Part XII: Second Chances

There is more still to learn of what Cotton was up to before he was sealed in his watery tomb. The visit with Dust, his final, is our last element. There was a time when Cotton needed Dust, and that was before they had even met. He had always had the book Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight as a guide, but to know there was another hero like the one he had read and thought about for so long was an entirely obsessive thought for him. There was much to Dust’s career that Cotton believed would be illuminating, from what he had originally set out to accomplish to what he had later took on in his dormant years. The son of the Blue Beacon surely had many things to offer beyond the advice he would later provide the increasingly troubled soul.

“Your son didn’t deserve to die like that,” Cotton says, having crawled back down the tower, resting. He would have gone to the museum, but he doesn’t have the strength. Dust tells him it’s unnecessary. Behind this institution is good enough. In later days, even this won’t be safe; there will be battles here, deaths, and the earth everywhere will know blood. For now, though, a final rest.

“Death doesn’t look for merit,” Dust says. “Maybe an old man, a father, doesn’t deserve this, but for a man at war? He didn’t die in vain, did he? He knew what he was doing. I’ve seen others fall with less dignity, and I have seen their families grieve and lament without shame. I didn’t want that for myself. When my father died, I told myself the same things. I have made a life of it. I still hold no regrets.”

“You are, as always, an inspiration, Nicholas,” Cotton says. “You will probably never know how much you’ve meant to me.”

“The same could be said on my part,” Dust says. When the young Nicolas Sanders discovered what he could do with his body, he was playing in the mud at school. The teachers were telling him to stop, but he was playing with a friend he’d lost, whom he was once told he couldn’t sit with because there were seating assignments to the contrary and damned were the consequences if a six year old and now friendless boy would enter the daunting world on his own again; and in that moment, he couldn’t have cared less how much trouble he could get in. He continued to slap around after every warning, until he looked down and noticed that his left foot wasn’t so much in the mud as a part of it. As he stared at it the final warning came and he was told to go stand against the school for the rest of recess. Once more he was separated from his friend, but he couldn’t notice that now. Oh, he was bitter enough to spite the school for the rest of his tenure there, but he couldn’t help but marvel at his foot, which was covered in mud as he made his way to the building. He pulled the hood of his jacket around him, and the world was reduced to his foot. He didn’t want to clean it, not just because of what he’d seen, but because he was afraid how much would be gone when he was done. And what did it mean?

Nicolas wouldn’t think about it again for months. Then, in the quiet of night, he awoke to find his foot asleep. He couldn’t get the feeling back in it not matter how much he shook it around, and then he lifted his blankets and saw why. It was a pile of sand. He nearly screamed, but he fought the impulse. His father was already gone, and his mother would not be able to handle it. Nicolas kept his terror in his eyes, lay his head back down, and slept for the rest of the night. He had heard that when you sleep, no matter how much you toss and turn, you always end up in the same position you went to sleep in, and this was the thought to which he clutched. There were many nights Nicolas couldn’t sleep, but this wasn’t one of them. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was understanding. At school again, where he had become forsaken because he drew himself away from others, he willed his foot to sand again, and was in the process of attempting more when a ball struck him. The other kids were playing, never noticing him, and only now did they stop to look in his direction. He now had their object of interest a few feet away. Without thinking, unmindful of where it would land, he threw the ball back, someone retrieved it, and he was left alone again. He looked at his foot, and saw that it was solid again.

He practiced for years, because he knew immediately what he would do with this power. He had his father as his example. Always at night, after darkness had taken the interest from other souls, Nicolas would slip away and see what he could do, how Silt, the Sand Man, could help. There was never a question of whether he would seek revenge on his classmates. What was there to avenge? His own inability to blend in? it was his own failure, not theirs. That was a matter of resentment, not anger. Anger was a tool of action, not inaction. In later years, there would be other youths too desperate to understand this, who would consume the national interest with their tragedies, but Nicolas had no rage to fuel. All he had was a burning desire to express himself in the way he could be understood. He longed for what his father could never provide, and that was a sense of belonging. The Beacon had never belonged, and the business with the Alarmist never made it easier. As Silt, he found he belonged everywhere. As a soldier, drafted to fight in a war, he lost that feeling again.

