3: Someone To Tell Your Troubles To

Radiance #3: my kingdom for a magical girl sequence...or some privacy. Privacy would also be nice. (#courtshipping)

Radiance is a lighthearted fiction serial about one of Earth's darker timelines. It takes place around 2013 in a world where atypical abilities have become increasingly common, with the storyline following a group of minor-league superheroes based in Washington, DC. Our protagonist is Lady Radiance, former teen sensation, aka Christabel Jones, professional ray of sunshine—or, at least, she's trying her best.

Previously, Lady Radiance was challenged by her mysterious nemesis, Lord Hades, to their first public match. This time, she must face up to her opponent’s true nature as she finds a way to prove herself.

<#2 || Directory || To #3.5 // #4>

Lady Radiance had never actually worked out the logistics of pulling off a superhero transformation in the middle of what might be America’s single densest zone of security cameras, at peak commuting hours, during the thick of the back-to-school field trip rush.

How did everyone else do it? Did the Emblem just live in the Pentagon, or something? For a split second, even though she’d already picked up speed, even though she could hear the screams from where she was, Lady considered leaving the problem for someone more official to deal with. No, she couldn’t: Hades was her problem, and her responsibility. But where…

Halfway down the next block, she spotted a waitress crouched down on the sidewalk to touch up the specials on Bakers & Baristas’ board. That’d do. There was a postage-stamp courtyard behind B&B’s building, and the ladies’ room window that looked out on it had been stuck half-open for as long as she’d been going there. Lady Radiance jogged up and ducked through the coffee shop, resisting the urge to apologize as she went, to slip into the tiny subway-tiled bathroom. There was no time to worry about looking perfect right now—what she needed was some kind of magical girl transformation sequence, honestly—but she got into her costume in record time and did a second quick pass with the new lipstick before realizing she also hadn’t worked out how she was going to get through the window. She was pretty slim, but the opening was smaller than she’d remembered.

“Okay, don’t panic,” Lady muttered, reaching up to run her fingers over the stuck hinge. No wonder it was stuck: the window was as old as the building was, and rather than fix or replace it, the landlord must have been painting over the hardware and letting the tenants eat the heating costs for decades. She closed her hand around the hinge and focused her attention there, intensifying the light squeezing between her fingers until the layers of paint started to soften and melt under the heat. After a minute, she tugged at the top of the window and was able to pull it open all the way with a rust-crumbling groan of protest. Success.

Lady unlocked the bathroom door, grabbed her things, and scrambled up through the window before using her fingertips to drag it mostly closed behind her, leaving some ventilation for the fumes. She slung her backpack into what she hoped was a blind corner of the courtyard and then, light gathering under her feet, Lady Radiance rose above the roof to a full view of the next street over.

The screams, to her surprise, seemed to mostly not be from terrified innocent bystanders. It had taken long enough for her to get here that the terrified ones were long gone, replaced by camera-phone rubberneckers and a thin stream of speed-walking commuters who either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care that the street two feet away was now lava. Just above a flaming portal at the center of the lazily bubbling asphalt, cloaked in shades of night, hovered the very Lord of the Damned. No, hover was not the word; there was too much energy in it. Hades hung there heavily in an air of both richness and decay, as if a man could be a marble tomb. Baroque flourishes peeked here and there from behind the darkness, silver lace glittering in what felt for a moment like a mockery of her innocent spangles. A band of gray silk gauze across the top half of his face muted, but could not hide, the blaze of his red eyes as they locked onto hers even across the distance.

Lady Radiance shivered all the way down to her bones. Lord Hades smiled broadly enough to be seen.

“So you did find me,” he said, raising his voice above the din. She recognized it now as the same noise she had heard through the portal in the living room—a disincarnate cacophony of agony and rage. She couldn’t tell from here whether it was coming through this portal as well, or somehow emanating from him.

Lady squared her shoulders and flicked her wrist, turning the light into a cascade of stairsteps that followed her feet as she stepped down through the air. An old favorite trick. It made her wish she had that gown back, but the capelet streaming back in the draft from the flames would have to do. “Lord Hades,” she said, descending in a long arc around him. “What do you hope to accomplish by this?”

