Patrons of mine got to read this update a month and a half ago, and in PDF form.
Thanks for everyone who's been reading and leaving comments!
With a tall can held in each hand, Terra tiredly shambled out the front doors of their apartment builing. Sure enough, sitting halfway down the wide stone steps was who she was looking for.
"Heard you could use a drink," Terra offered casually, approaching Jinx from behind.
"Mm?" Jinx, blinking out of a stupor, puffed out a cloud of smoke as she glanced upward. "Mm," she hummed with affirmative interest, noticing the beer cans Terra carried. She stuck out an eager arm while pinching her cigarette with the other hand.
Chuckling a bit at Jinx's grasping gesture, Terra remained standing, and primly lifted up on can onto her right hand's fingertips. She focused intently on the can, trying to hone in on the minerals contained within. It was tough, but she knew she could pull it off, since she'd been practicing it now and again. Her eyes flickered with a yellow glow in street's sunset, her muscles tightened and twitched, and her fingers sizzled with that specific electrical sensation. It hurt, actually, how much she was straining, like in mere seconds she'd ridden a bike up an entire hill, and...-!
She barely managed to make the can float two feet forward into a bemused Jinx's hand.
"...Ffffuuhh-!" Terra was left so out of breath, she couldn't even exclaim a curse, just pathetically pant out and stumble down onto her knees.
"Wh-Whoa, uh...-" Jinx was at a loss of how to react, with a mostly burnt cigarette in one hand and a can of beer in the other. "You OK?"
Her hair having flopped over her shoulders and into her face, Terra was alarmed at how much her chest pounded, her head spun, and arms stung with soreness. Coughing and sputtering on dry, summer evening air, Terra nodded vaguely, wiping a blonde mess over her back as she regained her bearings.
"What was that?" Jinx asked, sucking the last drag of her cigarette. "Looked like you hurt yourself..."
"Think I did," Terra grunted, wincing as she set her can down and took a seat on the steps. Her fingers felt a little numb, like the circulation had been cut off for a moment. "What I get for tryin' to act cool, I guess..."
Jinx chuckled out a cloud of wispy smoke through her nose. She dropped her cig on the cement and stamped it out with her boot, breathing out the last of her smoke.
"I, uh...-" Terra's voice cracked lowly, still recovering from her strained attempt at being fancy. "Thought you quit," she commented, bobbing her head at the cigarette butt.
"Thought I did, too," Jinx sighed, smearing the cig into an ashy paste beneath her deep-soled boot.
"Guessing Vic wouldn't be too happy if he knew about it," muttered Terra, cracking open her can of beer.
Snapping her own open with her long nails, Jinx bitterly grumbled, "Yea, well, Garf probably wouldn't be happy about your fuckin' browser history, either, but...-"
Terra might have spit beer out through her nostrils had she taken her first sip, but thankfully hadn't yet.
"Dude," she growled. "What the hell? I bring you a beer and nearly kill myself for your entertainment, n'...I get this attitude in return?"
Jinx's eyelids squinted shut as she gulped her first chug of the drink down. Terra could detect a bit of regret. She knew Jinx had been on edge all day. All week? So she decided to add a bit of humor.
"I mean, I know it's pretty shitty beer, but...-"
At this, Jinx laughed through her nose again, shaking her head with a small smirk. Seeing she'd managed to chip away a little at the woman's sour mood, Terra tried chipping a little more.
"Look: I won't tell Vic about this if you won't tell Garf about my Harley-slash-Ivy habit, all right?"
"Apfffhh," fluttered out a laugh from Jinx's lips. "Frickin' agreed, let's speak of neither."
Terra made sure to project a peace-keeping smile of genuine support Jinx's way, and was relieved to receive one in kind. Living together led to inevitable growing pains between even close friends, and Terra and Jinx were not yet what Terra would consider 'close.' Everyone had been in a generally bad mood since Dick's appearance the weekend prior, and for some reason Jinx in particular seemed pretty bothered and frustrated.
Victor had sent Terra with beers on a 'recon' mission, of sorts. Unofficially, but she could tell that was what the man was hoping for. And in fairness, Terra was all too eager to be useful, given her current state of being unemployed and all.