Silt in the years leading to that experience, emerged as a hero the city of Traverse could depend on. He wouldn’t merely offer his assistance to the community, but he would help cultivate it as well. He gave speeches, even at his old school, to students, because they were stuck in their own worlds, who didn’t understand words that knew them. This didn’t bother Silt, because he understood these youths, too. He spoke to them not to educate them, but so that they felt included. Merely to be there, that was what they wanted, and even though he had never been a part of the, he had shared this. As Silt, he was there, and he could make a difference. He was the beloved son, even as his father watched from his accustomed distance, having given it up. They never spoke of this, even when the end was approaching.

Once brought to another land, Nicolas left the Sand Man behind, and took on his burden of the war. Did he know what they were fighting for, or whether there was ever a chance of victory? Did he know that there were those perverting the experience? Of course he did. His father had known these things, too, and that was a generation that thought it was okay to win at the cost of leveling entire cities. Were there cities in this war to level? This was a battleground with few boundaries, few limitations. This was a war pitched in a country that had been divided. There was a north and a south. And long after this, there still were, and yet there could not be less connecting them. Why pretend? That was what troubled Nicolas more than anything, even more than the reaction he was hearing about from back home. He was no longer a hero. The world was changing, and leaving him behind again.

When he returned, Nicolas found himself unwanted, derided, and abandoned. He turned to his identity as Silt, and discovered the same was true in this guise as well. The people no longer trusted him. They no longer believed in heroes, not the kind he was, anyway. What was a Sand Man, anyway, but a man who could never be known? He lived in a dream, and that dream was shattered. In the history of wars, there was never one with a more simple goal in mind than the one for which he had fought. His nation had wanted to stop something. And because it was so simple, it was rejected. And what did Silt want? He wanted to, like his father, stop the spread of corruption in his city. He came to understand that things were not as simple as he had once thought, because it was easier to assume they weren’t. It was easier to assume that there were no good or bad people, but victims. And it would have been so much easier if everyone who had ever considered this thought had uttered it, because no one, no matter how much they embraced it, understood it. Instead, they rejected those who did. Nicolas Sanders, Silt, was one of them. He believed that he would die alone, a failure.

He did not, however, give up his efforts. The Sand Man persisted in his adventures, now refocused in his interest in educating the city, but in more concentrated form. Hated though he was, he saw to it that the next generation know that they were not wasting their time, that whatever good they did, however little they saw in their results, they didn’t need vindication to know they were doing the right thing. He was Switchblade’s inspiration in taking on the dangerous path of the bloodsport, in which he would show his enemies that their own merciless ways could be held against them. He would do exactly what they did, take a pound for every pound they did. He was the retaliatory avenger, and for a long time, his every measure was successful, until he realized what price he would have to pay. It was in these moments that Switchblade took on his own apprentice, the Eidolon, and when these moments were over, he made the final, inevitable sacrifice.

Nicolas watched as the Eidolon took wing. Nicolas himself had finally drawn into seclusion, because he had never meant to see a student bring about his own destruction. As powerful as he had been, he gave it all up, because of Switchblade’s death, and because that death had been a warning. All the years Nicolas had spent turning his body into sand, he noticed, had not come without a price. In the jungles, he had felt pain every time he volunteered for reconnaissance, blended into the mud that was everywhere. He couldn’t understand why, at night, when he could find a dry place somewhere above the other men and release himself into a dry state, all he did was hurt. He hurt because he was wearing his body thin. He was on the same road to self-sacrifice he had led Switchblade onto, neither ever understanding, or so he had at first allowed himself to believe. Switchblade had known. He had been a martyr. Nicolas had only understood it after being shown. In a way, the mentor became the apprentice, the father had become the son. Xenon was then old enough to understand, too.

The Eidolon in his own way took on the legacy on the Blue Beacon, of Switchblade, of Silt himself, and yet not for a single day was he able to handle it with any real sense of composure. He hid it with a constant stream of snapping wit for years, but inside, and in his eyes, he couldn’t handle the pressure. On the day he murdered the Cad, he found Nicolas for the first time, discovering that Silt had held the reformed villain Calypso in his trust already. This was like a final straw. Viper killed Calypso in the museum that day, and set Nicolas into liquid for the last time. His body could no longer handle that stress, and the Eidolon was the one who snapped. He left the museum and murdered the Cad, and went into his own retirement. When Nicolas found himself again, he went in search of the Eidolon, and found him in his own mind, trapped for a self of guilt he could never handle, and yet Nicolas couldn’t have been more pleased. His life’s work hadn’t been a failure at all, but a success.

