April 30, 2020

Megan Barnes hadn’t exactly complained when the position of Staff Judge Advocate fell in her lap. It was, after all, the exact kind of position she’d been working towards for the past decade.

She just hadn’t expected to receive the position under such sudden circumstances… nor have to deal with one of the headaches she’d been warned about quite so soon into her tenure.

Foxfire. DC’s local cryptid. The NMR and FMB consistently saw an upswing in online discussion about her right around tourism season, as people who weren’t as inured to seeing someone quite so odd came to town for vacation. But that upswing was on top of the usual calls and complaints that came in regarding Foxfire — about a Moonshot using their powers in public, or not using their powers to protect the public, as had more recently been the case.

And as Megan was Staff Judge Advocate for the DC National Guard, including its branch of the National Moonshot Regiment, that made these problems into her problems. Then, to top all that off, the headache just strolls into the building and demands to see her, in complete defiance of all decorum, procedure, and proper protocol!

So no, Megan wasn’t exactly polite in her dealings with the former superhero. Some could even argue that she’d been overly harsh, or gone too far.

But those people didn’t know. They didn’t know what Foxfire was, hadn’t heard from the family left behind by whatever unholy debacle let that fuzzball loose into polite society. All they saw was a pretty woman who was maybe a bit less human than normal, if in a way that meant she was still conventionally attractive. They didn’t see the empty grave that would never be filled, the parents and brother and sister who grieved for somebody whose corpse continued to walk, and talk, and pretend at living the life its killer had stolen.

Or at least… that’s what she told herself, what she let herself believe so she could sleep at night.

But there was still that small, niggling seed of doubt. What she’d heard, what she’d been told, what she’d been led to believe? It didn’t make sense in light of what she’d seen with her own two eyes. Megan had been given story after story, all feeding into the idea of some nebulous, nefarious creature that had been let loose into the world, a being of spite and malice, mischief and mayhem. And while they had certainly been on point with regards to the mischief?

None of the rest added up. The Foxfire that had traipsed into her office had been too convincingly human, vulpine additions aside, to see as anything but her own person.

It would’ve been so easy, too easy, to just put it out of her mind, let herself continue to believe what she’d been told. But if Megan had been willing to accept at face value an idea that ran contrary to other evidence, then she wouldn’t be where she was today. So she waited until she knew the fox would be away, made a call that would never be answered, and left a voicemail that might never be heard.

That had been two days ago. Two days of waiting, wondering if her message had gone through, weighing the pros and cons of sending another—

A call pulled Megan from her musings, and she pressed the speakerphone button to answer.

“SJA Barnes speaking.”

“Ma’am, you wanted a reminder when it was 1800 hours?”

Megan blinked, and checked the clock on the wall. Sure enough — 1800 hours, or 6 pm in civilian time. She’d had to relearn how to talk in civilian time for two husbands, now, but it was still a bit jarring.

“I did, thank you. I still have a bit more to get done, but there’s no need for you to stick around for it; you’re dismissed.”

“Ma’am.” The line went dead, and that was that.

Megan lifted and replaced the handset to hang up on the call, then leaned back in her chair. Well, not her chair, her chair. She still hadn’t had the chance to personalize the office the way she wanted to, and probably wouldn’t get the funds allocated for at least another five months, maybe even a full year. Bureaucracy had its uses, but it was slow.

Regardless, all that time she’d spent reading Foxfire’s full unredacted file meant she had a fair few things that she’d been putting off, and needed to get done: review some complaints among the recruits, sign off on some findings, assign out another dozen—

“I assume from your solitude that now shall suffice.”

Megan bolted upright in her chair, her right hand going to the sidearm hidden under her desk. What was — where had that voice come from?

It wasn’t one that she recognized. It was deep, resonant, but other in a way that she wasn’t sure she had the words to describe. And what was more, it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once, as though it had spoken through the very air itself.

