“Oh my God, Xbox.”

Charmian let out an incredulous laugh as she watched Justin hug the console. “Really?”

“You have no idea how fuckin’ bored I’ve been.”

She bit back a response about wishing she’d had time to be bored. She’d been a little busy worrying. Still, it was nice to see him looking chirpier. The further they had got away from the city the brighter he’d become.

“Well…” Justin stood back up and took a look around. He scratched at his head and tried to make an assessment. “It’s not too bad for how long I’ve been away. I think we could probably get away with just a vacuum and a quick dusting.”

“Cool. You can do that and I’ll make the bed.”

“That’s a much quicker job.”

“Yep.”

“So?”

“So what?” She grinned. “I am the guest here after all.”

“That’s so not fair.”

“I don’t deal much in fair.”

She opened the cupboard under the sink, located a duster and quickly tossed it at him. He couldn’t help smirking as it hit him square in the face – clearly her aim was still pretty good.

“Fine, fine. Sheets are in the cupboard, and my iPod is in my duffel if you want to hook it up to the dock.”

“The what?”

“Sorry, I forget you old ladies aren’t down with the young people.” He pointed to the docking station in the corner.

“Bite me, ass.”

“See, now if you weren’t such an old lady you’d have flipped me off. Need me to show you how?”

Charmian playfully scowled at him and stuck her middle finger up in his direction. “I invented this move, rookie. Sit your ass down.”

“For all I know you could mean that literally.”

She threw back her head and laughed. Justin nonchalantly thought to himself that apparently losing her immortality hadn’t meant she lost the perfect hair. He had witnessed himself how little styling she put into it but she still seemed to wind up with neat dark curls.

“No. I did inadvertently feed Christopher Marlowe a couple of lines but that’s about it for my impact on culture.”

“Who’s Christopher Marlowe?”

Charmian considered telling him, but decided to hope he would forget about it before he had any chance to Google. Although she was enjoying his light mood and the banter she was a little bit self-conscious about her age now. What seemed fine when she was a supernatural ass kicker struck her as simply bizarre now she was a regular Josephine again. He was but barely into his thirties and she was centuries old.

“Any preference on which sheets?” She decided to go for a subject change.

“You may as well pick, you’ll be sleeping on them.”

Guilt tugged at her stomach. She was forcing him to hide out in the woods and relegating him to the couch while she was at it?

“I really don’t mind the couch.”

“Where’s that music?”

Taking that as a not so subtle hint, she rummaged in his duffel bag and quickly found the iPod. In truth she felt kind of stupid for not knowing how one worked. Technology just moved so quickly and she’d had so little need of it most of the time that a lot of it simply passed her by. Thankfully the way it fitted onto the docking station was fairly self-evident, and she’d seen Justin messing with it in the car so she had an idea how it worked. With a little trial and error she quickly got the hang of it. 

Scrolling through a list of artists whose music she had never heard, she was about to pick some Sinatra (if only because she actually knew him) when she spotted Justin’s own name in the list. If ever there was an opportunity to tease him for having his own music on there it was then, but more than anything she was curious. Over the years in various guises she’d known him as a painter and a poet. What did he sound like as a singer?

“Oh Jesus. Really?” He whined as the familiar beat started. Charmian didn’t respond for a moment as she was too busy wondering what the hell she was hearing. Now she really did feel old because her overwhelming thought was what a racket it was. Had he heard of a melody?

“Uhh… why did sexy go away, exactly?”

“Must we listen to me?”

“Yes. I’ve never heard you before.”

“You mean I wasn’t a musician in any of my former lives?” It was a little more sarcastic than strictly necessary.

“No, actually. Is all your music like this?”

Justin was torn between really not wanting to listen to himself and not wanting her to take SexyBack as representative of his entire catalogue. Clearly she wasn’t so impressed by that one.

“Let’s try another.” He brushed past her and started messing with the iPod, trying to ignore the way his arm had tingled. As much as he could joke with her about past lives and her age he still found the whole set up disquieting. She was some star crossed love that he still knew relatively little about, and he had problems with that. He liked to think he had more agency in his own destiny. And yet there was no doubt that he had been immediately attracted to her, even if subsequent events had taken the shine off. All in all it led to a contradictory attitude where he didn’t want to go down that road yet still felt the need to impress her.

As Justin went back to work Charmian lingered by the stereo, the forgotten sheets folded over her arms. Every so often he sneaked looks at her, gauging her reaction. He was taking the slight look of wonderment on her face as a good sign; certainly she seemed engrossed. That was a mental pat on the back for him. Clearly What Goes Around had been a better choice.

“Man, what did this girl do to you?”

Justin smiled. “Not to me, to my best friend. Though I had my own experience of that too so I guess I was kind of already informed on the subject.”