All he had ever wanted was a sense of belonging, and this was what he had given the Eidolon, a place to call home, his own mind. He had given the troubled man a release, and when he had nurtured the Eidolon back to a normal perception, he gave him peace of mind as well, a means to control this need to control reality. Nicolas had never sought this man out, which was what made the accomplishment all the more spectacular. What’s more, his own son was not the troubled man he had expected to find, either, and the Eidolon was the first to congratulate Nicolas, and to, in all gratitude, take Xenon under his wing. The Eidolon never truly returned, but the hero did.

“What do you hope to accomplish now?” Dust asks. He believes that all things that can be done have already been done. He can’t see what more still waits.

“Your son’s killer,” Cotton says. “He’s still out there. I owe you enough so that there’s only one thing left for me to do.”

“This warmongering,” Dust says. “I have always been one to embrace it, but I have never understood it. We sacrifice our own lives for those of others, for ideas. We sacrifice, and hope we are remembered, for the great deeds we are always hoping we can accomplish. I believe I have had my victories, and yet I see even now that I have not always had the lasting impact I believed I would. And I wonder what impact would suffice. Is there any end to this, Cotton?”

“You told me there wasn’t,” Cotton says. “You told me that we would have to find our contentment with that. Ours is to fight, because that is what brave souls do, what the only right thing is to do. What would we be if we didn’t fight? What could we have accomplished, or ever hope to? Achievement comes with sacrifice, because we are always losing something of ourselves. We are dying a little bit every day, aren’t we? Did you tell me that? The moment we are born, we begin the progress of death. To begin is to anticipate a conclusion. Many of us don’t understand that. They don’t understand that when they refuse to fight, or must be roused. You have always made it your business to do the rousing. That is how you’ve become a champion, Dust, in your old age, reclaimed the power in your arms that the advancing years have robbed of you. You and I both have withdrawn ourselves. That is what the truly brave do, I have come to believe. They are not the ones who leap out in the front of the battle and demand their pound in flesh, but the ones who yield in the back and anticipate what the victory will cost. Victory is a cost, because it is the same as defeat. It is another event in an inevitable chain toward another battle, because there is no rest, only other battles. You helped me see that, Dust. You helped me see that pacifism is no victory, but defeat. It will amount to a greater loss in time than the attempt in battle could ever achieve. Your father, the Beacon, do you know what his life meant for me? He was broken down, defeated by a war, and yet when he returned home, he eventually built himself stronger than he ever was, not the same brave warrior he had been, but a smarter, cagier man who knew what the risks meant. I don’t know that you ever understood him, if you will mind my saying so. I don’t think it did you any wrong; in contrary, I think it made you stronger, because you discovered for yourself what it took to take on this challenge, and you approached it accordingly. You have been an inspiration to me, just as your father was, and the Sidewinder a century earlier, who told me retirement wasn’t a failure, wasn’t a retreat, or a concession, but another way to start again. It was his building Viper was thrown from. And I believe the stories that say Elijah Humbert fought at the Alamo, too.

“You once talked to me like this, Dust, and I am returning the favor. You gave me a second chance, and I am giving you one as well. You have lost your son, and you can’t fight in this war. You should, by all rights, consider yourself a miserable failure, and yet, I refuse to believe that even for one day in your life, you have. For this I admire you, as I always have. With your abilities, with your father’s agility and your son’s light, you have seen and been a part of a world I could never understand, no matter how much control I have brought to my own. And yet we have shared that world. And I shared responsibility over your son, for a brief time, before his death. I could never express my gratitude for being allowed that in a thousand lifetimes. He was a good boy, Dust. Have you truly understood that? For this you may grieve another night, even while the pain is still fresh and the funeral games linger.

