Asmodeus slowly pulls back from me. “Don’t look at me, I’m in a state of undress,” he says, seeing as he has two buttons undone.
“Might be sexier if there wasn’t like… blood and dirt on your shirt since you never even went into the house after the fight last night. Why didn’t we get you a clean shirt?” Landon asks.
“Because I want to show off my battle scars,” Asmodeus says as he slides into the seat next to me.
They pass out coffees and cookies, sliding both in front of me, and I take them because they’re handed to me, but I don’t know how to actually consume them.
“So are they technically illusions?” Asmodeus asks.
“That’s a hard question to answer,” I say. “That’s how they started out. They were illusions I could control, and while I can still control them, they’ve transformed into different things, as I’m sure you can tell. Because I’ve called them illusions since I was young, I’ve continued to call them that.”
“Was there something that made them change?” he asks.
It’s like I can hear screaming, and as soon as I think back on any of that, my entire body aches.
“It’s ridiculous because if I say it out loud, it’s like… it’s nothing. Hell, compared to what Asmodeus went through, my life was a walk in the park.”
Asmodeus looks at me and raises an eyebrow. “I would rather take on my mother than your mother any day.”
“Your mother tried to kill you!” I protest. “Mine only berated me.”
“Yes, but there’s a difference. My mother never pretended to love me. Never claimed to do anything out of love or care. She didn’t manipulate me. It was very clear that I would never have an actual family from the minute I was born and that this was how life was always going to be. It’s significantly different.”
“My history is still not enough to cause what I did,” I say, hating myself for it every day.
Nolan leans back. “It doesn’t always matter. These powers of ours are often not gifts in the way media likes to portray it. They’re weights we carry. They’re impossible to understand. And honestly… more don’t understand them than do.”
“I’m terrified of mine and it knows it,” Lex says.
Nolan lets out a laugh but it’s not a happy sound. “I was being driven to the edge by mine. I was willing to throw away my whole life, destroy my brother’s life, and sever everything for a moment of fucking peace and quiet in my mind because I felt like there was no way out. Imagine if someone as strong as Landon didn’t have control over his powers. I can’t even fathom what he’d have done.”
“I was lucky because my powers can be unstable when my emotions are high, but I was born into the strangest family whose only expectation was for me to rob banks,” Landon says.
“What we’re saying is that no one here is judging you,” Nolan explains.
“I’m judging how hot you are,” Asmodeus says.
“Besides Deus,” Nolan adds.
I try to fight back my smile. “Stay on task.”
“Yes, My Lord of Sweater Vests… although I guess you’re My Lord of Suits again today.”
I sigh and run my finger along the lid of my cup. “Most of you have met my mother, but my father wasn’t much better… actually, I would consider him even worse. Otto, my brother who was three years older than me, was my only rock. From birth, our lives were strictly regulated. We had tutors from the moment we could make a sound, while our father and mother ingrained in our heads that we had to be the best. But with that came the realization that we were never good enough.
“I remember in elementary school, my mother came into the classroom and began berating the teacher for teaching us such ‘basic’ materials. We were like five and my mother thought we should be off creating research or some shit. She screamed at the woman until she began to cry because I’d brought home some craft that had to do with the alphabet. She shredded it in front of the woman and told her to do better. That was the start of the rest of my life with my parents. The other students stayed away from me, the teachers didn’t quite know how to treat me… I was immediately ostracized at school.
“My father dragged us from one school to another because they were never good enough. But nothing prepared me for when I began showing signs of having a superpower. My father was furious. No, beyond furious. He was extremely adamant and vocal about wanting superpowers to be banned. He wanted to tear down Superheroes United, and he wanted to make a world where supers were required to be infertile so that they couldn’t ‘breed’ and make more supers. That logic doesn’t even makesense when both of my parents are powerless, and don’t worry, he made sure I was biologically his after berating me and telling me that a son of his couldn’t have superpowers.
“After the realization that I truly was his son, he took me to some… place where they swore they could use three rounds of drugs to get rid of my powers. Instead, the drugs made me extremely ill. And as I lay in bed, covered in vomit because I was too weak to get to the bathroom without passing out, my brother was the only one there for me. He was the only one ever there for me. He kept me from drowning. Otto told me that I wasn’t the monster my father made me believe I was. He was the only one who would tell me I did a good job—the only one who ever told me he loved me and that I made a difference.”
I glance up and catch Asmodeus’s bright blue eyes watching me intently before I continue. “I remember lying there, convinced I was dying, and my father coming in and seeing me in bed. He wasn’t concerned that I couldn’t get up. He didn’t care that I was covered in my own sick; instead he grabbed me by the hair and dragged me to the bathroom while Otto begged him to let me go. He was furious because I’d missed school, even though I’d missed school because of him. Still, it was my fault. It was always my fault. He packed me up and sent me to school where I walked ten feet into the building and passed out. It was the worst decision my father could have ever made, not for me… but for his career.
“I was sent to the hospital where I was blamed for causing ‘a huge scene’ for my father who was trying to run for political office. The second I was admitted to the hospital, it got out to the media, who blasted my father over it. And since my father was preaching about how he was going to abolish supers… let’s just say it didn’t look good when his devoted followers found out his child was one.
“The drugs were done in three rounds… and for the second round, I remember lying in that bed again, all alone… that was the first time an illusion showed any type of personality in front of me. I assumed my exhausted mind was seeing things, but when he crawled into bed with me and hugged me until I cried myself to sleep, I felt like I finally had someone.
“That round of drugs seemed to do nothing but cause my illusions to gain more control. I didn’t know whether it was because in my sickened state I wasn’t in control or that I was being pushed to the absolute limit. And for the first time in my life, I had a friend who wasn’t my brother.”
