The Paragon

The rain came down, drenching the alley in a slick mess of neon reflections. I stood, bruised and bleeding, staring down at the man gasping at my feet.

"You think you're a hero, huh?" he sneered, trembling.

I didn’t answer. The truth was I didn’t know. The world loved its lines—good and evil, right and wrong—but out here, those lines blurred into the grime.

Kneeling, I locked eyes with him. “Being good isn’t about following rules,” I said, my voice a whisper on the rain. “It’s about who you care for when no one’s watching.”

He flinched, fear flickering in his eyes. This time, I didn’t let him crawl away. I reached out, my hand glowing faintly as the warmth of my core spread with a pulse that matched my heartbeat. I knew what to do. I flowed into him, feeling the fear, the anger, the twisted righteousness that led him here (A small, scared boy huddled in the corner of a dingy room, his parents arguing loudly in the background).

He began to relax (taught him how to fight, how to build walls around his heart) and I pushed harder.

The glow intensified. I tried to pull back, now pouring into him with a force I could not control (failures, betrayals, isolation, anger). His eyes widened in pain as untapped potential seared through. His breathing caught, body convulsing as the energy devoured everything inside him—his fear, his anger, his very essence—leaving nothing in its wake.

As the energy returned to me, the last memory lingered—him as a young man, standing in the rain much like now, longing for a man he loved but could never tell.

The rain kept falling. I kept moving.