Disclaimer: Nope.

A/N: Thank you, lovely reviewers!

Six - Freelancing

There was a news report about the robbery, of course. I sat still in the living room while my parents watched it, never moving my eyes from the television screen. I skipped dinner and went to bed sick.

OOOO

I had reached an end. The thing about heroism – or rather, about support of said heroism – was the brutal reality that if you were not part of the solution by, say, eight weeks after graduation, there was no point kicking on. Lash was a dead-end, the point in which all my dreams would continue to crumble if I didn't leave him alone. I should have gotten the hint right from the start. I mean, it's not as if he didn't tell me flat out that he wouldn't save the world. I guess I just never knew how much he really meant it until now.

It was useless to dwell on. I couldn't change his mind by sulking anymore than I could by stalking and guilt tripping. It was time to accept the cruel blow I'd been dealt and figure out what to do about it. Like, for example, I could bike down to Lash's house right now with a convoy of cops demanding he hand over the cash in the name of justice and loving thy neighbor. Or, I could find something productive to do.

Productive; like freelance crime fighting.

The roof was extremely high. I had never noticed this before. It's sort of strange, knowing a house for eighteen years and never realizing how incredibly difficult it is to climb. I suppose my parents went through the teenage panic phase whereby all trees near my window were cut down, but shouldn't there at least be a drainpipe or something? It had all seemed much simpler this morning; a nice, straightforward plan to mark the beginning of my nice, straightforward career.

I was going to climb onto the roof and jump.

Better that no one else was home. Acts of self-training can so easily be misinterpreted. The problem was I'd scanned all the freelance ads on the Internet and every single one of them had been the same; decorated superhero seeking experienced sidekick to join elite crime-fighting team. Experienced. The forty thousand no's to the question I hadn't even asked yet; experience.

I didn't have experience. I was fresh out of high school, stranded without a hero, and facing my final chance at becoming a sidekick. I wasn't about to let a little lack of experience stand in the way of what I'd been taught to become. I wanted to help people, to save them, and if I had to jump off the roof to do it, well, everyone knows crime fighting power teams are all about self-sacrifice.

Of course, I hadn't counted on the lack of either convenient trees or drainpipes, or on the sudden vertigo that swooped into my stomach from just looking up at the roof. I was standing on the front porch, frowning slightly, hoping passer-by's wouldn't think me too suspicious. The last thing I needed was to be arrested and have to confess to planning on jumping. Again, serious misinterpretation could come into play there.

But how on Earth was I going to get up there? Teenagers did it all the time, apparently, so why did it suddenly seem so difficult?

There was logic to this plan, however unlikely that may seem. It makes sense that a superhero would want someone who jumped first and asked questions later, and in most cases that probably meant literally. So I was going to do just that. Jump first, ask questions about my freelance career later. Foolproof. Except for the part were I was starting to feel sick.

Pushing aside the gnawing thought that I was about to have a close contender for the worst idea in my life, I examined my goal.

If I couldn't climb up from the ground I would have to adapt. Improvisation is key to getting out of tricky situations. I should know; I wrote an essay about it once.

I glanced thoughtfully at the nearest second-storey window. It opened up from my parents' bedroom, wide enough to climb through and high enough that I would probably be able to grab onto the guttering if I stretched a bit. I hurried back inside, racing upstairs. It was important to get it over with before I lost my nerve completely.

Throwing open the shutters I willed myself not to look down as I unlatched the lock and pulled the top pane up. Despite craning my neck I couldn't see the edge of the gutter as I'd hoped. No backing out now. Fighting the urge to close my eyes, I gripped the sill and stuck my whole head and shoulders out, looking up. I could see it now, just. Up here it didn't hang over as much as I'd assumed it would on the ground and I found myself chewing anxiously on my lower lip.

I was hesitating, and it wasn't good. Every second spent staring above me was another second of wild, half-formed visions of falling to my death. Breaking my neck as I hit the porch and bounced off seemed quite popular.

No. I forced the image out of my head. I wasn't some teenage girl climbing onto the roof because a boy at school didn't like her. I was hero support. I faced stuff like this all the time – theoretically, at least – and I was braver for it.