So here Terra was, just hanging out, trying to shoot the shit, one reformed ex-villain to another.
"C'mon, though, for real," Jinx said after a moment, a concerned furrow overtaking her brows. "Something weird going on with your powers?"
"Huh? Ah, wh-? Nah, no, I...-"
Was something weird going on with her powers? Terra hadn't thought of that. She just wasn't used to manipulating metal to begin with. But, really, when she thought of it, she just hadn't been using her powers much at all lately, and what if not using them was making her lose some of her control on them or maybe there was something wrong with her body and it wasn't cooperating with them like before and was causing some kind of-
"Hey."
Terra was caught in a mental spiral, her chest fluttering some more as Jinx stared at her solemnly. She took a sip of beer, assuring, "If something is, I know that you know better than to hide it."
"N-No, yea, absolutely, totally, it's not...-" Terra realized she was still spinning a bit, her anxieties getting all stirred around, like mud in water. She paused, closed her eyes, took a breath, had a drink, and sighed out tiredly. Clawing at her scalp and sifting her nails backward through her hair, Terra nodded slowly. "I'm not hiding anything, swear, just, like-...I don't know what happened. Right then, just now, I mean. Maybe I...pushed myself too hard? Or...-? I-I'm not sure, seeing Rachel and Kori, just, y'know, acting all cool with their powers this morning, made me...want to try pushing myself a bit...Maybe?"
That last word had been spoken with a tint of frustration and confusion.
"Ech, yea. Relatable." Jinx scratched at her neck slowly with her thumbnail as she gazed blankly at the side-walk before them. Another resident passed them by, going up the steps and entering the building, and silent nods of acknowledgement were exchanged, though Terra didn't really know the other person.
Terra, left to this awkward silence, noticed a crack in the concrete step at the base of the stairs they sat upon. She hadn't really noticed before, but now that she was sitting there, up close, it felt starkly apparent. A little sip of liquid courage – watered down courage, anyway – and a flick of her hands, and she decided she was ready to try again.
"Stay still for a sec," she cautioned quietly, trying not to draw attention.
"Wh-...?" Jinx was confused, and clearly skeptical, but did as she was told, watching intently.
With a simple snap of her wrists, a flex of her fingertips, and a stretch of her palms, Terra snapped the pieces of step together, melding concrete slabs back together as one solid object. It was infinitely easier than what she'd just tried doing with the metal, which was relieving, but it still left her feeling just a bit dizzy afterward.
"Uhh...-?" Jinx was leaning slightly, looking downward beneath her boots to see what had just happened.
"Ha," Terra laughed quietly, pleased with herself. Scooping up her can and chugging some more down, she cited, "See? Nothin' wrong."
"What'd you just do?"
"Fixed it. The, uh, the step."
"It was broken?"
"A little, yea. Like, had a split in it. Huh. Maybe I should try checking out the rest of these stairs, actually..."
See? It's all fine. Still totally in control, never should've doubted yourself. Just gotta stop trying to overreach - you're not Wonder Woman or something. Just need to stay in practice, is all...
As Terra began scoping out the entirety of the steps, Jinx pulled out her phone. Terra managed to spot another crack and jimmied it back together easily enough. She heard Jinx sigh softly – irritably – and remembered she was supposed to be out there focusing on her friend, not the damn stairs. Sweating a little, Terra exhaled and sat herself back down to continue her drink, wiping her forehead off with the back of her bare arm.
"What's up?" Terra asked, trying to be casual.
"Nothing," Jinx mumbled, her eyes lulling sideways as she stuffed her phone back into her pocket.
Terra simply shot her a dubious look with a raised brow.
Jinx realized she was caught in the lie, and her lips pouted slightly as she gazed elsewhere in a flash of embarrassment. There was a heavy pause that hung between the two as Terra intently waited. Jinx had learned, like Terra had, to just fess up when there was a problem, instead of letting it fester, and while she knew that it was usually one of the others who would hear out either of their grievances, she was willing to start putting some more effort into this relationship now that things finally felt stable.
It took a few moments, but Jinx opened up.
"You ever had, like...a stalker?"
Unpleasant sensations from memories best left behind sent a shudder up Terra's spine, causing her grip her beer can just a little too hard, bending the thin aluminum slightly.
