The question knocks all calm out of me.

Did I really kill all those people?

It occurs to me that I have yet to sit her down and debrief to her all the things I’m out there doing every day. All this time she’s been in the dark about it all and now, now she hears the news declaim me as a mass murderer.

My chest tightens, shrinks so it's too small for the beating heart within it. My palm begins to sweat so I take it out of hers, she doesn’t like that. She stares at me with a look that tells all.

She’s horrified.

Promptly sitting up straight on the bed, not minding the splitting pain that craves through my shoulder as I do. I open my mouth to speak, to respond to her question, to tell her that I am not a killer, that I am not the mass murderer the news has been screaming about.

But I can’t, the words refuse to come out of me. Looking at her, sitting there expectant and patient, even reaching out for my hand again, and I can’t say anything. So I sigh and shut my mouth.

“So it’s true then...what the police, the news is saying...you’re the Kneecapper? You’re a villain?”

It takes courage to look up at her again, courage I don’t have. So my head hangs down in shame, disgrace and rage. Rage. Questioning my rage, what I find is curdling indignation at her for making me feel wrong about protecting myself, protecting Rex and Austin, protecting Paige.

Furious my head rises to face her, I breathe out with confidence, “I did it for you, I had to, they gave me no choice! This is the only way we can be safe, the only way we can survive in Xoxia.”

That look is back. Mortified, she screams, “By killing people? There’s always, always a choice, Vern!”

Before I know it I’m biting back, “Not when they threaten you, not when they want to take it all away!”

“The Police don’t want to kill you,” she continues outraged, stepping away from the bed and taking her hand with her, “They want to keep you safe, they want to clean the city of illegal things, like gangs, like drugs, like trafficking all which you are now a part of!”

She starts pacing, a hand on her forehead and the other on her lower back, “How did we get here Vern?” She gasps, fighting tears, “How did you end up on the news as a Meta-Villain, wanted by the police for murder and aggravated assault and none of this is false? How? How!”

“It’s not like I wanted to do any of this, I needed to.” I explain, “They would have taken us all in, Austin wasn’t going to back down and Rex finally grew some balls to join in. Someone was going to die if I didn’t interfere.”

She swerves, hands akimbo, “So you interfered and killed several police officers instead?”

“I didn’t do it intentionally!" I panic. This is getting out of hand.

"I shot them in the knee and elbows to keep them down, b-but things got out of hand when that man started moving. He’s the one who shot me, he’s the one who caused all the chaos, if it weren’t for him I would have disabled them all and left peacefully!”

“Are you even hearing yourself, Vern!” Her hands are flung onto her head, hovering aggressively, ready to pull out hair, “Did you listen to the news? Several of the people you shot bled out, they died a cold, scary death! Does any of that sound remotely peaceful to you?”

Staring at her, the room void of anything else to look at, Austin has long gone and Rex nowhere to be found. Only she remains, and for the first time in many, many years, I don’t want to look at her any longer.

I turn away, staring instead at anything that I can find. The long green couch in front of the TV, or the coffee machine that sits on a table with our guns.

And the silence of it all eats away at me, the fact that I can’t summon an answer other than the one I dread to speak now grinds my heart away. After all, this would be the wrongest time to tell her the main, driving reason for all my madness, for all my willingness to kneecap people, is that - I love her.

Already, I can tell how that would go if I were to dare utter it, already I could predict her words to me.

'That’s no excuse.' 'I can't love you, not after this.' 'If you did you wouldn’t have done it.'

And in the deafening silence, I ponder these responses. Is love truly not an excuse? Can I not love her to the point of outright murder? This thought sickens me for a moment, but in another I find that my throbbing heart is calm and I realize, disgusted as I am at the thought, I agree with it.

In further reflection, I know that she is the only thing keeping me pressing forward. That day when Steve took me out there, it was Paige that made me survive. It was Paige that made me strive to survive, it was her.

Without her, I would've given up on living long ago.

Resolved, I look back up at her at last, “I’d do it again.”

This is not the response she waited so patiently for, she begins to stutter and sputter incoherent words all over the place but I break in to explain. “They would have taken me away, deposited me with the Suppressors and killed Austin and Rex for resisting. Now let’s say I didn’t give so much as a fuck about either of them, that’d still leave me locked up and away from you. I can’t stand that possibility, I just can’t.”

Her mouth clamps shut, she sighs and walks closer, standing at the edge of the bed once again, “You know I travel forward in time all the time right? There’s always going to be a time where we won’t be together, Vern, in fact-”

Breaking in I say, “No, that’s different. Whenever you travel you always make it back to me, you always do.”

Her look softens at last and pursing her lips she says, “Let’s leave Xoxia then, together. If you stay here...you’re going to...kill someone else because you can’t get caught. So let's leave.”

That’s a lot easier said than done.

“And how are we going to do that?”

She smiles and folds her arms across her chest, “You just became a wanted villain protecting Rey and his interests, I say that buys us some leverage with them.”

Right...let’s hope this doesn’t blow up then.