To Be A Hero

Chapter 44: Just One Yesterday

I've never really thought of myself as a hero, though. I was more or less just given the label. It wasn't exactly something I wanted, but it was something I took on because people need someone to look to, I guess. If there's someone that they think will save the day, then they will push themselves to just make it through the day.

When I was in America, we had no possible idea how to stop this, we had no one to look up to to save us. Of course, there was the government, but they were only helping us cope, nothing more. There was supposed searches for a cure, but it all came up fruitless. We had no hope. We all just did what we had to do to get through the day, went to bed, got up and did it again.

I mean, we do that here in Abel, but at least we can smile while we do it.

I don't imagine myself as this main character-named Merlia, which is so very original-or at least, I try not to. For once I want someone else to make the hard choices, to be the one who gets hurt, to be the one to have to carry the weight of too many lives on their shoulders...

But I realize, as I keep reading, everything this mermaid does... I'd do. I'd do what she decides to do. I'd make the hard choices, sacrifice my safety, my happiness in order to protect the people that I love.

I set the book down in my lap, leaning my head back and closing my eyes. I think back to fictional heroes much like this mermaid, the ones I used to look up to-the ones I thought were so great.

I also used to think happy endings were for everybody who was good. How naive I used to be.

There aren't many heroes, not that I really knew of, anyway. I mean, I liked Barbie and Disney princesses-they got their happy endings. They always did. I did like Tony Stark... a lot. I think he's the only character like Merlia.

When I was younger, I was in love with Tony Stark because he did what he thought would help people, and he still tried to help people even when he went through terrible, horrible circumstances that left him not quite as normal as before. He became something different, a piece of him missing, a piece of him changed. And he still tried.

I'm beginning to realize that as a child I was in love with Tony Stark. As an adult I am Tony Stark.

Too bad the world ended after 'The Avengers' movie came out. I would have loved to see how that would have ended with the purple guy in the end credit scene. I also would have loved to see how Tony's life went on. Maybe if he would have gotten a true happy ending, I'd have more hope for my own.

Not that I don't have hope. I mean, Veronica says she's finally found her breakthrough, which means she may soon find a cure, or a vaccine, and we don't really have any bad guys to worry about besides Netrophil, although they've sort of been just... not quiet, exactly. Just not doing anything horribly sinister. Not to us, anyway. I can't really bring myself to care if they do anything to the Ministry, because the Ministry has the manpower to right themselves when something goes wrong. The Minister is a smart enough woman to fix that which has been broken, and she has people to help her when she isn't.

Abel... Abel has 350 residents in it. I think 233 or so of them are healthy adults, the rest being children, the elderly, and the disabled. When we were attacked before Sarah's kidnapping, we were barely able to keep the township from being destroyed.

Janine is running herself ragged. She refuses to take any pain meds. She refuses to rest. She refuses to talk about Tom to anyone. Kefilwe says that Janine just feels that she failed, but I don't if know if that's true.

Janine is still a human being, and people can only take so much before they snap. I basically did when Sam 'died'. I mean, I tried to shoot myself.