Responsible
Responsibility is a funny thing. There are several kinds of responsibility. There is a responsibility for you. There is responsibility for your things. And then there is responsibility for people. When you are a villain the only thing that you have responsibility for is yourself, and maybe your things, if you're lucky enough to get attached to something. You don't feel responsibility for anybody, and that was a good thing.
When you are a hero, however, you are responsible for other people as well as yourself. Being a superhero, however, isn't like being a firefighter, where if the mission is too dangerous for the officer you would save yourself before you would save the civilian. Superheroes have the' super' in their name for a reason, though.
This, of course, was that no matter what the danger someone else always meant more than you. This selflessness was what gave us the 'super' I suppose.
I didn't realize this before I became an official superhero, though. It was an interesting change, from taking care of numero uno to suddenly taking care of others, even if you didn't know them at all. I wasn't used to having to take care of anyone, and suddenly I had an entire population under my watch.
Me, being responsible for someone other than myself, what a concept!
What they don't tell you is that responsibility also has something to do with caring for the person that you are responsible for, even a little bit.
I realized this when I had to watch someone that I loved save somebody that not even firefighters could get through. The tower was bellowing flames left and right and they were the only person that could save the little girl that was trapped inside.
I was fearful for that person, and I didn't want them to go. They laughed away my fear. "Don't worry," they said. "I'll be just fine, I always am." Then they raced into the building, leaving me with only a burst of unnatural wind and a kiss on the cheek.
It had been the first time, and the last, that I had let him leave me.
The suspense was deafening. The only thing that I could hear was the heartbeat in my ears the only thing that I could feel was the adrenaline rushing through my body while I was aching to be inside with them, saving a lone little girl.
That and the selfish wish that they would just let the innocent little girl burn and be standing here with me instead, even though I knew that they would never stand for that. If they could save someone, they would. That was the fact of the matter, and there was nothing that I could do about it.
After that mission, which was successful although they did suffer from some second degree burns I asked them, "Why do you do those things for people? What's even the point?"
"Because I'm a hero, it's just what I do."
"Yes, but why?"
"I don't really know," they shrugged. "I guess I feel responsible for them in a way. You know?"
But no, I didn't know. "Responsible," I said, the word feeling strange on my tongue.
"Yes, caring for someone generally makes people feel responsible for people. That's just how it works, and I don't really know why, but it does."
"So you cared about that little girl that you saved today?"
"Yes, I care about everyone that lives in the city. You know that."
"So… you feel responsible for me?"
They put their hand on my cheek, and I leaned into their hand, for once giving in to intimacy. "The person that I feel most responsible for is the person that I care about the most. So yes, of course I feel responsible for you. And hopefully you feel responsible for me."
"I do," I told them, meaning every word. I feel more responsible for you than for me. Weird, isn't it?"
When Jinx realizes that these idiotic crooks are after her, she's livid. Stupid men, she thought viciously, thinking they can just come over here and take me away with them. Who would have henchmen this stupid?
Kid Flash would have had a field day with the two idiots, if he hadn't been away for a big meeting over at Titan's West headquarters.
The two of them didn't even have any powers, and they didn't smell like they had taken a bath in a couple of months. No self respecting villain would ever let themselves come to this, so Jinx is pretty sure that they two of them are just working for someone and not just in this for themselves.
As soon as she gets the two of them tied up they start talking, cracking like chicken eggs. Jinx doesn't even have to pretend to aim her powers at them; they were just that bad.
"What was the point of this?" she asks, exasperated already of their shoddy work and their obvious stupidity. The two of them broke into Kid Flash's and her home, destroyed a few o f her things, and expected to be able to capture her, or that's what it seemed like.
"We were supposed to get you… and stuff you in a bag," the braver of the two criminals decides to say after half a second of Jinx's harsh glare.
"Stuff me in a bag? Who told you to do this?" she demanded.
"We don't know."
"Then how did you get the instructions to 'stuff me in a bag' if no one told you?"
