AU: Most of the Time
Daniel Hebert woke to the strident blaring of his alarm clock and dark skies outside. He wasn't a fan of early mornings, for all that his job required them and had for the last two decades, and he found himself daydreaming about being able to make it noon whenever he wanted as he showered. It wasn't impossible; parahumans existed, and anyone could become one if the cards played out right. With the right power, day would come at his call.
But that was just a daydream; most people never got powers at all. Aside from those lucky few who did, the rest of the world had to do with their normal lives and normal solutions. Like getting a job that didn't require he be at work before the sun was up… But that would mean abandoning the Docks. Thus, he suffered in silence.
The house was quiet and mostly dark as he puttered about; he took the time to turn on all of the lights, but it still felt empty. Taylor's backpack sat in her kitchen chair, where she had last put it. He left it alone, though it smelled faintly of old juice. A spill, maybe an accident or maybe something else… Old now, whatever it was. If it wasn't so cold out, he'd have expected it to attract flies. A problem for later in the year.
He made a modest breakfast, enough scrambled eggs and toast for two, and ate his half. The other half went on a plate and into the fridge. That done, he donned his coat, gloves, and hat, and trudged out into the early morning darkness to get his truck started.
The old machine didn't want to start, but he twisted the key in the ignition just right and tapped the gas a few times, and it rumbled to life. He'd have to get it looked at; such idiosyncrasies were usually the precursor to something going horribly wrong, no matter how easily he adjusted to and ignored them. Better now then after it all broke down and left him with nothing but a hollow sense of regret.
It was cloudy out, depriving him of even the consolation prize of seeing the sun rise between the decrepit buildings that lined his commute. He didn't particularly like his own neighborhood, or the old streets leading from it to the docks. The buildings were sagging, the streets faded, the storefronts defensive and often closed… If he had more money, he would have long since moved himself and Taylor into a better part of town, to hell with all the muttering that might have caused about uppity union bosses not knowing the plight of the common worker. Getting a better house wouldn't have been for him, it would have been for Taylor.
But that old argument was irrelevant, and he didn't need to be stoking his temper this early in the morning, so he focused on the drive. It helped that the streets were pocked with little craters that required his attention to avoid, some natural and some the result of being a city with a high density of capes. If he looked carefully, he could tell the difference; the real, natural potholes were things of neglect and erosion, while the cape-made potholes were violent, broken impact points, lined with jagged edges. Though the cape potholes would at least draw attention to the streets they damaged sooner rather than later, being so much more dangerous. The normal potholes might otherwise go years without being addressed.
The lot by the union office buildings, a modest place situated in the midst of the dockyards, was already sporting a dozen different trucks in various states of disrepair. Danny parked close to the building, tugged his gloves tight, and made the short trek into the building. Today was a work day like any other, and he had a busy day ahead of him…
And an important meeting after work was over with. He couldn't forget that, though part of him wanted to. Instead, he threw himself into his work and let it slip away from his thoughts.
It turns out to be a very quiet morning, all in all. He had managed to get a contract for half the men under him, one out in the richer part of town as extra muscle after an all-out cape brawl, so the number of union members stopping by to ask for things, chat, or offer their condolences was lower than normal.
He busied himself making inroads on the stack of paperwork contracting labor out to the city entailed. Government regulations needed to be followed, and most of them fell to him to check up on and ensure. Drug testing, for one, though there was a new complication in the form of an amendment to the procedure for 'cape-dense areas' to account for TInkertech drugs… His men would either take the test and come out clean, or 'take' the test and come out clean, so it didn't really matter to them. He was the one stuck figuring out what changes would need to be made to the usual procedure.
As it was, he was in the middle of filling out a confirmation form on a totally different matter – because staring at the phrase 'Tinker-derived narcotics' was going to drive him insane if he didn't take breaks – when one of the men loitering about in the Docks burst into his office.
"Empire coming up the street, headed our way," Lars said briskly. "Ten guys, and Krieg at the head. They wanna talk."
Danny ignored how Lars could possibly know that – he would be a fool to think there were no Empire sympathizers among his men, and Lars was at least blatant about it – and stood. "Men gathering to bar them from entry?" he asked.
"I called everybody I knew was around, they'll be there," Lars assured him. Another point in his favor was that he was too stupid to lie effectively; Danny knew he was telling the truth in this instance.
