XI: The View From the Top
Joel has heard that there are two ways to experience Paris: as a welcomed guest or a bothersome nuisance – both dependent on how French people in the city see the person. He's reminded of this as he looks out into the Seine, the buildings beneath as small as Lego blocks and the people as pathetic as gnats.
His son has asked him if he would have married the woman he once loved if he had the chance. He smiles. The answer is still the same: yes. If he had been like other men back then, so young and so crazy in love, he doesn't doubt he would have taken Tasha here.
It's so iconic. The city of love, with its romantic structures and quaint little shops. Cafés that people fall head over heels for.
Streets that smell like urine. Waiters that show extreme prejudice.
Doors shut so tight on people like him, the love of his life, and their son.
He leans onto the railing, the thrill and fear of possibly falling from so far up crawling through his veins. He breathes in the summer air, so thin and different up there close to the clouds.
Then, he closes his eyes.
The calm escapes him as he remembers what happened at his parents' house. With that attack, the house is probably all but gone now. It fills him with anger that someone has taken even the place where his good memories are kept - but he files it away instead of feels it.
They will be made to regret. They will all be made to regret it soon.
Another wave comes in, this time as he remembers his nightmare coming to life several times: Slither cornering his son, Sonic Shriek's attack resulting in Leo breaking and bleeding.
His eyes open, filled with fire that cannot be tamed.
Leo is not like him. Leo is like his grandmother, both of them like the wind. He's comforting, soothing. Unpredictable but measured. Mostly gentle and easygoing.
Destructive if stirred the wrong way – but they've never gone to that point.
Joel used to be like his mother, too. RT said so several times.
However, things are different now. The wind that he probably was had been stirred over and over again, in fire and in forces as chilling and unforgiving as the deathly cold and devastating heat of space. The years after his parents' deaths have continued to move and coalesce and form so much weight that it dragged him to the depths of obscurity.
He is not like the wind like RT said, no. If he had been like the wind, he would be more cautious – play everything as he planned from the beginning.
But he won't, because he's different.
He is a rogue star – one that acts and moves with no regard.
And tonight, he will burn life on Earth as everyone knows it.
