ArHi OS: The Caped Crusader and The Cigarette Smoking Man

The wind flutters her cap as she leans across the ledge and watches the skyscrapers spread across the city. The buildings contribute to light pollution and even with her heightened ability to see, she has to squint to see the stars. It was another day, another night, another fight and yet another man with an insufferable God complex. It had taken her team less than an hour to take them down and dump them in high security prison. She knows it is only a matter of time, days even, when someone else will come - guns blazing and wanting power they cannot wield.

Instead of flying back to the based used by her team, she chooses a building to hangout instead. It's her time to introspect, retrospect or whatever one did when they had killed three men in a matter of minutes. She didn't want to think about the eleven cars that were ruined, two stores that now had holes in them or a dozen civilians who had suffered from scratches to major surgeries.

"I am sorry I didn't know you were here." She whips her head around and berates herself for not noticing a man coming to the roof let alone ten feet away from her.

The man was sharply dressed and she saw him clutching a pack of cigarettes, weariness painting his face.

"I don't own the building," she replies, sardonically.

His response is a cocky smirk. "I know. I do." He says casually and lights up a cigarette. "Sorry for this," he says blowing smoke.

She shrugs. "I may have a super sensitive nose but I have honed it to ignore stink for years now." She was born with a higher ability to hear, see and smell, but the ability to defy gravity and fly had come as a surprise.

He shakes his head in response. "I am surprised you aren't partying with your other superhero friends right now," he says. She doesn't know if it's a casual small talk or mockery. She is watching people mull about at this time of the night when they are supposed to be in bed and resting.

She sighs. "Didn't feel like today." She doesn't divulge any further but looks at him giving him an onceover. "I am surprised you aren't a party or a gala either. Being Arnav Raizada and all," She smirks at his obvious surprised face. She throws her head back and laughs. The mask across her eyes stretches delicately. "You may not be the richest guy in the city, but you are the most charitable rich person out there." There is fondness in her voice.

He doesn't respond for several minutes. "I have a lot more than others. I don't mind sharing or giving up on things that isn't strictly necessary."

"Your organization does a lot for the city," she says softly, being purposefully vague.

He snorts and cocks his head to the direction where the attack had taken place only hours before. "Superheroes swoop in and save the day. Someone has to clean it up. City doesn't have the budget to keep fixing things when megalomaniacs come to town because they are pissed at one of you guys. My charity organization helps those who get caught in the crossfire. The collateral damage, the cost civilians pay to be safe." She notes with a sense of weariness that there is no harshness or malice in his voice. It's the truth as he sees it and unfortunately he isn't completely wrong. The agenda for tonight's attack had been that driven by vendetta by the supervillain group.

It was a tango, a dance, a game that the two groups played. The heroes and the villains were so far gone in this game that neither knew who or what started the whole thing. There were times when small actions lead to very large consequences. Wasn't it enough that the intent behind the actions were understood and not be dragged out? Was it fair to hold two actions of different magnitude having very large impacts be held at the same scale? Statistics says one thing and theology said another. She didn't know what to believe but to live with consequences and monumental quantity of regret.

She had taken a beating earlier that night because she didn't want to fight the woman who was charging at her. Not because her attacker was a woman but because the attacker was a woman who was pregnant. And by the looks of it, the woman didn't even know. She had stopped the fight and told the woman to just stop, if she cared for the baby at all. And the woman had stopped and disappeared into the night with a muted "thanks". The event had left her completely drained.

"It seems like a never ending cycle, doesn't it?" She says when she realizes she hasn't spoken in a while and Arnav Raizada is already on his second cigarette.

"There are several never ending cycles; poverty, water shortage, terrorism. It's like we have all the answers and most resources to fix it yet it doesn't get fixed. Strange, isn't it? I mean, why doesn't the entire superhero community just band together and fix geopolitics once and for all?"

She turns her head away from the debris and fixes across the sky. "Why don't you give money to all the poor people in the city - that should fix poverty right?" She turns back to look at his reaction. As expected it's one of amusement.

"Sorry. That was my exasperation talking," he says sheepishly. She nods and smiles in response. "You may want to get your face checked. There are cuts and bruises." He hands her his handkerchief. She takes it silently and presses it against her jaw where there is a cut and she knows it is a nice shade of purple.

"Thank you." She says, sincerely. Arnav turns to look back at the city that's slowly going to sleep after the hullabaloo of the attack. "Can I have one?" She says watching him.

He makes an indignant noise. "It has been a weird day," she grouses and makes a grabby motion with her hand. He hand her a cigarette and lights it up. "It tastes worse than it smells." She says grandly after one inhale. He snickers at her twisted expression.

"You are avoiding your team," he says after several moments of shared silence.

"The woman who banged my face today is pregnant. She didn't even know it then. She dropped out from fight and walked away when I told her so." She dragged from her cigarette and let her breath out in a hurry. "She severely injured a family of three tonight. They probably will not make it. And I let the woman who hurt them walk away." She swallowed the smoke now. Her lungs burned and it gave her a soothing ache.

"If you had tried to stop her she would have fought back. And you would have hurt or even killed the baby in the process." Arnav finished it for her.

She nodded. "I literally have seconds to make choices such as these Mr. Raizada. Every time I kill someone or let them go, I have to live with the decision I made on the field. I don't get it right every time but I sure hope that I made the right one. Or else the brunt of the consequences will be bore by me and or civilians who have done nothing to incur the wrath that follows my decisions."

"You don't want to stop doing what you are doing?" He asks. He understands the moral predicament she is in. He also understands the proclivity of a person like her, who cannot see people in trouble or be denied of justice. The words "help" and "justice" now had an ugly twinge to them and a complex connotation to boot.

"You can sell all your shares, take the money and settle down in an island faraway from this broken city. Yet, here you are." She says throwing the cigarette stub to the ground and killing it with her toes.

He smiles. "Here we are." He tones.

She hops on the ledge and crouches in front of him. Slowly she removes her mask.

It's a face that wouldn't stand out in a crowd but one would gaze longer than necessary if anyone were to look at it. It's a young face belonging to a girl he has never seen before but finds familiarity in the angle of her cheeks and contour of her nose. He runs his fingers on her bruised jaw and purple cheek.

"Khushi Gupta," she says softly.

"Nice to meet you Khushi," he says, his voice equally soft.

Something inside her heart unclenches and the ache in her bones lessens as the smile across their faces slowly spreads.

With one last smile directed at him, she leaps from the ledge and flies into the night.

[Note: The pregnant super villain thing is from Harley Quinn comics. Harley refuses to fight Black Canary when she finds out that Black Canary is pregnant.]

Nicee... I wanna go read some now...

Oh very nice one indeed

so unusual n different, but in a beautiful sort off way...

They will remember each other even if they would never meet again ... ... Some time I wake up in the middle of night with a ache in heart remembering a face which I never met since one fine day when I was twenty... Awesome

A charitable rich guy and a superwoman. Wonderful story.

This is brilliant shot. How you get ideas like this? And left me carve for more of them.

I have aged, undoubtedly. Forgotten all that I have read as a young girl. Yet Khushi Gupta and Arnav Singh Raiazada enthrall me like no one does. I need help. Period.