I was cleaning the hard drive this weekend and found this mostly-written story an decided to finish it and post it here.
Title: Legacy
Rated: G
Notes: Set vaguely in the Marvel universe, a few years into the future. The parents aren't any specific characters.
I guess what most people want to know about me is that my parents were heroes. And not just heroes, but superheroes. Most people have issues living up to parental expectations, but my parents had statues and parades dedicated to them and a national day of mourning declared when they were killed. That was a long time ago, when I was 8, but when people find out who my real parents were, they get all misty-eyed and talk about how brave and heroic and wonderful they were and how proud I must be to be their daughter.
And if that wasn't hard enough to live up to, my older brother is a sort of superhero, too. He doesn't wear a costume or fight aliens, he's an officer up on the orbital Earthwatch Station, which is supposed to be dedicated to keeping the peace and safeguarding the planet, but all you need to do is pick up a newspaper to see how well that is working out. Got war much? Looks like plenty to me.
My brother can fly, like Mom could - though what good that does him on a space station I dunno - and he's stronger than your average human, like Dad was. He's five years older than I am, and because of his "special needs," we were raised by two different families after our parents died. He got training in using his superpowers, went to the country's top engineering school at 16, spent time at Stark Labs as an intern and, on graduation with his PhD, was hand-picked for Earthwatch.
I did normal kid stuff. Was normal. Am normal, I guess, whatever it is that normal is supposed to be. Which would explain why I am in college at 24 and on my third major, not any closer to graduating than I was when I started and not likely to be any time soon. Because, really, what would the point be? I have plenty of money, the Stark Foundation and the Van Dyne Foundation and half a dozen national and international groups organized trust funds for us, since our parents were killed saving the world. Wash away any sense of guilt with money, a time-honored solution.
Not that my parents would have wanted anyone to feel guilty, they always said that they knew the risks they were taking. It makes me feel a little disloyal and self-centered, but I wonder about that one. If they knew it was so likely that they would be killed, why did they have children? When I was 13, I asked my foster mother and she misunderstood and started off into a lecture about the birds and the bees, and I had to flee the room before she talked about my parents and sex in the same sentence. So I don't really have an answer.
Once a year I go to the Remembrance Day and I see my parents' former teammates and friends. It's a strange day, spent walking around costumed superheroes and calling the living incarnation of a Norse god "Uncle" and a woman who can shrink to the size of an ant "Aunt" and watch as everyone gets maudlin and sad about the ever-growing number of dead comrades. Even though the first Remembrance Day was in honor of my parents, it's become about all of them now. There aren't a lot of families or kids at Remembrance Day and I don’t know if it's because most superheroes won’t or can’t have kids.
At this point there are an awful lot of dead superheroes to be remembered. And many of the living superheroes are looking a little old and a little tired, because replacements don’t seem to be coming forward. Maybe it's because they don't call people with special abilities superheroes anymore, they call them mutants instead. No one ever called my brother a mutant, not with the family name behind him, but that was an exception. Really, "mutant" is just a word that refers to a genetic change, but there is an awful lot of connotation packed into that one short word, most of it very unpleasant. Step up, reveal your abilities and be branded "mutant" - apparently a lot of people don’t think it's worth it.
Or maybe it's just like my family: two superheroes produced only one potential superhero, and he turned down his shot at the superhero business to go into space instead. My brother doesn’t come to Remembrance Day anymore. I think they'd all still be glad to see him, especially since he looks so much like Dad, but he isn’t interested. Too busy. That's what he says, anyway. I think he might feel a little guilty about it. If I have problems with the legacy my parents left, what must it be like for him, when he could actually pick that legacy up, when he could be the kind of hero that they were?
I can’t deal with it and neither can he: the difference between us is that with his abilities he had to run further to get away from it, all the way into space. That's our real legacy.
Title: Legacy
Rated: G
Notes: Set vaguely in the Marvel universe, a few years into the future. The parents aren't any specific characters.
I guess what most people want to know about me is that my parents were heroes. And not just heroes, but superheroes. Most people have issues living up to parental expectations, but my parents had statues and parades dedicated to them and a national day of mourning declared when they were killed. That was a long time ago, when I was 8, but when people find out who my real parents were, they get all misty-eyed and talk about how brave and heroic and wonderful they were and how proud I must be to be their daughter.
And if that wasn't hard enough to live up to, my older brother is a sort of superhero, too. He doesn't wear a costume or fight aliens, he's an officer up on the orbital Earthwatch Station, which is supposed to be dedicated to keeping the peace and safeguarding the planet, but all you need to do is pick up a newspaper to see how well that is working out. Got war much? Looks like plenty to me.
My brother can fly, like Mom could - though what good that does him on a space station I dunno - and he's stronger than your average human, like Dad was. He's five years older than I am, and because of his "special needs," we were raised by two different families after our parents died. He got training in using his superpowers, went to the country's top engineering school at 16, spent time at Stark Labs as an intern and, on graduation with his PhD, was hand-picked for Earthwatch.
I did normal kid stuff. Was normal. Am normal, I guess, whatever it is that normal is supposed to be. Which would explain why I am in college at 24 and on my third major, not any closer to graduating than I was when I started and not likely to be any time soon. Because, really, what would the point be? I have plenty of money, the Stark Foundation and the Van Dyne Foundation and half a dozen national and international groups organized trust funds for us, since our parents were killed saving the world. Wash away any sense of guilt with money, a time-honored solution.
Not that my parents would have wanted anyone to feel guilty, they always said that they knew the risks they were taking. It makes me feel a little disloyal and self-centered, but I wonder about that one. If they knew it was so likely that they would be killed, why did they have children? When I was 13, I asked my foster mother and she misunderstood and started off into a lecture about the birds and the bees, and I had to flee the room before she talked about my parents and sex in the same sentence. So I don't really have an answer.
Once a year I go to the Remembrance Day and I see my parents' former teammates and friends. It's a strange day, spent walking around costumed superheroes and calling the living incarnation of a Norse god "Uncle" and a woman who can shrink to the size of an ant "Aunt" and watch as everyone gets maudlin and sad about the ever-growing number of dead comrades. Even though the first Remembrance Day was in honor of my parents, it's become about all of them now. There aren't a lot of families or kids at Remembrance Day and I don’t know if it's because most superheroes won’t or can’t have kids.
At this point there are an awful lot of dead superheroes to be remembered. And many of the living superheroes are looking a little old and a little tired, because replacements don’t seem to be coming forward. Maybe it's because they don't call people with special abilities superheroes anymore, they call them mutants instead. No one ever called my brother a mutant, not with the family name behind him, but that was an exception. Really, "mutant" is just a word that refers to a genetic change, but there is an awful lot of connotation packed into that one short word, most of it very unpleasant. Step up, reveal your abilities and be branded "mutant" - apparently a lot of people don’t think it's worth it.
Or maybe it's just like my family: two superheroes produced only one potential superhero, and he turned down his shot at the superhero business to go into space instead. My brother doesn’t come to Remembrance Day anymore. I think they'd all still be glad to see him, especially since he looks so much like Dad, but he isn’t interested. Too busy. That's what he says, anyway. I think he might feel a little guilty about it. If I have problems with the legacy my parents left, what must it be like for him, when he could actually pick that legacy up, when he could be the kind of hero that they were?
I can’t deal with it and neither can he: the difference between us is that with his abilities he had to run further to get away from it, all the way into space. That's our real legacy.
