"Mia's pregnant," Will said, setting his bass guitar aside.
 
Behind him, Billy drummed a rim shot. Andrew and I just stared. "I think I gotta quit the band."

Andrew, his guitar dangling suggestively on his hip, looked at me. I looked at him, and then to Billy, and then we all looked back at Will.

"What?" Will said.

"Three?" I said, finally. "Three? A little selfish in this economy, huh? And you know it's gonna be a—"

"We thought we'd give it one more shot for a son."

"It's gonna be a girl, Will,” I said.

Billy performed another rim shot. Ba-dum-ching...

"If it's a girl, you need to name her Yoko," Andrew said.

"Aw, that’s just tacky, dude..."

"Whatever, man," I said, winding the microphone's cord gently around my arm. "Had to happen eventually."

"Seriously, Parker, I can't keep this up anymore. I can't be on the road all the time... we're getting old. We're never going to make much more money at this. Three. I'm going to have three kids."
 
He paused, looking at me, like I was going to try to convince him to stay. Another day, another time, I might have tried, but I wasn't in the mood. I looked away and kept collecting stray cords.

I sat down on the piano bench in the corner of the studio and crossed my arms. We had played together for fifteen years now, Tilting Windmills, but fifteen years to them was longer than ten years to me. Billy, Andrew, and Will were all at least four years older than me, veteran musicians who had scooped me up at eighteen and made me their frontman. Fifteen years of living broke, three indie records to our name, including a concept album retelling the story of Don Quixote. Stupid fucking concept album, the hubris of a twenty-year-old songwriter who thought he was ten times cleverer than he was. Ironically, when we didn't tell people what the album was about, it sold better.

"We never got to play North Dakota, Willie," I said.

"Got to play everywhere else, though." He smiled a little, his face blurred by his grey-flecked goatee. "It was a good run, kid."

"Yeah," I said. I heard footsteps climbing the stairs to the studio. I hoped it was Katie Jane. I needed a little Katie Jane right now.

"Well, shit, if it isn't the dream queen," Billy said when Katie walked in.
 
I wondered, as I always do when I see her, if anyone else in the world has a girl like her, who took his breath away every single time she walked in the room. Dark hair worn simply and to her shoulders, grey eyes spilling wisdom like tears, those quirky, endless lips holding back white, imperfect teeth.

"You look like someone ran over your cat," Andrew said.
 
He said this almost without fail whenever he laid eyes on Katie Jane, and it was not far from the truth. Katie Jane was the princess in the tower, beautiful and timeless and bathed in an endless haze of perpetual sadness. Over the years I learned to read her happiness, in the arch of her eyebrows or the corner of her mouth, but if you were not a student in her shrine finding her joy was near impossible.

"Speak for yourself," she snapped at Andrew, flashing him a wink and one of her pretty little smiles, the ones that never, ever touch her eyes. In anyone else it would have looked mournful, but I'd been watching that smile since we were teenagers, and it was the best she could muster. A soft twitch of her lips was worth more than a glittering white grin. "It looks like a massacre in here. Did someone quit?"

Met by silence, she looked at me, eyes widening. She mouthed the word "shit." I shrugged. Katie crossed the room and sat beside me on the piano bench, setting the guitar case she had slung across her back on the floor and lacing her fingers through mine. She bumped her head against my shoulder softly.

I met Katie Jane in high school, the year we both tried to kill ourselves, running into each other in Harvard Square for the first time while both wearing matching bandages on our wrists. Two weeks later people took to calling us Hansel and Gretel on Prozac, and, honestly, we never quite left that way of living. It took us eight years to realize we were in love, eight years, two music careers—hers so much better than mine—three songs and two more suicide attempts. Her folk career and Tilting Windmills' prog-rock foolishness took us separate ways, and we left breadcrumbs in our wake, breadcrumbs and songs. She wrote a ditty called boy in a coffin for me and played it at her shows a hundred times before telling me it was mine; I gave her katie jane you promised me morning, which could never be hidden, and i know where you've gone now, which we never talked about, not once. One of the breadcrumbs we left for each other was to never use capital letters in our song titles. It was a stupid conceit, but nobody seemed bothered by it.

Should have named the second song serendipity. I called her in her hotel in Austin the night she tried to die again, and for whatever reasons she might have had, she couldn't resist answering, which gave me enough time to call 911. She stumbled into mine, in a studio apartment in Medford, Massachusetts eighteen months later, back from a tour with a bottle of whiskey under one arm. It was that moment we gave up being Hansel and Gretel and became something more, mostly because in my blood-loss I'd begun to hallucinate while she was calling for an ambulance, and everything I'd never told her came tumbling out. She put them in a song. "I loved you in every life I've ever had / I climbed a grey tower in Arizona / just to touch your hair," she wrote, telling me these were the words she thought would be the last things I ever said. "I only have tomorrow / because of you." I've asked her a dozen times if she would have let me die if I hadn't told her I loved her just then. Each time, she kisses me, deep enough to bite my lower lip, and clings to me like a life raft at sea.

