Part IX: Year of Hell

How long can someone sulk for? The unquestioned, unrivalled champion Godsend can sulk for a year. He’s done it before, and he means to do it again. This whole business with the Eidolon has gotten to him, how he questioned Godsend’s choice to terminate Viper. It’s the reason he called in Brother Jack and the Staged Man. They come and then they talk about how the Eidolon is his rival, that he means as much to this campaign as Godsend himself? Has that been what he’s been proving all this time, that he’s nothing more than someone else’s equal? He has never known his origins and he’s never known a weakness. And yet, he has been felled by his pride.

Godsend has retreated to his bunker, the one he set up when he and the other heroes arrived, the grand forces he marshaled to eradicate the threat of this city. From Agog, his young stead, to Proposition, the Woman of the Mind, they all came because he asked them to, not because they trusted him, not because there was so much trouble, not because of the Eidolon. One by one, they’ve fallen, too, scores of them. Proposition dueled Loco, and while she won then, the bout left her drained, ready for the clutches of Viper, one more victim, one more opportunity. There was also Midshipman, who traveled the city as one would the ocean, who was sunk by the Piercer. This loss had been great for the old warrior Dust, but Godsend had stopped caring about that man long ago. He only ever had contempt for him, and duties. Godsend shines alone. For the twins Park and Field, who were masters of the earth, they fell together, victims of Barren Blood. For the brothers Royale and Splendor, the same fate, between the jaws of the Barracuda. Godsend exacts revenge for all. Despite his distaste for Dust, he punishes Piercer. Regardless of Blood’s invulnerability, Godsend triumphs. His reward is contempt. Nothing, it seems, is good enough.

Others will carry on this fight now, others will toil in the war. He is mindless now of the casualties, mindless of whether the advantage falls to his side or the other. He is mindless of his friends, mindless of his foes. He is mindless. This power of his has always come at a price, not just the price of losing those he comes to love, but for himself as well. There is always a distance between himself and those he has sworn to protect. He cannot truly live among those he champions. The Eidolon, when he lost his faith, he unknowingly confirmed this belief in Godsend, even as Godsend was planning a mortal future for the first time in his life. He had been here for decades before the tower, and had never known, even before he became known, a life approximating what he saw around him. He was always isolated, isolated from himself, isolated from others, and isolated from a future. What did he have, but a selfless devotion to mankind? Nothing. He was to give his life to the world, and receive nothing in return. The Eidolon spoke of a mounting toll, but this mortal didn’t know what there was to lose, because he actually had something. Godsend never had a thing. Godsend only ever had himself.

He had the earth, which, in the way he grew to understand had once been a form of worship widespread among the earth’s population. He imagined such a relationship, grew to embrace his mother, and his father, too, immortals both of them. His wife had bore him a son, and that son had been sent off before the war. He was ten years old now. Godsend had never seen him. He wondered if he was his father’s son, if this legacy, whatever it was, would be passed down. This was the reason he had taken Agog under his wing. As a mentor, Godsend had much to impart. As a man, he had nothing, and that was what Agog himself had to offer.

As he had never felt with the Eidolon, as a part of that Tandem, Godsend felt a kinship with Agog, who now decides to retreat along with him. There is much still to achieve, a goal Godsend himself has set for himself, but that is some time off. Perhaps someone else will accomplish it for him in the meantime, someone else will slay Malcolm Bidd. He cannot define his relationship with Agog. It is something he never had even with his wife. He would move heaven and earth, and not merely slay Viper, for Agog. But there is no danger there now. Now both of them retreat behind the lines. It is the Eidolon who has caused this, the Eidolon who has angered Godsend into this retreat. They believe this man, this mortal, was worth rallying behind. So let them. See what it will get them. They all came for a war, even though there are other matters elsewhere, even at home, that would offer equal interest. Godsend could direct his attention to these places. He doesn’t. He prefers to remain here, to stay here and sulk.

He has done this before, and before, again, it was because of the Eidolon, who was once his closest ally. In another war, they could not seem to defeat Rancor, the same Rancor whose death had created this war. Again and again they fought him, thwarted him even, but never definitely. This was, as they assumed, what heroes did. They fought villains they’d seen before because each were equal matches for the other. The public cheered at every encounter, because the more familiar, the easier to appreciate. It didn’t matter that what it really meant was continual failure. Godsend only appreciated these moments when Rancor actually presented a new challenge. That was what Viper had once been, not simply a meddler, a mastermind, but a challenge, a new device for Rancor to handle, to deliver unto the Tandem. He attacked the Eidolon first, of course, managing to subdue him so that he would be bait for another villain, called Talisman, the Jailer. If Godsend was ever going to have a weakness, it was against this man, who had the key to a prison that would lock them both up for eternity. There would be no escaping.