A flash of bright blue fire appeared in the air over her desk, to which Megan fully withdrew the hidden sidearm and flicked the safety off. She sighted on the blue flame as it congealed into a sphere, and lowered itself to the surface of her desk, which… didn’t burn? That shouldn’t—

The flame faded away in an instant, its dull roar cutting off.

In its place was an animal — a silver-furred fox, its glowing blue eyes fading to amber as four tails fanned out in the air behind it.

Megan grimaced. These weren’t the circumstances under which she wished to have this meeting, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

“Foxfire, I presume?” she ventured, refusing to lower her weapon. Not yet, not until she was sure her unexpected ‘guest’ wasn’t hostile.

“Mm.” The fox briefly stared down the barrel of the gun in her hands before turning up its nose and giving her a look that just stank of derision, even coming from a canine. “Far from the worst welcome I have faced. Regardless,” the fox mused, looking down its nose at her. “I did not take you for one that would waste time repeating questions whose answers you already know.”

“Don’t patronize me, fox,” Megan snapped back. “I have questions, you have answers, and you’re going to give me them.” But despite the aggression in her tone, she found herself lowering her gun, flicking the safety back on as she did so. If the intruder had wanted her dead, she reasoned, then she’d already be a pile of ash on the floor.

“You had a question, singular,” the animal snarked back at her, tails swaying behind it as it continued to speak. “One question, and five other variations thereof. All of them branch from one tree: the ridiculous notion that… hm. How did he put it, again? That dear Naomi is ‘a profane flesh golem denied the dignity of the grave’, your husband said?”

Megan hid the flinch as best she could, but what little surprise slipped past military discipline was enough to draw a grin from the fox. That… that was exactly

how Eli explained it, when she’d accompanied him to see Joshua’s grave so she could pay her respects, and asked why his headstone said it was empty.

And that also wasn’t how Megan had phrased it over the phone.

“And?” she snapped back, mind racing as she thought of some way to gain back some ground in this battle of wills. “You can call it ‘ridiculous’ all you want, but can you prove that it isn’t? And even if you think you can, why would I believe a single word you say?”

To her surprise, the fox seemed to actually consider her words, canting its head to the side in thought. It hummed, the sound unnervingly close to a cat’s purr, before it gave a disturbingly human nod.

“Very well. If my honesty is in question, then you need not believe my words. After all, you are not wrong: tongues may lie.” One of the fox’s four tails swung up and over its body, reaching forward until it rested level with Megan’s forehead. “But the soul remains ever true.”

It was the kind of thing that had every bit of infosec training in Megan’s head screaming at her to decline, to just raise her gun and shoot the damn thing, to get the hell out of there. But try as she might… she couldn’t. This was one of the great mysteries about her second husband’s family that she’d never been able to solve, and had resigned herself to never truly knowing.

But now, here it was, right in front of her. The resolution to those newfound doubts, the edges to square her circle, the cure to sudden sleepless nights of what-ifs and maybes.

The answer she sought, presenting itself on a silver platter.

And so, against all good sense and in full defiance of decades of training, Megan leaned forward, and felt the fox’s existence open up before her.

‘What did you do to my husband’s little brother?’ she demanded, not giving the fox so much as an instant to claim the initiative in this. ‘What did you do with Joshua?’

‘Merely repaid her kindness with my own,’ the fox explained, the voice of its thoughts heavy with something Megan couldn’t place. ‘The one you call Joshua has always been the one who is now named Naomi, has ever been her own person — and no soul quite so gentle deserved to labor under so great a pall of misery as she bore. So I delivered unto her the means to remedy it. Nothing more; nothing less.’

‘No,’ she argued. ‘I don’t believe you.’

She didn’t want to believe it, didn’t want to accept that years of certainty had all been misguided. But Megan was grasping at straws, and some part of her knew it.

‘You know I’m not lying,’ the fox disagreed. ‘I can’t. Not like this. The soul is honest. See for yourself.’