Will and Andrew thought, when Katie and I moved in together, that she would be the one to Yoko the band. It was Billy, of all people, who explained to them what was really happening. I wouldn't expect such insights from Billy, but then again he'd known me the longest, and remembered where I got my scars. He’d caught me singing in the walk-in cooler at a pizza joint we both worked at as kids and recruited me all those years ago.

"She's not going to Yoko the band," he told them, drunk after the first performance following my razor-juggling accident. "She's going to keep us from being Nirvana without the fame."

From the mouths of babes and drummers.

"So who's going to play bass?" Katie said, breaking our sullen silence. Will's jaw dropped, as if he were offended we'd carry on without him. Looking at Billy and Andrew, I knew they were thinking the same thing—there's no new bass player. Just a bunch of guys who were a band ten minutes ago.

"I can learn," I offered.

"Parker..." Andrew this time.

"Seriously. How hard can it be? There's only four strings. I can play rhythm."

"No you can't," said Andrew.

"You can't even play the fucking tambourine," Billy said. "And... Andrew's been unplugging your amp since we did that last tour out west. You're really not good at the guitar. At all. Mediocre doesn’t even cover it."

"If Will can play bass, I can play bass," I said.

"I can play," Katie added. Billy tapped out another rim shot. "Oh, suck mine, Billy Cerullo, I'm a better guitar player than any of you guys."

"She's right," Will said.

Andrew stood there, looking hurt. That's what he did best, though, looking hurt. It was what he’d do any time we cut his guitar solos short.

"That settles it. She plays bass. Just call us the Smashing Pumpkins." I squeezed Katie's hand once, quickly, stood up, and threw my arms around Will in a hug. "Fuck it. Congratulations, you fertile motherfucker."

"You'll figure something out? Without me? I don't want you guys to stop..."

"We'll figure something out," I said. The boys nodded in agreement. We all knew we were lying, because never, not once in a decade, had we all agreed on anything. We couldn’t even agree on a case of beer at the liquor store together.

Ten minutes later, Will was leaving, headed home to tuck his girls in for the night. The door wasn't closed but ten seconds before Andrew spoke.

"Fuck me. It's over," he said.

Billy stomped on his bass drum three times and then wrapped the cymbal with his fist. Katie helped him break down his kit. I watched them talk softly as I unplugged the amps and gathered up the monitors.

"Good thing we didn't finalize that fucking tour," Andrew said, zipping the Fender in its case.

"Maybe we can get him out on the road one more time," Billy said. "That'd be..."

"Yeah," I mumbled.

In the parking lot outside, I watched the boys drive off, arguing. I had spent my entire adult life watching Billy and Andrew fight like an old married couple. I half-expected that one would whither away without the other. When they turned the corner and out of sight, Katie Jane bumped into me and pushed me up against her car. She buried her face in my chest. I could feel her breath through my shirt.

"It'll all work out," she said, voice muffled against my chest.

"I know."

She looked up at me, grey eyes twinkling. "I was serious about playing bass for you guys."

"I know. That's why I love you."

"Really?"

"Well, that and some other stuff. There's other stuff."

"One would hope." She paused. "Ever think about having kids?"

"Me and you?"

"Again, one would hope." She smiled. This one almost touched her eyes. "Yes, me and you."

"Would they let people like us have kids?"

"Nothing years of therapy and tons of medication can't fix for us."

"Therapy never worked for me," I said.

"Me neither. Or the drugs."

"Nope." Beat. "You helped a lot."

"Mm-hm. You too," she said.

We got into her car, and she took out a Patty Griffin album in favor of one of ours. I tried to filter out the sound of my own voice, to listen to Will's sound, but it was difficult to separate him from everything else. We'd been together too damned long.

"If things don't work out, I'll take you on tour with me," Katie Jane said.

"I don't think the folkies will like my music."

"Nah," she said, brushing a strand of hair from her face. "But I think they might like you."

The first glass of whiskey soured in my stomach, my body immediately and inexplicably repulsed by it by the third sip. It's funny how you can be a lifelong drinker, how you can stay loyal to your particular poison for years on end, and how that poison can still sometimes turn on you, can tell you, no son, not tonight, you and I will be parting company for the evening, and leave you, sober and cold, to face the world alone.

I dumped the ice and remnants of golden liquor in the sink and poured some tonic water into a new glass, over ice, with a lime. It wouldn't have the same benefits as whiskey, but at least no one would ask why I was choosing not to drink on New Year's Eve.

The house was set off the beaten path in a small, upscale neighborhood of a small, upscale suburb twenty or twenty five miles north of Boston; it was the old family homestead of an old friend whose parents had passed young, and whose siblings had decided, in their honor, to maintain this house, despite having moved away, to the city or to the country or anywhere else but this moneyed little town, as a place to gather, as a place they could share and call home. It sat on the edge of a pond, now mostly frozen, black and gleaming and visible from the back porch.

I pulled on my long, black wool coat and stepped outside. It was raining; I remembered New Year’s Eves as a teenager, going into the city, temperatures bitterly cold, winds biting as we crossed footbridges over Storrow Drive, arguing about where to go, who would take our fake IDs, who would not check for them at all, whether we should just give up and find a warm place to hole up and hide. If there was a reason to believe in global warming it was nights like this one, were cold rain coughed and spat down on us, melting the Christmas snow as the year came to an end.

