“NO!” Jane screamed.

She lurched forward, her eyes wide, her arms thrown out – but too far away to stop it, too far away to do anything as Captain Dawn set the gun an inch from his head and pulled the trigger.

BANG

Plink.

“NO!” she screamed again – but then her cries abruptly died. Halfway across the room, she stumbled to a halt, stunned, as Captain Dawn turned his head around to stare at her, a morose, curious look on his face.

“Who’re you?” he mumbled, “What’re you doing? You’re… you’re…” The gun flopped down into his lap. “You’re not supposed to be in here.”

Her feet frozen in place, her face contorted in strangled, dissolving horror, Jane’s eyes flickered from the Captain’s miserable expression to the smoking pistol in his hand to the squished, compacted bullet laying harmlessly on the floor.

“What… what am I…?” she spluttered incredulously. Then her brain regained proper use of her tongue and her voice rose to righteous anger, “What am I doing?! What are you doing?! ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR GODDAMN MIND?!”

“Stop shouting…” murmured Dawn. He sniffed and rubbed his wet nose with the back of the revolver. He looked down at the gun. “It doesn’t hurt me,” he said glumly, “Nothing does.”

“I… uh… my…” stammered Jane, words having temporarily abandoned her. All she could do was keep shaking her head and staring, disbelieving, at the man in front of her. “Then… then why-” she got out finally, her teeth gnashing every word, “-why. Are you shooting yourself. In the head?!”

“See if it works,” Dawn replied miserably. He swung his big head back around away from her, staring blankly at the desk in front of him, at the pile of reports and newspapers. “Maybe one day it will.”

“Wha- ah-” Jane spluttered, her hands held incredulously in the air. Her mouth worked furiously, struggling to form a coherent sentence. “One day?! I… Are you… Give me that gun!” she demanded. Dawn just sat there, slumped over, not looking at her.

“Please leave,” he whispered.

“Um, no,” replied Jane sarcastically, pausing in faux consideration, “No, actually, I don’t think I will.”

“Suit yourself,” Dawn mumbled. He flopped his hands on the desk and lay his chin on his arms.

A dusty silence stretched out between them – the Captain laying with his head in his hands, resting on a newspaper, the empath shaking her head, blinking rapidly as she struggled to comprehend what she was seeing.

“Why,” she got out finally, “Why, for the love of… EVERYTHING! – are you trying to kill yourself?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Dawn moaned softly. He rolled his head to the side, refusing to look at her.

“I-” Jane pinched the bridge of her nose and unleashed a flurry of violent swear words under her breath. This was insane. She was going insane. First the kid, then Morningstar, now-

“Try me,” she swore, “Just…” she resisted the urge to swear more, “…try me.”

Captain Dawn rolled his head on the side, looking up at Jane, the edges of his green eyes tinged with red. For a moment, she thought he was going to yell at her – but when he finally spoke, his voice was soft and sorrowful.

“Have you ever been in love?” he mumbled.

Jane hesitated.

“No,” she said finally, her voice little more than a murmur, “I don’t know.”

The superhero shook his handsome head, his dark hair barely moving. “No. You’d know. There’s no way you couldn’t, no way… when you love someone, when you find someone perfect, and the world stops moving around you, and they’re, they’re everything, and-”

“Captain,” Jane, hating herself for doing so, but unable to shake the burning image of Detroit from her mind, “Look. I’m sure this is all really important, but I need you to come with me. I need your help, the Black Death is-”

“Who?” mumbled Dawn.

“The Black Death!” she repeated louder, “He’s destroying cities sir, you need to stop him, he’s going to destroy the world if you don’t-”

But to her horror and amazement Captain Dawn just turned away.

“I don’t care,” he muttered.

Jane felt like he’d slapped her.

“You don’t… you don’t…” she stammered, stumbling over her words. She squeezed her eyes closed and open again, sure she’d misheard him, positive she’d explained it wrong. “Sir, Captain, he’s killing hundreds of thousands of people, he’s going to take over the world, you need to-”

“I don’t care,” Dawn said again. Face down on the desk, he rolled his head back over on his muscular arms, his lips drawn, angry yet miserable. “There’s always something. Some… villain to fight. Some… people to save. It doesn’t matter.” A single tear, a glistening drop of sunlight, leaked from the corner of his eye. “None of it matters anymore.”

Jane just stood there. Unable to speak, unable to move. The gears in her mind grinding through blank shock. After a few seconds, when she didn’t respond, Captain Dawn kept going.

“She’s dead,” he said, and his chest shuddered with the words as he said them, as though they caused him physical pain. Jane stared blankly.

“Who?” she asked. Dawn’s head snapped around, his eyes shimmering with disbelief.

“Caitlin!” he cried, “Caitlin, who else?!”

“Right, ok, Caitlin,” said Jane hurriedly, holding up her hands to placate the Captain, who was suddenly halfway off his chair, his face a mask of mangled fury, “No, of course, Caitlin, your wife, who else?” She kicked herself for missing the obvious. “Sorry sir, I’m really sorry.”

The anger on Dawn’s face faded as quickly as it had risen. “I… I don’t…” he sobbed. He slumped back into the chair. “Now that she’s gone I…” Dawn let out a long, heart-breaking moan. “I don’t know what to do, I don’t… none of it matters. Not anymore.”

“But…” murmured Jane, unable to grasp it, unable to understand, “But sir… just because she… Caitlin… is dead, doesn’t mean you need to stop...”

“You don’t understand,” Dawn mumbled. He raised his head from his hands, staring blankly down at the desk. “It was all for her. Everything I did, I did it to make her happy, I…” his voice gurgled. Then he straightened up, shaking his head, unable to meet Jane’s eye.