‘Two plus two is f—‘ Megan’s thoughts hitched as they ran into a wall. What? She’d heard rumors about the limits of telepathy, yes, but this? ‘One plus two is — what — how?’

The fox looked at her, eyes warm with… something.

‘It is as I said,’ he explained. ‘The words of man can ring false, but the soul cannot deceive. Grass is green; the sun rises somewhere off to the east; Naomi has always been her own person.’

Megan pulled herself away from the fox’s tail, the sudden silence ringing in her ears. She stared at the fox, tried to process what she’d been told — tried to square the circle on what should have been impossible, what went completely counter to something of which she’d been so damn certain for the last six years.

“But,” she started, “but Joshua was a man, and Naomi—”

“Merely an extraordinary answer to an all too mundane question,” the fox interrupted. “You humans — so eager to fit things into boxes, and yet so quick deny it when your own things are slotted where you do not wish them to belong.”

Megan didn’t have an answer.

“She is hurt,” her uninvited guest continued. “Old scars thought buried, dredged up out of the blue. But she will not condemn a malice born of ignorance.” The fox turned away and stood, walking to the edge of her desk before glancing back. “Let your mind be open. Allow yourself the luxury of a second opinion.”

“Wait.” To Megan’s surprise, the fox did just that, sitting back down and turning to face her. “Two things — you haven’t introduced yourself. And I’m not going to keep calling you ‘the fox’.”

“… I suppose not,” the fox murmured. “I was more, once. But now, I am Gorou. And I am happy.”

Megan didn’t say anything, not sure what kind of response she could even muster. Her unwanted conversation partner seemed to realize this and chuffed, flicking his tails at her in prompt.

“The other matter?”

“I—” Megan stopped herself, and swallowed. “Could you… no. I was… I was wrong,” she admitted. “Can you — could you let her know I’m sorry? And that…” she trailed off, realizing that she couldn’t ask this. That she didn’t deserve to ask this.

“Ah,” the fox — Gorou — hummed. “I understand. Very well, then. I shall see that Naomi offers a second chance. All I ask is that you offer one in kind.”

“... why?” she asked, unable to stop herself. The fox chuckled, favoring her with one last sidelong glance.

“Is it not obvious?” he asked as he stood, tails fanning out behind him once more. “You do her a kindness by considering a new truth. And kindness given deserves kindness in turn. It is as simple as that.”

His piece said, the fox hopped off the side of her desk, then disappeared in a flash of blue.

And Megan was left alone — alone with troubled thoughts, validated worries, and a profound sense of regret.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

May 22, 2020

The fox made good on his word. It shouldn’t have surprised Megan, not really. Not after she finally went and reread Foxfire’s full file, this time with first-hand proof of its veracity, and without her preconceptions blinding her to what she didn’t want to see. What use did something that old and powerful have for lies? What purpose did it serve, when the truth was a far sharper knife?

She didn’t have the answer. Nor did she particularly want it — and so she set that thought aside, locked it in a box, and slid it under her metaphorical bunk.

But yes, the fox had made good on his word. However he had convinced or coerced his charge, Megan didn’t know. All that mattered was the proof itself.

She and Eli had gone out to dinner to celebrate his birthday. It was a somewhat low-key affair — their favorite Italian hole in the wall on P Street, just off of Dupont Circle, just like Eli’s last four birthdays. The two of them split a salad, and shared a pair of indulgent pastas — seafood ravioli, and pasta with black truffle — before being driven home by whichever poor National Guard corporal had the bad luck of being the SJA’s chaperone/guard for the evening.

And once they returned home, and Eli excused himself to the living room for a couple quick, perfunctory calls from family, Megan snuck off to collect his present.

