Chapter One
“You cannot just pull me out of retirement, Prongs! I’m too old now!” Sirius exclaimed in a dramatic manner.
They were in his office, discussing his comeback to get his hands dirty in the field again, years after he last went into action. He didn’t really care if he sounded harsh, but frankly he never wanted to wear his itchy old hero mask again.
James sighed and rubbed his forehead, exhausted from the conversation already. “Padfoot, I get that you disliked being in action-”
“Hated every bit of it.” Sirius blurted, spinning around in his office chair.
“-but we really need a skilled hero to take Rosethorn’s place once she takes a break.” James continued, ignoring his remark.
Sirius sighed. He put his feet up on the desk and a noise something like a yelp or a startled laugh came out of his throat when the man seated on the other side of the table pushed his legs off.
“Don’t sit like that, it’s rude.” James chastised, sounding far too mature for someone who drew a penis on Sirius’ face when he was asleep on the boy’s couch.
“Don’t you have work to do?” Sirius reminded James, who was notorious for being forgetful and missing deadlines.
“I’m doing my work, I’m here trying to convince you to be a hero again.”
The Heroes’ Headquarters was a place most people would be lucky to get into, and considering his bad reputation, Sirius should have been thanking every entity out there that pushed his luck enough for him to get into the programme, and not only that, be able to work in the field.
But he had also hated every fucking moment of being in the field.
He used to be a popular hero, famously known as the Grim Reaper, a pretty badass name for someone who cried while watching The Notebook, according to his friends.
“I don’t know, Prongs. I’m still not completely healed from when Dementis attacked me.That’s kind of why I retired from hero work.” The black-haired man reminded.
“I know that.” James’s voice was soft.
They’d entered the programme together, and when everybody steered clear of Sirius because of his family line, James didn’t seem to care. He thought of him as his brother, and that would never change.
That was probably why Founder Dumbledore requested James to convince Sirius to get back in. He could never say no to him, not until now anyway.
He looked at James Potter. He was a buff man with dark brown skin and almost greasy dark hair that stood all over the place. His rectangular glasses were crooked on his nose that looked slightly like it had been punched and broken once and healed badly. He was in a red button-up shirt that seemed to cry out in pain as it struggled to cover his broad chest.
“I won’t force you if you don’t want to, but Rosethorn is going to be out of commission for a pretty long time, and it’s not easy replacing such a skilled hero adequately with a new recruit.” He explained again.
“Adequately? Is that a new word Minnie made you learn?” Sirius said.
James huffed and reached across the desk to push him, startling a laugh out of them both.
“Why is Rosethorn out of commission anyway? Did she get hurt?” Sirius asked out of blue.
James’ laughter melted away from his face, “No.” He hesitated before revealing, “Alice is pregnant.”
Sirius sat upright in his seat and James put his arms forward as he explained, “They’re keeping it on the downlow, I don’t even know if I was allowed to tell you this.”
“There’s no way they would have told you something if they didn’t want me knowing as well.” Sirius absent-mindedly stated, still processing what James just said.
There was silence for a moment or two before Sirius whispered out in a low voice, “Rosethorn’s pregnant?”
His brother nodded and the silence dragged on.
Alice and Frank were a sort of power couple in the Heroes’ Headquarters. They had been together since before they entered the training programme and made a cutthroat team while fighting crime. Alice, or Rosethorn, could make vines grow out of nowhere and trap villains within minutes, or block entire parts of cities by making trees grow there at fast paces. Frank was a role model and a top student in the training programme but quit the field faster than Sirius did. He was an instructor in the programme the two of them had always admired.
They had been married for years now and as far as he could tell, they were at their happiest.
Heroes were like celebrities when it came to families and personal life, any scandal would be in newspapers and tabloids for weeks and their personal relations were hard to maintain with the world stalking their every move at a worse pace than the villain organisations.
“Oh my fucking god they’re having a baby?” He gasped, unsure whether to rejoice or be quiet.
“That’s why they want you back as a hero.” Prongs stood up and put a hand on his shoulder, he knew he was asking a lot from his friend, “Dumbledore wanted you specifically, and Rosethorn thought you’d make a good hero while she’s gone.”
Alice wanted him back in the field. He knew it wasn’t his skill like James thought, she felt guilty for not saving him on time. He had told her time and time again she wasn’t the one to blame, but Alice was like that, carrying burdens that weren’t hers.
But she needed him to help her this time, it wasn’t just her hoping this would result in his comeback, she needed him to step up and take her place.