I turned my back on the pond and looked in through the sliding glass doors at the party within. I knew most of the guests, some well, some marginally, a few intimately, in those ways adults, when looking for something to do and someone to wake up with on a given day, know each other intimately and fleetingly. I had a few old friends here--the host, and Bethany, recently returned from six months' business in northern California with a taste for Napa reds and the kind of tan you can only get on the west coast, a few others. But mostly it was a gathering of names and faces I had known a year or less, people I had just begun learning about, people I knew I might not know still, in a year. I found myself making bets in my own head, wondering who would still sail in the same waters as I did in twelve or eighteen months.

I started, perhaps crassly or rudely, giving them titles and nicknames as I watched them sip their drinks and wait for the year to end. The Marathoner, she of the kindest demeanor and sharp wit; the Scientist, one of my new drinking buddies, who liked to take stabs at combining his research with conspiracy theories; the Cub Reporter, young, idealistic, who had for a short time reminded me what it was like to chase after a dream with rabid intensity; the Failed Writer, brilliant and unmotivated, with her cocaine habit currently in check but teetering on the verge of addiction. The Once Dancer, now moved on to other dreams, like becoming a playwright and marrying a rich husband. The Would Be Rock Star, who was clinging onto his dream, one I once shared but gave up long ago, who reminded us all that while music might be a young man's sport, it's an old man's war to win.

Bethany stepped onto the porch, pulling the sliding door closed behind her and a pack of Parliaments from her purse.

"Why in God's name are you drinking tonic water?"

"It's gin and tonic."

"Bullshit, you hate gin. You picked an odd night to become a teetotaler, Jason."

I shrugged.

"What are you doing up here?" she asked.

"Wondering how many of those people in there will still be in my life in a year," I said.

Bethany took a sip of her wine and moved next to me, to look inside, following my gaze.

"You ever think maybe you're the tourist?"

"What's that?"

"You're the tourist. We don't disappear on you, babe, you disappear on us." She smirked, carefully holding wine and cigarette in one hand while she moved to fix her unruly cloud of wine-red hair, pushing it out of her face. "I'm speaking from personal experience, you know. You drop off the radar very easily."

"That's because I'm a spy, you know."

She laughed.

"Is that the excuse this year? It's because you're driftwood. You just pass on by, most of the time. Except for the unlucky few, like me, for whom you keep turning up like the proverbial bad penny. Every time I think you're, you know, overseas in the Peace Corps or dead in a ditch somewhere or doing time in a Mexican prison, you show up at a holiday party."

It was my turn to shrug. The rain was coming down harder now, some old and angry storm system growing furious at its own inability to freeze over and drop snow. I looked at my watch.

"Ten til."

"I used to love New Year's Eve," she said. "I swear I used to think you could feel the whole world changing beneath your feet on nights like tonight."

"And now?"

"And now it's just a reason to think you're getting older and realize it's harder to find someone to plant one on you at midnight whom you do not find repulsive."

"Hey," I said.

"I'm not kissing you at midnight. I know where you've been."

"That is not what I was going to suggest," I said. "But I've got an idea."

"Does this idea involve kissing at all?"

"No."

"Okay then, I'll listen."

"I'll explain after midnight," I said. "It looks like they're waiting for us inside."

***

Someone turned on the television, where a mummy in a suit was MCing the dropping of the ball in Times Square. I'd been to Times Square on New Year’s; virtually every New Year’s Eve event is overrated, and it is just a matter of scale as to how overrated it is in comparison to any normal night, and Times Square is the most overrated of all, just based on sheer numbers and hype. At midnight people cheered, people kissed, new lovers and old friends, chaste and full of lust, in with the new, in with the old, out with whatever you happened to be tired of at the time.

Me, I just threw back the rest of my drink as though it were more than quinine and water and watched.

Some time between one and two in the morning, Bethany found me again and asked about my plan. I explained it to her.

"You're out of your mind," she said.

"Why?"

"Because it is cold, it is raining, and there are more drunks on the road here than an Octoberfest road race."

"Trust me. It's always worked in the past."

As the party wound down we gathered our coats and headed to my car. We drove to my apartment, a half-hour away due east; we drove in silence, watching police cruisers prowl like sharks in dark water for drunks on the road, peering into passing vehicles filled with men in disheveled suits and women in silly silver hats, looking boozy and tired and sad. Somewhere along a minor highway we saw a small foreign car embedded in the divider, surrounded by cops, the passengers downtrodden and wet and horrified, but unhurt.

"Amateur night," Bethany said, the only time she broke the silence of the drive. Otherwise, it was just our breathing, the sound of the wheels whispering against blacktop, the rhythmic pattern of wiper blades against glass.