"Go join them," he ordered. Lars couldn't make any trouble if he was in the middle of a crowd of defenders, while he could be convinced by his 'friends' to look the other way if stationed somewhere on his own.
"On it," Lars said, turning and leaving the building. Danny followed right behind him, only stopping once to retrieve a certain something from the safe behind the front desk. On another day, he might have forced himself to stay behind, but today… Today, he was feeling the urge to go out and deal with this personally.
The Empire members had been stopped within sight of the Union office building; a dozen skinheads were lounging on top of two stopped cars, glaring mulishly at the dockworkers spread out blocking the road. Said skinheads weren't sporting any visible weapons, while the dockworkers hefted pipes, wrenches, and the occasional nail gun, but that was a farce. There would be handguns and worse concealed under coats on both sides, waiting for an opening of hostilities.
And then there was Krieg; the Empire cape, an import from London if the rumors Danny heard were right, was standing between the two cars the Empire had shown up in, waiting patiently. He wasn't wearing his usual costume, instead decked out in a stereotypical trenchcoat and domino mask. There would be some sort of explanation for that, a seemingly reasonable one, but Danny already knew the real reason. So long as nobody spotted an obvious cape from above, there was little to no chance of interference from a hero. Krieg was inconspicuous, this way.
Danny made it to the human barricade. He could have waited for Krieg to speak, but he just didn't feel like waiting. "You're blocking the road," he called out, stepping into the open.
"Ah, my friend," Krieg said gravely. "Hebert. It has been too long since we talked."
"The answer is no," Danny retorted.
"To a talk?" Krieg asked. He shifted, looking back at his men, then to Danny. "Do you really wish to be so dismissive? We are only working for the betterment of all who deserve it."
"Cut the crap, or at least stop dressing it up," Danny shot back. "We both know what you want, and again, the answer is no. The dockworkers make no alliance, take no favors, and give no favors to any gang."
"You speak loudly for the position you are in," Krieg said softly. He stepped forward, and Danny forced himself to hold his ground. Krieg's powers, a sort of movement dampening effect with many different uses, were strongest around himself. Him getting closer was a threat… But it was also a risk.
"And I only came to offer my condolences," Krieg said carefully. "One wonders… Do you know how people such as I come about? Or do you know, now?"
"I assume it's either ingrained bigotry or weak-mindedness exploited by men without scruples," Danny said firmly. "Or if you're talking about people like you… No."
"That is almost a shame," Krieg sighed. "You would be much more interesting an opponent than many of those who oppose the natural way of things. But you know that you are– "
He cut himself off when Danny pulled out the slender little piece of machinery he'd taken from the safe. He held it close to his body, keeping it out of view of the rest of his men.
Krieg scowled fiercely. He didn't like the sight of a Tinkertech laser pistol.
"Most people never get powers, but we can make do," Danny said firmly, brandishing a weapon that Krieg's personal aura couldn't stop in the slightest. Acquiring it had been a dicey process, but utterly vital once Krieg came to town under the Empire; his powers were a hard counter to the usual strategy of focusing conventional arms on a cape. Bullets slowed to a crawl when they got close.
Lasers did no such thing.
"This will end in bloodshed," Krieg warned.
"Yes, and some of it would be yours," Danny retorted coldly. "The Docks are no gang's plaything. Not the ABB, not the Merchants, not the Empire. Go fight someone else."
Krieg looked at him, and at the men waiting behind him. He shook his head with a put-upon sigh. "I am not so stupid as to unduly provoke a man with so little left to lose. You truly do have my condolences. We will return some other day, when you are more amiable to discourse."
"Fancy words don't hide ugly intentions," Danny shot back.
Krieg shook his head dismissively and sat in the passenger seat of one of the cars, closing the door behind him. That seemed to be the signal for the rest of his men to get back in, a process that Danny might have compared to clowns stuffing into a clown car, were he in a joking mood. As it was, he watched carefully until the cars turned a corner down the road and were out of sight.
A collective sigh of relief – and potentially some disappointment, a good half of his men had personal reason to hate the Empire – went up among his men. They began to disperse, though many were only going back to their posts. Nobody was ready to relax yet.
"That was the gutsiest thing I've ever seen," one of his men yelled from somewhere nearby. "God damn!"
