Hi again!

I know, I said I was done writing fanfiction... and truthfully, I pretty much am. But a few weeks back, I had a dream where I went back and wrote one final "series" to finish off A Polaroid Allegory. In the dream, I went back and wrote what each character is doing 10 years after the original series was set, so around ages 26-27. I woke up and realised that it would be a very fitting way, after 6+ years, to come back and finish off this little writing endeavour that I began when I was 17. So, here we are... 10 years later.


Odie

Odie's feet pedalled hard against the rusty wheels of his creaking secondhand bike. If Odie wanted to kid himself, he would say he could still see the last rays of sunlight flickering along the pavement, reaching over the horizon before they rescinded and night fell altogether. But as it was, the sun had almost completely set; once again, Odie had failed to leave the office before 8pm. The night's inhabitants, from young people out on the town, to drug dealers, hookers and buskers, were emerging from their various homes and beginning to plague the streets. Some of them still sent chills up Odie's spine, even though he'd lived in the city for years now.

Odie's backpack was weighed down with his laptop and uneaten containers of lunch. Odie rarely found time for lunch breaks any more; there were lectures to teach, essays to grade, exams to write, and of course, Odie's own thesis to work on.

The thesis had been in the back of Odie's mind long since he'd first discussed the concept of an alternative time-space continuum with Hermes. Of course, Odie couldn't exactly write a PhD using greek gods as references, so he'd spend many of the past 10 years trying to integrate his own secretly-acquired knowledge into current academic thought. Toeing the line between what Odie knew, and what the rest of humanity knew, had proved a challenge even Odie struggled with.

But it was hardly the first challenge Odie had confronted in higher education. Even if the rest of the heroes had seen Odie as some kind of genius who never struggled with anything that used your brain, Odie knew that was never quite true. Sure, most of high school had been easy enough, provided that Odie put the appropriate hours in for study, and most concepts he could wrap his head around fairly easily… but he was never exempt from difficulty in the way that the heroes perhaps thought. It had been with shaking hands that Odie opened his acceptance letter to one of the best universities in the country, and with a quiet sigh of relief as he read it. A weight, cruel and suffocating, had slowly retreated its grip around his heart as he read the words: we are pleased to offer you candidature... Odie's fear had never been failing to get in - after all, there were other universities, other colleges - but trying to explain to his friends that he wasn't everything they saw him for.

And the challenges had continued once he reached university. The team often messaged in the group chat, asking how the rest were going. Whenever Odie's name came up, he would try to explain it: well, I went from being dux of one school in one town, but now I'm in a whole university course of people who were also named dux at their school, you see… and it turns out I'm not the best dux of them all. The heroes never seemed to quite understand. They'd reply with words of comfort, of encouragement: you'll get there, I'm sure everyone is overwhelmed! Or yeah right, you're getting straight A's though, surely. Odie never quite found words to explain what it meant to be one of the few black kids in a highly competitive course, where pretty much all of his prior achievements were just enough to put him on par with the rest of his cohort.

But as time went on, Odie's perseverance in the course had paid off. Perhaps it was from traits learned when you were thrown into being a hero at the mere age of 16, but Odie had a quiet resilience that took him through his undergraduate degree to various post graduate studies, and culminated in one of the few teaching and PhD candidature positions at his rather esteemed university. What Odie hadn't perhaps realised, when he'd first decided he wanted to study the stars and their physics as a teenager, was that you spent a lot of time working for very little money and even less recognition. Perhaps Odie should have been used to it, having saved the world with 6 other teenagers without being able to tell a single person what he had achieved… but many of Odie's achievements, no matter how great, felt largely thankless.

Odie was one of the youngest astrophysicists in his university, and had groundbreaking theories when it came to time and space, yet Odie still returned home to a dusty, cramped apartment with a sparsely stocked pantry. PhD candidature only paid so well, and no one recognised you in the street for your paper on sun spots, no matter how novel it was. Odie was living his dream, but it was as mundane of a reality as anyone else's. Much like many stories of one's 20's, pursuing your "dream job" turned out to be a much crueler, blander experience than Odie's teenage self had hoped.

Odie's phone fell out of his pocket as he ruffled though his bag for his keys at his apartment door, and Odie noticed a message had arrived. Odie seethed. It was definitely someone from work, probably asking him to take an extra lecture tomorrow again. The department loved to lean on up-and-comers like Odie to compensate for their own laziness. He squinted at the message in the dark: It's been a shit week. Think I killed my back on a clean and jerk. Wanna catch up for a beer? - Herry.

Odie gave a sigh of relief as he opened the door… only to realise there was a broad shouldered, all too familiar figure already seated in Odie's favourite armchair, beer in hand.

Herry grinned. "Hope you don't mind. I was gonna wait for you to reply, but I figured you'd be too busy with work to text back, so I let myself in."

Odie rolled his eyes. "What if I'd had plans for my Friday night?"

Herry looked pointedly at Odie, his gaze scanning the bags under Odie's eyes, and the heavy backpack hanging off one arm, and then slowly around the empty apartment.

"I'll take my chances."

Odie hid a smile from Herry as he dumped his bags at the door.