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.

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

Psy’s gaze lingered on the breach in Caroline’s mind. No longer was it an abyss; now a soft golden glow was writhing in its depths, warm and inviting. Caroline’s mind had changed, too, in the short time since he’d last seen it. The islands had shifted completely, aligning themselves in a constellation centered on her core, thin rings of stardust swirling around it. The mental barriers were weak yet, but they would remain after she gave him his powers back – this switch would leave her in possession of the natural equivalent of PsyBlockers.

Knowing that she was better off for having known him made him smile, but it still did not compare for what she had done for him. And he intended to give that back in full.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“I figured.” Soft hands wrapped around his waist from behind, and she pressed the echo of her body against his. “What I did with the tower… that was good, yes?” She sounded uncertain and hopeful.

Psy sighed happily in response, and her mindscape lit up with joy. He turned in her arms, intending to kiss her, only to hiss in a sharp breath at the sight greeting him.

Caroline’s dream self was nude, blinking up at him with a small smile on her lips, straddling the line between shy and seductive.

Absurd to be affected by that when he had seen all of her in the mirror, but there was still a difference between just having seen it and having her offer so willingly.

She leaned forward, her lips brushing his ear and Caroline whispered as if confiding a terrible secret. “You’re overdressed.”

He laughed, breathless despite having no breaths, and easily lifted her as the clothes on his body just melted away. She wrapped her legs around his waist eagerly, tightening the hold of her arms around his shoulder.

And then they kissed. Light sizzled and exploded all around them.

“I’ve been thinking,” she murmured and licked his neck. He groaned, helpless before the onslaught of pleasure all around them. “Can you give me another body?”

Brief pause. “What do you mean?”

Her fingertips traced along his back as she leaned back to meet his gaze. “Taking your body would be wrong, but… the idea is sound, I think. I could use a body nobody else would miss. Woman in a coma, maybe?”

Psy blinked, and then frowned at the vision of loveliness in his arms. The instinctive reaction to having her look like anything other than this was No. Verging on Hell, no. “Having a body that’s not your own will always feel wrong.”

She nibbled on her lower lip. “A small price to pay for freedom. I don’t… this is the first time I’ve seen an escape that could actually work. It’s one thing to take contracts when I have no choice, and another entirely when I’m passing up a chance because it would be hard.”

He sighed. “I could do it, yes, if we found someone suitable. But there has to be better ways.”

“They have a tracking spell on me,” Caroline said wistfully.

“They don’t. I removed it.”

The earth shook.

“What?”

Her voice was a quiet whisper, yet the sky roared with thunder.

“I…thought you’d like it.”

“Like it,” she repeated, dazed. “I…do you know how hard I tried to find a way to remove that? Nobody, nobody wants to cross the Order, and even when they do, they still have no reason to trust an assassin.” She laughed, and it was bitter, and suddenly she was out of his arms, pacing the edge of her island. “And you did it in three days?”

He opened his mouth, but then she laughed again, in disbelief.

“One day.”

Yes, Caroline was definitely getting better at reading him. He’d barely even sensed her intrusion.

“I am fortunate to have powerful friends,” he said soothingly and crossed the distance between them in a blink. “And there’s nothing wrong with not being able to solve a problem by yourself and needing help sometimes. It doesn’t make you… less.”

“I’m not...” She struggled with words, and the light of her mind kept wavering in her turmoil. “I never wanted to be this. Some victim for a hero to save.”

He rested his forehead against hers. “Look,” he murmured, lowering his walls.

Her mindscape fell away, silver light solidifying into walls, confining and looming like they were closing in around them. Caroline froze. PsyKick was lying in bed, gaze vacant as he stared at the ceiling, arms and feet strapped to that hated bed.

“I never wanted to be a lot of things,” he said, pressing a gentle kiss to her neck. “And I needed someone to save me.” The memory shimmered, and then Diane was leaning over him with a smile, brushing his cheek as his other self gazed up at her with adoration. “Does that diminish me in your eyes?”

Caroline slowly shook her head.

“Then extend yourself the same compassion you extend to others.”


***


PsyKick fell to his knees, coughing up blood.

The villain loomed over him with a mad grin distorting his twisted features. “It ends today, Tenacious Teens! At last, this world is mine! And there is nothing you can do to stop me!”

Psy’s bloodied lips curved into a smile. “Three words. Death from above.”

The mutant froze, then snapped his head up, snarling at Dawn – who lit up the sky the moment he looked at her with a blindingly bright light. He roared and clawed at his eyes, and a moment later was hit with the floating remains of a truck, enveloped in a golden glow.

