“All else aside,” Joseph said, “This was a pretty good idea.”
Chara sat on one end of the couch, legs folded up against her and toes curling over the edge of the cushion. Joseph sat on the other end, like a normal person. He’d just finished lighting the fireplace, fueling it with normal wood.
“I’m sorry,” Chara said.
Joseph raised his arms, ready to gesture—then let them drop back down into his lap. “Me too. I shouldn't have shouted. And I should have seen this coming—I could have said something earlier.”
“Really?” Chara said, reaching for the tassel at the end of her shawl, “You should have read my mind?”
Joseph shook his head, “No—no I just mean—in hindsight, this is so something you would do. You’re always acting out of obligation.”
Chara caught the tassel between her thumb and forefinger and started flicking it back and forth over her hand. There was something mesmerizing about the way the fire moved, never repeating itself, and yet somehow carrying the same flavor no matter what it did.
“What is it about him?” Joseph finally said. He shifted in his seat, turning toward her conspiratorially, “What is it that you like so much?”
“I don’t know,” Chara said, and it was true. She’d always shut her thoughts down before they got very far. “Let’s talk about something else.”
“Please, can’t you—can you just humor me?” Joseph asked.
“This isn’t a joke,” Chara said.
“Okay, fine,” Joseph said, leaning back again. “I can think of other questions. Who are you making yourself miserable for?”
Chara opened her mouth, but the words she thought would come easy weren’t sitting there on her tongue. It wasn’t fear freezing her up, like it always did. She wanted to speak. She disagreed. It was just that here, in this split second, she was realizing she couldn’t honestly deny the implication.
“Because it wasn’t for me,” Joseph continued, “I never asked that of you.”
“What did you ask?” Chara said. She caught the tassel in her other hand and pulled it so it slid through her fingers.
Joseph turned his hands over, palms up, almost reaching for something. He was still aborting his gestures halfway, like he didn’t want to startle her. Then he said, “I wish you could just be happy.”
Chara pushed her feet forward, let her heels slide off the edge of the couch and come down to land on the carpet. Joseph was right, but there was a poison in his implication, like he wouldn’t mind if she wronged him so long as she felt good about it. She shook her head—her vows weren’t so easy to erase. She was obligated to love him, no matter what he said.
Still—she couldn’t deny that if Joseph was this upset, she was probably approaching it wrong.
“There’s the movement for sure,” Chara announced, tapping at her lips, “Hmmm—I’m not sure if it’s any deeper than that. I’ve never thought about it.”
Joseph’s face changed, a whole kaleidoscope of expressions. First the hurt dropped out—she hadn’t noticed it there before that moment—and a blank sort of confusion spread over. Then he realized what she was talking about, and his eyes went wide, a bit more panicked than his normal enthusiasm. But there was still excitement there too.
“I think,” Chara said, threading her fingers together, “He talks to reporters a lot, but not the way that other heroes talk a lot. When that building went down three and a quarter months ago, he also talked to that child—that little girl all alone—and it was the same. He wasn’t doing it for anyone to see it. That’s why it works. There’s something—reassuring.”
“His voice?” Joseph asked, “Like the sound of it?”
Chara blinked. “No, I watched the videos on mute. There were subtitles. It’s the things he was saying, when they caught it. And sometimes, if the camera is too far away, you can still see the way people look after they’ve heard. You can see it on their faces.”
“Huh,” Joseph said. There was something in his eyes, narrower than his endless optimism, but just as thrilled.
“I like his fights too,” Chara said, pulling her hands apart and grabbing the end of her shawl again. She wasn’t sure if she was quite managing to convey her thoughts. There was always something there about Zephyr that defied definition.
Joseph nodded. “The movement.”
“No,” Chara said, “I mean—yes, but I said that. And that happens other times. It’s—in his fights, he never hits anyone. People fight him, and—I don’t even know how to say it—it’s like they’re so caught up in catching him that they stop paying attention to what they’re doing, to the things around them. And whenever they lose, it's their own blow that comes back around to them. So he never hits anyone.”
“You know, you’re totally right,” Joseph said. He leaned back against the couch cushion and set his hand on his chin. “I never would have put it quite like that, but now that you’ve said it—you’re exactly right.”
Chara turned in her seat to really look at him. “You watch hero fights?”
Joseph’s smile turned sheepish, and his hand moved to the back of his neck. “Well—after everything—I had to do my research."
Chara covered her face with her hands. She thought she might be embarrassed, but she was also smiling, wider and wider behind her palms. There was something so endearing about the mental image—Joseph sitting in his office, searching up hero fights, trying to see them whatever way she did.
That same thought stuck with her over the next couple of days. If Joseph could sit there and study Zephyr, then maybe it wasn’t automatically wrong to think about him at all. Maybe there was a way she could view him, appreciate him even—as someone with athletic skill, as a stranger who was trying to do the right thing. He wasn't the walking manifestation of everything she'd ever done wrong. He was just some guy.