He turned his face to track her as she moved, tilting up his sharp chin rather than rising to meet her. His smile lingered slightly around his wide, narrow mouth. “Vhat does anyvone vant, in this business?” he said. “Fortune? Renown? Perhaps I only vished to draw you out into the daylight.”

Lady Radiance paused where she was, glancing instinctively over her shoulder. Although she hadn’t spotted any other threats as she moved in, even to the nearby pedestrians, her glance caught the eyes of a bulky figure just emerging onto the roof of a nearby hotel. She recognized him by the swaths of red and blue: The Emblem. The DOD rotated a new supersoldier into the costume every few years, a figurehead who served as much for indirect diplomatic pressure as for practical defense of the Capitol. Lady had never met any of them, and wasn’t sure what to expect. The thought occurred to her that with the way that the city had the affiliate heroes’ territory overlapping, the Emblem wasn’t even the only official defender likely to show up.

Was it really her that Hades was aiming at?

“Draw me out?” she said, fixing her gaze again on the man below. “Why?”

“I said perhaps, my Lady Radiance. Only perhaps.” Lord Hades began to extend a hand to her, a dark glove emerging from the folds amid an intensifying red glow. Lady shot out her own arm and threw a bolt of light his way, hoping to head him off. He opened his hand, and for a moment a dimly visible field of energy crackled across his body, shielding him. The light hit it and shattered into a shower of sparks, tumbling down past his feet to be swallowed up in the inferno below. He seemed pleased. “So you do have teeth!”

She kept her guard up. “Did you really think I would set myself up against you without any?”

“Again, perhaps. You have no idea vhat foolish courage infects the hearts of the veak.” Hades looked past her and, with another quick gesture, threw up a wall of fire to her back. Lady Radiance had a resistance to heat, but the suddenness with which it hit her was dizzying. She clenched and unclenched her fists to keep her bearings, feeling the sweat start to bead up under her hair, hoping he wouldn’t notice that she needed to adapt. His attention still seemed to be directed elsewhere. “Stay out of this, tame jackal!” he shouted. “It is a matter of honor between the Lady and myself!”

Honor, was it? The Lady wondered what he knew of honor, but it somehow seemed the wrong time to taunt him. Instead, she dissolved the steps and let herself sink slowly closer to the ground, towards his level—towards the flames and the cries of torment, as well. But he had refrained from harming her so far, although with such powers he surely could have. If nothing else, the man had a theme. She had never heard of Death playing unfair tricks. “Do you intend to kill me, then?” she asked, spreading out the light beneath her feet to shield herself from the worst of the smoke down here.

“Only if you allow it.” Lord Hades raised his hand again, and another portal opened at the ground level behind him. The river of fire drained away, and much of the noise with it. The two of them faced each other now above a steaming expanse of buckled, acrid black pavement. At another motion, the flames from the portal died back and two, then three of his black-clad minions stepped out into their little slice of Hell. Lady Radiance watched them advancing with alarm; all three were armed, two with guns and one with a device that reflected too much of the flickering light around them for her to get a close look.

“I’m not going to play your games, Hades,” Lady Radiance said, curling her lip as she tried to step back. There wasn’t much of anywhere for her to go, with the flames at her back now curling into a hemisphere that seemed poised to cut them—and a small group of unlucky people left on the sidewalk—off entirely from the world outside.

He folded his arms, self-assured. “You von’t like vhat happens if you don’t.”

Lady allowed the light that had been shielding her from below to merge into her aura, ready to respond as necessary. “I thought this was between us! What happened to your honor?”

Hades cracked another smile—grim, this time. “I vas speaking of your honor, my Lady, not mine. Now. Shall ve?”

A wail arose from beyond the portal’s horizon, and Lady Radiance just perceived the panic breaking out among the people trapped in here with her as the latest sally of the One-Winged Army moved towards them. He had left her no choice, and only one course of action.

Gathering the light into beams coiled in her hands, she swooped in front of the advancing enemy and drew a shimmering golden wall behind her to shield the bystanders. Circling again, she stretched what was left of her aura into a net and threw it over the little knot of minions, hoping it would be enough.

It wasn’t. One raised his head, and a cloud of darkness like the one attending Hades began to flow from under his feet. The light dissolved and fled back to her hands, where she shaped it again, wary and fighting panic. That protective wall wouldn’t last either.

