The Akwesasne Mohawk reserve both straddles the border and ignores it, like a cowboy riding an invisible horse. I slip across the forty-ninth parallel in a truck carrying half a million counterfeit cigarettes, and, just like that, I’m home. I haven’t set foot on Canadian soil in years. The Akwesasronon would say I still haven’t.

The next best thing to an old friend is an old enemy, like Mariel Lazore. It’s late at night when the old woman answers the door of a big, rundown house on the outskirts of Cornwall Island. The other residents are nowhere to be seen. She’s expecting me. This is the first time we’ve seen each other since our fight over El Paso.

“It’s nice to see you again, Doctor Lazore. I’m Jethro Carver.” Stormcaller, my nom de guerre, has been long since unmasked, publicized, and almost forgotten; now I just go by my birth name. These days the magazines prefer supers—villains and heroes alike—who don’t just take sides, they adopt the uniform. A flying arsonist in a Guy Fawkes mask or an Occupy shirt gets good press, but my generation remembers Vietnam; we’d rather resent a senseless world than support a dozen placebo causes. When I killed, I never advertised it, and I sure didn’t use product placement.

The old Mohawk superhero shakes my hand. “I can’t exactly say it’s an honour.”

“Honesty is a good start, I suppose.”

She smiles without humour. “Start to what, exactly? Come in.”

The house is battered, sparsely furnished, dusty, and cheap. It is, however, both large and anonymous. Mariel moves like any old woman in her own home might, with a slight distrust of her own decreasing faculties and thus a disconnection from long-familiar surroundings. A hotplate or broken mirror can badly injure; stairs and shower whisper threats of a broken hip.

Even if the years have blunted Mariel’s powers—Sunflame used to throw radiation in an era favouring bravado and colourful tights—her attitude and the memory of her strength keep this place secure. I let myself relax a little.

“We don’t accept fugitives,” she says, pouring me a cup of tea at a folding table in the dingy kitchen. The metal chair creaks under me, and I’m not a large man.

“Really? The Underground Railroad waypoint for every super on the run since Arcanos dodged the draft?”

“The world is different now.” She sips from a cracked teacup. “What’s your legal status, Mister Carver?”

“In a nutshell? Canadian citizen. I’m not wanted for anything here. In America, sure, statute of limitations has yet to expire on a few minor peccadilloes, and one or two of their supers hold a grudge, but extradition—”

“Don’t worry about extradition. That much, at least, I can guarantee for the moment. The Canadian government wouldn’t touch Akwesasne.”

“Sounds idyllic,” I say, voice dry.

“Our own little utopia, yes. Such as it is.” Sadness clouds her eyes, and I remember her as she was—so bright you could hardly look at her. But her gaze sharpens and refocuses on me. “So you understand my reluctance to accept you on any kind of a permanent basis. Why not apply for Schedule Five status?”

“Be a registered super? The tax breaks aren’t what they used to be—besides, you’re Mohawk. You tell me how ‘status’ worked out for you.”

She grimaces. “You have . . . unique talents, Mister Carver. A man who channels the forces of entropy will be its victim, sooner or later. Whatever measure of stability and safety you find can only fall into ruin.”

“I don’t believe that,” I say.

“Convince me, Stormcaller.”

I shrug. “I make no defense of my life thus far. My choices have incurred their consequences. If I remain in a place like this, I have no doubt that I can be—”

“Rehabilitated?”

“—at peace.”

That earned a thin smile. “Do you deserve peace? Those who live here have retreated from the world—tired old heroes and the chronically misunderstood. Not mercenaries, or murderers—”

“Please.” It comes out as a snarl. “How much collateral damage is on your conscience, Sunflame? And the ‘heroes’ who live here—have none of them ever killed in anger? Don’t judge me without applying the same standard to yourselves. Yes, I’ve broken my share of things that didn’t ask to be broken—”

“Spines, hearts, promises, governments?”

“All of the above, but which super hasn’t? I make no apologies, Mariel.”

“Agency lies in the difference between accident and deliberate intent.”

“Please. You go out, you do your job as a superhero, and people get ‘accidentally’ hurt. How are you not responsible for that?” It’s an old argument, but it’s one of the few things I believe. I know I’m shooting myself in the foot, but I can’t stand self-righteousness.

I knew what I was getting into when I set out to take sanctuary here. I make myself calm down. Mariel is swelling with rage, preparing the kind of tirade that left Crimson Overlord’s mansion a smoking wreck, back in the day.