At my apartment I brewed a pot of coffee and found Bethany warmer clothes. We found a pair of hiking boots an ex-girlfriend had left behind that were just a size too big, which she used to replace her heels. I ditched my suit for a pair of jeans and a heavy hooded sweatshirt. Wool hats for both of us, my heavy mittens for her, a pair of wicking gloves for myself, long, mismatched scarves, a waterproof yellow coat for her in place of the expensive winter duster she had worn to the party. We filled a thermos with coffee and dug out a pair of travel mugs from the recesses of my kitchen.

"Think this is overkill?" she said.

I shook my head.

"You like the cold even less than I do. It's not overkill."

And, an hour before dawn, we were back on the road, headed for the sea.

***

The road to the shore was empty and dead at five-thirty in the morning. The rain had stopped, and temperatures never fell below freezing; everything was coated with a wet gleam, freshly washed. I picked the beach because I knew they did not bar their parking lot during the winter, for locals to run their dogs on the shore. I knew also that the lot was just a short walk up over a hill to the shore. January is a terrible time to go walking down dark paths to the ocean.

I pulled the car right up to the sand, near one of the pathways. We got out, pulling our hats down low--Bethany wrapped her scarf across her face, leaving just her eyes visible--and we got out, carrying out coffee.

"You're making this up as you go along, aren't you," she said.

"Nah," I said. "I used to do this every year, when I was a kid."

"A kid?"

"Relatively speaking. As a teenager. In college too, before I started going to bars and driving to the shore became a legal liability."

"Always this beach?"

"Whatever beach I was closest to, really. As long as it faced east and wasn't locked down for the winter."

Once upon a time, I decided, when I was young and romantic, to watch the sunrise on New Year's Day from the shore. I wanted the illusion of being the first person to see the sun hit this particular part of our world. I knew there were folks halfway around the world already well into the new year, living in the future, nursing their hangovers and starting their days. But that was their world, and this was mine, and I wanted to be here to greet the sun.

Funny, the romantic tomfoolery we engage in when we're young. You go a few times, you battle the cold, when you're too poor to have a good car with good heat, when you're too stupid to remember to bring warm clothes and hot coffee, when you think the universe revolves around you, and when the year begins when you wake, and when you say hello to the sun. Eventually you grow up, you move on, you celebrate the night and find someone to take you home or to take home with you, and you wake, in your bed or in someone else's, long after the day has begun, and you start the slow and creaking machineries of your body, shaking off the snows of a dead year to begin again. There's no time for little romantic notions like watching the sun rise when there is whiskey to be drunk and arms to be wrapped up in, when there is sleep to be had in a warm bed, far from the crashing waves of a black, bitter ocean.

Instead I just tell Bethany about the first time I came here--here being the shore, here being the beginning, not necessarily this beach, this place, this lifetime--the morning after the last time I ever worked with a particular rock band, singing cover songs and trying to win back some pretty girl who, at that particular moment in history, ruled my heart. She and I had gone to a stone tower in a small forest outside of Boston that night at midnight to watch the fireworks from afar, stupidly wandering into the cold night, trespassing after dark; and later we went to the shore, and watched the sun rise. It had been brutally cold that year and snow covered the beach, snow so old and hardened by the cold it had the texture of cheap Styrofoam, turning to frozen dust beneath your boots.

This year though, the rain was winning, and the snow was short on the ground, patches of white and beige like dying clouds against the black-brown wet sand. The sky was hazy and just starting to turn silvery white on the horizon.

"We're unlucky," I said. "On a good year, it's all pink and gold. I don't think we're getting a show this year."

Bethany was silent a moment. I looked down at her, taking in the waves with her large, gunmetal gray eyes, peering over a ridiculous mask of red and black flannel scarf.

"The last time I did this, I went alone," I said. "I think I was twenty. There was a man running his black Labrador retriever down the shore. I think he figured out what I was doing. Just sort of tipped his cap and wandered off, further down the beach."

Finally, she spoke.

"You are a ridiculous man, you know," she said, finally, her voice muffled by the scarf.

"I'm well aware."

"Although if I'm reading you correctly, you were an even more ridiculous boy."

"Also accurate."

She pulled down her scarf and sipped at her coffee. The sun rose further, and we could see it struggle against the cloud cover; in places where the haze was lighter, shards of red and pink started to break through. Otherwise, it was a concussive white, a creeping hope against the remaining darkness. A year of black and white and gray, with little by way of indigo and gold to show for it. They say what you're doing at midnight dictates what happens with the rest of your year, but I used to think, and sometimes I think I still do, that it is not what we do in those moments when an archaic calendar turns over that really matters, but simply what the world looks like when it opens its eyes the next morning.

Hello there, Year. We've been expecting you. Your predecessor was unkind, and we were hoping, perhaps, you might right a few wrongs for us. But if not, well, there's always the next guy.

We stayed a bit longer, until the coffee had grown lukewarm, and we had grown too cold, and eventually, we turned out back on the sun and stomped our way back to the car.

Bethany was quiet most of the ride home. As we pulled into a diner off Route 1, she spoke.

"I don't think I could do that every year," she said.

"It takes a lot of energy," I said. "It's hard to be motivated to stay awake, to stay warm, to get back on the road."

"That's not why I don't think I could do it," she said. "I'm not sure why. I just don't know if I could."

She paused.

