We sat on Kilimanjaro with not an ounce of snow. It was littered with dead bodies, skeletons, really, covered in hiking gear—no one we knew of course, just climbers who had a bad time, who had to prove something to someone.
“Sol, I’m really going to miss the cheering,” Xander said. His suit was tattered to absolute shit. His face was bruised and battered like he’d gone twenty rounds and didn’t even try.
“Really?” I said. “The cheering? The parades and all that shit? Gods, I couldn’t stand it for one second.” I handed him the last Little Debbie Fluff Cake that would ever exist. I saw the one I wanted for myself and hid it under my thigh.
“I mean, to them life was really fragile, I guess,” Xander said. “They always died really tragically, Sunburst. I mean they could just fall down stairs or get hit by a bus and that was it. When we’d save them, they were just relieved! Another day to drink, fuck or watch TV. Huzzah!”
I took a chug of beer out of the smörgåsbord of snacks and food we brought up. For as much as I bitch about the human race, the fucking snacks they could come up with. I threw the empty beer can on the pile and said, “And then we show up. Gods, how they lost it.”
Xander said, “Right. We show up and they are like, ‘Holy shit. Our saviors.’ and how did we get here? By fucking accident. A little shifting accident and here we are in this reality.”
“Not really an accident though. We paid a steep price for interrupting a minor villain. He opened up a portal and shoved us here. And since this version of Earth never saw a superhero, we had to move to Antarctica to get away from it all.”
Xander sighed. “That’s probably gone now.” He opened the last Little Debbie Star Cake that will ever exist and looked me square in the face, “So you don’t really need to breathe, right?”
I shook my head. “No. I run on all solar. No food. No air. I can live in complete darkness for probably a thousand years? I’ve never done the math.”
“You never needed to until today,” Xander said and he rested his head on my shoulder.
I guess when you think someone is going to clean up your mess, you never learn how to do it yourself. From there, you don’t learn to apologize, or mind your manners or business. You tend to just depend on two beings from another reality to fix all of your shit until they can’t. The dishes come crashing down, down and down and then you break the world. You can only fix what you can.
“I’ll stay with you until the end, my old friend,” I said. I then reached under my thigh and handed him the last Little Debbie Snack Roll to ever exist. I put my head on his and hold his hand until the end.
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