44. Superman – Sandi Thom

Valon didn't know whether he could be classed as a hero. At any rate, he wasn't a villain – not anymore. He couldn't claim to ride around the country doing random good deeds or anything, but he definitely erred more on the heroic side of things than he used to. Maybe it was just a knee-jerk reaction against everything he'd learned about Dartz and Doma, but these days he looked back at his past actions and shuddered.

His favourite question: 'What was I thinking?"

Answer: What Dartz wanted him to think.

Others might try to use that as a get-out clause – "It wasn't my fault, I was only doing what my boss wanted me to do, and he was very 'persuasive'."

Not Valon. He knew that although the Oricalchos had influenced and manipulated his thoughts in directions Dartz wanted, it hadn't placed anything in his head that wasn't already there. It inflated and embellished, drew out dark impulses from their hidden corners and amplified them, but it couldn't create the anger that had motivated him his whole life, nor the bitterness over Sister Mary Catherine and the thugs who burned her alive in her own church. Those were all his own.

Therefore his debts were all his own, too.

It hadn't been easy tracking down the people he'd challenged and beaten in duels – those whose souls had been forfeit when they lost to him. Some had blocked out the episode entirely, while others hated him so unconditionally he was lucky to have escaped them with his life and limbs all intact. Nonetheless, he continued in his crackpot quest to find everyone he'd wronged and make amends.

A few accepted a simple apology; others wanted him to pay some kind of penance. The worst, however, were the ones who remembered everything – far too clearly – and hadn't been able to go on after they were released from the Leviathan's belly. Nightmares chased and caught up with them long before Valon managed to do the same.

He'd made amends to two such victims by giving them a proper burial, and one more by standing by dredging up Sister Mary Catherine's old prayers, vainly hoping the guy would find the peace in the next life that he hadn't been able to grasp in this one.

"Why are you doing this?" asked the daughter of this third man, when she found Valon beside her father's grave and remembered him from their duel. It had been three years. She'd been thirteen at the time. Now she was blossoming, though her mouth was a hard line and her eyes even harder. "What do you hope to achieve?"

Valon looked at the simple headstone and sighed. "I don't know. But it's still something I've got to do."

"You'll never make everything all right," she said bitterly. "Not you."

"That part I do know," he said, heading for his bike in the parking lot and the next name on his list.