"Have you ever watched the last sunset instead?" she said.

"No," I said. "I'm better at hello than goodbye."

"I thought you might say that," she said.

And eventually, well-fed and overtired, we drove home, following the sun west, into another year, and all that goes with it.

Premise: The Martian Manhunter is an entirely different take on the Superman Mythos. If Superman/Clark is the adopted foreigner, raised looking and acting like his adoptive family only to discover he is different, J'onn is the adult immigrant, who finds himself in a new country not aware of the culture or language, overqualified for any job he might apply for but unable to fit in because of his differences. The Martian Manhunter is an immigration story. 

He's very much like Superman in a lot of ways: an alien among humans who could be a force of destruction or dominance but instead decides to show them by example how to be better than what they are. He's a god who takes on the face of a man and solves little crimes, changes one life at a time.

The series should play into his telepathy. He is alone in the universe, the last of his kind, but is tied in through telepathy to the human condition, a million little thoughts, good and evil and everything in between, at his fingertips whenever he wants it.

Story arc: Let's look at the first four seasons. It's an ambitious arc but each season could represent a theme in his journey as accidental immigrant to Earth. 

Season 1: What does it mean to be human. How does he mask his differences. How does he use them to his advantage. How do they create a barrier to his understanding the human condition and all its beauty and darkness. J'onn explores this through taking on a private detective's life. He will need a guide, a connection to humanity to help him translate his experiences.  

Season 2: Embracing humanity, he becomes an inspirational force. He shares more of himself. He becomes both Martian and Earthling, like an expatriate in another country taking on their culture and becoming part of their fabric. J'onn's heritage contributes to the fabric of the Earth the way every new culture becomes a piece of America's always-changing face. 

Season 3: Humanity disappoints him. He is betrayed, by friends, by the government. Terrible decisions are made he cannot stop. War, death, crime. He starts to feel his connection to mankind slipping away. Spends more time in his Martian form, alienating himself from those who know him. Stops being a detective, starts being a superhero. Fixes bigger problems. Interfering, not fixing.

Season 4: Humanity rejects him. We do not want this green man trying to tell us how to be better. J'onn returns to the stars. Retires to Mars, alone with the ghosts of his dead kin. We feel his absence; only when his adoptive family really needs him does he return home to take on the role of both brother and protector. J'onn is called home, where he is needed. To make his adoptive home a better place. 

Themes: J'onn is inherently well equipped to learn about Earth. He can read minds, he can change shapes. Martian Manhunter should be the anti-Orphan Black--where Tatiana Maslany's chameleon-like ability to shapeshift into entirely new people with the same face, J'onn's face should change episode to episode--different actors playing him with different faces, so that the Martian can experience different races, genders, creeds, colors. He will see first hand how we treat those who are different from us--not just green-skinned, but a different hue of humanity. The Martian Manhunter can be a one-character ensemble cast. Clearly there must be a central actor to be his true face, and he will have recurring personas, but it will also be an experimental role--what would an alien being with an expansive ability for empathy be like? He wouldn't pick just one face. He would choose to be all of us. 

The biggest barrier to entry is his name. Neither Martian Manhunter nor J'onn J'onzz is particularly sellable. He arrives on Earth, lost and confused, and he takes the identify of a dead man, his first stolen face. John Jones. Private detective, deceased, mourned by no one. And the Martian Manhunter's first case is to find out why and how someone could die so very alone. 

What do you think? This is all for fun, but I'd love to hear what readers would want to see in their OWN version of Martian Manhunter. Are you a fan of the big green shapeshifter? 
​

Atlanteans are eco-terrorists. 

Humanity is destroying their kingdom. Their planet. They are preparing to go to war, an alien and unstoppable culture which has been the slumbering giant of earth's superpowers for thousands of years. Like something out of a Lovecraft story, strange men are rising up out of the sea, sinking warships, murdering fishing vessels.

An aircraft carrier is torn wholesale beneath the waves on a Wednesday morning. Not a single human being aboard the craft is ever seen again. And all of its ordinance has been taken.

The next day, three nuclear submarines disappear without a trace.

Oil rigs are attacked in the night. The contents of their drilling gone. Their workers nailed to walls with coral-like knives. Written on the side of one massive oil tank: "The sea is ours."

Manning a lighthouse for his dying father, Arthur Curry does not yet know he is the only who can stop this from happening.

At night, Arthur dreams of the sea. He sees through the eyes of dolphins as they ride the wakes of ships. He feels the cold waters of deep trenches where sharks stalk prey.

When he hears whalesongs, he understands the words.

Arthur thinks he's losing his mind. He tells no one of these dreams.

One night, a dream wakes him. He had been seeing through the eyes of a sea lion, dancing in the currents. A vast maw of teeth rose into his vision. He felt a thousand stings as those teeth tore into his body. He felt the sea lion dying. It wakes Arthur from his sleep. He walks down to the water, careful not to awaken his father. He sits in the sand, staring out at the sea.

And he wonders if he is still dreaming when a woman rises from the waves, her skin pearly white, her face so similar to his own. She knows his name.

"Arthur, my son. You are unique in this world, and we need you. We need you before it's too late for all of us."