Cheered on by my internal pep talk I pulled my head back in, pushed the window as far open as it would go and swung my left leg up and over the sill. I could do this. Absolutely nothing would happen to me. I was going to be fine. Bracing my hands against the frame, I followed with my other leg until they were both hanging out over the front wall of the house. Perfectly fine.

The next part was trickier. I had to simultaneously prop my feet up on the sill and twist my upper body until I was facing the house. Then it was a simple matter of grabbing the gutter and hurling myself up. Once I was safely up I'd start thinking about getting down.

Hardly breathing I edged my legs up until I was squatting uncomfortably on fifteen inches of painted wood, wishing that my mother had been a fan of window boxes. I bird-stepped carefully, shuffling the smallest of distances at a time to turn around and, with my back to the street, I stood up.

Okay, the gutter was up there, I could reach it. I tentatively let one hand drop away from it's vice grip on the window and reached, fingers brushing helplessly short of their destination. But I was too close to give up now. Throwing away all sense, I raised up onto my tiptoes, stretching out my arm…

I caught onto the gutter and, grinning, swung my other arm up. Piece of cake.

Unfortunately I hadn't counted on the part where I have no upper body strength. As I threw my weight upwards, fully expecting my arms to simply yank me to safety, my feet lost contact with the window sill, only I didn't launch up onto the roof as I'd anticipated. I hung there. Completely stuck. I waved my legs around uselessly, trying to feel my way back to the security of the window, hoping I'd be able to just drop back inside and pretend none of this ever happened.

It was about this time I realized I was in trouble. Serious trouble. Closed casket-like trouble. I finally closed my eyes.

I had no idea what to do. If I had a useful power I could have saved myself. Actually, if I had a useful power I probably wouldn't have had to jump off a roof to prove myself in the first place, but that's beside the point. I mean, what could I do? Make enough butterflies to carry me to safety? Even if I could do that, I don't have a clue how to communicate with them. They'd just fly off.

There was really only one option at this point; I started screaming.

Retired Mr O' Conner from next door was first on the scene. I could hear him yelling both at me to hang on and at his wife to call the fire department. I was screaming for my life, that my arms hurt, that if someone didn't come up and get me within the next five seconds I was going to fall. Mr O' Conner, sounding extremely terrified, told me to calm down and not do anything stupid.

"I'm not jumping!" I shrieked at him, "I'm falling!"

"I'll come up and try to pull you through the window!" he dashed across our front lawn and rattled the door handle. Sensible me had locked it, of course.

"You need a blanket to catch her," Mrs O' Conner, who had joined us, called out helpfully.

"Get me down! Get me down!" My arms were in agony, fingers and knuckles blotched red and white from the effort of holding myself up. The gutter was digging painfully into the bruise on my wrist. If I slipped… Tears were welling up in my eyes and I was starting to choke on my sobs. "Help me, please!"

Mrs O' Conner tutted. "She's going to fall."

More neighbors were arriving, I could hear the O' Conners filling them in on what was happening as if this was some sort of show they'd missed the first act of.

"Don't jump, Alissa," someone yelled, "Whatever's troubling you, we can work it out together."

I have never been more embarrassed in my entire life. This even beats the time my dad turned up to parent-teacher night with a Batman mask. Everyone in the entire neighbourhood is going to shout affirmations at me until I either fall or am rescued, in which case they will then proceed with more affirmations about the joy of living life un-airborne until I am carted off in an ambulance to listen to why I-failed-at-jumping-off-a-roof stories. It's difficult to say which would be worse.

And speaking of worse…

"Sidekick, as flattering as it is to assume that this is all for me, what exactly do you think hanging off the side of your house is going to accomplish?"

I must be hallucinating, because I could have sworn I just heard Lash. Which is, of course, impossible. Because Lash is currently tormenting small puppies and stealing money from those stores that sell Christmas decorations and way too busy being mean elsewhere to bother being mean here.

"Because if you flatten yourself across the pavement how will you ever get around to sewing me a costume?"

Was he trying to use some bizarre reverse psychology? "Lash, I am going to die because I have no hero support experience!" I'm not even sure he could understand me, my voice was way beyond the realms of hysterical at this point. I was screaming and crying and begging all at once. "I can't jump first and ask questions later! I can't even scale a wall!"

