“You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here. My name is Isobel Summers. I’m also known as Manner. I’ve come to fight.
“You may also be wondering where I’ve been all these years, since the death of Danny Grace, whom you knew as Switchblade. I can answer that easily enough. I killed Switchblade myself, and I’ve been feeling awfully terrible about it, and that’s why all I’ve been able to do is bake muffins. I’ve baked thousands of them, and I’ve never been satisfied with a single one.
“How did I kill Danny? Isn’t it well-known that he was pretty much terminal when you last saw him? Well, he was, and I couldn’t bare to see him like that. I looked into his eyes and saw what his heart most desired. Oh, he wanted to die. He knew he was going to die. He just wanted to have control over it, just not in the way you thought it was going to happen. He asked me, he really did. Sometimes you have to ask about those kind of things, whether you want suicide, homicide, or a little of both. We were both trained to save lives, and that was all we ever wanted.
“I don’t know that you ever understood our relationship. You were jealous, and I don’t know whether you were jealous of him, jealous of me, or jealous of the both of us, but you were jealous and that much was obvious enough. The truth of it was of course I’d known him for less time, that we’d spent so much time loathing each other across the hallway already when Danny walked into our lives. He was a dead man walking from the start, wasn’t he? And he wanted to take you under his wing. What wasn’t perverse about that? He was older, more experienced, sure, but he knew less than you, didn’t he? And it killed you to know that I preferred him, because you could never understand why. He was so much less sophisticated. But you know what? I think it’s because he had more class. You always had a problem about being blunt, about being obvious in all the wrong ways. He was a charmer, you were an anvil. Was it really so much a surprise that I chose him?
“I gave him his wish, even though it broke my heart, even though I knew his was already broken, and that I couldn’t fix it. It was his broken heart that I loved the most, don’t you see? I wanted to believe that I could fix it, that I had a chance because I wanted to believe we had a chance, because you and I both knew that we never had a chance ourselves. You pushed me to him at every chance, and you probably never realized it. Or maybe you did and you secretly were happy for Danny and me. Maybe you were happy that I found someone, if you couldn’t have me. I always liked to think that, even though I never believed it.
“I gave him his wish and I killed him. I killed Danny, before the Solomons could, before he could kill himself. I didn’t have a choice, I knew I didn’t, but even when I finally made it, I knew immediately that I had made the biggest mistake of my life. My god, what had I done? I’d thrown my own life away, and you let me. You abandoned me. How could you? You left me in pain, and you left me behind. You knew what was going to happen, and you let it.
“I gave everything up, and I started baking muffins. Yeah, I started baking muffins. I didn’t know what else to do. What else was there but muffins now? Danny was gone, the invincible Switchblade, the bold, the daring, the cunning, the lover. My Danny was gone. Can you imagine it? And I was the one who pulled the plug on him, I pulled the plug on the Danny Grace machine. I made the final cut. I was devastated. I quit being Manner. I wasn’t even in that costume when I did it. Do you know that? I wasn’t even Switchblade’s partner anymore. I had dressed up in an evening gown. I was his lover. How pathetic is that? How pathetic could I have become? I stayed in that gown for weeks. I couldn’t bring myself to take it off. Do you know that this story isn’t even original? Is that pathetic? Do you pity me? Have I ever done anything to please you? Do you still believe in me? Well, I’ve come back, and I want a fight. I love to fight. It’s my life, isn’t it? Eventually, I had to accept that.
“Do you know what life in a partnership between Switchblade, the brutal club, and Manner, the elegant blade, was like? It was heaven, it was harmony, it was bliss. It was never going to last. I think maybe I’ve come to accept that. He left me something, too. Have I mentioned that? He left me behind his fortune. I didn’t even know he had one. He left me his legacy. And for the longest time, I didn’t know what to do with it. I think I’ve decided. I’m going to use it to fight, because that’s all that I can think of, the only thing that could be appropriate, for what we had, for what we were, for what I did, and for what he wanted. We never spoke about ourselves. But I always understood.
