The Arbiter

They called him the Arbiter. His real name was Samuel Graves, I'd known him since before he was born. He was everything we thought we wanted-decisive, strong, fearless-the whole gamut, but once our fantasies about protecting the weak and avenging the injured were presented to us in living, violent, color, we wavered. We didn't have the stomach for it. We needed someone to stop him.

There was no one his equal, the Arbiter. Anyone who'd be sent after him to answer his own violence in kind, would be mere cannon fodder. We had to find another way. It was decided that I would talk to him since I was most responsible for his creation. We staged a hostage incident and waited for him to show. It didn't take long.

He kept his guns on me as I approached while the hostages behind me were freed and led away with their hands in the air to show they weren't a threat.

"What is this, Adam," he asked. "I don't appreciate being toyed with."

"This...is a long overdue conversation, Sam," I say. "Probably, it is the first thing I should have ever said to you. I need you to stop fighting. I want you to stop. I was wrong, the things I taught you. I was grieving and angry and I used you, though I didn't realize it at the time. I'm sorry, Sam."

"You have nothing to be sorry for," he says. "You made me this. I protect people. I save lives."

"No, Sam," I say. "You kill people. You take lives."

"Only the guilty," he nearly screams. "That's what you asked of me. To protect these sniveling cowards. To protect people like you. I'm a hero, goddamn it!"

"That's what I thought, too," I say sadly. "I thought making them pay for what they'd taken would make the grief and anger go away but it didn't. Nothing can bring my family back. I didn't feel anything after you avenged them-just emptiness. I want you to stop and come home with me. Live the life we took from you. Be the hero you should have been."

"And what is that," he asks. "How do I come back from this? If avenging the fallen isn't heroic, then what is?"

I sit down on a bench and let out a long sigh. "I don't really know, Sam," I admit. "Maybe, there is no such thing. Maybe, it's just one person being kind to another. We need a world that isn't afraid of losing, Sam. A world that isn't afraid of failing. Those things are inevitable and they're the best teachers. We need people who put themselves second, or third, or whatever. Just people who think about others before themselves."

I stand. "Son, we need peace in our hearts with strength in our arms and the wisdom to know when to use each. We need patience and forgiveness in equal measure. We need to stand under a blue sky and be grateful for the gifts we've been given. We are not fleeting bags of meat and bones. We are inheritors, you understand? We are the lifeblood of this world's beating heart and we were not meant for small things. Lay down your anger and come with me and we'll bring healing to this scarred land. You will be what you were born to be. You'll be a hero."

"Adam, I never met your family," he says. "I don't think they would be proud of what we've done. But I think they'd be proud of what we're going to do."

He drops his guns and we embrace. I sob as I inject him with enough potassium chloride to kill an elephant.