She’d hidden it in the attic, behind all the things she knew her husband wouldn’t bother to think twice about — blankets meant for the winter months, Megan’s wedding dress (held in waiting for her daughter, just in case), old photos that hurt too much to look at — and retrieved a carefully-wrapped box. The wrapping paper was perfect, every corner sharp, the bare minimum of transparent tape holding it all down, and perfectly concealing the layer of sound-absorbent foam that would keep Eli from divining its contents with a simple shake of the box.

She brought it down from the attic, finally remembered to change out of her evening wear into something more comfortable, and brought the box downstairs. Then, it was just a matter of waiting until he was done on the phone (time which she used to send a quick text message, and pour herself a glass of chardonnay), and once she heard him set the handset down…

“Honey?” Megan asked. “Could you come to the table really quick?”

“Hm? Of course, one moment; where did I…”

If the muttering and rustling Megan could hear from the other room was any indication, he’d set down the remote for the massager in the armchair and forgotten where he put it. Again.

“Try the cupholder?”

“Why would — oh, there it is; every time, I swear to…” Eli’s words trailed off, replaced by what could only be an ‘oh my back is stiff’ stretch and groan. “Coming!”

Megan couldn’t help but smile at Eli’s reaction to the box; he blinked, set down his tumbler of brandy, took off his glasses, wiped them clean, and put them back on before looking at her in slight disbelief.

“Suddenly those earrings I got you for Christmas feel inadequate,” he muttered, pulling out a chair but not sitting in it yet.

Eli picked up the hefty box, and much as Megan expected, he lightly shook it to try and gauge the contents. Thankfully, though foam she’d wrapped it in absorbed most of the sound — but not all. There was enough to arouse curiosity. Still, the dullness of it all was enough to plainly double the confused interest on Eli’s face, making Megan giggle lightly at his response, which drew a very brief stink-eye that only had her laughing harder.

“Your wrapping always makes me feel bad about tearing it open.”

“Eli. It’s wrapping paper,” Megan gently scolded. “Tear away.”

Eli didn’t need to be told twice — though he seemed rather poleaxed when the paper fell away to reveal the foam she’d further wrapped it all in.

“Soundproofing?” Eli looked at her over his glasses, which had Megan’s grip on her chardonnay getting a bit precarious from the giggle fit it caused. “Really, Megan? Really.”

“Oh, don’t be such a sourpuss!” she cajoled. “Go on!”

“Okay, okay,” Eli rolled his eyes, working at the strips of tape holding the soundproofing in place. “Just not sure why you would want to… to…”

There were a few general feelings and emotions that tended to fade out as you got older. Naïveté, for one. Far too often, optimism was another. But right now, Megan saw three of them warring for dominance in her husband’s eyes. Nostalgia. Childlike wonder.

And regret.

“I…” Eli closed his eyes hard, and paused to take a sip of his brandy. “Is this…?”

A pair of boxes sat stacked, one atop the other, both Lego sets.

The first, smaller box was of the titular ship from Eli’s favorite movie; the Titanic — iceberg not included.

The second, larger set was a monument featured in the background of one of the two family photos Eli kept on display in the sitting room — the Roman Colosseum.

“This is—” Eli cut himself off, swallowing hard to ease the croaking sound of his voice. “Where? Who?”

“Your little sister,” Megan answered honestly. It was a bit of deliberately vague evasion on her part — and suggested. If he asks, blame our little sister Mira, Foxfire had recommended. It was a good thing Megan had sent Miriam ‘Mira’ Ziegler that text telling her to play along if Eli said anything. She had a feeling it was going to be useful. “I wish I’d asked sooner. The sets I could’ve gotten a military discount on just stopped production last year…”

“Well…” Eli coughed a half-hearted laugh, then moved the Titanic set’s box aside to see the one beneath it.

Then he sniffled, his eyes got shiny, and he was pushing his glasses up to wipe unshed tears away from glassy eyes, staring mutely into a distance Megan couldn’t even begin to see.

“Eli?” She rested a worried hand on his shoulder, which he reached up to wrap his own around.