“Vhat is the matter? Have you never fought an equal match?” Hades taunted.

She set her shoulders again, glaring up at him. “Keep dreaming. You’re no match for me.”

The dark cloud was still billowing slowly across the ground. “Prove it, my Lady Radiance.”

Lady dropped into the breach and lashed out this time, using the shining ropes and all her strength to knock the soldiers back towards the portal of fire. One fell through, but the other two recovered and began to move forward again, but not as smoothly as before—like marionettes, or spiders with missing legs.

Snap! She hit them again. This time, both stumbled into the flames.

The men didn’t burn, as she half expected in her horror. Instead, they crumbled. Piece by grotesque piece, their bodies simply fell apart, dissolving into a cloud of hissing black steam that swirled aimlessly for a moment and then streamed through the portal whence they had been summoned. As soon as the last wisp was through, it closed again. The great sphere of flame lifted as well, leaving no indication that anyone but she and the Lord had ever stood on the damaged street.

“You asked me vhat I vanted,” Lord Hades said. She turned slowly, remembering he was still there. “It is not so much to ask, my Lady. The dead desire only not to be forgotten.”

Lady Radiance raised a hand without quite knowing what she meant to do. He was sinking into the portal beneath him already, followed by the last of the flames. An overwhelming silence fell around her as the screams of the damned were abruptly cut off.

As she turned to look down the street—what she wouldn’t give to just be able to portal away—Lady saw the Emblem and at least two other heroes walking towards her from a barrier that had been erected across the street while she was distracted. Oh, wonderful. This was it, wasn’t it? The ‘go public or get shut down’ speech. She wasn’t sure vigilantism was the path she wanted to take, but she’d been hoping to at least put off her exit for a little longer than this.

Pop!

Jacob, or at least she assumed it was Jacob, put an arm around her from behind and then—

They were back in the house, stumbling a little, but safe.

“You found me,” Christa said, sitting down hard on the floor.

“You’re the only thing that’s been on the local news for the whole last half-hour,” he said. “I mean, good job and all. Just…next time, maybe call me first.”

“Oh. Sure.” She leaned her head against his legs, still trying to catch her breath as her hands shook against his feet. “Sorry. I mean—thanks.”

Jacob put a hand on top of her head. “You okay?”

Christa nodded, reminding herself that she was Lady Radiance, and she had said she could handle this—so she would. “Yeah. Thanks, again. I’ll be fine.”

✨✨✨

iMessage: Marissa Cotlin

Marissa: non emergency !!

Marissa: do u have time later to come see 1WA test results? finally got em done & this is crazy

Christa: Sure! I can come on my lunch actually. 11:45ish?

Marissa: sounds good :^)

It was the first time Christabel had come by Dr. Marcos’ lab in a few weeks, and she spent a few minutes chatting to the receptionist before the woman called up to Marissa’s lab to confirm she should buzz her in. Fatimata was hardly ever here by the time she made it over—usually somebody had to come down and open the door, since Christa wasn’t in the security system—but she seemed nice enough. Quirky, true…but then Christa supposed you’d have to be to run that front desk.

“Yeah, come in!” Marissa shouted through the door when she knocked. Christa opened it to see her friend sitting at a computer desk across the room, talking on her cell phone. “What? No, that was a yes and a no. Yes, I got the joke, but no, the badge being valid doesn’t make anything better!”

She peered over doubtfully, and Marissa rolled her eyes and waved her in, tossing an ID badge her way when she got close enough. “You know, if most people were copied on the notification email about a zero-day vulnerability in the badging system, they would’ve just called to make sure I saw it.”

Christa turned the badge over in her hands. It certainly looked valid—it had the barcode and the correct format, and was labeled COTLIN, MARISSA RAE LYNN, PHD just like it should be. However, she couldn’t help noticing that Marissa’s picture had been replaced with a headshot of a raccoon wearing a lab coat.

“I was going to patch it,” Marissa said, spinning in her chair now. “I mean, you obviously had access. You could have patched it if you knew the first thing about software.” She paused. “Wait, really?” Another pause, raising her eyebrows. “Uh, that is my line. You do not get to quote Legally Blonde to—okay, you know what, I don’t have time for this. Christa’s here.”