He didn't smile; the cold, somewhat hollow satisfaction in his heart was enough.
Quitting time rolled around and lingered while Danny finished up the last of his daily allotment of paperwork; contrary to what some people might have assumed, he still had work to do after driving off the Empire. One potentially life-threatening confrontation with a cape did not immediately warrant the rest of the day off, not in Brockton Bay.
By the time he was actually getting ready to leave, it was growing dark outside. The night guard was pulling up in the parking lot, his deceptively small car divulging an absolutely hulking man.
"Danny, heading out early?" the night guard called out.
"Got somewhere to be," Danny said tersely as he got into his truck, not appreciating the crack about his frequently overlong hours. "Keep an eye out tonight."
"Heard you spit in a few eyes today," the guard called out as he got the engine started. "Careful, man, that ain't safe."
"Nothing's safe." He pulled out of the lot and left the guard behind. The drive home was as uneventful as always; save for a bit of residual traffic, he had missed rush hour and all it entailed. He got home without incident, which was good. A part of him had expected the Empire to ambush him the moment he was out of his 'territory' and presumably without his Krieg countermeasure. Not that they would send Krieg; Hookwolf was much more that sort of cape.
He didn't care; it would happen or it wouldn't.
The house was brightly lit, but still mostly empty. Taylor's backpack was back on the chair, where she had last put it. There was a dull discoloration on top that he only noticed in the waning light from the windows, and he wiped his finger over the coarse material to discover the source was a fine layer of dust.
The answering machine was blinking. He went over and hit the necessary buttons to play back the messages; it wasn't often people bothered to call his home phone.
"Danny, this is Alan," a familiar voice said stiffly. "I've been trying to get in touch with you, just… answer my calls, okay? We can work this out without–"
That message wasn't worth listening to; Danny hit the delete button the moment he got the gist. Nothing new there.
"Mr. Hebert, this is the Brockton Bay police department," a dry, no-nonsense woman said in the next message. "We're going to need you to come in for further testimony at your earliest convenience."
There was more, but it was all of the contact information he already knew. He eyed the notepad by the phone just to make sure the scribbled numbers and addresses there matched what she was saying, then deleted the message.
That was all. Disappointing, but not unexpected. At least nothing urgent had come up; he didn't want to miss his appointment.
He shuffled through the kitchen, throwing together a basic sandwich, just something to make sure the hollow rumbling in his stomach wasn't too distracting. He'd forgotten to pack a lunch that morning, but he'd also forgotten to eat lunch, so it all worked out. While he was at it, he tossed out the old scrambled eggs and toast on the plate in the fridge… It hadn't been eaten.
He left the house, locked the door behind himself, and got back into his truck. The drive was longer this time, to a place he didn't go daily, though he'd gone there a lot more often as of late. An appointment he wasn't going to let himself miss.
The sun was setting by the time he made it out to the cemetery. Orange and yellow washed across a cloudy sky, dull but there. He sat between two gravestones, the cold, hard ground freezing him through his pants, and watched the sun set.
A strange shape flew into view, slowly crossing the skyline. A floating figure carrying another, bridal-style. Glory Girl and Panacea, based on what he knew of the city's capes and who might be carrying who around in plain sight. The intimidating flying brick and the miracle cure.
He knew a little about them; Alan had known Carol, they worked together. Victoria had gotten powers after being fouled in a basketball game. He didn't know how Panacea had gotten hers, but it would be something similar. Second-generation capes got powers easier, it took a lot more for first-generation capes. Something like that.
But it all depended on chance, in the end. Or in the beginning. Some people got superpowers, some people were able to fly before they hit the ground, to punch through walls before they were found, to fight back when they were cornered and helpless…
Some didn't. Most didn't.
He sat there, cold and silent, until the world was dark, and then lingered longer, until he couldn't feel his legs for the cold numbness that came with sitting as he was. Numb like he was on the inside, most of the time.
He closed his eyes, sighed, and forced himself to keep moving, to abandon the two graves. No matter how he felt, he had to keep going.
Some people got powers. Everyone else had to make do without.
Author's Note: I tried to leave plenty of hints – direct, contextual, and even one meta – as to what this little one-shot is really about, but I didn't want to spell it out. So I won't. Just know that, if you didn't already catch what wasn't directly said, there is more to this.