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The Beach, Tuesday Afternoon

Cable had been taking some time to find his way around the island. Eventually, that had brought him here-- through some detours he wouldn't have come up with on his own. Now he was, though, staring out over the water in some attempt to find a mainland anywhere.

So far, he hadn't been succesful. It was starting to trouble him, and his only comfort so far was the fact that no one had fallen ill or disappeared yet.

Beyond the animal transformations, anyway. But those had always been kind of a problem.

[ open beach! ]

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"I don't believe this is my room," Viki said amicably, glancing around at the beach. "Not that I mind particularly, but it is still not which is mildly interesting at the very least as that's the door I went through and I the door never did that before."

"It's a reoccurring thing," Cable replied. He didn't let on any particular surprise at her appearance. "We might be dealing with it for a while."

"I don't mind, really," she said, staring up at him. "It's a bit like always for me, only on a much smaller scale. But no one has lost any time yet, I don't think, so it's not quite the same thing."

"Maybe," he said, folding his arms behind his back. "But I'd like to know what it is before it's going to give me a headache." Or worse, but he wasn't going to spook the girl.

"The key to not getting a headache," Viki said, and this with comfortable authority, "is to not think too hard about it."

Well. It was the way she coped with everything.

"It's also a key to ignorance, which I'd rather not have as a first option," Cable said, then added wryly, "But thanks for the tip."

"It does save headaches though." Viki shrugged a bit. "And you're welcome, even if you'd rather be stuck with them, and their headaches."

"Does anything beyond the phenomenon itself seem familiar to you about this?" he asked, glancing at her.

"I keep expecting doors that go nowhere to start appearing," she said, almost thoughtfully. "Or stairs on the ceiling, for some reason. This is almost nostaglic, though I couldn't say why."

"Hmm."

That was all he had. For now. Cable crossed his arms and regarded the empty horizon once more.

She considered the horizon for a moment, but found it uninteresting. It was just the ocean, after all.

"Do you think there's a difference between heroes that have powers and those that do not?"

"I find," Cable said, "That when it comes down to it, you can do a great deal more without powers than with them. You can blast every enemy to pieces and it won't do anything in the long run."

The color of the ocean-- Atlantic. Definitely.

"That's what I thought," she said, glancing at him. "All of our biggest heroes had powers, but it wasn't the powers that won anything. It was them, and the way they inspired and lead people."

"Sometimes you might need them to save the world. That's a simple fact of history," he said, with the voice of harried experience. "And of course there's no shame in it. The immediate threat comes first. But it's what happens afterwards that's most important. On that count..." he sucked in a breath, "...powers tend to just be an extra load that gets in the way."

"Our heroes, for the most part, never kept to the front and center of the order they brought once the war was over," she said. "They were still around, but it was always other people who took up the reins of command after."

Others. Had it been such a crazy idea, the concept that maybe he could stop being a man of war and become something else instead? "There's always hope," he said, "As long as men of war can become men of peace eventually."

"I think it depends on the person." Viki tilted her head to watch a bird fly by. "Our heroes never wanted to be heroes, it just happened and other people named them as heroes. It might be different if you wanted it, I wouldn't know really, I'm no hero."

"That's usually the truth for most people who wind up termed 'heroes'," Cable observed, "Simply because they chose to do the right thing." He shot her the slightest hint of a smile. "As far as I'm concerned, you can be a hero if you recycle your trash right-- it's the same principle." In theory.

He had a habit of going a little too far on that one.

She considered that. "I don't think you can be, really," she said eventually. "I mean, well, some people might consider you a hero for that, but nobody would really name you as such. A hero doesn't get to pick their name, they just do what they feel that they've got to do to make things right and then other people decide that they're a hero."

"In the end, the name doesn't matter much," he replied, "A thousand people could call you savior, but you're still no closer to saving the world. So I'd rather take my definition."

"We called them heroes after the fact," she said, nodding. "But during it, it was merely 'Commander'. It's better, that way, I think."

"Usually." Some memories were fresher than others. "It's too easy to trap someone in a definition of who they should be-- in expectations-- when at the end, all that we can do is what we can. 'Hero' can be as big a trap as anything else."

She shrugged a bit. "Only if the trap is sprung while they're still active. Naming them after the fact, especially if they're no longer in the spotlight, doesn't do as much but encourage people to look up to them."

"Sometimes, they need you to be a name..." he stared up at the horizon. "Which isn't a good way... to see." Because a name laid in the mind. And the mind plays tricks on you...

"I should think, rather, that it really depends on the timing of the naming," Viki said, watching him. "People are who they are after all, and being called 'hero' doesn't make one anymore of one as long as they don't buy into it themselves. People can give other people names, and call themselves that, but it's the difference, I think, between a mirror image and the real thing. People might need to see the mirror image, but I think the successful heroes are the ones that can always, still, see themselves. They don't get lost in the mirror."

"Oh, I agree," he said. It had been, if nothing else, a constant consideration in his own mind. "But eventually, the expectations that come with a name have a habit of catching up to you. People need heroes, but they tend to have their own definitions of what they entail." You could work with that. But only for so long.

"People don't always need the same hero." Viki contemplated that. "A person who attempts to be the hero for everyone, all the time, would go mad quickly I should think. The key lies in recognizing when a person can no longer be the hero that is needed. After all, before they were heroes, they were first themselves."

"Or recognizing," he said, wryly, "when a person has to be a different kind of hero, despite his original intentions."

"They still have to remember themselves though," she said. "Because a hero without that wouldn't be very stable, I shouldn't think."

Because she was the image of stablity, really.

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The Beach, Tuesday Afternoon

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