There was so much he already needed to be thinking about. He didn’t need Godsend adding to that. He didn’t need one of those existential moments. He couldn’t afford it. He couldn’t afford it. He couldn’t afford it.
Damn that man. And now Colinaude was forced to conclude his rounds in a frenzied fashion, which was going to do no good for them. He needed more information on Neville. He needed more information on Cad. He needed to know what was going on. And there was more than Neville, and Cad, and everything else. There was an entire city he had taken as his charge, superceding the authorities of the authorities, and the claims of other heroes. There was a lot here to handle, and he had his own life to handle, too. Had he been neglecting that? No. No, of course not.
Colinaude wiped his hand on his pant leg, finding hotdog remnants still there, relish among them. If only Lou hadn’t been so distant. Yet Lou was always distant. That was one of those things. There was a host of other contacts out there with their own quirks. Fletcher liked to rub his chin a lot. Cudgel spoke all of her sentences like they were questions. Stanley Snip couldn’t stop moving. Finley thought he had to be in the shadows in order to fulfill ‘obligations,’ and called himself Slightly Deeper Throat, even though he was a soprano. All these he was going to be seeing before reporting to work. He’d need to switch back into the garb of the Eidolon for these. That’s the only way they knew him, and the only way they were ever going to.
He might see Hopper again at some point, depending if he rode the subway again. Colinaude had this thought, realizing he’d had the newspaper he’d just bought tucked under his arm during the entire conversation with Godsend, plus the exchanges with Lou. A permanent crease had formed down the middle. He hated that. It was a bother to read the paper with that, on top of the crease the paper already had. Trying to keep enough of it readable was like a puzzle when a crease like that happened.
It was good to have a trivial concern like that for once today. Neville was definitely not one. His defection to the other side meant Colinaude’s attempts to hide from him became more a mandate than a challenge. Being seen was going to get him in a lot of trouble, and it occurred to him presently that his appearances outside the wares of the Eidolon were probably now as dangerous as those within. He could no longer assume that Neville couldn’t put two and two together. Somehow the bad guys always seemed a little bit better at that. A hero like Godsend could openly parade without a mask because he had no private life. Some others took gambles with that notion and some of them got lucky, either because the two personas were inextricably contradictory or by some hand of a fickle deity’s, or possibly because everyone considered found it more convenient that way, subconsciously or otherwise.
There were many things Colinaude liked to fool himself about, and one of them was that he had no personal life to be concerned about were those two’s to finally meet. He did, and Lou had made that much perfectly obvious. He may have put Peter Cooley’s life at risk. This he had never considered, because nothing had ever made him consider it before. Like most other people, Colinaude completely lacked foresight for the unexpected, no matter how much it would seem necessary to expect it later. He had considered it at times, but never had it seemed that urgent to invest himself fully to it. Life was always a choice between apathies, not interests. The interests were the cards remaining on the table after all the others had been personally withdrawn.
It sucked to think about it like that, but Colinaude knew enough to see that. Naturally, he was usually apathetic about it, and no matter the detriment because of it. Nobody ever did something because it made sense, but rather because it didn’t. The challenge was always the key. And for Colinaude, the challenge was proving more daunting all the time. He didn’t know sometimes if he could handle it, continue to handle it, or whether he should ever have even tried in the first place. Right now he was deciding if he should call off the entire mission, the Cad version of it anyway, and walk away, leave Traverse and all its problems behind him.
That’s where they were, too. In Traverse. Traverse had always been the source of his heartache, and he had foolishly decided to go there to try and chase it away. What a fool. He was repeating someone else’s life. He could feel it. He was one of those who failed to learn from history, but at least he realized it and realized too that this was mostly what kept civilization going. He hated knowing these things, but he knew no other way to deal with it than to do what he knew. And what he knew was killing himself a little more every day.
Should he go on? Were the negatives greater than the positives? He was basing it right now on emotion, and he knew also that there was no more dangerous way to do it. But he couldn’t go on and hope the answer would come later. The answer was going to have to come now, when he wasn’t too far to know exactly where everything was going but far enough to be able to see where they could go. What the end result would be of this present path could not be a consideration. No, he couldn’t let that influence him. That was going to be a consequence, and a consequence alone, of his decision.
Colinaude had crumpled into a heap on the sidewalk, nestled against a building, and if he’d looked up he would have realized it to be the same building he had talked with Godsend on top of. Yes, there were things Godsend had said he couldn’t ignore, things he would never had admitted to Godsend but things he couldn’t ignore all the same. But there were also driving forces within him that were telling him to ignore those things, to betterment and otherwise of his wellbeing. He had a charge, a calling. What was he to stand in its way? Was he fool enough to get out of the way of the incoming bus? Was there such a thing as fate to be considered?
There might be something Godsend had said he could not argue with. Colinaude thought too much. He thought it was a benefit, and he dreaded it was a curse. He had a decision to make. Would he continue to push forward through the wind, knowing all he knew, and what he didn’t?
To preserve his sanity, he decided to. Colinaude concluded it was the only decision he could reach. And so he continued on his rounds. He visited Fletcher, and Cudgel, and Stanley Snip, and Finley, each of them with their quirks and their useful information. They were like nails being driven into his resolve. He couldn’t turn away now. Not only was he left without any other decisions, he was whittling his choices, too. This was something he had to do, and damn the consequences, and possibly himself as well.
He couldn’t let that bother him. He saw other contacts, other informants. There were no other overlaps with Peter Cooley’s, and not another word of Solvent himself. He had become a riddle, another thing for Colinaude to consider as his day marched on. There were going to be answers by the end of it, answers he was going to make himself if he had to. He couldn’t let this, or himself, rest.
It was something he owed. For everything else there was to pay for, Colinaude worked the counter in a bar. It seemed like a rather trite occupation for a super hero, possibly one of the better ways to describe the antithesis of what he did. But there were selling points to it. If he was going to help someone drown their sorrows, or just themselves, at least he could be there to lend a sympathetic ear, which he found was a satisfying way to pass the time and earn his living in a monetarily recognized way. It was also an example of the ways he left some societal help to people he actually differed to. He never preached to anyone. He couldn’t do it. It wasn’t just because that was all he’d ever heard Godsend do, and do somewhat hypocritically.
It just wasn’t in his nature to tell people what to do. But it wasn’t like he viewed his chosen methods as anything like saintly. No, there were probably plenty of patron saints for those interested in that sort of thing, medals and prayers and the like. And he knew he was no saint, not when he understood the basic truth of what Godsend had been trying to tell him.
So most of the time it was mostly letting the customers drown their sorrows. He did allow them to keep tabs if they needed it, and he usually knew if they needed it because he knew a lot more about them than they would ever realize. A percentage, of what amount he never cared to tally, had had their fair share of run-ins with the Eidolon. In a way, he had already helped them, and now got the see the fruit of his tough love.
There was going to be a long evening ahead of him, with a respite to attend a dinner as an unsuspecting Cad’s guest. He had learned a few more things about him and about Neville on the last rounds as the Eidolon in the daylight hours. There had surprisingly not been a need for the hero in other regards. There would probably be following the bar. But until then he had some new rounds to attend to.
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