Heart Attack

I need a hero

Damian.

He was older now — older than the boy I remembered, older than the boy who used to scowl at me over Alfred’s tea trays. I had no idea how much time had passed over there; here it had been months, but there? Was he twenty now? No — eighteen, by Earth reckoning. Old enough to tower over the memory I kept of him.

I hovered in the corner of the dream — the strange half-space between worlds where I could watch but never touch. My three boys stood together, though “boys” no longer seemed right. Tim and Jason looked the same as always, their postures unchanged: Tim with arms crossed and mind calculating, Jason with hands shoved into his jacket pockets like he’d rather be anywhere but here. But Damian… Damian was almost unrecognizable. Taller. Broader. A sharpened blade where there used to be raw metal.

Perhaps it was because when they’d been yelling at Dick earlier — my Dick — Damian had been in the distance. Or maybe it was my emotions making him look so alien.

“What do you mean she is in another dimension?” Damian’s glare was sharp enough to cut steel. His voice — deeper now, but still carrying that League-born arrogance — lashed toward my friends.

“That’s what she explained,” Tim answered evenly, the only one of them with patience enough to weather Damian’s storms. “Look, we aren’t happy with this either. We saw her barely yesterday. According to what Starfire said, a pair of gods brought her there for some kind of mission.”

“Why didn’t you bring her back!?” Damian barked, hand twitching toward the blade at his hip.

“Because we can’t, demon spawn!” Jason growled back, every syllable dipped in venom and frustration. His hands shook, though whether from rage or helplessness, I couldn’t tell. “We would, but we can’t! We were mere fucking ghosts there, pipsqueak!”

Damian’s growl rumbled low in his chest. He gripped the hilt of his katana — paused. Strange. He rarely hesitated. The boy I remembered would have drawn steel in the same breath. Now, his green eyes flicked to the weapon, then to something else — me.

Could he feel my gaze?

Slowly, he unsheathed the blade and held it flat over his eyes, almost like a lens. Then his mouth parted slightly, soft shock replacing his scowl.

“…Starfire?”

My breath caught. “Damian… can see me?”

He smiled — faint, fleeting, but there. “I am able to see and hear you. What are you?”

“I am not dead,” I said, relief curling my lips upward. “I am… just not here.”

“So what these losers said is true,” Damian muttered.

“HEY!” Tim and Jason yelled, unified in their offense.

“What in the world is going on?!” Tim demanded, exasperation bleeding through his calm. “Is that the dimensional sword?”

“Only if I want it to be,” Damian smirked, because of course he did. “Starfire, I will encounter you soon.”

A voice rumbled through me — through us — before I could reply. “Allow them,” the god intoned, echoing in all our heads. “I have a special mission for them. Their semblances will help.”

“Do they have semblances?” I asked, startled.

“Yes,” the god replied. “Everyone does. You did not — until now — because you are not fully human.”

I understood then. My heart thrummed with anticipation.

“I nodded back at them with a smile,” I narrate quietly to myself — because sometimes narrating out loud helps me make sense of this madness — and then I woke.