Sirius knew the decision he was making. He’d been a child once, ruined by fame and neglect because of the world of heroes and villains.
“Rosethorn and Frank are taking a big break because they want to be there for their kid.” Prongs informed him, “They want you there, Pads. Just until she’s back in the game, she wants you to take her place and Frank recommended you. Nobody will force you back in, but…Pads it’s really hard without you there, you were one of our best heroes. Just…just consider it, yeah?”
The Grim Reaper stared at his brother, grey eyes like silver moonlight and as big as coins, long eyelashes fringed on his eyelids. It was a shame he’d have to mask them soon.
Rosethorn had saved his life once. They never talked much but she had made a monumental impact on him. He owed this to her, whether he liked it or not.
“I’ll join.” He sighed, “I’ll get back in the field with you.”
— — — —
He regretted his choice the moment the night air started to bite.
Hogsmeade was a quaint place, a small area with mostly petty crime like sweet shop robberies and drug deals.
The college students dancing in the nightclubs and bars were too drunk to notice him as he leapt from roof to roof in the cold. The loneliness was starting to get to him despite the crowds below.
Unlike most districts where two heroes were partnered up for their shifts, Hogsmeade was too small and never had much drama happening around for heroes to interfere.
Standing alone on the roof of a closed joke shop, he felt a sort of melancholia seep through him. It was almost summer, but it could’ve been snowing with how chilly the surrounding air was.
A call distracted him from his moping as a familiar voice reached out to him from the dark earpiece hidden in his ear beneath his long hair tied in a bun.
“Sirius, are you there?”
“Yes, I’m here. There’s not really anything I have to do here at the moment, everything feels fine.” He answered.
“That’s because you’re in the district where literally nothing happens.” Mary’s voice snorted.
“What do I do now? Just sit here and fuck around?” He asked.
It had been nearly six years since he last patrolled as a hero, he had lost his touch.
“Check the northern side, there’s a pretty famous prep school nearby there-”
“I know, I studied there.” He interrupted her when he saw the old building she was talking about.
“And I know a lot of- you studied there?” Mary had a habit of clicking her tongue disapprovingly and saying ‘Do not interrupt me.’ that she hadn’t used this time around.
He leapt through the rooftops, his black leather jacket showing off the letter ‘H’ in white on the back of the shoulder, small enough to not be horrendous but big enough to clearly represent he was a hero.
“I hated that place.” He was starting to discover he had a lot of things to hate, “ I had like two friends and both of them dropped out halfway through so I was lonely for half the time and got bullied a lot.”
“Damn. I didn’t take you as someone who’d get bullied, more like the overrated popular kid that people couldn’t tell was punk or goth.” She murmured.
“Surprising for you, but the leather jacket aesthetic only started after I entered the training programme.”
Mary and her friends were the ones that had gotten him into punk bands. She had been his friend and senior who had graduated early and bagged a job at the headquarters before he could even memorise the protocols.
“And here I was thinking you were born with winged eyeliner.” She deadpanned as he reached the colder part of Hogsmeade.
“That part is true, when I was born the doctors called me a miracle because of how beautiful my smoky eye was.” He retorted with equal fun.
He looked around the crowded streets near the prep school which were filled with students who were definitely underaged sneaking into pubs and taking out the cheap beer.
“Why did you want me to come here, exactly?” He pressed his finger on the device as he asked.
Every hero had an operator behind an earpiece who could see their surroundings with the district’s cameras or a camera attached to the hero themself.
The operator could be someone who was considered not experienced enough to do field work or too physically weak to do so. It had been Sirius’ job to be Marlene’s operator for the past six years after the villain Dementis had tackled a severe blow to him mid-fight.
He wondered how Marlene was holding up with the new operator who was temporarily taking his place.
“It’s a prep school next to a bunch of nightclubs and shady alleyways, there’s no way nothing illegal would happen here.”
“You want me to stop drug deals and vaping emo kids?” He asked incredulously.
“Hey, emo kids aren’t the only ones who vape, it’s them popular jocks always hiding in the locker room taking out the bubblegum vapes.” She replied, changing the topic in her distraction.
“It is also very much not illegal.” He pointed out.
“Is it not?” Her disbelief sounded in every word.
He paused, “I don’t think so?”
“Well it should be!”
“But it isn’t and I don’t make the law so don’t complain to me.”
People were starting to notice him now, a few kids sneaking pictures with their glitter phone cases they tried to phase off as selfies.
