Of Heroes And Villains: The Ties That Bind By Minikisa An assassin. A fallen hero. An unlikely meeting. The road to redemption is long and hard and filled with explosives.

Something brushed her shoulder and Caroline jerked back. The man – PsyKick, why was her brother friends with people who kept codenames anyway? – had somehow crossed the distance between them and was now awkwardly patting her shoulder. It felt surreal, not like a real touch, but an echo of one. Her skin that wasn’t even real skin tingled where his image touched her.

She stared at him.

“I’ve asked this before, but what’s wrong with you? I had you strapped to a table and now you’re, what, trying to comfort the woman who threatened to scalp you?”

He shrugged, a small smile curving his lips. She realized he looked different, not as gaunt, but strong and broad. “And as I told you before, I was having a great time.”

She laughed, the sound choked and hollow, her voice distorted in this weird space. “Liar.”

“You think I’m bluffing, but I’m not.”

His face sobered as he gazed down at her.

“Ian was very happy to see you. Me. In your body.”

“Stop reading my mind,” she said flatly.

He spread his arms wide. “I’m in your mind. I can’t help it if you don’t guard your thoughts.”

“Then get out.” She turned away.

He caught her wrist. “There’s still the matter of our bodies.”

“Undo it.”

“I can’t. You have my powers.”

Her brows furrowed. “If you don’t have powers then how are you here?”

“Ah, well.” He made a vague gesture as he seemed to strain for words. “Body swaps require a…connection. A bridge. It’s how you entered my body after I accidentally pushed you out of yours, even though you don’t have psychic powers of your own. I used that to get here, but I can’t do anything more than that. You have to fix us.”

Caroline chewed on that for a long moment.

“I can’t even keep the voices out.”

His face fell somewhat. “I figured. You’ll have to learn.”

“Learn how?”

PsyKick shrugged, and then held out his hand. “I’ll teach you.”

Caroline eyed his hand, not understanding why he was speaking to her so kindly. She reviewed the possibilities and eventually settled on manipulation. He probably thought he’d get her to cooperate more easily if he was nice.

She supposed they could keep up a cordial relationship until this whole mess was behind them.

And then…

Ian knew what she was.

A cold breeze made her skin echo with goose bumps, running both hot and cold.

Ian was safe. He clearly had powerful friends who looked out for him. Her interference had achieved nothing but pain all around; she didn’t think she’d even be able to keep up her surveillance of him if he knew to look for her. How could she ever stand to look him in the eyes?

Once she had her body she’d leave Paragon and never look back.


***


PsyKick sat on the floating island, gazing out at the stunning firmament, and wondered if Caroline had any idea what she was doing to him. He would ask her to stop it, but if she didn’t know, then he’d be handing her a weapon.

The key to keeping out the thoughts of others was to build walls. To build walls one had to want to protect something. As such, it was best to focus on something positive in one’s mind, guard it, and then expand from there. It created a safe haven into which one could retreat and which would, in time, grow to encompass the entire mind.

Caroline was meditating in the midst of one of her little islands, the one that held her core, suffusing it with contentment and happiness as best as she could.

Upset as she was, she was clearly straining to find positive emotions to build her Happy Place with.

Because she was reaching for arousal.

There wasn’t really anything wrong with that strategy; physical stimulation was one of the sensations best suited to grounding oneself in one’s own mind and body. Clever of her to figure that out.

He just wished she had figured that out sometime when he wasn’t right next to her.

Looking at the beauty of her inner mind really wasn’t helping him dispel these thoughts.

She’s an assassin, he reminded himself. Villain. Evil.

Of course, his crazed mind only liked that all the more, responding with a pleased purr.

He shifted uncomfortably and crossed his legs, glad that he wasn’t actually here physically. That would be hard to hide – actually, it wouldn’t be, would it? Having spent his puberty around teenage girls with the ability to read their minds, he knew they could easily get as horny as their male counterparts did, except they could hide all evidence of it. As a teenager fighting to conceal an erection at the worst possible times, he’d been rather envious their ability to carry on normal conversations while thinking about how they were soaking their panties.

High School had been a special kind of hell for him. Not only did he have to contend with his own hormones, he’d lived everyone else’s puberty by proxy.

His thoughts drifted off as he became aware of what his body was doing, the warmth of Caroline’s mindscape fading into the background. He could feel the heavy fabric of a blanket rubbing up against his sensitive chest, his skin prickling with awareness of every light touch. He heard himself sigh in a voice that was definitely not his own, soft hands slowly gliding down his subtly curved belly…

“What are those colors?”

PsyKick jumped, whirling around, the mindscape sharpening as he slipped back into the dream.

Caroline was watching him with interest, standing so very close to him. Her concentration had succeeded in immersing her more deeply in this mental state – she was no longer flickering, and was now almost as solid and sentient as he was.

“…colors?” He knew his imaginary mouth could not possibly be dry, but it certainly felt like it.

“Around you. They weren’t there before.”

PsyKick checked his walls, which were solid as always. He really shouldn’t be projecting anything, not even when in the middle of her domain.

The connection. He groaned softly at the realization that she was theoretically capable of prying just as much as he was.

“Ah. Just emotions,” he said evasively, and she cocked her head, her gaze sliding past him entirely to the swirl only she could see. Her fingertips traced the invisible shape, even though he knew it to be as intangible as smoke. Caroline’s eyes glazed over in bliss and he shuddered.

“They feel…” she murmured, trailing off, and PsyKick tried very hard to look utterly innocent.

She dropped her hand.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Many things,” he repeated.

She frowned at him.

“But that’s not one of them,” he said, at length.

Her frown only deepened.

PsyKick weighed his words carefully. He had seen that flare of self-loathing, and he wasn’t quite sure why, but it bothered him. “You are beautiful. And I mean inside.” He raised his gaze to the firmament that still was not glowing nearly as brightly as it had when he had entered.

She chuckled humorlessly. “It’s just light. Far too many people confuse something being shiny with it being good.”

“I have seen many minds,” he said simply. “I know what I’m talking about when I say yours stands out.”

Her image flickered.

“Do you even understand what I am?”

“Order of Oblivion. I know.” He paused. “But I saw more than that.”

The pleasantly warm breeze turned freezing.

“I know I played a part in pushing you into breaking in here, but if you read intimate memories of mine again as if you have any right to see them, I will give you back your body in a condition you will not like.”

He exhaled. “Fair enough. But I saw what I saw.”

She said nothing, taking a step forward and ending up close to her shining core behind them to resume her meditation.

“I’m close to waking up,” he called after her. “So I’ll be leaving for now.”

She briefly met his gaze.

“Do not tell Ian what you saw,” she said through clenched teeth as the dream started splintering around him.


***


PsyKick woke up to a body aching with need. He groaned softly and it ended up a feminine whimper. He rolled over to bite the pillow, willing himself not to touch the body that was not his.

As she had made very clear, he had no right to it.