Villains Wear Masks

“We’ve all got both light and darkness inside of us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.”

~ Sirius Black (Padfoot)

April was tired of reading the SNN articles on her phone every day on the supers in Kingdom City. Now more than ever their saves were seeming artificial. And it wasn’t just White Knight, who she knew for sure made publicity stunts to improve his public appearance.

Wild Fire and Artic Frost never seemed to want to really hurt one another, just like White Knight and Black Knight. If he was a more competent hero who actually wanted to help the city, he would’ve apprehended the villain by now.

Momentum, the newest addition to their city, seemed to be a little underqualified for the role. He never trained under a better hero, choosing instead to try and start off his career without sidekick initiation. And, besides his speed, he didn’t seem to have any technique.

Silver Streak was one April could stand, but she still wasn’t meeting expectations. She was stopping crime in Oakland, but it was an endless cycle. No matter what Silver Streak tried to do, there would always be sickos who wanted to rape women and steal from innocent bystanders. She would never be able to make a real difference.

April didn’t know why she was being so cynical, but it was true. Being away from Kingdom City and viewing the heroes from an outsider’s point of view must’ve really been giving her a new outlook on supers.

Interviewing a villain like X probably wasn’t helping. In the three months she’d been living in San Francisco, she found she was actually looking forward to her sessions and dreading going back home. At least when she talked with X he was being real to her, not putting on a façade of grandeur. He had no reason to lie to her. X would be stuck in Alcatraz for the rest of his life, lying to April would get him nothing.

Even the worst of villains would eventually want forgiveness, and X was finally at that point in his life.

Sitting at the staff cafeteria in Alcatraz looking at news articles on her phone was probably not the best use of her time though. She should’ve been back in the interview room, getting as much information as she could get out of X, not eating soggy mac and cheese that she picked up in the morning from the gas station down the street from her hotel.

She watched as a guard heated up a piece of pizza with heat vision. One of the only places in the entire place that wasn’t lined in Merlonium.

Now, why would a place lined with a mineral that could hurt supers hire guards that were supers? Mostly it was just in case the prisoners tried to escape. There would be competent supers on hand to go outside and stop the villains from getting anywhere. The only downside was the fact that Merlonium hurt pretty bad. Some supers could take the pain and after long exposure to it only feel a dull throbbing. Brandon once told April that he survived being tied down with Merlonium infested ropes because he got the pain out of his mind by thinking about her. She assumed the guards got used to the dull pain and took a lot of break in here.

April ran a hand through her messy hair. At the beginning of the interviews she had made sure to look impeccable. Now? She was tired and losing sleep, and, quite frankly, didn’t care about how she looked anymore. There were no cameras flashing at every turn to catch the city’s favorite damsel and X didn’t seem to care how his interviewer looked.

In fact, she had spent so much time in the presence of X without being turned crazy that Agent Argent of MASKED (Monitoring of Abnormal, Strange, and Kaleidoscopic Events Department) was thinking of making her his full time psychologist. It was why she had temporarily put a hold on her degree.

April could end up making a career out of interviewing X, a well-paying one too. She’d be far away from her damsel past and could finally make a better name for herself. Forget writing one book, she could write a plethora of them about X and other villains in Alcatraz.

April could be who she always wanted to be.

But, to do that she had to get back to X. And, it looked like her lunch break was just ending.

“You ready to see the King?” the guard who was heating up his pizza with his heat vision asked April, leaning against the counter casually.

The guards liked to poke fun at their most infamous criminal. Demeaning him gave them a feeling of power. April didn’t remind them that it did nothing since they had already made X helpless by locking him away without the name calling.

“As ready as I always am.” April answered, folding her arms into her chest.

The guard shook his head, an incredulous smile on his face. “Man, if you’d told me three months ago that someone would last this long in his presence, I would’ve laughed in your face. Now? I still find it amazing. I had to spend a week guarding his cell last year and I still lose sleep whenever I think about him.”

April nodded along. She could never figure out why all the guards were so scared of X. All you had to do was appeal to his softer side.

“X isn’t your run of the mill villain because you know he’s human,” the guard continued. “Most of these villains stuck in here are supers. I’m a super, so I understand the whole absolute power corrupts absolutely spiel. Having super powers can give you a rush, make you feel superior. Having X around reminds you that regular people can be evil too. Just because they can’t freeze you in a block of ice or melt you to a puddle doesn’t mean they can’t be awful, evil to the core people.”

April stirred her cold bowl of soggy mac and cheese absentmindedly.

“But, you know all of that, don’t you, Miss Watson?” the guard asked. “You have to spend every day with him.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

A pause. “Are you going to finished that?”

April looked down at the bowl and shook her head. She didn’t feel like eating anymore.

“Sweet.”

She let him take the bowl and watched as he used his heat vision to warm it back up to the temperature it was when April had first heated it up. She gathered her stuff from the floor and left the staff cafeteria, not looking back. By the time she was in front of the door that would lead her to X, she was exactly on time.

Inside it was as drab as usual. The bleak gray walls, the faint red stains that may or may have not been blood, the dull steel table and chairs. The old nails that kept the chairs in place. The cobweb in the top right corner of the room.