For the first time, Godsend felt resentment toward his friend. He had never felt fear before, yet this Talisman provoked great fear in him. He didn’t know if he could avoid the fate set before him, because he had never heard anyone triumph over the Jailer. They had all of them been ensnared within his medallion, trapped forever in the prison of the damned. If the Eidolon could have defeated Viper in the first place, and how hard could that have been? This would never have presented itself. He didn’t sink away, however, not yet. He came, pushed aside Viper, ignoring whatever insignificant threat he might have been, and took on Talisman, while the Eidolon lay prone before them. To eliminate Godsend had been the plan all along. The Eidolon was nothing. When he finally came to, Godsend had wrested control of the medallion from Talisman, who himself had been a formidable challenge. All the time Godsend had feared that item, and now he would destroy it, and thus end its threat forever. It was the Eidolon who stopped him.

“You will be condemning the lives of every one of his previous victims,” he said. “Do you really want that blood on your hands? You’ve defeated Talisman. That was the easy part. Now do the right thing, and allow those souls a chance.”

Godsend couldn’t believe it when he heard it. The audacity of the man. “We know that there is no escape. He’s said so himself.”

“That’s what he knows,” the Eidolon said. “But who’s to say he knows everything? My own history of that medallion goes back centuries. Do you want to know how old our friend is? He should have a birth certificate that you could easily produce in court, without raising any suspicions. He is an expert in its use, but Talisman is not an expert in the medallion. I’ve heard him say so himself. You can even ask Viper. Why do you think I risked any of this in the first place, Godsend? I came for answers, not for these men.”

“You risked your life on what, a hunch?” Godsend said.

“I risked nothing,” the Eidolon said. “I already knew more than both of them combined. This was a confirmation. Do you know what their brilliant plan was going to be, after defeating us? They were simply going to give the medallion to Rancor, as a trophy. A trophy, Godsend. Rancor knows even less about this thing than you do. You want to call this a risk? Go right ahead.”

Godsend indeed called it a risk, an unnecessary gamble on his ally’s part, and put an end to their adventuring for a year, the first time a crack appeared in the Tandem, which would eventually fracture completely. It would be the Eidolon who would seek to mend it, even though he wouldn’t admit it, even in the moments before his final disappearance. It was Godsend who knew this time, what Barracuda had been planning. He stood by and did nothing. Why should he? The alliance was shattered. The Eidolon was holding on to what? To hope? There was no hope anymore. Godsend stepped away, not just from the Tandem, but from all the problems of this planet. He went into deep space then, perhaps in search of his origins.

When he returned, he found Ulysses Kincaid at the height of his powers, having convinced the world that Godsend had abandoned it. When they finally confronted each other again, Kincaid threatened everything Godsend had stood for in his time as champion, having remade so much of it in his, Kincaid’s, own image. In many ways, it was that year, more than any other, that had helped to create this war, since Kincaid secretly funded every operation that had rippled together to create this catastrophe. The murder of Rancor? Viper, a man of meager funds himself, had help from Kincaid, who could afford to lose a rival. Malcolm Bidd’s chief financial backer during his early campaigns? Kincaid, who would have run for president if he’d thought it wouldn’t compromise his lifestyle. He could have won, but he knew too many scandals would follow him. And yet, after that year, after that confrontation, Kincaid, too, slipped away.

Godsend always put so much responsibility on himself. In time, he began to wonder if, as the hero the public most admired, he had a responsibility greater than all the others, a responsibility that asked him to do things others wouldn’t do. He began to wonder if he shouldn’t merely deter threats rather than end them. To end them would be to end the loop that caused needless destruction and hardship, which the same foes caused in the same fights time and time again. Why allow that to happen? Didn’t he have the calling to put an end to those threats? He didn’t let this be known to anyone else. Just as he kept a secret from his own wife, when he attempted to lead a mortal existence, he kept this to himself, this suspicion. He had noticed it before, in the back of his mind, but he had always assumed that a noble champion wouldn’t do such things. Even though it was what, in times past, had been expected. There was no mercy in allowing threats to exist then.