"Well… they found us and asked us if we wanted to go to dinner. We said yes, and the next thing we knew we were waking up underneath the sewer where we couldn't see anything, but this voice was telling us that if we got you for him that we would get enough money for the rest of our lives. Who wouldn't want that?"
"Yeah!" the second, quieter one, piped up. "We didn't have nothing against you or nothing! Honest!"
"Okay." Jinx began rubbing her temples trying to think. "Okay, I'm going to call the police, and then you are never going to have anything to do with anyone that is trying to give you a free dinner, okay?"
"Promise!" they squeal at the same time. The sad thing is that she only sent one hex (and not a particularly strong one) at the pair of them, and they're already acting like this. Honestly.
When Kid comes back Jinx has to tell him everything because he came home at the same time as the police where picking up the two goons. "And then the police came, and that was the end of it," she told him nonchalantly as if this didn't bother her at all to know that someone wanted her kidnapped.
"I honestly don't see this as a serious threat, and I don't think that you should either. So what, a couple of idiots came over here and tried to get me. It's not like anything happened, or would have happened. They obviously had just gotten off the street."
"But this could be something important… didn't you say that they were working for somebody?"
"Well, whoever it was they obviously weren't very well informed if they thought that I couldn't take care of myself."
"I know," he said finally. "But I keep getting this feeling that something else is at play here, even if I don't know what it is. It's like the two of them were some type of warning. Do you get that feeling too?"
"Even if they were a warning it's not like they were a very threatening one. I mean, if that's the way things are going to go, if that's how they're going to warn me, then the next thing is probably going to be something like my car is going to be stolen and in its place there is going to be a note that says 'Give me the money'. I wouldn't worry about it."
Of course he worries about it, because that is just how he is, he can't help that more than she can help the fact that she's naturally pale (even though there was many a time that she had tried to change that fact).
Of course he tries not to show that he's worried, but she can see through him because he's so easy to read.
Jinx certainly isn't worried about it; she didn't give it another thought after she got her couch repaired. It had been months, nothing was going to happen to her now.
Jinx, however, is pretty sure of one thing; Kid Flash was going to ask her to marry him. She's sure of this fact because he didn't put up the receipt to Gorman's Jewelry, and on the receipt she could see that he bought an engagement ring for five thousand dollars, which is flattering to say the least.
When she sees the slip of paper she feels so ridiculously happy that she feels like jumping up and down, even though she doesn't because Kid's in the next room and he's going to wonder what's wrong with her, and she can't tell him that she's knows. It crosses her mind that if they're going to get married (as well as the fact that they were both nearing twenty years old) that he had better drop the Kid from his name, and soon. In fact, she's surprised that he even kept it for this long.
With these idle thoughts in her mind is when she feels it, the earth shattering vibrations of an explosion. She'd know the feeling anywhere.
Jinx runs outside with Kid Flash in front of her and watches in awe as the smoke bellowed into a mushroom cloud.
Kid Flash nods at her, and they both set off the two blocks where the explosion was, Kid getting there a couple minutes ahead of her, of course.
When she too gets there she can see that he has already assessed the damage, and sees a man in front of the burning building laughing hysterically. She can't see the face, but she'd recognize that laugh anywhere. But it can't be-
"Jinx, I have to try and save the people in there, I'm the only who can. No one else can get inside with all of the toxic fumes. This isn't the work of a normal arson, this person wants to kill someone, badly, and as it is the people here might very well get sick and may be mutating as we speak."
"But you might die," she can't keep these words from slipping through her teeth, and when they do she wants to stuff them back into her mouth.
"Jinx, I'm responsible for these people. I have to protect them. We're a team and we do most everything together, but if you go in there you will die. This is something for me to do alone."
Responsible, they are back to that word again. But what about your responsibility to me she wants to scream. I couldn't live with myself if you rush into another burning building without me and you don't come out. What then, Wally?
Of course she doesn't say these things, and he takes her silence as affirmation and goes off without her, once again. She can't take that and she runs in after him, hexing anyone that gets within three feet of her and runs into smoke so thick that she can't breathe or see before sinking into the blessedness of unconscious.
