On a Saturday morning, or evening, or whenever the whim strikes her, she goes to the cabinet and takes out the case. The metal is hard and shiny, always cool to the touch. There is a space for a name on the cover beneath the official insignia of the League, and she can still see the precise lines of his handwriting inked onto a yellowed paper slip and slotted carefully into the niche. Inside, nestled snugly against a layer of dusty violet foam, are seven badges.
She works her way from left to right, top to bottom, polishing each badge until it gleams. Holds a badge up to the light and watches the white glints around the edges, checking her work, before putting it back.
It's habit now; she's retired, she's got her pension, there's nothing else to do in the meantime but wait. And she's already done a great deal of waiting - maybe too much, she thinks.
Mr. Mime is in the kitchen brewing her afternoon tea. A gust of wind rattles against the windows and she can feel the chill passing through her. Such an old house, all creaks and drafts. She'll have to call the repairman soon, before it starts to snow.
The eighth slot is empty, as it has always been. Maybe even as it was meant to be. She had never believed in the dream the way Oak had; she lacked the conviction, she supposes.
Instead, she let the doubt take root, watered it on the letters and parcels that always seemed to get lost in delivery, fed it artificial sun from the television. Cage matches. That was a man she saw on the screen, a man who had ended the year-long reign of terror of the most vicious crime lord the region had ever witnessed and who had accepted the honors presented to him with stoic dignity before being paraded among the reporters swarming inside the Indigo press chambers.
By the end of the fiasco he was gone. And good riddance for that.
There are times when she tries to place herself in his body, to read the secret in the badges he had fought so bitterly for. This is what they wanted, all of them, all rushing headlong into the wild in search of some grand, empty thing. The tired wish of a nation.
But there is no meaning to be read, no words yielded up by copper and gold. Just scraps fished out of the wreckage, refined, repurposed. This was the purpose for everything.
Delia puts the case away and walks over to the window, arms folded against her chest. Against the slate-colored sky, the first snow of the year has started.