I know enough. I know more than you think. More than you've told me."
Angela raised an eyebrow.
Ricky looked her straight in the eye. "I know about the ambulance."
Angela had to look away. The memory overwhelmed her.
Her power had failed her. No, not failed, taken away by The Hunter. Desperately trying to escape, clawing at the sky as her sapphires were turned against her, bringing her down as they inflamed her, stoking unwanted uncontrollable sexual desire. Crashing her to earth, passed out in the throes of unnatural climax. Fallen into the hands of the enemy -- not The Hunter, but the police, who'd thought her a deadly vigilante. Unconscious and scarcely covered by the tattered remains of a makeshift costume, they'd loaded her in an ambulance.
Where an opportunistic bastard EMT had taken full advantage of her condition and situation. She'd been so out of it. Who would ever find out what he would do to her? And since she'd just been the target of a police action, who would care?
Strapped down. Groped. Penetrated. Violated.
Angela's cheeks burned with shame. How did Ricky know? How could he know?
What did it matter?
Ricky continued. "And I know that wasn't the only time. I set up a website about you, remember? There were so many rumors going around. And some stories were more than rumors."
"It was just bad luck. Anyway, I know more now. About what I can do. And about what... happens. It's not a problem. I can handle it."
"What happens the next time you come up against something like Black Widow or The Hunter?"
Black Widow: she'd had sapphires too -- sapphires that Angela had lost on her first night as a crimefighter, the first time she'd felt the dark side of the sapphire energy. Black Widow hadn't used them for good, instead taking twisted fatal retribution against the demons of her own past.
And The Hunter: her phantom menace. A mysterious man who'd seemed to have the ability to cloud or even control minds. An attack against which Sapphire had been immune, only to be susceptible to something far more devastating. Somehow The Hunter could turn her power inside out, triggering at will the terrifying sexual feedback that normally happened gradually when the sapphires were near exhaustion.
Black Widow and The Hunter. They'd both had her number at one time. But they were gone, and she was still here.
"They're dead."
"How do you know there aren't others? You don't know. Even if there aren't, what happens when someone studies you, searching for your weakness? You think they won't find one? You don't know where the sapphires came from, how they work, how many more there are, what other things might be out there..."
He was so damn melodramatic. "This isn't a comic book, Ricky."
"Said the girl who flies over the city half-naked, protected by a magical forcefield."
"With the powers I have, the things I can do, shouldn't I be helping people? Shouldn't I try to make the world a better place? It's what I was meant to do."
"You can't tell me you always wanted to be a superheroine. You don't even like comic books."
"I like some of them." When she was younger, and her mom couldn't get a babysitter; Mel at the diner always had two things to read in his office: comic books and Playboys. As a ten-year-old, she'd found the exploits of Supergirl and Storm and Shadowcat more interesting than the deep thoughts of Miss September. "I just don't collect them like religious artifacts."
"So what did you want to be when you grew up?"
A waitress. But that was a long time ago. Truth was she hadn't really thought about it.
"I don't know."
She'd just been going through the motions for so long. Focusing on the little things. Idly wishing her life were different. More glamorous. More dramatic. More exciting. More... dangerous.
And when her mom had finally gotten her a real computer -- not that ancient GS fruitbox that couldn't even get on the Internet -- and she discovered instant messaging and chat, she'd thought she'd found it. Her escape. Of course, even that was boring before long, once she could see the real world poking through.
Maybe that's why she'd fallen for Scott. (His real name was Eric, she reminded herself.) There was something artificial about him. Not fake in that obvious pathetic way that fat thirtysomethings pretended to be hunky twenty-three-year-old investment bankers "tired of the career-obsessed alpha bitches who can't make time for a real relationship" until they made one too many 80s references. No, Scott shared so many specific details about his work and his life, facts that could never quite be verified nor refuted, that she knew his was a ruse -- but one so meticulously constructed as to be a form of flattery all its own. And as likely as it was that he was just another fastfood-gutted geek, there was that fantasy that behind the mundane excitement of a travel-weary network engineer was a life far more extraordinary. A fantasy that had turned out to be true. And then some. A secret agent who'd sent her sapphire gemstones with incredible powers...