He saw his picture being taken in one of them, his dark visor reflecting the streets. There was a slight gap between the lower mask and visor he was wearing, revealing the area between his eyes and nose.
His lower face and nose was covered in a white metal mask that was shaped like a bunch of pointed animalistic teeth, an entire set of sharp fangs shaped well enough to tear someone to shreds at will.
He wore a bulletproof jacket underneath his leather jacket, keeping him warmer than most for the night but still uncomfortable with the chill around for some reason.
He struck a pose for the picture and watched the startled expression on the teenager’s face, fueling Mary’s wheeze of laughter.
“Ok but there’s definitely something suspicious going on in that alley near the school.” He heard her try to fade the mirth from her voice.
Following her directions, he ignored the surprised admirers within the crowd as he jumped towards the alley Mary found suspicious. The boots he wore, specifically designed to help him jump, seemed to get lesser and lesser effective the more he used them to reach the area.
Mary, it seemed, sucked at being able to tell him where to go, forgetting how to send directions and getting dizzy at compass directions.
“How are you an operator again?” He sighed, trying to navigate to her desired place.
“Shush.”
She finally gained the brain cells to point him to the correct place, only for him to find a slender alley barely large enough to drive a bike through.
“Oh, you mean this alleyway, yeah nobody uses this place except seniors trying to make out and fuck.” He claimed loudly.
“You don’t know that you were a dumb teenager when you were last at this place and you’re almost thirty now.” She held a tone of seriousness.
As if to prove his point, a teenage couple drunkenly making out in the dark caught sight of him and ran out with an embarrassed apology muttered under their breaths, fits of giggles catching up to them as they held onto each other’s hands while they walked out of the cramped area.
He raised an eyebrow, his silence louder than his words.
“Ok fine, maybe you’re right, but stay here anyway.” She insisted.
“Why? There’s not much happening here.” He reasoned.
“I just have a bad feeling. It’s not like there’s going to be much happening in the other parts of the districts either.”
“Well, considering it’s a saturday night and there’s so many students here, the amount of drug intake and vaping is going to be off the charts” He echoed their previous conversation.
“Just stay where you are for a little while. I have a bad feeling” She pressed, getting more serious and almost sounding desperate.
He pursed his lips, unsure of what to say. Unless it was the person’s power, having a bad gut feeling was not a sign to stay put somewhere, but Mary was a popular rule breaker and it was one of the reasons she was one of the best operators the heroes had.
“Alright, fine. I will stay right here. But if something happens at some other corner of Hogsmeade and they ask why I couldn’t help, I will rat you out.” He warned her before making himself comfortable on the edge of the flat roof.
“No you won’t.” She knew him well enough to know he wasn’t the snitching type.
He sighed, “No I won’t.”
He could feel the smile on her face without her even speaking.
There was a comfortable silence among them for a while. He sat down, tugging at his jacket to keep himself warmer. Mary must have been checking the cameras around the district because he couldn’t hear a peep from her.
The air tensed, as if to hold a breath. He could hear Mary gasping all of a sudden as if the air in her lungs disappeared. He opened his mouth to ask her what happened, only for him to feel the sudden shift in the atmosphere.
The wind started to pick up, suddenly getting cold enough to frost. Ice spread across the rooftop, nearly glueing his legs to the roof he was seated if not for his fast reflex.
“Hey is it just me or is it really getting cold now.” Sirius yelped, his foot slipping from the sudden ice.
“Sirius!”
He heard Mary yell as he landed on the floor icy enough to skate on with a loud crunch.
“Fuck!” He had been thinking well enough to use his hand to protect his head from hitting the ice, but not well enough to think of how that would hurt his hand.
“Fuck, shit did you break anything?” Mary asked in a panic.
“Why is there ice when it’s almost summer?” He groaned, jolts of pain travelling through the arm he had landed his head on.
He froze when dread rolled in his stomach, a nauseating feeling making his throat go dry. A bitter taste set in his mouth. The atmosphere around the district turned rancid, like something was rotting everywhere. The ice felt filthy for some reason, and the power went out silencing the speakers of all the nightclubs and pubs.
There were murmuring voices and panicked screams that urged him to get onto his feet and run to see the situation.
“What the fuck is happening?” He asked, speaking the question already taking huge effort like he was moving through a haze.
“I-I think you already know.” Mary said, her voice small and almost a whisper.
His chest tightened. Bad memories piled up in his mind. The reason he quit came back to haunt him again the moment he chose to go back to work.