Basic premise: war is coming between the Atlanteans and the surface dwellers. The Altanteans plan to use our own weapons against us. Between oil spills, nuclear accidents, overfishing, and global warming, we have all but destroyed their world and they see extermination as the only option.

Arthur Curry (we never call him Aquaman) is the only living half-breed between man and Atlantean, an ill-planned love affair between a sailor and a princess of Atlantis who fell in love with the sky. He can breath air and water; is incredibly strong; is nearly bulletproof and heals at a remarkable rate. He will live hundreds of years if the world doesn't kill him first. He doesn't control sea life in the classic sense but he can jump into their bodies (like wargs from Game of Thrones, really), taking temporary control of any beast in the ocean.

It will be his job to bring both worlds together before there's nothing left for either of them. Opposing him are the hardliners on both sides, and by his side is a young Atlantean named Mera and a lunatic who calls himself King Shark, who is both friend and enemy...

Season 1: focuses on Arthur's dual nature and the fact that neither culture wants him. He was raised on the surface and feels some loyalty to protect them. Through his heroism, he earns the begrudging respect of the Atlanteans and is able to broker a temporary peace... 

Season 2: Shattered by Ocean Lord, who ascends the Throne of Atlantis and targets the surface for war once again. In a medieval challenge for control, Arthur must battle his birthright and become King of Atlantis. He does this, defeating his half-brother, just in time to... 

Season 3: See himself betrayed by the surface. A cabal of corporations and government agencies work to remove the Atlanteans from the equation entirely. Arthur sees all of his work torn apart by greed and ignorance. He heads his Atlanteans against these surface dwelling threats, but when they are defeated... 

Season 4: He finds himself disappointed with both sides of his nature. With a small group of companions, Arthur heads deeper into the ocean to find himself and perhaps a way to unite both sides of the conflict, or to never return and let the two sides destroy each other. 

Throughout the series costumed enemies will be rare. Threats will be larger in scale, as he has to work against the mundane but dangerous surface dwellers and the brutal yet elegant intrigue of Atlantis. In the end Arthur is a simple man who is thrust into the role of king and savior, a role he never wears well. 

*** 

So what do you think--does Aquaman deserve a shot? Or better yet... is there room in the Indestructibles world for its own Atlantean adventures? (EDITOR NOTE: Turns out, there was!) 

Then:

We woke up on Christmas morning in a bed without a frame, box spring flush with the floor and covers flung about like a nest. Outside winter was wet and gray, an inch of slush piled through the streets of Boston. Rain spattered against the window and froze, just for a moment, before filling with the heat of the apartment, an ugly morning of tarnished silver.

I woke first, sliding from bed, pulling on a pair of shorts and staring out at that white-gray sky, leaving a steaming palm print against the glass. Somewhere out there families were rising, kids were barreling through houses and condos and tiny little apartment like mine, tearing into gifts, looking for signs of chimney soot footprints or half-eaten cookies. But my family had long ago moved on in one way or another, through tragedy or some grand adventure, scattered to the winds, and Jaime's family, six blocks away, would not allow the bonds of blood to sully their individual Christmases by allowing unwelcome daughters or siblings to cast a shadow on their doors.

I looked over my shoulder at this girl who had staggered into my life six weeks earlier, at the way the freckles were cast across her face, her full lips pursed as she dreamed of some other place. We spent Christmas Eve here, us against the world, exchanging the sort of small, self-conscious gifts you exchange with someone you think you might love some day when Christmas comes too early in a relationship, trying to show you care without showing too much, trying to imply what they mean to you now and what they might mean to you some day later. Here in this pair of mittens is a kiss I wish I could give you, hear in this bracelet is a chip of my heart, I thought you might like it. Stay a while, maybe I'll give you the whole thing next Christmas.

Jaime stirred, deep green eyes twirling as they adjusted to the light. I cannot do her face enough justice, I cannot explain the unearthly lines of her cheekbones and jawline, the delicate upturned tip of her nose. She is the type of girl you paint, in your mind, when you think about who you might want to see smiling at you the rest of your life.

"Merry Christmas," she said. She stretched, long, lovely limbs breaking the surface of the comforter. She squeaked at the cold while I admired the different tones of her skin, her nearl-faded tan hanging on just a little longer than it should, some vague and distant reminder of a summer long gone.

"Merry Christmas,” I said. I knelt down at the edge of the bed and kissed her to entice her out of bed. Instead, she drew me back in.
 
***

Now:

She left on Christmas Day out of South Station, on a day when only the lonely and the desperate deliberately choose to ride the rails. I dropped her off, the world buried beneath a heavy blanket of pure white snow, the season's first storm so late, an unexpected nor'easter dumping winter on us as though to avenge every warm autumn day. She wore all black, a wool pea coat and heavy military-styled boots, a knit cap pulled down over her dark brown hair. She had cut her hair to her shoulders, bangs forming a harsh slash as they were pushed flat from beneath the cap.

I pulled up to the curb and turned off the ignition.

"Why did you shut the car off?"

"I'll wait with you for the train."

