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Thorne

Thorne lay on his dorm bed, staring idly at the ceiling. He heaved a sigh of boredom. He'd always thought that superheroes had their days packed full to the brim with beating up bad guys and helping old ladies across the street and whatever other good and honourable things they did. Now that he was one however, he discovered that there really wasn't that much to do, unless you wanted to train day-in day-out, which Thorne didn't. Seriously, what could he do to train? Run laps? He could probably run around the entire perimeter of the city twice in less than a minute without breaking a sweat.

A tentative knock on his door caused him to grin. Finally, something was happening!

In half a second he was opening the door and looking down at the short (and a bit startled) blonde on the other side.

"Hey Cress." He said, "What brings you here?"

She blushed slightly and fiddled with a strand of hair. "We've been called to a meeting in the Training Hall by the Council."
"Is it compulsory?"

"Yes."

Thorne made a sour face. Listening to the Council preach about their greatness was hardly his idea of fun, but he supposed it was better than just staring at his ceiling all day.

He shrugged and stepped through the doorway, closing the door behind him. "Alright then, let's get going."

Thorne kept his pace slow so that Cress could keep up. Even so, he couldn't help but notice that she seemed to be struggling a little.

"You doing okay?" He asked.

Cress nodded, but he slowed down further anyway.

"So…" Thorne smirked at her. "how does it feel to be a hero?"

Cress smiled at him nervously. "You don't need me to tell you how it feels. You are more heroic than I am."

He barked with laughter. "I seriously doubt that."

"You shouldn't."

"No, I really should." He insisted, "I'm as far from a hero as you can get."

Cress shook her head. "No, I know that you're a hero!"
"I think you're thinking of a different Carswell Thorne."

Cress fixed him with a determined stare. "When you were four, you released a rare Sumatran tiger from the zoo because you hated the sight of seeing the poor animal trapped in a cage."

Thorne stopped dead in his tracks and stared at her in surprise. "How did you find out about that?"

"I-I researched your background when I found you in the Rampion prisoner records." She admitted, her cheeks turning a delicate shade of embarrassed pink. "But that's not the point! The point is, you released a poor, sad creature because you felt sorry for it!"

The sight of Cress's wide, admiring blue eyes gazing up at him was enough to make him wince at what he was about to say. Why did he have to be the one to burst her bubble?

"I only told the zoo guards that so I wouldn't get in trouble." He told her, "Really, I wanted a cat and thought it would make all the other kids jealous if that cat was a tiger."

Cress blinked at him, obviously taken aback by this revelation. "Oh. Well, what about that time you sold your mother's necklace to donate money for your favourite charity? You were a hero then!"

"I just told that to the authorities because I thought they'd let me off easy. Really I was going to use the money to buy myself a lifetime's supply of videogames." Thorne chuckled. "Man, I used to love video games so much."

"You stole your mother's necklace…" Cress whispered incredulously, "for videogames?"

He shot her an apologetic glance. "Like I said Cress, I'm no hero."

"No… no, I know that's not true!"
"Cress, you know why I did that supposedly heroic stuff now. I can assure you, I've never done anything in my life that was not motivated for selfish reasons."

"What about Kate Fallow?"

Thorne tilted his head and frowned at her in confusion. "Who?"

"In high school, some other boys stole her laptop and you were trying to return it." Cress told him.

Thorne screwed up his face as he tried to remember. He did have some recollection of getting punched in the face over some girl's laptop. And he thought he might have had a bit of a crush on Kate. Yeah, he remembered now. She was really good at Math, and… he was failing. His parents had threatened to keep him in all summer studying if his grades didn't improve. She let him copy her homework for the rest of the year because of that episode with her laptop.

Thorne opened his mouth to tell Cress that even this supposed heroic act was nothing more than a selfish scheme to raise his Math grade, but the sight of her looking up at him, in admiration of the good person she thought he was, made him falter. All his life he'd been told that he would amount to nothing, that he would be little more than a simple criminal. He would never become anything greater than a thief. But now… here was someone who thought differently. Someone who saw him as selfless and good. The thought of that glow of awe in those big, blue eyes snuffed out by disappointment and disgust… Thorne didn't think he could stand it.

So, instead of confessing the real reason behind the rescue of Kate Fallow, Thorne said, "Right, Kate Fallow! Yeah, I think I was crushing on her at the time."

The smile that lit up Cress's face wiped away any regrets Thorne might have felt about the lie.

She skipped ahead, calling over he shoulder, "Come on! We don't want to be late for the meeting!"

"I have super speed Cress, I could be on the other side of the city and not be late!" Thorne laughed, but he jogged up to her side anyway.

I may not be the person you think I am right now Cress, he thought, but I will be. I promise, someday I'll be someone who deserves your admiration.

A/N: At last! At last we have some Cresswell! I know I've made you guys wait way too long, but finally this couple is getting some traction!

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