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Seven & a Half
The monitor beeped, and with it a graph sprang to life, a black and white image of something moving.
tu-tump
tu-tump
tu-tump
Those three little sounds making a graph on the screen in front of his eyes made Thomas come alive in a way he never had before. His body reacted in a way different than ever before. Each beat climbed its way to its peak before it fell, leaving room for the next. It made him feel excited, yet scared. He felt a tear well up in his eye as he clutched Tiffany's hand, leaning down to kiss it as the ultrasound device was moved across his wife's exposed belly. He wasn't sure how to handle this kind of challenge in front of him, and he knew there would be challenges, he just didn't know how monumental they would become.
"It's a boy," Tiffany told him with a smile
For seven and a half months they had prepared for it. It wasn't the first ultrasound they had made. But this was the first one that felt so monumental.
"What do we do if the kid is... Special. Like you?" The auburn-haired woman had asked him with a cocktail of emotions in her voice. She was holding a paper from the hospital, conclusive evidence of what they had both known for weeks.
He had dreaded this question since the day the two of them met. Yet he wasn't ready for it, like an uppercut from someone with a weak hook. He had prepared himself for it his entire adult life. There was no maneuver to deploy, no tactic clever enough, and no defense strong enough to create a guard for this kind of emotional struggle. He was unarmored and disarmed.
He rocked back and forth on his heels, hand holding his chin and the other hand fidgeting with the ring on his calloused hand. Tiffany couldn't help but notice and offer a soft smile at the stains on her husband's jeans, motor oil from the car in the garage. Something about it felt nice, normal even. Normalcy she had desperately craved for so long, normalcy she had never known, after all, how could she when she walked in on this same man picking out buckshot from his shoulder like it was corn from his teeth more times than she could count?
"I don't... Know? I think." He was baffled, confused, and unsure. While his intent was on the present, his thoughts were occupied by the past.
"C'Mon Jason, duck!" The man shouted, the wooden stick swinging at the 13-year-old boy's face, who avoided it narrowly with a step to the side, unable to avoid the follow-up strike that swept his legs, landing him on his ass. The man turned around and pulled the same motion onto his oldest son, who had just turned 15. Thomas took a step forward, dodging downwards, the stick swung over him, raising his leg he avoided the stick until it was perfectly lined up under his foot, where he could apply the full weight of his body onto it, pushing it to the ground. As he did, his father, Bruce was surprised. Thomas sprung up and delivered a swift punch to his father's jaw, who stumbled backward before backhanding his son in retaliation.
"We're supposed to be practicing defense today, Thomas."
"And I saw a crack in yours." He responded with a chipper tone that the look in his father's eyes immediately changed.
"You don't let your guard down like that after striking, it allows the opponent to retaliate. That's enough for today." Bruce put away the mahogany staff as his youngest son walked over to him, having picked himself off of the floor.
"You okay Dad?" Jason asked and Bruce nodded.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Are you?" He responded and Jason nodded.
The younger of the brothers had wanted to join in on the little sessions out in the make-shift dojo in the barn for years, but it wasn't till a few months ago Bruce had let him. And with Jason joining, the sessions without him had gotten more and more grueling. Bruce was wearing a long-sleeved shirt to cover up the cuts from his and Thomas's practice session with knives from the other day. Thomas was free to wear a T-shirt, his wounds while they had outnumbered Bruces twenty-to-one had all healed.
"Sorry sir, I'll do better next time." The oldest son had apologized and Bruce stoically nodded.
"You better. No one else is gonna hold back on you. Out there every mistake you make can cost someone their life."
"We're supposed to be practicing defense today, Thomas."
"And I saw a crack in yours." He responded with a chipper tone that the look in his father's eyes immediately changed.
"You don't let your guard down like that after striking, it allows the opponent to retaliate. That's enough for today." Bruce put away the mahogany staff as his youngest son walked over to him, having picked himself off of the floor.
"You okay Dad?" Jason asked and Bruce nodded.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Are you?" He responded and Jason nodded.
