It was that day.
It had been that day five years ago.
Will Stronghold entered his kitchen with sleepy eyes. He saw his mother sitting before the television, her eyes glued to the pictures on the screen. It was almost as if it was that day all over again, the day the towers fell, the day everyone found out that superheroes are not always able to prevent evil. For that's what it was. The young boy didn't look at the set again, instead he gathered his things and left the house without eating.
Josie Stronghold continued to stare at the television…she remembered where she had been that day. She was in the car driving back to the house after dropping Will off at the junior high. She had just been ruminating on whether her costume needed to be revamped when she turned on the radio and had heard about the planes. Wasn't it strange that only three superheroes had been able to respond that day? All of them unnamed, unmasked heroes who hadn't time for a costume change…and Jetstream was wondering about whether a cape would be too dramatic.
She watched the footage that had made the whole world immune to the actual feelings that should come with the catastrophe, and drank her coffee, wondering what would have happened if she could have been there. Who would have been saved? She turned the television off as her husband came down from his study to refill his own mug. He had been silent all morning. Josie Stronghold knew why.
Steve Stronghold poured the coffee in his cup deliberately and ignored the look his wife was giving him. He wasn't able to speak that morning, he had been too stunned by his own inability. Steve Stronghold, realtor, had been in New York handing keys over to an old buddy of his. Neither had realized what was happening mere blocks away until they went inside and turned on the television. By the time Steve reached the scene it was too late, the towers had already fallen and he was without a costume.
So he ignored the superhero code and began toiling side by side with the firemen. Even to this day, as he walked back down the hall to his study he wondered, rubbing his forehead, if he could have stopped it. If they could have stopped it. Somehow he knew the constant questioning was useless…it was done, it had happened and on that day he had questioned why exactly he was a superhero. What made him different from the volunteers and the priests and the police and the firemen who had done just as much, if not more, on that day.
The silence was his only answer, sometimes, he mused, even superheroes have their bad days. What in the world could humans, even super-powered humans, do against such hate. The answer was there…he just had to find it. Setting his mug on the desk beside him he repeated the same actions of that day, he fell to his knees, grasping at the floor, asking, screaming in his head the one word question, "Why?" wondering for a moment if he had enough strength to do what must be done.
The answer was negative, but he had toiled on that day, even when it seemed he was on his last reserves. There was no applaud, no awards, he had simply been a man like any other, and in that moment he had been able to do something that spat in the face of that great enmity, something that made him more a hero than he had ever been before. He had realized what a pitifully small being he was in the whole of life. Steve Stronghold stood up and took another drink of his coffee, glancing at the calendar that hung on the wall.
It was that day.
AN: So this is quite a little oneshot and since I've never done a oneshot before it might be confusing to some of you. I had the urge to write this last night and decided to post it on 9/11. The idea of a superhero dealing with news like that was very interesting to me, so for better or worse, this was my answer to that thought.