“He died in this war, and you and both know what that means. Do you know how he died? Has anyone ever told you? He died in my arms, Dust, in my own arms. I saw into his eyes, his peace with what befell him. You should only ever be proud of him. The look on his face, this was what he wanted, what he ever wanted. He died in a war and his death didn’t bring victory any closer. In many ways, it made victory look more distant. Godsend saw to that, but looks are only ever deceiving, aren’t they? That has been our weapon, our greatest weapon, what united the both of us beyond everything else. We have different tools, and the same tools. Our greatest weapon is our ability to command the stage, to own it, isn’t it? Does it matter what it looks like?”

“And now you’re plotting your exit, aren’t you?” Dust says. “You know what you’re planning is suicide, to walk directly into a trap?”

“I have already fallen into a trap,” Cotton says. “We are always falling into traps. You told me that, don’t you remember? Risk is part of the game. Do we have our own traps? That is what our opponents don’t understand, what they never see. They are too busy thinking themselves clever to see that. This is all one inevitable fireball, and the stage is going to burn. Can it still be called a victory? You can tell me that. Your father can tell me that.”

“They called my father’s a victory,” Dust says. “They never allowed me to call mine one, because they were too busy rejecting it. War is a terrible cost to pay, but it must be paid. Do you see utopia anywhere? There is always sacrifice to be made to achieve peace of mind.”

“I wonder who your mentor was,” Cotton says.

“I was my own mentor,” Dust says. “To some extent, my father was, but I had to train myself. I only ever had myself. You had books an examples, and people constantly quoting their philosophies to you. It’s a wonder you still stand. What has been your cost, Cotton? What have you given up? I gave up a son. What have you lost?”

“You mean besides my second life?” Cotton says. “There is always a price, of course there is. Some are more invisible than others. Some pay a higher price to achieve more, and their pain is the greatest, and least knowable. I don’t think we want to know it. That’s what I have come to decide. Great pain shouldn’t be known. It becomes an object of guilt, of pity, of resentment, of disbelief. What is great pain? What is great sacrifice? I wonder if you can tell me that, Nicolas?”

“I have already told you the sum of my existence,” Dust says. “Others have done that, too. Has it been enough? I believe so. I believe you’ve turned out better than any of us, the old fools. I wonder, how did you take Switchblade’s death?”

“I took it as I take any death,” Cotton says. “As I am taking Viper’s. It is a moment to mourn, to commemorate the passing of someone great. It isn’t just about sacrifice, and isn’t enough to say that they accomplished something, because the living will always remember their dead. The important thing is to remember the simplest thing that they could do. They were strong enough to live.”

“And strong enough to die,” Dust says.

“And strong enough to die,” Cottons says. “I’m not sure if any of us accomplish anything greater than that, in the end. People are always talking about a will to live. Is it because that’s what we’re constantly keeping together, that will? Without it, are we that fragile?”

“You suggest we’re stronger,” Dust says.

“I suggest nothing,” Cotton says. “The only thing I know is there always seems to be something left to be done. That is what successive generations see. And that is what I see before me.”

“I cherish your wisdom,” Dust says. In the state his body has known for a decade, in this cloud of so many particles suggested in the name he has taken for himself, he has already moved on. He really did die the day Viper killed him in that museum. He has been lingering, as if a ghost. His body is unique enough so that his mind was able to remain on this earth, and his body resilient, just enough, so that he could reclaim it, in this insubstantial form, and yet in his presence, few are able to tolerate him for long. In many ways, he had to relinquish his son to Cotton, and in just as many ways, he wanted to, and in some ways, his son has now joined him. When he sees a glimmer of light now, he wonders if it is Xenon.

Such a moment passes. He leaves Cotton to the business that soon enough ensnares the Eidolon beneath the Palomar. Cotton has no regrets, no inner torment. Not like he had before, not anymore. He has lingering thoughts, desires he know he won’t be able to shake, but Dust, as he has for so long now, serves as a gentle reminder of what he’s gained, what can never be taken away, because it has already been given. This is a war, and there are losses all around him, but if there is a defeat ahead of him, there is victory, too. He has made sure of that. He would never have allowed himself to fall into a simple trap without having first understood and accepted what would happen. This is a calculated sacrifice he was always fated to make, and with that, he long ago made peace. What is left to cling to? He has already given everything, and has already seen what course the war will take without him. He returns to the rhythm of his breathing, in this chest below the river, just to the side of a city he pledged his life to. There is peace in this.