Promises Unbroken
Summary: He knows he could've stopped this. A 9/11 memorial piece
I own nothing.
Rated T for my standard stuff
Dedicated to the men and women who were senselessly murdered a full decade ago today, as well as the men and women who selflessly risked everything to ensure their safety, and the families who never got to see their loved ones again, and the soldiers who stood up to the challenge of delivering justice…may God bless all of you. You will never be forgotten.
Life means nothing in the hands of a killer.
It is a proven fact, an unmistakable reality that seems to come with the admission of death by the hands of a fellow human. Life cannot be sacred to them, or else they would not take it away. And this slice of sorrow, in Manhattan's backyard, this wasteland of war, it demonstrates to the people of the world just how low humanity can stoop.
The dust is not white, for white is the color of purity and virtue. This dust is gray, the color of a tarnished homeland, of a tragic early-morning daylight. There is a sun out…somewhere. But the sky is so thick with the suffocating grime that the golden rays are blocked out, never reaching the ground or touching anything beyond the smokescreen. Perhaps it's for the best, anyway. Rubble is strewn over the ground, all that remains of once-proud structures that would gleam from the New York City skyline. Jagged slabs of concrete, of glass and steel and sheetrock, jut up from the dirty pavement and reach for the untouchable sky, the wide expanse of blue heavens from which can emerge nightmares fresh out of hell. Nothing remains of the planes that brought them down—or, at least, nothing they've yet found. This is a rare time when it is truly silent here, when there is a space that is not occupied by rescue workers and first responders, by firefighters and policemen and medics and every other godsend of a man or a woman that still desperately digs for the people who are down there and still alive, few though their numbers might be. This formerly busy place has become a void of darkness, emptiness, and none-too-quiet grief that echoes through the streets of this famous city. It is here at the place they now call Ground Zero that an icon kneels amidst the remnants of the carnage and attempts to hold together for the people's sake. They have called him by many names: hero, Man of Steel, savior. He has power beyond that of any normal, mortal man. But for everything he stands for, for everything he is supposed to be for them, that S on his chest didn't stop those hijackers or their planes full of innocents. His strength didn't stop the day from ending on the lowest, saddest, sourest note imaginable. He did not prevent this wound on the heart of the United States, did not protect the populace's psyches from scarring.
He knows he could've stopped this. He knows he could've done something. But he stood by and let it happen. And now how can he be called a hero, when he allowed for the deaths of thousands in this place so close to his own city? They lived their last moments in terror, wondering when a savior would arrive, and many never saw one until they were already dead. How can he bear the admiration in the face of so great a failure? And such a momentous tragedy…what was it that was said once about Pearl Harbor? "A day that will live in infamy", he thinks?
September 11 will be the same.
"I know you."
It snaps him back into the present, into the time he's forced to live in now. He turns at the voice on his left. It's small, feminine, high-pitched, and belongs to a little girl wrapped in an oversized gray sweatshirt. Two curly brown pigtails stick out on either side of her head, and her dark eyes are wide with interest. She shifts one little foot, grinding the toe of her shoe against the pavement in nervousness, and adds, "You're Superman."
He almost has to laugh at her cuteness, but in the thick of the emotions that still linger in his heart even a year after the loss he only manages a rueful smile. "That I am," he responds.
"I don't think I've ever seen you here before." She must not be much over six at the oldest, and she babbles on as easily as she might in a conversation with another child her age. "My name's Regina, but I don't like that, so I go by Gina. It's prettier. Daddy wanted to call me Reggie, but I said no 'cause that's a boy's name. I live in a big building a long way away from here but still kind of close, and our house is next to a bunch of other little houses in one big house. Do you live in a big house?"
He feels the smile grow a little perkier. "I suppose you could call it that."
Gina sniffs and wipes her nose on her sleeve. She stares out beyond the fence with its makeshift memorials woven into the chain links at everything that is, while he stares out to see everything that was and everything that could've been. It's a long while before the little girl speaks again. "Mommy comes here a lot. She used to say I couldn't go with her since I was too little, but she let me come this time." Gina screws up her face in something like confused disgust. "She would've come to talk to you, too, but she's too busy crying."
His spirits are equal-opportunity bolstered and dampened by her nonchalant admittance. She's only a child, and perhaps doesn't fully understand what happened, but it still seems eerie, nonetheless. He swallows the feelings threatening to arise and asks, "Why's that?"
Gina nods out toward Ground Zero. "Daddy was in there," she tells him. "He used to live with us, but then he went to work last year and didn't come back home. That was when Mommy said that he went to go live with someone else. I was mad at first, and then I was sad because I loved my daddy a lot and he was fun, but I was okay when Mommy told me that Jesus is a nice man and likes Daddy a lot and that, if I'm a good girl, I can go live with them, too, someday."
He has come here among people who have lost loved ones, people with children in tow, but the full gravity of it has not hit him until now. This little girl will grow up without her father, all for one group's heartlessness.
"You catch bad people before they do bad stuff, right, Mr. Superman?" Gina's face is hopeful as she meets his eyes again.
He nods slowly. "I do my best."
She digs in her sweatshirt pocket and produces a crumpled ball of paper, which she promptly shoves into his hands. He makes it smooth against his thigh and gazes at it with teary eyes. A man with dark hair and eyes, like Gina's, smiles out at the camera, bearing a striking resemblance to the little girl who taps the picture. "That's my daddy," she declares. "I was gonna put it in the fence, but I thought I'd give it to you, instead." Her face turns surprisingly serious. "Will you catch the bad people who made Daddy go away?"
His resolve returns in an instant, speaking with this little girl who so desires his help in achieving justice for her father's death. No longer is he hopeless; now, he is a beacon of hope. He gently hugs Gina. "I'll do everything I can. I promise you that."
The End
9/11/2001—When America Learned About 21st-Century Warfare
Your Sacrifices Were Not In Vain.
We Will Not Forget.
Never Again!