The younger of the brothers had wanted to join in on the little sessions out in the make-shift dojo in the barn for years, but it wasn't till a few months ago Bruce had let him. And with Jason joining, the sessions without him had gotten more and more grueling. Bruce was wearing a long-sleeved shirt to cover up the cuts from his and Thomas's practice session with knives from the other day. Thomas was free to wear a T-shirt, his wounds while they had outnumbered Bruces twenty-to-one had all healed.
"Sorry sir, I'll do better next time." The oldest son had apologized and Bruce stoically nodded.
"You better. No one else is gonna hold back on you. Out there every mistake you make can cost someone their life."
He knew that whatever happened, he wouldn't raise his boy as his father raised him. He wanted to protect his child from knowing the truth about what he did, to keep them away from that life. But perhaps that line of thinking was the easy answer, after all, while the circumstances were different Bruce tried for a long time to hide his past from his sons. The far harsher truth was that Thomas didn't want his son to grow up to be just like him.
He could still remember the cold touch of the rain on the bare skin of his hand. How he felt his friends' fingers dig into his forearm till it bled. The shouting, the alarms. The taste of iron and the smell of smoke. How the broken cowl betrayed the fear in the blue eyes at his mercy. He was fighting Thomas' grip around his throat, blood spat from his mouth as he begged his friend to snap out of it.
Thomas could remember how angry he felt, how instinctually he knew exactly how much pressure he had to put onto Chuck's throat to snap his windpipe. 7 and a half pounds of pressure more than he currently was. That was all it would take to put him out of this misery. A part of him felt like he had killed men with his own bare hands like this a million times before, his instinct was pure destruction. Yet another instinct had taken control, one far more sinister. He didn't push harder, he wanted his friend to suffer. He didn't know why he wanted it, but god damn did he want it.
They peered out through the hole the two had made of the south wall on the 18th floor off of the building they once had called home. Through the haze of anger and pure bloodlust, he managed to make one single rational action. In an act of mercy, Thomas let go, watching Illadvised plummet to his doom in the stormy New Lilith night.
Thomas could remember how angry he felt, how instinctually he knew exactly how much pressure he had to put onto Chuck's throat to snap his windpipe. 7 and a half pounds of pressure more than he currently was. That was all it would take to put him out of this misery. A part of him felt like he had killed men with his own bare hands like this a million times before, his instinct was pure destruction. Yet another instinct had taken control, one far more sinister. He didn't push harder, he wanted his friend to suffer. He didn't know why he wanted it, but god damn did he want it.
They peered out through the hole the two had made of the south wall on the 18th floor off of the building they once had called home. Through the haze of anger and pure bloodlust, he managed to make one single rational action. In an act of mercy, Thomas let go, watching Illadvised plummet to his doom in the stormy New Lilith night.
While he had many times come to resent his adoptive father for the way he tempered him into less of a boy and more of a soldier, he couldn't help but realize that without his fathers many, many lessons it would've been far easier for him to give in to that temptation he had felt that night, and many times since. Truth was that he wanted to give his son the chance to become different than himself. And ultimately, that was his answer to the question his wife had laid out in the room that warm Tuesday night.
"I want to give him the chance to be different." He stated and Tiffany's eyes lit up.
"Different how?"
"He should have a different life than I did. Unlike my people before me. A better one." The alien spoke, and perhaps in that wish for a better life for his children, he could feel truly human.
This wish for a better life was ironically what pushed him away from his wife and unborn child for 7 weeks and four days, traveling to places he had known existed but never dared to visit.
In an underwater cavern off of the coast of Norway he had always known it was here yet never entered its halls. A library filled with secrets. Entering that well of knowledge would solidify one thing for him; it would never matter what mask he wore or what the press would decide to call him. He would never be one of them. He would never be human. He decided that for his child he was willing to accept that so that his baby would not have to walk the path alone as he had.
His hell on earth. His celestial home. The remnants of the ship his escape pod that a young couple had found in a lake in America's mid-west had been sent from. Bruce's closest translation of the data from the spacecraft had only yielded one name for the craft that had crashed on Norway's coast.
Fifteen Divided By Two.