When she wakes up she hardly processes the fact that she is in the hospital, and instead asks for Kid Flash without even noticing all of the machines hooked up into her before feeling the prick of the needle. She rips them out of her arm, not feeling them tear out of her skin and is trying to locate the nearest nurse. There is no way in hell that she is just sitting here and waiting while she isn't sure that Kid Flash is alive. She has to see him, feel him, and smell him before she is in any way going to calm down in the slightest.
A male nurse notices her and rushes towards her. "Jinx, you are going to have to lie down again. You really shouldn't be up and walking around…"
She interrupts him before he is able to finish. "Where is he, Kid Flash? Where is he? I need to see him. Now."
He suddenly looks very uncomfortable, as well as pained, and that's when she realizes that something has to be terribly, horribly wrong for a nurse to look like that. "Where is he? You have to tell me where he is."
"Now, you need to calm down, ma'am," he says, and she notices that he's trying to get help over to him from the way that he is cocking his head toward her.
"Where is he?" she asks, her voice breaking and her tough girl demeanor totally pulled from underneath her feet. "Please, please just tell me. I'll do anything." That's a very big thing to say, especially for a hero, so when she hears the phrase coming from her lips she realizes how desperate she is to see him.
Because how can she be herself without him? She's forgotten what it's like not having him around. She's forgotten who she was because of him. He was a big part of her choice to become a superhero instead of a supervillian like she had been trained to be, the way she was practically raised to be.
Without Kid Flash she didn't know what or how she would be anymore. He's almost a part of her. They were going to get married, maybe, and then have a life together even more than they have now. This was just the way things were going to be with them. Before this.
It's obvious that the nurse isn't very used to dealing with crying women because she can read the indecision on his face and thinks for a moment that she might just get her way after all. "He's in room 2307 on the third floor," he whispers before leading her to her room.
"Thank you," she breathes and allows him to take her back to her room, knowing full well that as soon as she gets some normal clothes on she is going to visit him and there is nothing that anyone is going to be able to do about it.
Kid Flash was right about the two thieves being something more sinister than she had first thought. It turned out that the explosion was because of her, and that the police had gotten a mysterious phone call earlier that evening saying they were going to blow up a building in the city if they didn't get Jinx to a certain place at a certain time alone.
Jinx took in all of this information from the Chief of Police, because the hospital called him as soon as she woke up, as was his request.
Evidently the police had called Jinx's and Kid Flash's residence to try and warn them of this, but that Kid Flash had told them absolutely not was he letting Jinx go anywhere alone, especially with someone that had previously tried to kidnap her before.
The Chief of Police tried to explain the bomb threat, but Kid Flash had assured them that nothing was going to happen…at least he had thought. But he told them that he had written it down on a piece of paper, or so he told them.
The Chief told Jinx that Kid was going to go where they wanted Jinx to go by himself and take care of this problem before it got any bigger.
The sad part was that they set off the bomb at an earlier time than what they had told the police that they would.
Jinx began piecing two and two together.
They had expected her to know about the bomb threat, so that when the bomb was set off earlier than expected they would have been sure that she would have offered herself right there to save more lives than might have been lost.
She, as a hero, would not have wanted to be responsible for the lives lost, and would have given herself to whatever was going to take her.
Jinx had to give whoever this was props for thinking like this, because it was a good idea, at least to her.
But why would someone want her? And who?
That was a question that she was just going to have to figure out on her own.
But hearing about how Kid had offered to protect her made her longing to see him even stronger than it already was. She couldn't stand just sitting here anymore. That was it. She was going to have to see him.
She eventually finds her clothes, thankfully, and she puts them on in the hope that they burn marks, ashes and tears aren't too noticeable.
She isn't able to get rid of the hospital bracelet, though, or her pink hair that makes her fairly recognizable, but she just hopes that no one pays enough attention to her on the third floor (which is where they hold the critical people, she has learned).