The villain blindly smashed his fist into the twisted metal wrapped around him, tearing it to pieces. “You fools, I am The Brick, I am invincibl–“

“Boom,” said Tex, leaning against the wall for support, clutching his broken arm.

The kinetically charged metal exploded.

Caroline watched with a wide grin on her face.

“And you were how old?”

“There?” Psy hummed thoughtfully as the memory faded. “Seventeen, I think.”

“Seventeen,” she repeated, shaking her head. “You were saving the world when you were seventeen. When I was seventeen, I was getting arrested for public indecency.”

“That’s a memory I’d like to see.”

“New Orleans. I’d been led to believe that beads were an entirely appropriate attire.”

“Beads, huh?”

“Nothing but beads.” Caroline flashed him a smile. “It was fun, arrest and all. And thus began my career as a hardened criminal.”

He laughed and pressed a kiss to her neck.

“Your turn. Preferably with the aforementioned beads.”

Caroline curled up closer to him as she contemplated which memory to show him next. In their little game of back and forth, Stephen had played out a variety of scenes from his life for her.

Some were moments he was clearly proud of, moments he had faced villains and evil and persevered. Watching him fearlessly challenge a mad demigod made her insides writhe with lust.

But he had shown her other moments, too.

His defeat at the hands of a villainess.

The horror of fighting his own friends.

He’d apprehensively watched her reaction out of the corner of his eyes and seeing him at his weakest only made her angry on his behalf.

So Caroline tentatively started showing him memories in return.

She brushed over her training – she did not think she would ever be able to display her past vulnerability as serenely as he did with his – and focused on the things she’d accomplished that she was proud of instead. Raising Ian. Almost graduating as valedictorian, only to deliberately flunk her last exam so the associated scholarship she did not need would pass to someone for whom money actually made a difference. Using her generous salary – the Order charged exorbitant fees for their services – to fund charities.

And her kills.

For all that she hated her place in life, she did not feel remorse for many of her victims. The Order’s highly specialized service of being able to take out anyone, anywhere, no matter how well-protected, was rarely called in for true innocents, because they rarely had that level of protection – more often than not, it was monsters turning on other monsters. And she had chosen her contracts well.

Radiance decided to showcase one of her last targets, and felt a wave of disapproval from his direction. But pretending she wasn’t proud of the things she’d done would simply be a lie. So she calmly laid out the facts as she’d researched them before accepting the contract.

It had been a Colombian drug lord, his empire spanning half of South America. His smuggling operation had made him a truly wealthy man, able to bribe his way through life, far above the law. In his quest to refine a drug both cheap to produce and addictive beyond measure, he’d stumbled upon Metadine, a vicious drug that awakened latent powers in its users. The power rush was said to be immense, but required regular doses and came at the cost of sanity.

She’d been hired by one of his rivals. Radiance had enjoyed twisting that knife.

Some people made the world a better place by leaving it.

Stephen sighed and ruffled her hair.

“No more, okay?”

She blinked up at him.

“If you had the opportunity to kill Cinder Snow right now, would you not take it?”

He tensed and didn’t answer.

But she could read it in his mind.

“I would,” she said serenely. “And for what she did to you, I’d make it painful.”

Stephen groaned and suddenly rolled on top of her, pinning her arms above her head. “You shouldn’t say such things,” he said, his gaze intense.

“Don’t like what I am, hero? It’s not going to go away.”

“I like it far too much,” he rasped and then his mouth was on hers, hot and desperate and filled with need. She moaned, barely aware of her mindscape shifting to one filled with warmth and silk and mirrors reflecting a thousand different desires.


***


Psy moaned against her, his mental projection fading in and out of existence, as did hers. Bodies had so little meaning here, and they drifted from one fantasy to the next. One moment she had him tied to the bed and the next he was atop of her, bodies tightly entwined as they bathed in pure pleasure, ecstasy building all around them.

And it just kept building, never releasing.

If Psy had been the one with the powers to shape this encounter, he would be able to mimic what their bodies just did naturally, but Caroline had neither the knowledge nor the control to do that. She whimpered and he could feel her desperation, feeding his own, which he in turn projected to her, creating an endless feedback loop of sexual frustration.

He was becoming aware of his real body again, writhing under the sheets.

“I want you,” he whispered and she bucked beneath him.

“You have me.”

“Not here.” He gave her neck a lick and wished he could actually taste it. “I want to see you.”

Caroline grew still, panting with need.

A moment later an address flashed through his mind.