A troubled Godsend broods on these thoughts, these memories, trophies of his victories all around him: Viper’s armor, Piercer’s golden staff, among others. He considers what his absence from the battlefield means again, and then turns the thought away, disgusted. Does he believe that the Eidolon has really been defeated? How should he know? It is probably another of his elaborate plans, more elaborate than the mind of the Staged Man would imagine, nothing more. This disgusts Godsend, too, that he could ever have trusted the Eidolon, much less called him an ally, a friend, even. This was a weakness he is glad to have shaken loose. It will only make him stronger. He has already done his part here, he will already be remembered as the greatest champion of this war, and not just of this generation. They will miss what he has done for them, but they have brought this on themselves. The Eidolon, however, he is done with him, at last. He should have severed those ties a long time ago.

***

Time slows in a vacuum. You can no longer perceive it, locked away from all indications of its motion, its constant motion. That is something, among many things, that Cotton Colinaude, the Eidolon, becomes more aware of as he knows time passes, sealed away in the locker, below the mighty waters of the Palomar. There can be only so much air left, and yet he knows a significant amount of time must have passed by now. How have things led to this, really led to it, he wonders, not just in the sense that he allowed Clayton Neville to set this trap. He has allowed himself to fall into traps before, always with a purpose in mind. He feels there was a purpose this time, too, but he can no longer remember it. Why did he allow himself to fall?

In the moments after his last conversation with Godsend, Cotton was more vulnerable than he had ever been. He had been defeated, truly defeated, by Viper, as he had never been before. Not even at the revealing of the betrayal had Cotton felt himself defeated by this man. Physically, emotionally, Cotton had been defeated. It was Viper’s last plan, for whatever new calculation, to be murdered by Godsend, that Cotton becomes more and more sure of as time, in its way, passes. It was Viper’s plan, and Cotton couldn’t prevent it from happening. He had never let that happen before. Other people called this a war, but what Cotton held it as was a continuing strain, one that had begun long before the death of the Cad, the death of Rancor, or even the death of William Tekamthi. No, it wasn’t a war, it was a strain, one that stretched out long before any of this, before the Eidolon, before the Blue Beacon, before Sidewinder, before everyone, before everything.

In his dying moments, as he now considers them, Cotton has finally embraced the realist philosophy so many have tried to convince him of, a philosophy that influenced him in so many ways he never understood. He became the Eidolon because he thought he could do some good, and when he thought he could no longer do that, when he came to believe that he was doing more harm than good, he gave up the Eidolon, and only took him up twice more. These moments are among the last.

Neville had set his trap on the subway. This was a man who’d found out everything, much as Viper had done. Cotton is at peace with this, too, because he has discovered that secrets are not things to be exposed, but to be shared. They aren’t hidden because they need to be, but because someone wants them to be, and because it is this way, they can’t hurt those who don’t willingly admit them. Viper had no power over Cotton even after revealing who Peter Cooley really was, because it was Cotton who then possessed it. Viper had given away his greatest asset. For what? On the subway, Cotton was given as bait Viper’s files, which he was meant to find value in because, in Neville’s mind, these would be the key to unraveling everything Viper had set in motion. In a way, Cotton did walk into this trap, but only because he was intrigued. He wanted to know where Neville was going with this. He didn’t need the information, because he already had it. Much of Viper’s notes indicated the Palomar, which was apparently an exit strategy in case anything went wrong, as being of great importance. Few considered it remarkable, why not take advantage of it? That was the reasoning behind this whole conflict. Cotton realizes that. He is no longer angry about it. This isn’t a war because it is only an effort to defeat one man. In one sense, that has already been accomplished. Despite himself, despite what he wishes would have happened, Cotton understands that. Viper has finally been defeated. Godsend was right about that. But his death wasn’t the end. By the shores of the Palomar, Cotton discovered a boat, which Viper seemed to have lived out of in the last few years. This was the trap. A failsafe, put in place not by Neville but by Viper himself, ensnared Cotton, locking him away, releasing him from the boat, yes, but down into the muddy bed of the river.

