Sapphyra [Adult Superhero Progression]

There was hesitation in my voice, but my answer was no less true. 

“Yes, I'd still be with him.”

 The ladies seemed to get it but my tormentor in his judge's seat did not. In fact, he rolled his eyes. 

“Of course, the monster chooses to stay with another monster. I'm not surprised.” 

That made me laugh truly because who the fuck did this guy think he was? Bent over, I held my belly as the last few giggles escaped by system and I looked up at him pointing one finger, just one. 

“You've got some nerve calling someone a monster. You left me as a child, you left my mother—the woman you said you loved since you met her. So what if she used the soul of a dragon to bring me back to life? Who cares? Any parent would do anything to have their child back.”

As soon as the words slipped out of my mouth and that smirk hit his face I knew I was in trouble. 

“Are you sure about that?” He asked, sneering down at me. 

“What about your child? With all the power that you have, all the resources, all the Frankenstein technology your husband keeps in his fucking basement, why didn't you bring your son back? Is it because deep down you know that you're an abomination who should never have existed?” 

I felt the bubble shake. Wyatt's fist hit the side of it. I know he wanted to speak, to interject—hell, he probably wanted to defend me as my lawyer, but we didn't have time for that. 

I let Bayani’s words sink down into my soul for just a moment. It's not the first time I asked that question. In fact, the only rocky part of our marriage before all of this was me losing Barnaby. 

Why didn’t I bring him back? Because I thought it would make him an abomination, no. He's right. Why didn't I? I could have thought of something to bring him back. 

That's when I glanced up and ‌saw Theia staring at me on top of a building. As soon as we locked eyes, she looked away. That was weird, anyway. 

I turned back to Bayani, and with a measured tone, I answered clearly.

“Because his journey wasn't with us anymore. And no, that's not me saying I expected him to go to heaven or anything like that. I'm saying that there was something else for Barnaby that Wyatt and I could not have provided him. Because I wanted to bring him back.” 

I didn’t realize just talking about this would tear me apart. My whole body is trembling. I feel like the walls are closing in, but screw it. If they want me to be open and honest, then here it is.

”When you are a parent—I'm sorry, when you are a parent that gives a shit about your kid—” 

I glared at Bayani.

“You know that their journey in life and the afterlife will come to a point where they don't need you anymore, and that's what I felt with Barnaby. He didn't need us, not anymore. Now whether that's me bullshitting to cope or actually true, I don't fucking know. But it's what I've used to carry on all these years.”

I finally stopped to take a breath. All eyes were on me, wide and tender with care. Except Bayani. He was like stone; even the fake version of him couldn’t care less about me.

I turn back to the boys and give them a shaky thumbs-up. 

“It's all right. I'm not gonna break, at least not in front of you lot.” 

“You know it's okay if you need to let it out, right? That is what we're here for.” Said the ever-helpful Guy. 

“Of course I know that's what you're here for, but I'll be damned if I use any of you to play therapist right now. I am at my trial, shitty a courtroom this may be.” Guy frowned, Noa flicked me off but Wyatt shook his head with a rueful smile.

I examined the stones in Themis' hands. The guilty stone was definitely bigger than the innocent stone. 

Fan-fucking-tastic.

“So I take it you all have come to a verdict on me?” Themis frowns and looks at the stones in her hands. 

“It would seem to be so.” She almost sounded sad when she said that. 

I'm confused. Are the Titans not supposed to be against me? Why are they sympathetic to me? They can save their sympathy. I'm not here for pity; I'm here to win so I can try to get my life back. 

“Out of curiosity and because you haven't answered the question yet, what happens when I'm found guilty?”

Bayani opened his mouth. I quickly raised my hand.

“No, no, not you. You're not actually him; you're just a representation of him. I know between Rhea, Themis, and Mnemosyne, you three have a network built off of your powers. So what are you going to do with that network? And by extension, what are you gonna do to Wyatt?”

They looked shocked, but they tried to hide it poorly, so. 

People often underestimate my perceptive skills.

“Wyatt is allowed a fair trial just as you were,” Themis says with her shoulders squared. I rolled my eyes. 

“A fair trial, please. You've been trying to paint his character as evil since this whole thing started and trying to paint him as evil, contaminating me like I'm some bastion of goodness.”

Themis’ hands trembled a little. Truth is heavy, ain’t it?

“When the truth is so much more complicated than that.”

 I turned to Mnemosyne and held out a hand, motioning towards her book. 

“Could I see that, please?" She looks at me, looks at the book, and raises a curious eyebrow. 

“That's not how my power works exactly. Is there a specific memory you wanted to look at?” 

The grin that tore from my face should be painted in a museum somewhere. 

“As a matter of fact, there is.”

I gave them the date, the specific day that I nearly lost myself the first time, not the second time, after Barnaby. The memory plays like an old record, but this time? I’m narrating it in real time.

“You see, all this specific day I was going through it.” Even now, the pain of that day still sits with me. 

“I had just lost my mother. I was frustrated with myself and my own shortcomings. And I got so weighed down by something that I didn't have to be weighed down with that I lost control. My dragon side ripped free, and she was hungry as hell, and the city? Cyran City was an all-you-can-eat buffet as far as she was concerned. Luckily, I was on the outskirts of the city when it happened, still far enough away that my team at Beacon could intervene. And they did, or at least they tried to.”

Vega, Liam, Dire Wolf, Pressure Point, Snapback,Fade Out…none of them had enough power to bring me down. And these were people who went toe-to-toe with galaxy-spanning armies and gods.

“ I don't know if they weren't putting their backs into it, they were holding back for sentimental reasons, but they just couldn't do it. They couldn't put me down. And I had just gotten‌ to the edge of the city, tearing everything up: tree lines, power lines, all of it.”

I paused, slowing down as the memory got to this point. My heart sped up; it was almost as if I were back there.

“But Wyatt was there. He stood right in the way, and he looked up at me with no fear. He said, ‘if you're going to destroy the city—if you're going to eat everything in your path, then you start with me.” 

Hand on his chest, right over his heart. He broke the rampage I was in and gave me just another reason to love him.

As the memory played, tears fell down my eyes like a waterfall, not because I was sad but because I was happy. It was because of Wyatt that I did not become a real monster that day. Thanks to him, I gained control back. 

“Now, if Wyatt was this megalomaniacal villain that you proclaim he is, why would he stop me? Why would he care?” Hands in my pockets, I shrugged as I pleaded my case.

“You could say he was faking it, maybe to impress me, get under my skin—playing the long game. But I doubt it. For the crimes my husband committed, I stand by him.”

Themis and Mnemosyne remained silent. They looked as if I’d shot their puppy or something.

Meanwhile, I glanced back at Wyatt and nodded. His smile was sad but knowing. It was always going to come to this. It’s just how we’re built.

“But I also walk him into the jaws of judgment itself, and I'm with him every step of the way—he knows that.”

The words were clipped as they escaped me, but they were true—painful but very true.  I love my husband, and I always will. But my love doesn’t outweigh my sense of justice. And I don’t believe it outweighs Wyatt's either.

Themis gasped. The stones in her hands shifted.

And just like that, the scales balanced.

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