She paused, looked at me with those dark green eyes, her mouth firmly closed before breaking into a small, soft, hesitant smile.

"Okay," she said.
 
***

Then:

We lay in bed, her back against chest, my hand running up and down her thigh. Outside, the world celebrated. In the kitchen the coffee pot kicked on, gurgling liquid awareness, and we stayed in bed.

"This is shaping up to be an interesting Christmas," she said.

"I don't know," I said. "It feels a little like last Saturday morning to me."

She wriggled, making small struggling noises as she fought to keep our heat sealed beneath our blankets until she faced me. Jaime looked up at me, the tilt of her head doing nothing more than highlighting the wonderful structure of her chin.

"Christmas isn't my best day, you know," she said.

"You mentioned that. I was hoping we could maybe change that a bit."

"We're doing a good job."

"I hope so." I kissed her; she snaked a hand up behind me and took hold of my hair, keeping me in place.

"Yeah, a good job," she said.

"Want me to bring the coffee in here?"

"How about the coffee waits a bit," she said.

And it did.
 
***

Now:

We stepped from the car into the whipping winds coming off the water, kicking snow up into our faces, collecting on clothing and eyelashes. Jaime darted into the station; I took my time, stomping through the snow, watching her shadowy shape as she launched herself ahead of me. A moment later we were inside South Station's cavernous halls. They always struck me as being a place that might have once been beautiful, before Au Bon Pain took over one of the stalls, before the walls became covered in Harvard University and Red Sox apparel.

A beautiful place where people say goodbye. I'd never had a good experience in that station. Either I was leaving, or someone else was. Train stations are made for goodbyes. You would think they should offer some kind of solace and hope—there is a better place beyond the next horizon, there is an escape to for everyone somewhere—but really, it is in these way stations are hubs for ley lines where you realize what you've known all along, that you are going away, or someone else is, and your world is about to change.

I stomped the slush off my shoes. She was brushing the snow from her bags. Jaime caught me watching her.

"You gonna be okay?" she said.

"Yeah," I said. "Just can't figure out why it had to be today."

"Cheaper ticket," she said. "And I've never done Christmas Day very well."

"I think you get it right once in a while."
 
***

Then:

We fell asleep again, waking in late morning. I crawled from bed, as before, retrieving two cups of coffee from the kitchen, black for both of us, me because I couldn't be bothered, her because she hated to mask any of her experiences behind any other sensation. I placed her cup on the makeshift nightstand next to the bed, and returned to my perch by the window.

"You don't stay in bed very well, you know," she said. She sat up, taking the blankets with her, wrapping them around like a cloak, the crocheted blanket draped over her head like a hood.

"I know."

"How come?"

"I don't know."

"It's because you can't be bothered to sleep," she said, taking her coffee in both hands as though holding some fragile creature.

On the street below, I could see a family piling into an SUV, four little ones (the oldest, looking sullen and self-conscious, dragging his feet, hustled along by a gentle mother's hand on his shoulder). Rain was falling down in sheets now, ice water from the gods, some practical joke on the holiday itself. Then again, holidays have a tendency of helping folks forget the unfortunate pieces, awful weather, dark moments.

"Hey," she said.

"What?"

"Thanks."

"For?"

"For making this just like last Saturday."

"How come?"

"It's better for Christmas morning to be like a good Saturday morning than for it to be like just any other day."
 
***

Now:

"Everything is all set for when you get there?"

"Yes," she said. We were standing just far enough apart for it to be uncomfortable, obvious we were no longer in each other's orbits. Nearby, a couple dressed in primary colors sat on a bench, hand in hand, her head on his shoulder. They were both very blond, and very lean, and very tired. A police officer would spare us a glance once in a while, more for lack of something interesting to look at than anything else.

"Got a place to stay?"

"With friends. We've been over this."

"Just making sure."

"No you're not," she said. "You're making small talk. I know you're not that forgetful."

"Yeah."

I looked up and made eye-contact with a pair of wreathes; I followed from them the trail of garland running around the circumference of the hall. I never understood the purpose of wreathes, unnatural formations best meant to be forgotten outside one's house, left to dry until Valentine's Day.

"I do get it, you know," I said. "Why you're going."

"I know. I've just had enough of the cold. So have you."

"I'm just not done here yet," I said.

"I know. These things happen."

"They do."

***

Then:

We ate breakfast in bed. Afterward, we stayed there. I laid on my stomach, and Jaime, inexplicably, lay on top of me, her head resting between my shoulder blades. Her breath was warm against my skin. When she spoke, her words were slightly muffled with her mouth pressed against me.

"You know," she said. "I suddenly get that saying, when people say they wish it could be Christmas morning every day of the year."

"Oh really?"

"Yeah."

"You wish you could sleep all day and eat breakfast in bed and have your coffee delivered by a someone you like the look of, every day, is what you're saying," I said.

"And also have nowhere I need to be, and to have sex a few times before noon, but otherwise your summary is pretty accurate, yes."

"Sounds good to me."

"Why don't you have anywhere to be?" she asked.

"How's that?"

"You've got to have someone in your life who wishes you were there on Christmas morning."