Marissa kicked off her desk and rolled the chair across to a project table, gesturing for Christa to follow as she continued with her phone conversation. “Yeah. Just, um—real quick, I made those tweaks you suggested to the Mk. 2, so…maybe you could give it a spin when you get back? And we’ll see who was right about the duramide content in the insulation.” She smiled slowly, tucking a loose curl behind her ear as she examined some detail on what looked like another exoskeleton, but not quite. “Cool. Just put something on my calendar.”

Christa looked more closely at what she presumed was the Mk. 2. No, it wasn’t a successor to Scorpius; this one had the right number of limbs, for one thing. It looked much more like some kind of power armor, except that the panels were mail instead of solid metal. If she were guessing, she’d say someone had finally told Baz he needed an upgrade.

“It is not a—! Shut up,” Marissa yelped, suddenly pink. “That’s not funny. Bye. You’re the worst. Drive safe, bye.”

Never mind. Christa was completely lost now. “Sebastian?” she asked hesitantly.

“You know it. Who else is going to ruin my day from out-of-state?”

She didn’t really look like she’d just had her day ruined—somewhere between amused and lightly embarrassed, maybe—but Christa had been wrong before. “Right…what was the joke supposed to be?” she said, handing back the badge.

“Raccoons eat garbage,” Marissa said as she clipped it back to the pocket she kept it on. “I think it’s also about that one time I tried mascara.”

Christa frowned, a little surprised he’d go so far. “That’s just mean.”

“I know. He doesn’t deserve me at all.” Marissa rolled her chair in closer and threw her arms around the Mk. 2’s waist. “Isn’t it gorgeous? Although I’m suddenly tempted to coat the inside with loose fiberglass…”

“Oh, don’t.”

Marissa chuckled. “Nah, I already made sure he’ll be locked out of the showers when he has his stress test next week…and fiberglass would wreck the mechanics. Check this out.” She pressed a small switch on one of the suit’s wrists, and the panels folded away to retreat into a slim harness around the shoulders of a ballistics dummy that had obviously led a long and full life before retiring to be padded out as a body double for Chained Lightning.

“Neat!” Christa looked over the disassembled power pack and marked-up sketches on the table, admiring the design. “I really like that. You’ve done a great job, Marissa.”

“Aww, thanks. I wish I could take more of the credit, but, you know. Sebastian has his moments. I did all the fine-tuning and integration with his crazy bioelectric field, though.” Marissa ran her fingers down the shoulder strap until she hit a switch that extended the frame and panels again. “So much nicer than the old rig. I mean, that was literally just a proof of concept that he threw together on a bet and swore he’d never use. This one should turn some heads.” She patted the arm, smiling, and then started rolling her way back to the computer desk. “But! You didn’t come here for me to show off my side projects. Guess what I found out about our bad guys?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think much would surprise me at this point,” Christa said, following her.

Marissa unlocked the screen, restarting her music in the background, and brought up several stacked windows of gibberish. “Well, I was surprised. I even called back and had them verify that there was more than one donor in the sample set.”

“It didn’t look that way?”

“Nope, and for good reason,” Marissa said. “They’re clones.”

Christa stared as she clicked through several more meaningless graphs. “I thought you said cloning was outdated. And extremely illegal.”

“That only stops regular people, Christa. If you need disposable minions and you can’t afford androids, but you can pay off or strong-arm your local regulators, the investment’s still worth it. Just look at this. Every sample the pathologist sent me had the exact same DNA…and that DNA is weird.”

“Weird, how?”

“It’s not internally consistent.” Marissa pointed to a set of peaks in the lines on the screen. “Dr. Marcos didn’t know what to make of it, either. The only thing we could think of is that maybe there was some contamination in the initial cell line. The samples are consistent with each other, so it’s not happening later on in production. But based on the stress the cells are showing, they’ve definitely been cloned—you only see that pattern when you go straight to a fully-grown body.”

“How long does it take to grow an adult clone?” Christa asked.