“All I’m saying is, I’m a person, Mariel. Don’t judge me because your crimes and sins and failures are less public, or at least less publicly memorable.”

Mariel grimaces and deflates. She looks away. “Not so loud, you’ll wake the others.” It’s an evasion, a capitulation; I guess I still have it in me to beat up an A-grade superhero, albeit one with cataracts and a cane.

When I was young and drunk on changing the world, I would have called this tasteless, pointless thing a victory. Now I’ve learned to see beyond the moment. But I’ve never been able to define the difference between knowing a thing and following it through.

I’m not out for redemption. Peace of mind would be nice, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not the sort of thing I think about. I have other concerns, functional concerns. There are death warrants out on me across sub-Saharan Africa, and in this hemisphere even the most incorruptible supers don’t mind accepting a side job as long as I’m the side job.

I need to get in here. I really need it. A year or two off the radar, and I can have my pick of twenty consulting positions. Turns out Nigerian rebels really like people with a knack for breaking oil refineries. It’s the sort of job I’ve taken my whole life.

But I’m tired. Maybe it’s the way old Mariel is crumpling in on herself. She glances at me, her face a ruin of fatigue, sadness, even guilt.

“I’m sorry,” I say at last. “We always tried to solve our problems the hard way, didn’t we? Massive conflagration of light and power? Cue music. Cameras flashing. Big words.” I run a hand through my thinning hair. “Where do we go from here? What follows naturally from what we are—and what we’ve said and done? It used to be I could fix anything with the proper application of entropy.”

She laughs, or cries. It sounds like choking. “Violence.”

“Violence.”

Her hands clench and unclench, wiry claws. But it’s a frustration without direction, not a threat. “I’ve burnt a lot of people, Carver,” she says. “More than you’ve broken.”

I snort. “And right now we’re a stone’s throw from the kind of competitive games we used to play. Who would win in a fight? Your powers, your weaknesses—how well do they stack up against mine? They used to list our temperaments and backgrounds in bullet points. And I hate the—what’s the word, pillboxes? Niches? The little boxes they put you in.”

“Stereotypes.”

“Close enough.” I snap my fingers. “Pigeonholes, that’s it. I sang to their tune and let them define me, but now I find all I want is . . . what I used to have.” And I mean it. I want the jobs in Africa, yes. I want freedom, of one kind or another. But if I get it, what will I do with it?

My guess is, if Mariel lets me stay, I might have a chance of finding out who I am, apart from a guy who wears black and breaks things really, really well.

A wry, tired grin steals over Mariel’s face. “We can’t turn you back into a child, Carver.”

“You can give me a few months or, hey, a few years without worries. You can give me time to grow up.”

“Careful. You’ll lapse into cliché.” She stands, visibly aching, her teeth clenched, and shuffles over to the dusty fridge. “Coffee cake?”

“At this hour? Certainly.” Behind the fridge door, she’s out of my line of sight. There was a time when two supers with our backgrounds would have taken a sight-line break as an opportunity or a threat—keep your hands where I can see them and so forth. I make myself relax again. I can do this. This is a real life.

Mariel hums to herself. She produces cake on little saucers in the same ancient gold-edged style as the teacups. The cake is heavy, moist, all chocolate and structural integrity. It’s the perfect midnight snack between friends—or old enemies.

“Thank you for the cake,” I say. “This is delicious.”

“I thought I warned you about cliché.”

“Look, I want to stay here. I want it more than—than I wanted Hawkmoon’s head that time in Bogotá. You ever hear about that?”

“Yes.”

“And because I want it so badly, Mariel, I feel the need to correct your . . . impression of me.”

“By thanking me for coffee cake.”

“It’s what normal people do.”

“You want me to accept you. Haven’t you noticed? A super can never be accepted. Either you want to be just like everyone else, or you want to be special. Two paths to happiness, utterly contradictory.” She examines her cool tea. “Carver, I don’t even know what to say: I’m not sold, I’m not rejecting you, and yet I feel none of the tension inherent in fence-sitting.”

“Then give me a grace period. I could use a little grace.”

“Couldn’t we all.” She sighs. “You can stay, as long—” she holds up a cautionary finger “—as long as the others are fine with it. I hope you don’t have history with them.”

“If there’s bad blood, it won’t be on my side. I’ll make every effort.”

I’m a bad man. But even a bad man needs a home.

__________

Born in Vancouver and raised in Calgary, Jonathan Olfert studies international relations in Ottawa.