Chara stood before the thick carved wooden doors, heart thumping wildly, hand poised to knock. The light slipping through the crack at the bottom was a different shade than the rest of the mansion—paler, and less warm, but airy rather than dismal. Joseph must have left the window open in his room.
Taking a deep breath, Chara rapped on the door, stepped back and waited for it to open.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then she heard Joseph’s voice, faint and muffled, “Come in!”
Hands shaking, Chara reached out and turned the handle, carefully so that the latch wouldn’t click. Then she slowly pushed open the door and crept inside. She glanced over the room, scanning the reading chair, the double bed, the curtains shifting in the breeze—but Joseph was nowhere to be seen. So, steeling herself, she pressed forward, past the bed and the dresser, until she could see through the door that led to Joseph’s personal office. It was a bit of a strange layout—there was no second door leading from the office back out into the hall. Still, there were probably worse eccentricities for a rich man to have.
Joseph was sitting at his desk in his office. He looked up from the tablet he'd been examining, saw her standing in the doorway, and his face broke out into a grin—the same way it had been doing since kindergarten, when he’d offered her a slice of his tangerine and she’d taken it. “Chara!” he said, pushing the tablet away, “I didn’t expect you—come in, if you’d like!”
Tentatively, Chara stepped forward. There was a chair on the other side of Joseph’s desk, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to sit down. Instead she grabbed the back of it, dug her nails into the wood to anchor herself there. She wasn’t going to run away.
Joseph’s brow furrowed. “Is something wrong?”
The words caught in Chara’s throat. She was stuck staring at Joseph’s face—his skin was fine, a lighter brown than her own—but the rest of him ruined it. His curly black hair was plastered down against his scalp, and his eyes were perpetually blown wide, like each and every event in his life came as a complete shock. Worst of all, his nose was high-bridged and crooked—it gave his whole face such a homely look. None of it would have mattered if Joseph was a coworker or a friend.
It was such a terrible way for her to think about her husband.
“Chara,” Joseph said again, face full of concern, “What’s going on?”
“I don’t love you,” Chara said. Maybe that wasn’t the kindest way to put it. She was half surprised she’d managed to get the words out at all.
“Oh,” Joseph said, and his shoulders deflated a little, but the smile didn’t slip from his face. “I know.”
Chara's mouth was dry, and her stomach felt like someone had pulled the plug at the bottom, like all her insides would sink down into the whirlpool, but there wasn't another way to say it. “I like someone else.”
Joseph’s whole expression dropped, and he just sat there for a moment, trying to pull himself back together long enough to form a response. Chara didn’t know how to help him. She'd just spent her last scrap of bravery.
Finally, Joseph swallowed, reached forward to straighten one of the paperweights on his desk. “Are you leaving me?” he asked.
“No!” Chara blurted, shaking her head. “No, I’d never do that!” Then her voice cut off again, blocked by the lump in her throat.
“Okay,” Joseph said, standing up. He didn’t do anything else—just sort of hovered there in front of his seat, frazzled and uncertain, hands raised in some motion that had been abandoned halfway.
Chara covered her face with her hands. If she tried to say anything else she was just going to start crying.
“So—um,” Joseph started, chair creaking as he pushed it back, “Why are we—why are we having this conversation?”
Chara took in a breath, slow and controlled, and let it out the same way. “I thought you deserved to know,” she said. It’s been eating me up inside, she didn't add.
“Okay,” Joseph said, voice strained, “Thanks for telling me.”
A clock was ticking somewhere nearby, but Chara couldn’t remember seeing one on the wall. Maybe Joseph had a watch on his desk, or maybe she just hadn’t seen it. She didn’t come in here very often.
Behind her, the curtain rustled in the breeze.
“Who is it?” Joseph asked.
Chara had been too young when her family moved to remember a life before Horizon city. So, unlike her parents, she’d always been looking up to see heroes. It was a habit so ingrained that it came to her like breathing—whenever she was outside, she would scan the sky, searching for those flashes of color.
As a child, she used to hope that one of them would come and steal her away, that she wouldn’t have to go home anymore. Then she’d grown up enough to start looking for a more realistic escape—that’s why she’d married Joseph right out of high school. But there was a part of her that still wished she could have been rescued in a more complete way, that safety and stability didn’t have to come at the cost of everything else.
A few weeks ago they'd been practicing figures at the studio—her friend Fatima had brought in a whole set of photos printed from news articles for everyone to use as references. Chara couldn't remember now if she'd picked hers because of the dynamic pose or because of who was in it.
Zephyr wasn't a particularly popular hero, but he wasn't unheard of either. From Chara's passive knowledge, he'd seemed like the kind of guy who was really good with civilians and didn't do much in fights. His power gave him some kind of control over the air, which meant he was always flying around. That made the foreshortening more interesting. So when she'd finished with the first study, she'd gone and looked up more pictures.
At some point she'd snapped out of her stupor, seen the notebooks filled to the last page, the sketches scattered over the desk in front of her, the dark window behind her curtain, the clock that read half past three, and she'd thought, oh no.
"A superhero?" Joseph asked, face shaped like he was trying not to let it make the expression it wanted to.
Chara nodded, sharp and short.
"That's not," Joseph said, rubbing at his forehead, "So you haven't even met him? Nothing's happened at all—you don't even know who he is."
Chara shrugged, not quite looking him in the face. He was right, but that wasn't the point.
"How did you even," Joseph started, "Wait—hang on a second." He sat back down in his chair, turned on the tablet and opened the web browser app. For an awkward stretch of time he was silent, totally focused on the screen in front of him. Then he spun it around for Chara to see, pointed at the images his search had brought up. "This guy? With the baggy clothes and the scraggly cape and the face shield? You can't even see any of him!"
"You haven't seen him move," Chara said, pinching the fabric of her shirt.
Joseph pulled the tablet back to face him again, stared down at it like he was trying to figure out what part of an equation he'd done wrong. "He's wearing purple," he insisted.
"Don't make fun of me," Chara said, quiet.
Leaning forward, Joseph steepled his fingers and set them against his mouth. For a moment he sat there, lost in thought. Then he shook his head. "Sorry—I didn't mean to—I think we're overthinking this."
Chara pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, I don't think we need to worry about it." He turned off the tablet, pushed his chair back and stood up. "Are you hungry? Let's scrounge up some lunch downstairs."
"You can't just," Chara started, not sure how to explain what ought to be obvious. "Don't pretend that it's fine."
"I'm not pretending," Joseph said, though he looked less certain than he had a moment ago. "I forgive you, if that's what you want to hear. But really, I'm already over it."
Something rustled behind her, and Chara startled—but it was only the curtains, blowing away from the open window. Chara shut her eyes. It had been awhile since she'd jumped at small noises. This whole thing had wound her up so tight, and it still wasn't settled. How could it ever settle, if Joseph was determined to ignore it?
"If you really want to make it up to me," Joseph said, reaching forward to roll his stylus back and forth across his desk, "I guess—you could come to work with me tomorrow! There's not—nothing exciting is going on, but it might be fun if—and really, if you don't want—"
"I'll come," Chara said, still facing away. It was a pathetic olive branch, and Joseph had only come up with it to humor her. But at the same time, it was the least she could do. And he'd asked.
Knowing her husband, it would probably be the highlight of his month.