"Not anymore," I said. "Things change. People move on. One way or another. You're the one with family in the city, though. Why don't you have somewhere to be?"

"Don't get me started," she said. She started chuckling. The rhythm of her laughter against my body was almost tickling. "Don't get me started on that at all."

She started kneading my back with her knuckles, and I drifted off again, as she talked about places she's never been.
 
***
 
Now:

She looked at the doorway to the trains, anxious for the call to board. She did this with only her eyes, irises retreating to the corner of her eyes, long lashes aimed at me like armed fences.

"You're going to get a ticket if you leave your car there much longer," she said.

"It's Christmas, maybe they'll be in a forgiving mood."

"Sure, that happens all the time," she said. She turned her gaze back to me. "I probably could've picked a better day to leave. I'm sorry."

"It's fine," I said. "We had a pretty good year, didn't we."

"We did. A pretty good year isn't so bad for people like us, is it."

"We exceeded all expectations," I said. She smiled. I reached out, grabbed the lapel of her coat, drew her in. She pressed her face against mine. "It's all better when it's self-inflicted, Jaime."

"Better than when it’s someone else’s fault."

"Yeah," I said. She brushed her lips against mine, lightly at first, but breaking into a real kiss, one more, one more for the road, like they used to say. One more for the road. Pack your bags and bring your compassion and kiss me goodbye like you mean it or don't do it at all.
 
"Be brave," I said, softly, for no reason at all.

"I always am," she said, her words a light breath on my neck.

We heard a call for her train over the intercom. Honestly, the station was empty enough they could have called for her by name.

"You should get going."

"I should." She paused. "Like a good Saturday morning."

"Not all Saturday mornings turn out the same way. Sometimes it rains."

"Sometimes it snows," she said. "Goodbye."

"Goodbye, Jaime. Be brave," I repeated.  

"Always am," she said again.

And then she walked out the hall into the eddies of snow on the tracks, looking back once before she boarded, and she was gone.
 
***
 
Then:

Christmas fell on a Saturday, like any other Saturday, when we were still strangers but knew we wouldn't be, not forever. Gifts were exchanged, but the better gift was that of time, for two people who otherwise would have spent the day like any other day, rising alone, cold, watching the world pass us by.

Instead, something more. Here's a little piece of my heart; stick around, I'll give you it all. It's easy to give it all away, even easier if you're inclined to give it all away, to be brave in the face of heartbreak and disappointment. You don't learn anything by being cautious, you don't learn anything by keeping the shield up past your eyes. Armor only gets in the way of feeling the sting, but be brave, and the sting has its own rewards as well.

We spent Christmas night in the claw-footed tub in my apartment, the only piece of that place worth a damn for romance or aesthetics, using the hot water to chase away the seeping cold the thin apartment walls couldn't keep out. Jaime dunked her hair in the water, brushing it back from her face. She leaned into the crook of my arm.

"We should do this next year," she said.

"The bath?"

"The whole thing. It's been nice."

"We could do it all again tomorrow."

"That would be nice too. But let's make sure to do this next Christmas."

"If you want."

"You swear?"

"I promise," I said. But we both knew, then and there, that these are not the kind of promises anyone can keep. You make them to preserve the moment, not the future. "We'll do it all again next year."
 
***

Now:

I walked down the street from the station and stopped on the Summer Street Bridge. Once upon a time I worked in South Boston, six or eight blocks from the train. It was cold then, too, a bastard commute on winter days, with freezing air tearing off the water, burning eyes and cheeks. I leaned my elbows on the railing, watching the cold winter light glinting off the nearly frozen water. I'd always lived by the ocean, the black waters that don't freeze, that stay in constant motion, at war with the physics of freezing. I heard a car driving past, and turned to watch; from the back seat, a brightly clad child, round-faced and wearing a ridiculous hat with a pompom as large as her head on top, placed her hand against the windowpane as the vehicle drove by. I raised my hand back to her, and she watched me with luminous blue eyes as they drove on.

People pass by and pass along every day. It's what we do. We aren't built to stop moving.

I wrapped my coat around me tighter and headed back to the car. Somewhere else, Jaime was headed west, to somewhere warmer, that flawless face looking out a window as the world rushed by; really, there is nowhere else to go from here, if you want to run away. We always follow the sun. It's instinct. It is tradition.

But instead I headed north, to find my way home, and to salvage Christmas Day.
 
© Matthew Phillion, December 13, 2007.

For years people have asked if the digital Indestructibles short stories would ever be available in print. I've always said: once there's enough to fill a print book! And now there is. Tales from the Indestructiverse is a new anthology collecting every online-only short story as well as seven brand-new stories. These feature: 

• The first crossover with the Echo and the Sea cast 
• A horror story from an Indestructibles team from centuries ago 
• A never-before-seen villain's origin story that once appeared in the City of Heroes comic book
• And much more! 

I've always wanted to get stories like Gifted, the Soloist, and Blood & Bone into print, so I'm psyched to finally be able to offer it as a paperback. Available now on Amazon or through my web store here. And if you prefer ebooks, it's also available as a complete collection in Kindle.