This is a story that's been kicking around in my brain for a while now. I will try to update as often as I can, but I'm hoping my writing muse visits me more frequently than it has been. I hope you guys enjoy it. Please leave reviews if you feel inclined to do so. Thanks.

Being a superhero isn't all flash blubs and pearly whites. Thank you's and tossed bouquets. It isn't a movie…the good guys wining and the bad guys losing. It's hard hits and harder falls. It's losing yourself and not knowing if you'll ever come back. Will the shell of what was become the norm of what is?

You see, superheroes aren't born…they're made. Very rarely do you wake up and go, "I think I'll be a superhero today." You're forged through blood, sweat, and tears, or so one saying goes. You don't need powers, although they help. You don't need a partner or a team, but they're a great support system. But sometimes, it's just you. You against the crazy, the misplaced, the wronged. But then this could be describing yourself.

Why are you on this battlefield, in this place reeking of copper and sweat, the silence deafening in its infinity? What clicked in your head to fight for injustice, to fight for the powerless, to just…fight?

No one is born a superhero, they're made. Made by a heartache so powerful nothing can fill the echoing void. Nothing can calm the storming thoughts, quell the simmering tempers, and relieve the rigid tension coursing through the body.

Superheroes are forged by the path of a single bullet slicing through the yielding flesh of a loved one; being trapped in your head with the taunts of monsters long since gone, but still very much alive in your mind; feeling the last tickle of a breath upon your face as you cry dry tears.

All the pain, the suffering, the powerlessness, the abandonment; it flows through your veins like a scorching lava. There's nothing of what once was, just what remains. The past is a brilliant reminder of the good times, the better times. But that's just it, it's the past. The Present is like a true present; you're unwrapped, from layers upon layers of your old life – every new scar, every skipped heartbeat, every lost tear is revealed in dark contrast to who you once were. Remaking you into this, this person you don't recognize. It wears your face (most of the time), it uses your voice to convey it's opinions, it doesn't let on to those you know that it is altered, numb, broken.

That's the worst part, 90% of the time, you look the same. Sure you might be slightly disfigured or walk with a limp, but you're recognized by those that knew you, knew you before. It's the inside that's changed. You can never go back to that person you were, the one you so desperately wanted to escape from in the first place. No take-backies. Never. I guess it's true, you never realize what you've lost until it's gone. And now, now you must learn to live with this newness, this new you. Do you wish to escape this version of yourself as well? But if you did, would you become something better….or worse?

But no wishful thinking in the Present, this is the current norm, the you of today; the person that you have to live with, that your friends (if you still have any) have to learn to accept. It's the adapting to the indefinite void growing millimeter by millimeter inside you. Filling the spaces once warmed by love and happiness with cold dread and apathy.

Superheroes aren't born, they're made. It might be a long road or a bright instant, but it's never an easy path or a fairytale story. Soul sucking pain, guilt, loss – so much loss…