This failsafe had been in Viper’s notes. Cotton had remarked on it particularly, even. He fell into the trap, because he didn’t see it coming. Some of Cotton’s thoughts return to the subway. He stayed there for a while, riding it with no destination in mind, in memory of a friend. Its constant motion, its restlessness, comforted him in those moments. He doesn’t have that now. The locker doesn’t allow him to feel the Palomar around him. All he can feel are the walls around him, and his own body, in his costume, within the walls. He can feel his breathing, too. This alone brings him back to the subway car. He allows it to center him when he begins to panic, because he does that, every now and again, in this quiet moments that seem to have no end. He doesn’t know what dying feels like, he can’t even imagine it. He doesn’t know how near he is to it, to his own end. He remembers a coin he once took for himself, sewed into this costume. It’s here, somewhere. He couldn’t remember, after retrieving it the day he came out of his psychosis, where he’d sewn it, but he could remember the act. He still remembers it. The woman who made the physical appearance of the Eidolon, the woman so closely connected to a family he long ago left behind, he tries to imagine her creating this costume now, how she sewed it herself. Would she remember every stitch? If she had put that coin in here, would she know where to look.

It’s ridiculous, really, not knowing where that coin is. He should be able to feel it, for no other reason than the connection he knows he has to it, the meaning that emblazoned itself into his memory. He chastised Godsend for his action. No one chastised him. Maybe the coin fell out somehow, maybe he did not do as good a job as he thought. Maybe it’s still in the grave, the grave he made for the boy, so long ago. Cotton has already sworn to himself that he’s finally made his piece. The longer he remains like this, the more time he has to think. That has never been kind to him, time. He doesn’t know what it looks like. He doesn’t know how long this war, if indeed it is one as they all say, has been raging, how long he’s been in here, how long he has been the Eidolon. He doesn’t even know how old he is. He stopped paying attention to that long ago. He had to dedicate himself. What business did he have with birthdays? To be selfless is to give of the self. He has made many sacrifices, and each of them has cost him. He had needed Godsend because Godsend could give him what no one else could: vindication. Why could Godsend not understand that? Why did Cotton himself throw that away?

Peace was the reason Cotton gave up on the Eidolon, why he never resumed the life he had assumed for himself. He wanted peace of mind. His experience as Balthazar Romero, taking on a fictional life, was enough to scare him. He didn’t need the peace Dust, Tekamthi, Hopper, anyone, preached at him. He needed peace with himself. He understood what each of them had been trying to tell him. He also understood what each of them, in their own way, represented, the very life he took on from that moment. Each of them had withdrawn into a passive existence. They wanted him to find his peace, and they thought it meant it would mean something different for him than it had for them. Well, they had been wrong. And they had been right. He was supposed to have learned from them, not emulate. He hadn’t learned from his mentor, Elijah Humbert, the Sidewinder, either. He hadn’t learned from Switchblade, the suicidal maniac who, in the end, sacrificed himself.

Is that what Cotton is doing now? How can he know? Should he? Will his death, if that is what it should be, affect the course of this conflict for the better? He wants to let go of the notions that he alone can save the day. That was always his problem, even when he was told, as a young boy, that this is what he had really done. He hadn’t believed it, because he couldn’t remember. Cotton, a hero? That could never be. How could he have done it? Cotton is powerless. Cotton has always been powerless, and he will die powerless. Is this not, in the end, the only truth?

Or is simply the only thing he will accept? He is left alone, once again, in these timeless moments, when the world has ceased, has silenced itself. Has he made a difference, and if he has, was it for the better? That is what he would like to, more than anything, know, in these moments he believes are his last. He has always wanted to know, that’s the reason he became the Eidolon in the first place. He learned of others, and so he wanted to know if he, too, would be known. He decided the means, but he couldn’t decide the way. That was, in the end, his greatest struggle, because it haunted his every thought, his every action, until he let it, finally, overtake him. To defeat it again, he retreated. To where? Ultimately, to here, to this locker beneath the Palomar.

He wishes, once more, that he could look about him, to see this figure that he’s become. He wants to study it, maybe see it from someone else’s eyes, or perhaps his own, for the first time. Who is the Eidolon? What worth has he had in his time on this world? There is no light here, only darkness. For so long, he craved the darkness because it allowed him to carry on with his duties unimpeded, unrecognized and unfazed. He existed in his own mind, in the darkness he created for himself, too. Why was it s comforting then? And why can’t he find that now? He listens to his own heartbeat, its rhythms that are so constant. He listens to his breathing, feels his chest rise and fall, rise and fall. He feels the walls around him, feels the cape, between the gloves he has still not removed. He is preserving himself.

There is a world out there, a war, as they call it, raging, and yet Cotton is no longer a part of it. Has he tried to escape? Of course he has. But even if he does, there are greater obstacles still. There is the Palomar, and all the waits beyond it. Is he afraid? Not for the first time…