perfectworry | [original] Civilian Casualty

title: Civilian Casualty
verse:

joyfulfeather's super hero story
community:

therealljidol
prompt: Exhibit B: Week 1: "You gave everything you could possibly give."
word count: 1020
rating: PG
summary: Superhero in training, Cassiopeia, reflects on a woman she couldn't save.
notes: intersects with

joyfulfeather's At What Cost, per the challenge
notes2: hi, I'm Meep, and I like fucking around with the formatting to interesting(?) effect.

TRUDY DELANEY, age twenty five, passed away yesterday in a tragic accident.
Trudy was born and raised in Bangor, Maine. She graduated from Bangor High School in 2006 and left Maine to study librarianship at Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts. After graduation, she returned to Maine as a high school librarian and media specialist at Caribou High School.
Trudy is survived by her father Christian, brother Jake, and beloved pug, Boggles.
Memorial services will be held at the Unitarian Universalist Church at 120 Park Street in Bangor, Maine, next Sunday. In lieu of flowers, please send monetary donations in Trudy's name to the Bangor Humane Society.

You never forget your first civilian casualty. Trudy was mine. I clipped out her obituary and folded it into the envelope containing my birth certificate, passport, Social Security card, and proof of metaphysical abilities registration.

Trudy's death weighed heavily on my mind, even while my classmates and teachers tried to cheer me up.

"It happens to everybody."

"You did your best."

"I still remember my first time too, but you've got to move on."

Sometimes my classmates would laugh, not with humor but with hysteria. I heard it creeping up in their voices, and before long it would crack them up. Except for Thomas, I was the first one in our class to lose a civilian. I envied Thomas; his first was a scumbag billionaire about to go ENRON on his employees' assets and run away to Tahiti with his mistress - a textbook civilian casualty, he was an interesting but ultimately unlikeable character in the comic book of our lives, forgotten by almost everyone a few panels later.

The teachers never warned us about casualties like Trudy. Thomas's two-bit billionaire was a character so outrageous he was a caricature. I couldn't even remember his name, let alone the color of his eyes, but I couldn't forget Trudy's name, or the way her hazel eyes went saucer wide as the support beam crumbled down. I think she realized a moment before me that I couldn't get there in time, couldn't save her.

"C'mon, Cassie."

Thomas nudged me out of my slump, psychically jostling my plastic cafeteria chair from across the room. At least he had the decency to talk out loud instead of whispering into my mind like the telepaths liked to do, and laugh when you looked around trying to figure out who said that.

"You can't just give up. I saw you during P.E., you're a hot mess."

In a normal school, P.E. means "physical education." Here at super hero school, it means "psychic education." I can light things on fire with my mind, but Thomas was right. I was off my game and I kept missing the targets that morning, because somehow every one of them turned into Trudy's terrified face.

"Not funny, bro."

"Not funny at all."

Thomas nodded sagely and took the seat next to mine without asking. I didn't pick my head up from my folded arms.

"I thought about him a lot afterwards. You know, Parker Grant."

Parker Grant, the billionaire who might have grown up to be a super villain if his brains hadn't been blown up the time Thomas tried to save the world.

I didn't interrupt. I didn't do anything, just sat there at the cafeteria table with my feet sticking out and my eyes two inches away from someone's engraving, CK+LL=4EVA.

"Everyone says I got off easy, but he was still human. You know. Still alive, until I killed him."

Officially, Thomas's report on Parker Grant says "Accident," like mine, but the story seeped out: Thomas's powers got the better of him. I just couldn't run fast enough to push Trudy out of the way of a falling beam. Thomas's psychic power was the beam that fell on Parker, crushing him under the weight of it. If the rumors were true, Parker Grant died without a scratch on him and no visible injuries, except for the blood that gushed out of his nose and his ears and his eyes.

"They don't prepare us for that, Cassie. They don't get us ready for the real world any more than a normal high school helps normal people know what they'll have to do to make a living. Because they can't. Because we can't read it out of a textbook and understand what it feels like to have someone's heart stop beating because of us, and if we could, then we'd all just give up and go home and normies would quit the grind and grow sweet potatoes."

I laughed at that, but still didn't look up at him. It sounded like he might be crying, so I kept my eyes on the penknife engraving on the plywood table.

"But we can't quit, Cassie. The bad guys aren't gonna give up and go home because they hurt somebody, or kill them. We have to use our powers, Cass. For the greater good."

Privately, I thought the good would have been greater if Trudy was still alive, helping with senior research projects at Caribou High School and walking her dog, Boggles. But I sat up then, and shouldered my backpack as the bell rang. During Ethics, I wondered if the greatest good wasn't in freaks like those of us at Area 51 Alternative High School, but with the normies who walked dogs and helped rural kids apply to fancy colleges in the city.

Tonight, I'm due out on my patrol. They didn't send me back to Bangor after the Silver Vixen incident, but I got my placement at graduation, just like Thomas and the two others who eventually lost a civilian during our training. I work in Vermont now, a six hour drive from where I killed Trudy: super hero by night, library media specialist at Essex Junction High School by day.

When I'm not on patrol or checking out books, I like to walk my rescue mutt, Cap. Every April, we drive the six hours to her grave and leave flowers in the morning before her family arrives. For the greater good.