If he responded I didn't hear. At that moment a fire truck pulled up, siren blaring, and amid all the noise and sudden chaos everything else was drowned out. I heard the ladder extending against the wall, moving in slow motion, wondering how I was going to make my hands stay put for just a few more moments. And then there was a voice in my ear, hands around my waist and I was being lifted and carried down to safety, still crying.

The ambulance was against the curb just like I'd known it would be and a new emotion crept in; relief. I had done something so incredibly stupid I was never going to forgive myself, but I had survived it. I had held onto physical strength that I hadn't even realized I owned. Now there was something else; the tiniest hint of pride. It was quickly squashed under a fresh wave of tears as I was lain down on a stretcher.

Lash's face peered incredulously down at me, shaking his head. "Are you trying to prove that you can be a hero on your own, or what? Because there's a reason everyone knows sidekicks aren't heroes; it's true."

"I don't have anything to prove," I snapped, "especially to you."

He didn't answer, just smirked. I wanted to hit him, but someone was taking my blood pressure.

"Is there something you want from me, Lash?" I suddenly felt very flat.

"Actually, yes. I wasn't just in the neighborhood to watch you attempt to fly, I have something to tell you."

I blinked at him, confused. "What?"

"I have something to tell you," he repeated.

"I didn't mean – " I cut myself off, exasperated. "What is it?"

He suddenly looked rather uncomfortable. "Now, I'm not sorry, okay? So don't go getting any ideas that this is one of those apology things. I don't feel bad that I tricked you, or hurt you, or made you cry."

"Then why are you even here?"

"Because… because you left this behind that day you came to my house," he held up the crime fighting application form. I remembered dropping it in his doorway, discouraged that my guilt trip plan hadn't worked.

"And you wanted to give it back?"

"No! I mean," he ran a hand through his hair, "I don't care that you lost it and I don't care that it's yours, I just… don't want it in my house."

I took the form mutely as Lash was pushed aside by a paramedic. It was scrunched and partly torn, but still in one piece. It could still be filled out and sent to the Mayor. Well, maybe I'd have to photocopy it first, but it was legible. I didn't know what that meant. My head was beginning to hurt.

They opened the ambulance doors and started wheeling me in, explaining that I needed to be checked over and my parents had to be called and all sorts of questions had to be asked and answered. I couldn't hear them. I was listening to something else.

I just don't want it in my house. Maybe it wasn't enough to have me so angry that I never wanted to see him again. Maybe, like the form, it was better to be rid of me completely. Because something was dawning on me, something I should have realized right away.

"You could have saved me," I said through the curtain of paramedics. Lash, who didn't want to save the world, didn't even try to help me when I was falling. Who had superpowers and hadn't moved an inch when he'd heard me screaming for my life. Nothing, apparently, moved him. There was no pity or justice, no conscious to speak of. There was only Lash and what he wanted right at that moment. A self-driven need to purge what should have been a source of guilt, but was only an annoyance, out of his life.

But he had done nothing. It didn't have to mean something, it didn't have to mean that he was destined to be Superman and give everything of him to help the entire world, or even just help Maxville. It should have been a reflex. But he had done nothing. That he was fazed by the prospect of an apology, but not by standing idly by while he could have done something, would have taken care of any doubt I might have had that he would one day change his mind. As it was, I was beyond doubt.

"You could have saved me," I repeated.

I saw him shrug. "Probably," he replied.

I lay back, letting the paramedics shut the doors behind me. I can guess what they're thinking, because I know how this must look to people on the outside of Sky High. They'll ask me if I'm depressed, ask my parents if there have been any changes in my behavior. They'll want to know what I think about, what I do during the days, what I dream when I go to sleep. And eventually it'll come up that, yes, I have been quiet lately, I have been anxious and tired and talking about failure. My mother will talk about the bruise she found on my arm and my dad, awkward in his straight-backed plastic chair, will mention that there was some boy or something. I imagine they'll think Lash will have quite a lot to do with it. And he does. He's ruined everything.

And everyone kept suggesting freelance as if it was the solution to my problem. My problem goes way beyond that. My problem is a criminal that was given a second chance he didn't deserve. Principal Powers should have locked him up along with Royal Pain, done us all a huge favor. My problem is that I will never be hero support to anyone. My problem is that I am thoroughly ordinary.

But I won't be going down without a fight.