“I… wow.” She blinked. “This is really good, Justin.”

He tried not to let his chest puff out too much. It would have been a dead giveaway. “Thanks. It’s some of my best work, I think.”

“How do you get from whips to this, exactly?”

“Heh.” Another smile. “Depends what kind of mood you’re in when you hit the studio.”

He had his back to her, but still Charmian was watching him contemplatively as he moved around the room. In part she was watching the way his muscles moved beneath his t-shirt, thinking that for a human he was actually quite graceful, but mostly she was letting it sink in. In every life he’d had some kind of artistic talent but for the first time she was seeing it at full power. It made her wonder what he’d have managed if he hadn’t been so busy womanising with poets more successful than him. Byron really had a lot to answer for, but she didn’t dwell on that as she listened. It was emotional stuff and he sounded excellent on it. It almost made her wish she’d have found him earlier so she could have paid more notice to his career. Before they’d met and she’d realised he was her Michael she had known his name – as she knew a lot of celebrity names for work reasons – but hadn’t given him any attention.

“No, it’s really good. Really good.”

He turned back and smiled at her. “Thanks.”

It was becoming uncomfortable to have him look at her. She gave him a tight smile in return before going to busy herself with the sheets. Justin’s eyes followed her as she disappeared into the next room with a slight frown on his face. What had that been about? One minute they were having some fun banter, the next she was looking awkward and running away from him because he’d accepted a compliment.

Not for the first time he wished this whole thing was over already and the bad guy caught. As much as he wanted to feel safe again, he also needed some space from her. She did weird things to his head.

**

The deep breath in hit her nose with a strong scent of earth and leaves. It was a comforting smell and she tried to focus on it instead of the pins and needles creeping into her leg. The lotus position was much more comfortable when you didn’t need circulation.

Her new training tactic was not to train. She could practice her kicking until the sun came up but she was not getting any stronger. There was nothing more she could do to perfect her technique and no way to make up for the power she’d lost. All that trying was accomplishing was making her despair, so she had decided that it was her mind which needed some work. Whatever it was that made her great, she needed to grab back onto it and trust it would see her through.

Unfortunately this was a work in progress. To that end, she had wandered the three minutes down to the lake shore and was attempting to meditate. She had left Justin with instructions for painting the necessary sigils on the walls and she would go say the spells when he was done (he could have done it and it still would have worked, but his ancient Aramaic was naturally inferior to hers).

It might have been going better if she’d got the hang of not being able to compartmentalise the same way her immortal brain could. Individually, there was nothing going on that she shouldn’t be able to deal with. She had unrequited love? That sucked but she’d live. She was separated from her friends just when she could use the support system but she was tough. She was afraid for Justin but she could face that. The problem was that she didn’t quite know how to juggle all those feelings in her head without getting overwhelmed and giving into anxiety. She missed the easy calm that she’d had before.

She was disturbed by the sound of twigs snapping and leaves crunching behind her. Her eyes quickly opened and she twisted around to see Justin approaching.

“Hey. You alright? You’ve been a while.”

“Have I?” She wasn’t wearing a watch.

“Hour and a half.”

“Oh. Oops.” Maybe the meditation had been going better than she’d thought. It only felt like ten minutes.

“Never mind.” He dropped down next to her and stretched his legs out. “Just means you missed the stink of all those herbs. I left the windows open but honestly it could probably use another twenty minutes. Pretty out here isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Charmian looked out over the lake. The sound of water had always been relaxing to her and the air was crisp. “I can see why you would use this as a getaway.”

Justin nodded in agreement. “It’s good to cut the noise sometimes.”

She paused for a moment, a question forming on her lips. After a brief hesitation she let it out. “How do you do that with the noise in your head?”

He looked at her, scrutinising her expression. Her lips were pursed slightly and small frown lines were visible around her eyes. “It loud in there?”

“Oh yep. I just can’t seem to focus on any one thing at the moment, which is kind of new for me.”

“You don’t remember feeling that way before the avenger gig?” He plucked blades of grass. “How did you deal with it then?”

“That life feels more like a movie I watched than something that ever happened to me.” Charmian shrugged. “I don’t know. We were too busy farming to think about this stuff much. Chores from sun up until sun down, you did what you were told by your dad… just kind of lived day to day.”

“Farming?” He couldn’t picture her doing that. She looked more like she should have been a noble woman or something.

“Yes. Near Athens.”

That was about as much information as she’d ever volunteered about her own life, he realised. She asked him plenty of questions but rarely talked about herself much, save a few pithy remarks about historical figures she’d dealt with.

“Greek huh?”

“Originally, yeah.”

“You can actually speak Greek. And Aramaic.”