Much to her relief no one notices her and she is free to find room 2307 just as soon as she can. When she does get there she once again begins to cry and has to hold her hand to her mouth to stifle the wail that wants to free itself from the confines of her mouth.
There is Kid Flash lying there on a hospital bed, not moving, and breathing on his own, but shallowly. She had never seen him look so small and pale before and the feeling almost breaks her heart. Why him? She isn't sure what's wrong with him, but it shouldn't be something like this.
Kid Flash normally is able to heal much faster than normal thanks to his powers, and has never, to her knowledge, had to stay overnight at a hospital for any reason.
Now he is here, alone in his hospital room, with only her for company and for some reason she just can't stand this. She goes to a corner of his room and curls into a ball and begins sobbing profoundly, letting every emotion that she had felt since the beginning of this whole kidnapping mess find an outlet.
She sobs for the stupid boy on the bed, who because of his responsibility to herself and to others has led to him being left in a hospital.
She sobs for herself, the whole reason that any of this even happened to begin with, and if she just hadn't been born that nothing would have happened to Kid Flash and he would have just stayed his nomadic self and kept on fighting crime without her. Or maybe he would have found a girl for him that wasn't all of this trouble and would have planned on marrying her, this imaginary girl, instead.
She cried the kind of cry that cleanses the soul and the mind and when she's done she's ready to make a few decisions, the big kind, and ready to sit and wait for Kid Flash to wake up as long as she can.
First things first, she was going to leave Kid Flash. He was so much better off without her, especially now, because if she left him, he wouldn't get in the middle of her affairs and therefore wouldn't get hurt anymore.
Secondly, she was going to go find whoever did this, and she was fairly sure she knew who this was, and get them sent to the highest security prison in the world and make sure that they stayed there.
While Jinx was making these decisions she could feel a wrinkled piece of paper shoved into the pockets beginning to fall out. She smoothed it out and realized that it was the ring receipt, and written on the back in his messy scrawl were the words Jinx, kidnapping, bomb, and telephone booth on tenth, ten o' clock.
This is almost enough to get Jinx to start crying again, but she doesn't because she knows she's stronger than that and has no desire to begin shedding tears again.
As soon as she sees a white coat pass by his room she asks the woman what was wrong with Kid Flash, and when would he wake up.
"The toxic gas that was released with the bomb did something to him that I have never seen before, not to a speedster at any rate. I think that this gas must have been made with Kid Flash in mind, because it did not seem to affect anyone else at the scene other than making them vomit or go unconscious." These words only make Jinx's decision to leave Kid Flash that much easier, and she thanks the doctor and doesn't ask her when he's going to wake up, because she honestly doesn't want to know.
Because when he does she knows that she's going to have to leave him.
He wakes up groggy and disoriented, but when he sees her face hovering over him he smiles and says, "Okay, I know I'm not in heaven. If I was you'd be naked."
Jinx smiles and runs her hand through his hair, feeling the silkiness of it for what she knows is most likely going to be the last time.
Jinx isn't angry at him for trying to protect her. He was just trying to be responsible for her safety, and if he thinks he's the only one that can be noble and responsible he's dead wrong.
Because the one thing that she's not going to be responsible for is his death.
He didn't take the news very well, to say the least. He automatically began protesting, telling her that she was ridiculous and that she needed to think about him and what this would mean for him when she's gone.
"I'll stay here as long as you're in the hospital, and then I'm gone, Wally," she tells him, saying his real name to let him know that she means business.
"You can't do that! What about the city, you can't just leave your responsibilities here."
"I've already got it covered, don't worry Kid. Argent and Hot Spot are on the way as we speak, and since Bumblebee owes me a few favors she's also going to keep an eye on the place until you're ready to fight."
He seems to be at loss for words, and Jinx feels triumphant knowing that he has no other relevant arguments to throw at her, and she's won.
"So you are going to leave me here just all by myself? Is that it, Jinx, because if it is I don't know you anymore?"
"Maybe you never did," she told him, knowing every word at this point was a lie. "This is just who I am, I guess, and all who I'm destined to ever be. A deserter and a traitor, just like the Hive Five always said."