"Yea," Terra confessed, trying to be nonchalent without dismissing the solemnity of the topic.
Jinx scanned Terra's expression for a second, as if trying to suss something out. Her lips pursed a bit and she nodded to herself as she had another sip.
"Someone at work recognized me. I don't know, a couple weeks ago. He's become a regular. Apparently he was...a total fanboy when he was younger. Feels like he still is."
"Ugh, such a pain in the ass," Terra groaned softly into her elbow, leaning over with her arms over her knees. Sniffing and leaning back up, she pushed her hair back, shaking her head sullenly. "You'd think all these middle-aged chad-bros who were obsessed with superheroes would, like...get over themselves by now, right? No, wait, lemme guess: he wants to know why you're not still fighting crime, or-...or wearing striped socks and skin-tight clothes, or whatever the fuck."
"Erh, he did ask why I don't...promote myself more, what I'm doing working at a dive bar, but...-"
"Did he complain about not wearing enough makeup?"
Jinx's nose wrinkled, and she smirked, citing dryly, "He did, actually."
"Ya know, fuckin'...-!" Terra drizzled out a frustrated sigh that spilled into her beer can as she finished it off, leaving her errant, chaotic thought of repressed anger to drift off and dissipate like Jinx's cigarette smoke.
"And it's like," Jinx rambled tiredly, "I still wear makeup. Just not like I used to. Holy Vishnu, though, it's kind of...messed up when I think on it, the way they'd have me dress up like that?"
"What, HIVE?"
"Yea. They never made freaking Gizmo powder his cheeks. But I didn't even think twice about it, I just-...I did what I was told, and it became my style, my identity, even after the fact. Don't get me wrong, I liked that look, but...-"
"Miniskirts and leggings aren't exactly practical for fighting supervillains."
"Well. I sorta was a supervillain, so...-"
"Ehhhh, I mean, I was more of a supervillain than you were," Terra teased. "If we're splitting hairs."
Jinx frowned and stuck out her tongue at this.
"But yea," Terra went on. "Whatever. Superpowered...beings. Battles. People get so damn hung up on the stupid outfits."
"Didn't you used to just wear a t-shirt and shorts, or something?"
"Close enough. Worked fine for me, anyway. Had my own edgy phase, too, sure. But...wasn't in a leotard or whatever. I don't even know how Rachel was brave enough for that shit."
"I mean." Jinx shot Terra a look. "She could pull that off. She still could."
"Ohhkay," Terra huffed, rolling her head backward over her shoulders. "Just because we were beanpoles and she was, y'know-...Doesn't make it any less weird. When you think about it. For guys twice her age to be all...fixated on it. On any of us. We were kids. The fuck should it matter to grown-ass adults how attractive our outfits are?"
Jinx shrugged up one shoulder, her eyes glazed over a bit.
"Yea. Well. That was the job," Jinx dryly dismissed. "Aaaand...that's part of why I'm glad we pulled out. It's not enough to just protect people, has to be a damn show."
"That what this stalker of yours was looking for? A 'show?'"
Jinx swirled her can around, noting the lack of liquid. She set the empty can down beside Terra's and shook her head thoughtfully. Those eyes of hers remained waxy and distant.
"He looked me up online. Started messaging me."
"Oooh, boi," Terra sighed, already knowing this was going nowhere good.
"Just the usual bullcrap at first," said Jinx, a tiredness to her voice that Terra knew and understood. "Didn't take long until it got weird, though. I started avoided replying to him, and he-...You know how it is."
"I know how it is...And then what?"
"So last night, he tried asking me how much it would cost to spend some time 'fighting crime' together, only...-"
Jinx didn't need to finish that sentence.
"First time?" Terra asked.
"First time since we retired the Titans, anyway. Barely anyone recognizes me."
"Eh, people forget about me, too, don't let that bother you."
"Maybe it's better that way, if it helps me avoid people like this. Asking for me to do crap like-...Guy said he'd even pay for the outfit and everything."
"What'd you, uh...tell him?"
"Haven't replied yet. So, obviously, he's continued bothering me multiple times since."
"He'd better not show up at the bar anymore, then," said Terra, "unless he wants something unlucky to happen to his drink."