“She was the one,” he said miserably, “She was the one who wanted to be superheroes. She was so passionate, so forceful, with all these dreams about changing the world and helping people and I…” Dawn’s voice wavered, “I just wanted to be with her. I just… I loved her, I loved her so much and I was scared, I just wanted her to love me and so I…” He trailed off, sniffing, staring down at his hands.

Jane’s mind was blank. “But…” she started- but her voice caught in her throat. She tried again. “But you… that’s wrong! You started the Legion of Heroes! You’re a legend, the Power of a Hundred Suns, you, you intervened in dozens… hundreds of conflicts, you’ve saved thousands of lives!” She stared at him, her face ashen, aghast.

Dawn shook his head. “It was all Caitlin’s idea,” he mumbled, “She came up with everything. The Legion of Heroes. The name, ‘Captain Dawn’. Even the costume,” he added miserably, gazing with painful longing at the glass case in the corner where his wife’s uniform stood empty, perfect partner to his own. “Everything. She would talk in my mind, tell me what to do, she… she cared about these things, about the world, about…” he made a face, “…politics and people and human rights, and, and being a hero and… all of it. And I just, I had the power, and it just made her so happy, and I just wanted, I… I just didn’t want her to leave.”

Jane’s heart dropped to her stomach – but she didn’t believe it. She couldn’t.

“We will do what we must, we few, we great,” she recited. Memorised, word for word. “We, who have the power to save the world, and who will not, cannot, stand idly by while its peoples suffer. We are servants of no nation but the protectors of humanity”. She looked at him pointedly. “You said that.”

Dawn shook his head again.

“Caitlin wrote it,” he mumbled.

“But you’re…” Jane whispered lamely. Underneath her battered armour, her shoulders drooped. “You’re a hero. You’re Captain Dawn.”

The golden man, slouched over, glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “That’s not my name,” he murmured, “Everyone always calls me that but I’m not… I’m just Walter,” he said pathetically, “Walter Reid.” His face crinkled. “Caitlin, she’s gone and… nobody ever calls me by my real name.”

And then, before she could do anything, the hero of legend’s shoulders hunched over and he began to genuinely, openly cry – as Jane just stood there, watching golden tears stream down his perfect face.

“Oh God.” Her knees buckled. Jane doubled over, a dry, retching sickness spreading through her chest. She wanted to collapse, to scream, to beat this giant, miserable man – hit him, again and again and again until he gave in, until he retracted these lies and admitted that he really was a hero, the hero he had to be…

Oh God. Everything she’d believed in, all those years of hard work, and now… this man that she’d… she’d worshipped, who she’d looked up to since she could walk, was saying these things and just… moping and sobbing and crying there in front of her like some shining over-grown baby…

No. She straightened up, forcing herself to draw a long shaking breath, trying to focus, to drag her mind back to why she was there. Detroit, the fire, she had to, there wasn’t… there wasn’t time for this.

“Sir,” she whispered. Her voice shook and her eyes seemed too heavy to ever leave the floor. But she pushed herself onwards, forcing the words out. “Captain,” she said, “Captain Dawn. Walter. I...” she took a deep breath, “I know, you might not be the man everyone thinks you are. I know you… you miss Caitlin, and I’m so, so sorry she’s gone. But I…” her voice trailed off and she looked at him, slumped over in front of her alone in this attic. “But I need you,” she pleaded, “Right now, I need you. I need you to use your power, I need you to be a hero, I… I need you.”

A heaving sob caught in her throat but she forced it back down. “Please,” she begged him, “I can’t do it. It’s just me and I don’t know how to… the Black Death, he’s back and he’s going to destroy the world-”

Captain Dawn – Walter – barely looked up from crying. “I don’t care,” he sulked miserably, and then, with a hint of anger, “And I’m telling you, I don’t know who that is.”

Jane’s fists clenched in frustration. “What do you mean?” she demanded, feeling so exasperated she could cry, “How is that possible? How can you not know who...?”

She fell silent. For a few seconds, both she and the most powerful man in the world stood stuck in place – her trying to collect her thoughts, him sobbing like a baby, his arms dangling either side of the chair. Finally, after a full minute of her groggy mind reeling while… Walter… bawled into thin air, finally the man’s crying trailed off. He sniffed and exhaled, drawing a shuddering breath in between his teeth and staring across at Jane through red, bleary eyes.

“Who are you?” he asked finally, sucking in a wet sniff, “One of Elsa’s new…? Why are you even…?” The words fumbled on his tongue. “She’s supposed to tell them, they’re not supposed to, to come in here…” His eyebrows furrowed, dull confusion scrawling over his features as his eyes took in Jane, seeming to really see her for the first time. “What happened to you? Are you… are you hurt? What’s… why is there an ‘E’ on your face?”

“It’s my-” started Jane, her hand flicking instinctively to her tattoo – but then she hesitated, the true meaning of his words hitting her. “Wait, Elsa?” she queried, peering forward at him, confused, “Elsa Arrendel? The White Queen? She’s alive too?”

Captain Dawn stared at her, tear stains still fresh on his cheek. “Well... I think so,” he said with a slight hiccup, “I mean I haven’t heard… wait, what do you mean too?”

Jane blinked, her mouth stuck open, trying to process. The White Queen – alive? And Captain Dawn… Morningstar…

And suddenly, her eyes caught the top of the newspaper on Dawn’s desk, the bottom half covered by his arms. Jane squinted, reading the headline upside down – something about the Lakers beating the Celtics, she didn’t know, she didn’t follow basketball – but the date…

June 12, 1984