"But you deserted them for something different, something better, something good. You left them because you knew they were wrong and you knew that there was something better out there, at least for you. And Jinx, you might not think this, but I do. There is nothing better for you than what is right here in front of you. I didn't want to do it like this, but I really need to ask you this, now. Will you marry me?"
She knows why he chooses to spring the question at her right now. Because if she says yes, like she so desperately wants to, there would be no easy way for her to get out of her word. He would be able to follow her everywhere, and she knows it as well as he does.
"No," she tells him. "I can't, I'm sorry, but I can't." Jinx counts to ten in her head to staunch the tears that threaten to fall. If he knew why she was really leaving, his safety, he wouldn't let her as much as look away from him. "Do you want me to leave now?" she asked him softly.
"Go ahead," he told her. "You're just going to do it anyway."
That day Jinx gets on a bus and buys a one way ticket to the farthest place she can go and actually afford. The bus ends up breaking down in a little town called Rosin, about twenty miles from her original destination, and she decides to stay there instead.
The first thing Jinx does is dye her hair a light blonde and take out her pink contacts, making her eyes their natural muddy brown.
The second thing is she got a job and a place to live. She began renting a room that an elderly woman was renting out for quite cheap, and got a job at the local diner, where she wasn't recognized by anyone. It was nice, for a while, the inconspicuousness. No one knew who she was anymore, and she had even started going by Nicole again.
Of course there were things that she missed about being a hero. She missed saving people, and being able to sign autographs. She missed the perks that came with celebrity. Jinx missed living in the big city, where there was always something to do or see, unlike Rosin where the most interesting thing was the dance held once a month at the one hall in town.
But most of all Jinx missed Kid Flash.
She watched him on the news (being the nearest hero gave him huge air time), and every time there was the slightest mention of him in a magazine Jinx bought it as soon as she could.
It was comforting to know what was going on in his life, even though she knew most of the details were missing and that it would have been better to have to person instead of the picture.
She watched him as he changed from Kid Flash to Flash in just a couple of months. She watched him as he began dating one girl after another again, and how the press had a field day with that one, and pretended that it didn't hurt when the Kelly's and Veronica's and Marsha's all got to hold his hand and she didn't.
Men in Rosin often approached her, but she turned them all down, knowing that she could never feel about them the way that she felt about Wally and it just wouldn't be fair to them.
She also crime fights in her spare time, often at night and not consistently, but when she does it makes her feel good and like her old self again. Half the time she turns to her right, expecting to see him there, and then cringing when he wasn't there after all.
Jinx found the person who had been trying to kidnap her before, and made damn sure they went to prison, which they did.
It was Gizmo, actually, and he had a grudge against Flash that had lasted ever since Flash had handed him back his butt and humiliated him in front of the evil community. Gizmo bidden his time well, and chose to take Jinx, who was the one person that Flash would have died for. This was what Gizmo had wanted to happen to begin with.
Jinx wanted to strangle the short man that had caused her so much grief, but she ended up getting him stuck with a thirty two year prison stay, and that had to be enough for her.
She did everything that she had vowed to do, and has nothing to show for it.
One day a red haired man came into the diner and sat at one of her booths. As she went up to take his order she felt the same catch in her throat that she always felt when she saw a red haired man now. "Hello, I'm Nicole and I'll be taking your order…" she trails off as the man looks at her. She would recognize those eyes anywhere.
"Yes, I'm looking for a girl named Jinx," he told her, and with a sinking heart she realizes that he doesn't recognize her.
To be honest she wouldn't have recognized herself either. These past two years had not exactly aged her well.
"There is no one here that goes by Jinx," she tells him, watching as he studies her.
"It's you, I knew it," Wally tells her. "I had to ask Robin for help, but I finally found you. I can't believe it."
Jinx isn't quite sure what to say, so she decides that saying nothing is probably best. "Jinx, Nicole, whatever you want to be called, will you please, please, come back with me?"
She nods and all is well.