“I think you could use me again. I think I can provide the kind of perspective you’ve been lacking, the kind I’ve always given you, that you’ve never known that you needed. I give you empathy. I understand you, and I always have. If I judge you, it’s because I think that it is in your own best interest, and that if I didn’t, I would only be hurting you. Do you understand? That’s what I did with Danny. That’s why I killed him, because if I hadn’t, I would have caused him more pain, more pain than he would have ever needed, ad certainly more than he would have ever wanted. They used to call him a masochist. Don’t you know that we knew? They called him a loose-cannon, as if it was a bad thing. Even you did, and you were always worse than him, because you tried to hide it, even if in that process you made it more obvious. Oh, Danny was obvious, but he was comfortable with himself. You never were. You were always uncomfortable. We always said behind your back that we didn’t trust you, because you were always plotting. Did you know that, or has it come as a surprise to you now, to hear that?
“I bet that you’ve always considered Godsend your greatest ally, and your biggest foil. Haven’t you? You can admit it now. I think it’s time. But as much as we respected you, we never trusted you. We trusted you with our lives, and we were disappointed in that, weren’t we? You had plans against us, each of us, contingencies, as you called them. And can you see why that made us angry? Why this city was always left to you? Yes, you proved that you had it under control. But no one else wanted to share in your sandbox.
“We didn’t want to get burned. I think we’ve discovered that we were right, haven’t we? Does that surprise you, that I’m putting all this on you? I don’t blame you, but I do think you’re responsible, that in the end, you’re accountable for all of this. You’ve done your good, and you’ve done your evil. This is the end result, this war.
“I honestly don’t believe that I’ve missed a single step in my absence. I’ve come back just as strong, and with everything I once had. I’m offering to you now, because it’s obvious you still need it, still want it, myself. Is it a selfless act? I don’t think I have the right to call it that anymore. It’s not selfless. I’ve participated in a horrible act. No amount of atonement will make up for that, not in a thousand wars. I think I’ve lost my innocence. Does that sound silly? Can one lose that so late in life? Maybe I just had my eyes opened, or maybe the doubts I always had, but never acknowledged, certainly not to this extent, have now fully manifested themselves. I have looked at them in the mirror, and I did not turn away. I think I have new strength to go with my new vulnerability, and I think I had both all along and I’m only now just realizing them, pushing them to their limits. I’m creating myself for the first time.
“I’ve got all this new power, and yet this war is not going to be my triumph. It is going to be someone else’s, because even with this new power, I know I am not the best, and not even close. I think I’m seeing myself for the first time. Or maybe simply acknowledging something I’ve always known. I was the second name in Switchblade and…
“And yet I’m entering a war, even one I know is coming to an end at last. I am going to be there when the final acts are played out, and maybe it was fated that way. Maybe Manner’s presence alone is going to be enough to turn the tide. This is hubris talking. I think I’ve had a vision. There are going to be many battles to fight, and my hands will be dirty once again, dirtier than I made them when I killed Danny, and I will e okay with that. I think I’ve made my peace with myself. Have I said that already?
“I feel like I’m the last of the cavalry to arrive, even after Godsend’s son. I’ve arrived to see the city burn, to see our final triumph, when it looked as if we were never going to achieve our goal, when it looked like we were going to turn away in defeat, allowing our enemies their hollow triumph. But I’ve come in the end of it, as the last of the cavalry. I’ve arrived on my horse, ready for the final charge.
“I grieved for a very long time. Do you know what saved me? The embrace of those whom I believed had abandoned me, the wounded willow. You finally came back for me. How much I’ve appreciated that. I was made whole again. You gave me my second chance, and for that I will only ever be filled with gratitude. In return, I will ensure your victory, because that is all I’ve ever been meant for. I gave Danny his victory, didn’t I? And, I think, I pushed you along your way. I think we’re all going to be grateful for you, after all this is over. I think we’re going to trust you again.
“In all my modesty, the final link has been forged, and we are ready. I see no further reason for delay. Sound the trumpets, mount the cavalry. It’s time for our final charge.
“What am I doing here? I’m here because you believed in me. I think you always knew, what I did, and you still believed in me. I can never repay you for that, but I’m here to begin my effort, to show you what you’ve meant to me, how much I’ve always believed in you, too, right from the very start, even when I chose Danny ahead of you, even when I gave him the honor of killing him, and grieved him for so long. I never gave up on you, because you never gave up on me. So my name is Manner, and I’m here to fight, on your behalf, on the behalf of the goal we have all believed in for so long, and to see that, once more, as always, the right thing is done, because it is all we really have in the end.”
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