And as horrible as the recent past had been, as frightening and foreboding as the future might be, it was still the chance of a lifetime.
"Truth is, Ricky, I never gave it a lot of thought. But I don't have to visit a career counselor to know that 'Superheroine' is the best option I have now."
Angela had already had this argument with Ricky in her head. Everything he was saying, he'd already said in her mind. She'd already thought it. Everything he was saying was right.
It was like she was arguing with herself.
A smarter version of herself.
She wished they could switch sides.
Because even if he was right, about the danger, about the ugliness, Angela still had to do it -- she had to be Sapphire. And she wanted so desperately to hear that it wasn't a bad idea. She needed him to apply his smarts to help her cause, not doom it to failure before it even began.
If only she was smart enough to trick him into it.
If only he was sensitive enough to know she needed it.
Angela put on a look of suspicion. "I know what this is about. You're jealous."
"That's crazy."
"Is it? You surround yourself with comic books. You read about superheroes. You know so much about their world. You *draw* them."
"Angela, I understand the difference between fantasy and reality. Comic books, even the dark gritty ones, they don't show what it would really be like. They can't. Nobody would want to read it."
"So it's not glamorous. I don't care. I want to make a difference."
"How do you intend to do that? My dad's a cop, Angela. It's not that different. He's part of a huge network of trained professionals, and still it's a struggle. You want to stop the bad guys -- who are they? How do you find them? Playing games with gravity isn't going to get it done.
"You want to help people -- who do you help? How do you choose? You can't help everyone.
"Think about what it, Angela. Everybody taking shots at you. The media hounding you 24/7. The ungrateful masses criticizing you because you didn't stop that bomb in Budapest or save that busload of children in Wisconsin. Normally-decent people stalking you to ask you for favors. Politicians fighting over you, half wanting to lock you away, the other half wanting to draft you into some official role. Every move analyzed to the nth degree, criticized. No privacy, no security, no discretion, until you're so hemmed in by everything you're completely powerless."
It sounded like Ricky had already lived an entire life as a superhero. Was he sixteen, or sixty?
"You read too many comic books, Ricky. It doesn't have to be like that."
"With technology where it is, there is no privacy anymore. No anonymity. No mystery. You can't hide, can't retreat, can't escape. It's only a matter of time. Your life wouldn't exist. You'd be consumed by it. I can't let you do that to yourself."
"Are you done with your lecture?"
"Well, I've given it a lot of thought. Somebody needs to."
"Excuse me? Maybe I don't have your brain, or your vocabulary; maybe I haven't written a *thesis* on The Nature Of The Superhero, but I think maybe I know a little bit more about it than you do. Maybe you don't want to admit it, but I *am* a... a heroine. I didn't ask for it -- at least I don't think I did -- but there it is. Call it God, call it Fate, call it Aliens From Another Galaxy, I don't care -- somehow I ended up with this gift. And I *can't* just walk away from it. I can handle it. I *have* to. And if you knew anything at all about me, you would know that."
"Angela, it's too much. It's dangerous. And you can gloss over it if you want, if it makes you feel better, but you're not Supergirl. You have limits. You're vulnerable."
"I know that. I'll be careful. I can handle it."
"You don't even really know how they work. They have... behaviors you don't fully understand. And there's no telling the long-term effects."
"We can learn all that. You can help me."
"Angela, this is the real world, not 'Dexter's Lab.'"
"But you're smart."
"I'm not that smart. A whole team of experts could study you for years and not figure it out. And I'm sure there's one standing by in case you ever return the to the public eye."
Dammit, Ricky, don't you think I know that?