“It depends on your resources. Supposedly the Chinese have gotten it down to ten days, but I think a month or two is more realistic for entry-level supervillains.” Marissa swiveled her chair thoughtfully back and forth. “I don’t think the production will be local, though, if that’s what you’re thinking. There’s too much surveillance around here, and those portal abilities you told me about would let him keep a base just about anywhere.”

Christabel sighed quietly, unhappier than ever with this information. It was ridiculous—he was a villain, wasn’t he? Slaying, pillaging, spreading misery abroad, that sort of thing?—but she liked to think better of Hades than this. “Okay. Well…I appreciate you figuring that out. I guess that’s good to know,” she said, twisting her fingers together behind her back. “What about that black liquid they were…um…leaking?”

“That was much less useful,” Marissa said. She pulled up another screen to check herself. “Epithelial cells, a whole bunch of other liquefied tissues you don’t want to hear about, and some very weird molecules that don’t look harmful, though I haven’t been able to ID them yet. They’re running through a set of increasingly esoteric research databases right now.”

“Sounds good,” Christa said vaguely, still wondering what kind of man could create people from scratch only to throw them in front of her to die, playing the charming ne’er-do-well all the while.

Marissa looked at her sideways. “You all right, hon?”

“Oh…” She shook her head. “Sorry. I’m fine. I haven’t had any lunch yet. It must be that.”

“Christaaaaa. You have to eat.” Marissa got up from her chair this time and went over to the back wall, towards a refrigerator with a neon-pink BIOHAZARD—LABORATORY SPECIMENS ONLY sign that was obviously being ignored. “I know you don’t want my stuff, but I think we’ve got some Lean Cuisine that Lautaro forgot about in…oh, son of a—! Argh! I saw those Bagel Bites in there two hours ago!”

✨✨✨

“This is for the best. I'm not dead and I'm not alive. I don't belong anywhere,” Hades said. His arms were trembling. He couldn't hold on much longer. 

Lady Radiance shimmered in the twilight, easily outshining the moon behind her, as she extended a gold-wreathed hand into the void. The motion exposed the words written across her forearm, words she had carried with her all her life and hardly dared to hope she would one day hear. Words the Lord himself had spoken to her just hours before, thinking nothing when she said his words in return, because how could she have meant that? “Don't say that,” she said softly, her warmth enveloping him as she took him by the wrist. He knew she wouldn't let him fall. She was his soulmate. “You will always belong with me. I have a hole in my heart that’s just your size.”

–Save Me, Soulmate: A Superheroes Real-Person-Fic Soulmate AU Collection (Chapter 51: Lady Radiance x Lord Hades) by AO3 user HastaLaPasta. 

“Lord/Lady (Courtshipping??) is not my usual sort of thing, but this was mad cute to write and I think it’s got potential actually” - Author's Note, now widely accepted as the popular ship name originator.

✨✨✨

In contrast to the comfortable downtime of summer, September and much of October passed in a frenzy of activity—for Christabel and Lady Radiance, both. Although Christa did her best to stay unplugged from social media, the Lady’s first public encounter with Lord Hades had catapulted her to local celebrity as well. DC was a small town. It only took one morning of being stared at over the top of the WaPo Express, which had featured a writeup of the standoff on page 12, for her to pick out a few pairs of fake glasses and pivot into wearing hats more often.

Still, when she stopped to get the mail, neighbor Lulu asked if she’d ever been told how much she looked like that atypical-actress, Christina Baines—whatever happened to her after Radiance, anyway? Do you think that new Lady Radiance could be her, or is it a copycat? I mean, not that I pay that much attention, myself, they’re Kate’s gossip sites… And Christa liked neighbor Lulu and all, but she did feel compelled to lay low for a couple of weeks after that. It would’ve been nice if Lady Radiance could have, too.

Hades confirmed almost immediately that her wards, although he complained about them, did nothing to stop him from calling; he continued the practice of delivering threats a few days before launching his attacks, which came almost weekly now. He also complained about Lady’s insistence on keeping ‘chaperones’ around, which, to be fair, was not entirely her idea. Marissa had hacked together a bracelet for her with a GPS tracker and SOS function—not that you couldn’t buy something like that already, but she insisted hers was better—so that Lady Radiance could get backup for the fights, and Christa was quite happy with that. It was Jacob having moved his evening video-gaming downstairs that she agreed was a little bit of overkill.