“And Italian.”

“Cantonese?”

She smiled. “No. I have a few words of Mandarin but only about enough to ask for directions.”

Justin shook his head and grinned back. “I know you had like hundreds of years’ head start on me, but you make me and my GED feel really uneducated.”

“Does it make you feel better if I tell you I’ve always sucked at math, even as a super-powered immortal being?”

He mused on that for a moment. “Yes it does. I’m good at math.”

“I’m glad my incompetence soothes you.”

“Seriously though…” He was still shredding grass. He wasn’t quite sure why but his hands seemed to need occupation. “Is this why you were out here? Trying to shut off noise?”

Once again Charmian hesitated. Nervously she tucked her hair behind her ear, wondering how much she was really willing to confide in him. Emotional barriers were shaky enough without using him to offload on. Still she had started it so she supposed she couldn’t be cryptic now.

“I feel like…” Now she was mirroring him, though picking daisies rather than grass. “I got complacent.”

“Really? How do you figure?” Maybe he was looking at this wrong, but he didn’t see how she could count herself as complacent after managing to remain at the top for so long. Surely that would have required continual effort? “You were like the biggest bad ass around.”

“Not exactly the biggest bad ass around but the biggest in my group, yeah. But that’s exactly it, I was the bad ass and I was way too comfortable there. Now suddenly what made me that is gone. I have to fight people much stronger than me and I’m having to mentally fend for myself instead of relying on handy super powers to shut down any inconvenient feelings. My total failure at it so far has just served to show that I was coasting on my laurels there. Relied on my strength too much.”

He thought about that for a second. In an unexpected way he found he could relate to that. It was easy to take success for granted and he’d fallen into that trap a few times himself in his career. It had taken painful moments like the Superbowl to remind Justin that he was not infallible and that people could turn on him as quickly as they raised him up. The situations weren’t exactly analogous but he knew what it was like to come back down to Earth with a bump.

“I disagree.”

She turned her head to look at him. He didn’t sound like he was paying lip service to placate her, but she didn’t see how he could honestly dispute her assessment. “With which part?”

“Maybe you did get a little too comfortable, but I don’t think what made you who you were can be gone.”

“Uhh, hello? Mortal weakling again here.”

“Aside from the fact that you’re hardly a weakling by normal standards, you could probably still kick most humans into the middle of next month…you really think that’s what made you?” He caught her gaze and gave her a stern look. “Bull. Trust me, I know. I don’t exactly have the world’s strongest voice.”

“Your voice is great!” She protested.

“I like my voice and I flatter myself I work it well, but there are people with better ranges and stronger lungs. I was in a band with one of them.” JC popped into his head. “Raw talent is not what made me more successful than anybody else who could have made it but didn’t. Talent means shit if you don’t have the stuff to back it up.”

Charmian didn’t respond, but he could see he’d struck a chord. Her face had shifted, now more quizzical than scowling.

“Like… you didn’t get handed any super powers that Lucas or anybody else didn’t get, right? You didn’t just get plucked out as some special chosen one to lead, right?”

“No.”

“So that means you earned it. How did you get better than anybody else at what you do? And why when you were looking for your little special ops group or whatever they are did you only take some people and not others? What were you looking for?”

The boy was good; she had to give him credit. He asked the right questions. “A lot of practice. And I guess with my team… I don’t know. I can’t explain it. Work ethic, attitude, there’s just something going on in their heads that I saw and knew it would make them better. Like… I don’t know. Zac came in with five other people but somehow I knew that if I gave them all exactly the same amount of tuition he’d be the one who really internalised it and gave it more somehow.”

“Exactly.” Justin said. “I don’t know what it is; I just know that when somebody has it it’ll take them further even maybe than people with more raw talent. They’ll be the person still practising when everybody else has gone home, they’ll be the person still trying to get it right when everybody else decided it couldn’t be done and gave up. And because of that they’ll be the person who brings it when it counts. It strikes me that if you managed to out superhero a whole bunch of other superheroes then that must be what you got. You may have momentarily misplaced it, but just know that it’s there and you’ll work through the other stuff eventually. It’s in who you are.”

Slowly Charmian’s head nodded, just once. Lightly she bit her lip and looked down at the hands she had now folded in her lap. The left corner of her mouth tugged upwards slightly.

“You know the thing about education, JT?”

She’d never called him JT before. “I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”

Her face turned sideways to meet his blue eyes. “It’s good to be educated but it’s better to be wise.”

Now it was his turn to nod and smile, to duck his eyes away from hers. “That a fact?”

“Just an observation from an old lady.”

She nudged him with an elbow and he let out one of the few truly whole-hearted chuckles he’d been able to muster since the whole screwed up saga had begun.