"Angela, sometimes the hardest thing in the world is to say No. To turn something down, to pass something up, not because you think it's wrong, but because it's bigger than you. It's beyond you. It's too dangerous -- too *important* --"
Angela was getting desperate. "So now you're saying I'm not good enough? What, am I too naive? Too young? Too dumb? Yeah, I'm just a dumb girl. Maybe I should just let you take care of everything? Or maybe your dad?"
"Angela, I didn't mean-"
"You didn't? That's not what you meant? Then tell me, Ricky, what *did* you mean?"
"I-... I'm trying to think of the right way to put it..."
"Yeah, well, while you try to come up with a good lie, think about this. Maybe you're right. Maybe despite how hard it is I have to say No. Maybe it is bigger than me. Too important to screw it up."
She caught her breath, the pause cracking her anger enough to let a tear slip through.
"Maybe we *can't* be together."
Thud.
She'd run herself right into it. The real issue. It wasn't whether Angela should take up Sapphire's tiara again -- despite the argument so far, that was a foregone conclusion. A matter of when, not if.
The real issue was whether their relationship could survive in the sapphires' shadow.
Ricky couldn't have looked more surprised or more hurt if she'd kicked him in the gut.
But he wasn't surprised that it had been said. Only that she'd been the one to say it. It put out into the open what he already suspected, what he'd hoped against -- that Angela needed Sapphire more than she needed him.
He looked down at his feet. "Maybe you're right."
No. Ricky, No. You're not supposed to agree. Now you're supposed to argue with me. Tell me I'm wrong. Prove me wrong.
"I'm sorry, Ricky. I didn't mean to say that."
"But it's true."
"Don't-"
"Do you know what it's like to sit at home wondering if the woman you love is at that very moment falling helpless at the hands of some twisted evil bastard? And wondering if maybe she wants it?"
Ouch.
"You talk like I have a choice." Of whether to don the sapphires again. Or of how they affected her.
"You do."
"You know I don't. Not after what happened Sunday."
"Angela-"
"Do *you* know what it's like to listen to a man screaming for your help? Seeing his face the moment he realizes you can't help him? Watching him burn to death?" The violence of sudden memory choked her.
"You can't keep torturing yourself over that accident. What if we hadn't argued? What if you hadn't stormed out of the house? You wouldn't have even seen it. You would have read about it in the paper the next day -- what could you do then? Unless the sapphires let you travel through time, what is it that you think you can do? You can't save everyone."
"I could have saved him. Isn't that worth it? Isn't even one life worth trying?"
"What about your life? What about *our* life?"
"What about my mom's life? I can't just let her death be for nothing. I can't just throw it all away."
"Angela, no matter what you do, you can't bring her back."
Damn you, Ricky.
Angela's voice was barely above a whisper. "But she said I can't give up."
"I know, but... it's only a matter of time before something like that happens again."
Before her love was used against her.
"Ricky, I won't ever let anything happen to you."
"That's a promise you can't keep."
"No one has to know. We'll keep it a secret."
"I can't always be looking over my shoulder, Angela. And I can't love you from afar."
"So that's it? You're just breaking up with me?"
"You make it sound like an ultimatum."
"Isn't it?"
"Look, even if it's not me, someday it will be someone. You can't live your whole life alone."
If they both came to the same conclusion, why were they on opposite sides?
And if she'd already known they couldn't be together, why did it hurt so much when Ricky said it?
Because she hadn't wanted it to be true. And some small part of her hoped that Ricky would prove her wrong. She knew he was smarter than her, even if he was two years her junior. Maybe he could see a way through it.
But it seemed either he couldn't...
...or he didn't want to.
And the way he was belittling her and the importance of being Sapphire, it seemed more and more like he just didn't want to.
The way Ricky was talking -- if he didn't understand how important Sapphire was to her -- she was already alone.
She stood up. The room began to blur through tears.
"I hate you," she said, and ran to her room.