A part of her still felt it was scandalous, but her new perspective also had something of a clarifying effect. Zephyr didn’t know her at all. He probably hadn’t meant to run into her in Joseph’s office, and if he had, maybe it had just been to thank her for helping him out on Auge Island. It would have been fine if she had read his letter, accepted his thanks.
Still, she had no plans to ask Joseph what had been done with the message. She'd already flubbed her last interaction with Zephyr—if she tried to fix it, he'd have no way of knowing. But there was somebody else she could try to make things right with.
First, she started watching videos of Zephyr again. It wasn't the same as before. She was still pausing every thirty seconds, trying to find the perfect frame—but the criteria she was after had changed. She skipped over the sky battles, searching instead for the parts that came after, when people came crawling out of the wreckage like ants. The shots came mostly during newsmen voice-overs that explained what had happened. Sometimes there were closeups. Eventually, she found the one she'd been thinking of, the one she'd half remembered.
In the back of her closet, stood up behind the row of dresses, were a set of canvases. She always meant to do something with them, but they were formal enough to be intimidating. Most of her best figures came half-accidentally, scribbled on the back of a receipt with a pen. Using a real canvas meant drawing thumbnails first, pulling out her paints, setting up an easel. It was a whole process.
Chara brought everything out to the living room. It took several trips—an extra one when she remembered the rug and went back to get an old sheet to spread on the ground. She pulled the curtain back from the window and set the easel perpendicular to it, canvas facing in, on the side of the window farthest from the corner of the room. That meant the light would reach it, but her back was still toward the wall. She wouldn't be comfortable enough to paint otherwise.
Usually, she never would have left her room for this.
She had already made up a sketch of what she wanted the picture to look like. It was on a smaller paper, but there was a grid, dividing the page into eights. She made the same measured marks on the edges of her canvas, spacing them out with a ruler. Then, careful and light, she drew out the main lines with a 6H pencil. If she was careful not to press, not to draw where she would need the painting to be white, then the acrylics would cover her composition lines in the end.
It was difficult work, but not for the reasons most people might expect. She had to pause five separate times during the pencil work alone just to close her eyes and breathe and remember why she was doing this. She wasn't giving in to her obsession. She wasn't doing anything to hurt Joseph—in fact, she never would have tried this at all if she hadn't thought it might make Joseph happy.
Finally, the edges of the shapes were all traced out. Chara took a moment just to savor them—even in the state she was halfway to working herself into, it was hard to keep from appreciating good shapes. And there was something reassuring about how these fit together. Her eyes were drawn to the right places.
"What's that?" Joseph asked.
Chara jumped. Her pencil dropped out of her hand, clattering against the easel on its way down to the floor. A bit shaky, she stooped and picked it up. Normally, she wasn't quite this easy to surprise. Art left her vulnerable—it had a way of sucking her in.
"Sorry," Joseph said. He was almost bouncing—every part of him primed to step forward, close the distance between them—but he stayed tethered at the edge of her floor sheet. "Can I see?"
"Hmm," Chara said, She stood up, tapped the end of her pencil against her lip. For once, she didn't feel badly for making him wait. She'd already decided to show him—that was the whole point. Really, she'd assumed he would walk through here and notice while she was at dinner. But if she had to pick when he got to see, she wanted to pick a good moment, to build the proper suspense.
"Eventually," Chara finally announced. Maybe she could ask her friends tonight, see how they thought she should reveal it.
"Death by suspense," Joseph said, dramatically slumping his shoulders, "I think all artists love to torment people."
"It's true," Chara said. She found herself smiling—she'd thought secrets could only be bitter, but this one tasted sweet. "Guess."
Joseph blinked. "Guess? What's in the picture?"
Chara nodded.
"Oh…hmmm," Joseph said. He tapped his chin absently, leaning forward a little.
Chara grabbed the canvas and turned it away. "Don't cheat!"
"Okay, okay!" Joseph said, stepping back. "But you haven't given me a lot to go off of."
"Are you sure?" Chara said. She set the canvas back in its place.
"Well," Joseph said, rubbing the back of his neck, "Now I'm starting to think I've missed something. Is there a person in it?"
"Yes," Chara said, "Two."
"So if I stand here," Joseph said, dramatically setting his hands on his hips, "You'll draw my face in on one of them?"
Chara laughed. "No," she said. On the right side of the frame was a young girl, hands in her pockets. Crouched down on the other side, head level with hers, was Zephyr, But his mask was on—so there wasn't anywhere to put Joseph's features. She might have taken him up on it, otherwise.
Joseph's shoulders slumped, but he was still smiling. "Man…so it is two girls then?"
"No," Chara said. She stepped away from the easel and past Joseph. "Keep thinking—I'm going out to dinner with my friends."
Joseph gave her a thumbs up, but his gaze was distant. He was still diligently trying to puzzle it out.
Chara stopped at the door, hand on the frame. Joseph was stepping slowly forward again.
"Do not cheat!" Chara demanded.
Slowly, Joseph turned and trudged toward the other door, shoulders slumped. "Okay," he said, and he sounded so forlorn about it that Chara nearly laughed.