And, per usual, X was vibrant on the boring background. His orange jumpsuit and blood-red hair stood out. Not to mention his expression of someone who was genuinely happy to see her.

After years of seeing that expression on Brandon’s face, April felt a sharp twang in her chest. She had to remind herself that Brandon was probably doing better in Kingdom City without her. No damsel to worry about meant more chances at actually catching Anakin and stopping the cycle.

“How are you this afternoon, X?” April asked, like always.

“Well, I’m still stuck in this place, so how good can I be?” he asked cryptically.

April shrugged. “At least you have me to keep you company now.”

He smiled, “Yes, that does make my life significantly better.”

It was April’s turn to smile. At least there was someone out there who thought she was more than a little puppy that wasn’t smart enough to lead herself.

“Anything new you want to tell me about your life today, X? Or do you want to continue where we left off yesterday? How about more about your childhood? You don’t seem to like talking about that part of your life.”

X sneered, his expression going from harmless to vicious in nanoseconds. “My childhood isn’t a topic we need to discuss.”

April frowned. “You know, in most case studies the subject’s past is a key factor in how they act in the present. In fact, our childhood is when we get imprinted with certain fears and morals and stigmas.” X didn’t look like he was catching the bait, so April offered up a little bit of herself. “You know, I have this insane fear of walking barefoot in grass. I think I can tie it back specifically to this one time when I was five and walked through my neighbor’s grass barefoot and stepped in an ant pile. I had ant bites covering my feet for weeks. I cried like a baby.”

“What was your father’s reaction?” X asked.

She furrowed her eyebrows. “What does that have to do with anything?”

X narrowed his eyes, willing her to answer. April huffed and lamented, “They babied me for weeks. They jokingly told me not to walk in the grass like that unless the ants were radioactive or the grass was outside a laboratory. They always used to think I’d be a super like my big sister when I was little. They kind of got that dream stamped out of them, am I right?”

April felt fine talking about her past with the villain. Over the months she’d spent in his company, she found out that he already knew who her parents were due to the whispers of the other villains in here that her father had put away. Another reason not to want the villains in Alcatraz to ever break out – most knew your secret identity.

“Anyways,” April directed the conversation back to X, “we aren’t here to talk about me.”

“No, I suppose we aren’t.” X agreed, sitting back in his chair. “You know, I have a traumatizing experience like that from my childhood. I remember sitting on the edge of the community pool with my feet in the water. There was a dead bee floating on the top of the water, though I didn’t pay much attention to it because it looked dead. Next thing I knew, I looked down and the bee had climbed up my leg and was on my upper thigh. I freaked out and it stung me. I will forever have a fear of bees and bodies of water now.”

April laughed. “How didn’t you feel the bee moving up your leg?”

X shrugged. “I guess I just didn’t. At least it was fitting that when a bee stings you, it dies. I didn’t have to hunt it down myself.”

That was the push Aril needed to remind herself she wasn’t just talking with anybody, but a heartless villain. After all, that was what everyone told her about him.

“How did your parents react?” April aimed back.

X chuckled low. “My parents didn’t give two shits about me.”

April frowned, “They had to have cared about this. You got hurt.”

“Not everyone grew up around pillars of the society.” X fired back.

She narrowed her eyes and hardened her expression. “Just because they were pillars of the society doesn’t mean my parents were perfect to me. When my sister got powers, I was the one who was treated as lesser, not as worth their time. They had to help their superhero daughter thrive and they had to shelter their poor unpowered other daughter. They have never and will never treat me as an equal, and you don’t know how hard that is to live with.”

April put her hand to her mouth. She hadn’t meant to say those mean things about her family. She was so ungrateful. They took care of her. They didn’t throw her out on the street. She should’ve been happy that she grew up in a home where everyone loved each other, not resentful that she wasn’t given enough attention. There were others who had it worse than she did.

“See, that’s the real April Watson.”

April looked up and took her hand away from her mouth. “Excuse me?”

X laughed, a genuine laugh. He actually looked less sinister when he smiled and took joy I life. “That’s the real April Watson. You’ve been giving me your mask for months. That emotion right there, that’s the feelings you’re really feeling. But, you won’t accept them as real. You’re trying so hard to be the person you think you’re supposed to be without thinking for one moment who you want to be.”

She had never thought of it that way before. She may not have been a superhero like the rest of her family, but she did wear a mask.

“You need to be more like this. You need to share how you’re really feeling more often.”

April hardened to stone. She wasn’t going to let him in, not when she knew the kind of person he was. “Since when did you become my therapist?”

X raised his eyebrows. “I’m just trying to help a friend.”

A friend.

“We’re not friends.”

“Acquaintances then?”

April crossed her arms. “You are my road to something other than being known as White Knight’s damsel, and that’s it. I don’t need you to tell me how to live my life. I think our session is over.” She got up from her chair and made for the door. April had to get out of the room. It was suddenly suffocating.

“Just try and think more about what you want in life,” X offered. “And try to be your own person, not the persona you created to satisfy everyone else.”

April closed the door.