“I don’t see what the problem is,” she told Lord Hades the next time he mentioned how irritating it was to have his private ultimatums eavesdropped on, leaning forward on the cushion she’d used to improve her usual spot on the floor. “You never call just to talk to me, Hades. It’s always match my powers if you dare this and you’ll regret your boldness that. I’ll believe you really want a private conversation when you start opening up like a normal person.”

The flames, the screams by now toned down to a whisper, flickered in what she’d come to recognize as an expression of amusement. “Ve are neither of us ‘normal people’, my Lady. I’m surprised you vould expect such a gesture of vulnerability from your svorn enemy.”

“I don’t expect it,” Lady said. “Still, if you don’t give me answers about yourself, I’m going to have to keep guessing, and you’re going to get more and more offended at how off-base I am. You can’t tell me your life’s ambition is to make a name for yourself as a one-dimensional stage villain.”

“I am not vone-dimensional.”

“Yes, you are. Everybody knows it.” She wasn’t the only one annoyed by that, either. Marissa, giggling, had shown her enough fan works during the monthly PR update that Christa had an idea of how much nonsense had been invented so far to fill in the gaps. Lady decided to poke at a new angle. “Don’t you think I deserve better than this from my self-proclaimed nemesis? Lady Radiance has a pretty well-known mythology—”

“As does Hades, you know.”

“You’re not an ancient chthonic deity.”

“And you are not a naïve high-school heroine trapped in the future,” he pointed out.

Lady Radiance played uncomfortably with a loose thread at the cushion’s edge. “That’s true,” she admitted. She hated how the Lord would do that—use his own artifice to slice through her illusions, suddenly, and leave her once again aware she was only playing a part. He made it impossible to pretend that she was anything besides a face beneath a mask, looking at his mask and seeking another face. She wanted to be something so much more, but she was still just a girl playing a game, and he had such a way of calling her on it. It should have been enough to hate him. More than enough, with everything else he did. Instead, she found herself noting every hesitation and genuine smile. If he was corrupted, then he must originally have been good. If she could see the remnants of his goodness, then there might still be enough to reclaim.

“My Lady?” Hades prompted.

“I’m here,” she said. “I’m thinking.”

“A terrifying idea.”

Jacob snickered behind her, and Christabel reddened at the reminder that he was there. Having nothing else to hand, she peeled her socks off, rolled them together, and turned to pitch them at his shoulder with Lady Radiance’s accuracy and power. Then she returned to Lord Hades, ignoring the noises of mock complaint from the couch. “You’re not even really dead, are you?” she said.

The flames waved slowly; she could imagine a long exhale. “My heart beats, and you have seen me bleed. Do you call that living?”

“One usually does.”

“Then, no. I am not dead.”

The answer was profoundly unsatisfying—as, Lady thought, he had probably intended it to be. “Well, then…you’ve seemed reasonable enough,” she said. “Can’t we resolve our differences without putting other people at risk? You’re better than this. You don’t need to be alone with all that pain.”

This time, it was Hades who fell silent as the warmth in front of her suddenly dimmed. The fire remained, but it was cold and still, and the base of the portal beginning to darken. Had she really offended him this time?

“I am not alone, either,” he said after some time, his voice a little harsher now. “My Lady, it is not only you vith a role to fill. Are you really so concerned for me, or is that also an act?”

Lady Radiance drew her legs up slowly under her folded arms, already chilled and all too aware now that her brother was still listening in. “I want to help,” she said quietly. “But if you don’t let me, Lord Hades, I’m going to have to stop going easy on you.”

“I see…I do look forvard to that.”

Before she could respond, or even think of how to respond, the portal collapsed in on itself and then was gone.

“You were going easy on him? Really?” Jacob asked.

“Don’t start,” Christa said, running a hand across her face. Of course she’d been doing no such thing, but her bluff had been called without a second thought. If the Lord expected her to start hitting harder now—and it seemed pretty clear that he did—then she was just going to have to get stronger…

<#2 || Directory || To #3.5 // #4>

Thanks so much for reading! Radiance #4 is slated to go up on August 22. In the meantime, follow me on Notes for progress updates, sketches, teasers, and crippling fandom nostalgia.

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