RAMIEL

— followed by an “Um” with nothing ever coming after it.

— he spoke, slipping right back into a decade-old routine like a glove.
He held up his right arm, a ghostly imprint of a small hand marked on red and irritated skin.
“She cooked me a ‘lil bit when she grabbed me, but it’ll be fine.”
Every sentence was punctuated with a nervous “Heh,” usually —

— his face, and then kept doing it when he was standing perfectly still. All those years, all that time, and he still had no poker face to speak of.
“Hi,” he repeated before evidently realizing that he had already said that.
“Oh, I was about to ask the same question. Are you okay?”
He signed as —

Jack’s hands busied themselves by separating the food, the squeaky styrofoam boxes as loud as gunfire in the silent loft.
Every moment felt as if he were running in place, going nowhere and going there fast.

He kept sweeping a hand back through his untamed hair every time a lock fell in front of —

— matchstick.
“Stay out of this,” the woman said, her voice an electronic growl as it filtered through her helmet.
The fist gripped tight in Superman’s grasp began to move.

Against all odds, it was getting harder to stop.

— seconds, barely managing to place himself between his sister and Superman.
This hit landed.
Her furious swing landed square on his shoulder, the thunderous impact splitting the asphalt beneath their feet, sending him skidding across the pavement and through a streetlight pole like it was a —

— caught the strike, only to miss the next.
“Superman, don—“
Sara’s swing with her free hand was faster than the human eye could track, yet Jack knew it was coming.
Whether Superman could avoid the blow or not, he couldn’t tell. He would never know, either.
Jack moved in the space between —

His eyes flitted to the blur of red and blue that appeared between him and the devastating strike aimed at his temple.
He felt the hit land.
No. He felt the vibration passing through his suit, prickling over his skin, rippling through muscle and bone up through the ground.
Their visitor had —

— blow to her belly.
He had been at this far longer, he had experience, but she had the clear focus of one unburdened by free thought.

And he was tired. He was so, so tired.

— But the man in red and blue couldn’t know what was happening here. He couldn’t know how dangerous his twin was, what she could do to the city—the world.
“STOP, SARA!”
His fist connected with the obsidian-black of her helmet as he juked to the side in a move as slick as oil to deliver another —

— help. He emerged from the dust in a mad dash towards his twin, the fading sun glinting off a suit of armor the color of morning fog.
He had to stop this, here and now.

“That’s enough.”

A voice from the sky, cutting through the chaos. He knew who it was, he knew he should listen.
—

— his “sister.”
This is what she wanted. He had given her exactly what she wanted by tracking her here. She’d tossed the chum into the water and he’d swam up to check it out.
Now people were dead, and more were about to die.
“SARA!”
His voice boomed over the screams, the sirens, the cries for —

— cloud of dust.
This was not going well. Not well at all.
He had tried so desperately to lead the fight away from the throngs of hungry Metropolitans going out for dinner, for drinks, for good times.
Now the café was gone and so was the little bar next door.
Wanton, rampant destruction from —

His ears rang, thrumming and pulsing in tempo with his rapidly rising heart rate. He’d taken the last hit directly to his chest, Saraquel making sure her blow landed true.

The bone-shattering strike had sent him straight through the western corner of a bank, turning brick and glass alike into a —

And there he stood, ten years different but still just the same tall, broad-shouldered goof with bright eyes that hid unimaginable terror.
“Hi,” he said with half a laugh, his hand subtly taming back his hair.
He quickly found that no other words would come out.

— Then as if stepping out of the shower but much more clothed, he simply stepped out of the suit as every inch of it opened with the sound of clinking alloys and synthetic, leathery weave.
“Sentry,” he said, and the suit closed itself and…Walked away down the creaking stairs. That was new.
—

— In his contorted face anyone could see the passion, the pain, the rage that had no choice but to escape him through his voice.
“Jesus, I keep forgetting I still have this on.”
Jack ducked beneath the little archway from the kitchen to the living room, the suit seemingly filling the space.
—

— attire. A guitar was slung around his shoulder, one whose shape matched the poor sight on the kitchen table. His hands were a blur on the strings and neck, his wild black hair drenched in sweat as he leaned against another man on stage as they both screamed a microphone into submission. —

— other than a TV remote and a small picture frame that held two pictures.
One was a photo of a band playing on a small stage, the photographer too distant and the venue too flooded with light and smoke to make out the faces. The other photo was of Jack, dressed in his usual ‘Man in Black’ —

— stripped down to the wood, taken apart, and was covered in little pencil marks and notes to himself.
“I, uh, sorry about the mess. I wasn’t expecting company, clearly,” he said with a chuckle that was tinged with the disbelief he still felt.

On the coffee table there was nothing —

— “Oh,” he began, almost sounding startled from inside the suit he still hadn’t exited.
“On the coffee table is fine, kitchen table’s been occupied by a project.”
Indeed it had. On the table was a guitar not unlike the two that hung from pegs on the rear wall next to his TV. The thing had been —

Every square inch of the place had his mark on it, leaving absolutely no question as to the kind of person that lived here.
The dark green walls were lined with framed posters and artwork of this interest or that, flags from bands that had toured in Gotham hanging neatly between them.
—

Steep, narrow stairs lead up to his home. They were the kind of steps that would kill if attempted in the dark or drunk, and each one creaked like a not-so-subtle intruder alarm as Nat ascended them.

Ten years had done little to change Jack’s tastes in decor and fittings, that much was clear. —

— imaginable, and…

…She was here again. To hell with everything else. She was right there on that unused welcome mat waiting for him.

The door clicked audibly, his voice following through his suit’s audio system.
Seems he forgot to change.
“Door’s open!”

— intention on it.
Straighten this, pick up that, disarm the security system—a good thing to do if he didn’t want his final memory of Nat to be a smoking crater.

And then there she was at his front door, a small figure on his security monitor. New clothes, bags of the unhealthiest food —

— he wanted to scream, he wanted to vomit, to cry, to do something, anything to quell whatever this whirlwind of emotions roiling inside him was.
Panic, joy, fear, love, frustration, all of it blending into unidentifiable nonsense.

He did what he always did; pick a task and set every ounce of —

— Jack.”
Nat was as fast as always. She was already probably at the front door and waiting to be let in. No, no. She would have to wait for the order. That would give him time, right? Time for a little hyperventilation and then some very quick cleaning.
He wanted to sprint around the room, —

Mere seconds later he was home. Rather, he had circled around his home in a blur on skittering heels and entered through a rear path that kept him and his suit out of public view.
The biometric scanners he had installed opened the door before he could reach it.
“Okay, okay, okay, think fast —

“All this happening after ten years…Feels like a reset.”

— gone, almost expecting for Nat to beat him home.
Wouldn’t that be something, coming home to her again?