"Heh. Yea. Yea, guess there's always that..."
"Wh-? That was my immediate thought, how was that not yours?"
Jinx scratched her nose, wiped something out of her eyelashes, and breathed out raggedly.
"I don't know. My powers don't...really feel like mine anymore? Hard to explain."
Terra recalled what it was like to be engaged in the middle of some thrilling chase, some epic fight, hurtling objects with reckless abandon, focused on a foe...and how vastly different that felt from...repairing cracks in a concrete step.
"I probably get what you mean," Terra muttered, getting up from her seat. She scooped the two cans up, looking across the sidewalk to the recycling bin as she ever-so-briefly considered trying to get them there in some flashy way.
Instead, she walked over, opened the lid with one hand, and chucked the emptied cans in with the other, noting the sour smell emanating from within, and how her own choice of discarding the cans without rinsing them out only contributed to this.
Returning to Jinx's side, Terra asked, "So, eh, you gonna message this guy back? Or just keep letting him stress you out?"
"I don't even think it's him that's stressing me out," Jinx said, and her tone conveyed some self-actualization. "It's more like the whole thing's reminding me of who I used to be? Who I don't want to be anymore? And who I can't be. I don't know..." She trailed off, sinking her face into her knees.
Terra lingered, sitting beside the distraught woman, uncertain of what to do or say. She thought of what Kori might do in this situation.
Terra stuck a hesitant hand out, pressing it into Jinx's back slowly. She quickly readjusted, slapping Jinx's back a little roughly, in such a way that made Jinx cough a little. Jinx twisted her head sideways, giving Terra a perplexed, dull-eyed glare. Her palm still pressed against Jinx's back, Terra grinned awkwardly back.
"Encouragement? Words? Encouraging words? Support? I, uh...-"
"Nailed it," Jinx said sarcastically, but with a warm tip to her tongue.
Terra peeled her hand away, lifting up both palms in a defensive gesture while her dumb smile remained in place.
"Sorry," Terra eked out.
"Don't be," said Jinx. "Not like I could do any better."
"How come you're so down on yourself, anyway? I remember you used to be sassy as hell."
"I used to be cringey as hell, too. Not sure I'm really wanting to revert back to all that."
"Eh, that's fair. I don't want to, either. I just-...You know Vic's worried about you, yea? Or, I mean, all of us are, but...-"
"I know. He sent you down here to come talk to me, right?"
"He-...? What? He got the beers for me, and-..."
"Yea. Yea, I figured..."
"Uhhh, welp. Guess now he'll know to send somebody else next time to cheer you up."
"No," insisted Jinx. "I think he made the right call."
Jinx wasn't exactly smiling, but there was definitely a twinkle of appreciation in her eyes, a hint of comradery hanging on the corner of her lips.
"Maybe you should tell your boyfriend about...that whole situation?" Terra advised half-heartedly. Her voice raised in pitch at the end, indicating her lack of confidence in this idea.
"The short version, perhaps," Jinx ruminated quietly.
"Maybe give Rach a heads up, too, while you're at it. I'm sure she could scare the bajeezus outta this guy if you need to get him to lay off."
"True," Jinx agreed wryly, smirking with some delight at the idea.
Terra's phone buzzed, reminding her of an appointment she had coming up soon.
"Ah, right – Garfield needs me for his livestream in a few, sooo...-" She got up, thumbing toward the apartment building's entrance.
"Ugh, I can't believe he makes a living doing that nonsense..."
Terra grinned at Jinx's disapproval as she was followed up the entrance steps.
"Hey," said Terra. "Maybe I was never into the...performance part of the job, but he clearly was. Supers may not be needed in Jump City anymore, but people still wanna see the show. Might as well adapt to the times."
"Oh, I can't fault him for it at all," Jinx conceded as they entered the main lobby hall. "I just can't believe he doesn't tire from the attention."
"Heh, that stuff can...be more draining than it looks," Terra admitted.
"Honestly, I'm at a point where existing is more draining than it looks..."
As Jinx huffed loudly toward the floor, Terra smiled warily, understanding and relating with this sentiment, but offering a firm grip on Jinx's shoulder in support.
"Hey, existing is what we've got, so I'll take it over the alternative while I can."
