radiating / joy
Under a sky of shredded clouds, he sees what his mind has been trying to show him for whole spans of minutes now. Caitlin Lightcap on the ice, kneeling, her hands pressed to her bloodied ribs, her helmet off, her hair blown free, looking up at the corpse of Karloff and the rent-open chest of Brawler Yukon, leaching radiation. Laughing. Pure joy.
“We did it, you know,” he murmurs, “but I like to think you always knew we would.”