“That was our last family trip,” he said, voice wet with emotion. “Last time we were together, before he went off on that stupid trip around the world, that idiot…”

Megan realized who her husband was talking about immediately. But she didn’t say anything. Instead, she just pulled a chair up next to Eli, and waited until he was ready to speak. Seconds ticked away. Eli’s shoulders heaved in silent sobs, twice, thrice; then, he settled down, somber in his silence.

“God… Joshua wanted to be a teacher,” Eli said, breaking the quiet. “Our mom didn’t approve. Said only those who can’t do, teach. But Josh wanted to teach. He wanted to teach history.” Eli picked up the box for the Colosseum Lego set, tapping on its front. “He kept buying me Legos for my birthday once I moved out. Our little secret, he said. God, I remember arguing with his picks — all these bridges, and monuments. But we’d build them together. And I got this one for him,” he said. “Years ago. Said we’d build it together after he got back from his trip. From that stupid fucking gap year. We should’ve — I should’ve never let him go. Not after Tatsumi. But we did. We did, a-and now Joshua’s dead too, but he… his—!”

And that was then the dam broke. Eli shoved the box away, tossed his glasses across the room, and buried his face in the soundproofing foam she’d packed the Lego boxes in. She tried to let go of his shoulder, to let him cry in peace and quiet — but he held her hand. He held on tight.

So she let him.

Megan realized, as he cried, that there was so much she wanted to ask, wanted to press him on — because she knew that the ‘brother’ he mourned wasn’t dead, now that she’d met the woman in question, and then the age-old spirit beside her. And she couldn’t square the circle on how this grief could exist in the face of undeniable proof — in the face of the plain fact that his ‘dead brother’ was just his sister, her truth made plain for all to see. Because what she saw here wasn’t hatred, it didn't make sense for such raw emotion to come from what appeared to be simple prejudice, and Megan just couldn’t understand it. There was something she didn’t know, something she was missing. Something that she needed to, but couldn’t bring herself to ask about.

So she didn’t. And instead, she just said one thing.

“I would have liked to meet him.”

Eli let her go, then, shoulders heaving with sobs he’d long kept bottled up. Megan gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek, whispered sweet nothings into his ear, and gave him some privacy to process his grief.

When she came downstairs the next morning, she saw Eli asleep, glasses askew, still sitting at that table. But now, he had three things in front of him. A half-built Lego Colosseum…

And a pair of framed family photographs from yesteryear, dead cousin in one, lost ‘brother’ in the other.

Megan retrieved a blanket from the family room and draped it over Eli’s shoulders, then removed his glasses and set them aside, between the two framed photos. She glanced at them, unsure how to process what she was feeling. She just… she couldn't understand it. Joshua — Naomi was still alive. Eli didn’t need to hurt himself like this.

But he did. And she could only ask one question:

Why?

April 5, 2021

“Enter.”

Megan’s office door opened to reveal a fresh-faced young man, clad in civilian clothing — polo shirt, jeans, and a light spring jacket. The only things hinting towards any sort of military bearing were the rugged boots on his feet and the stiff-backed posture with which he held himself after closing the door.

Megan was not amused.

“At ease,” she commanded with an exasperated sigh. “You’re supposed to still be on leave.”

“That’s what I’m here for, ma’am.” He reached into his inner jacket pocket with two fingers, and withdrew a square of folded papers before tossing it onto her desk. “It’ll be sixty days as of Friday. Figured I should get the paperwork handled before I have to report for duty again.”

She gave the young man before her a Look(™), but not even her best drill sergeant’s glare was enough to faze him anymore. A year and change of work, and he wasn’t flinching at every loud pop or sudden wash of heat anymore.

“Very well.” Megan picked up the papers, unfolded them, and pulled out her pen. “Your administrative leave will officially conclude at 0700 hours on Friday, April 9. Welcome back, Barricade.”

She signed where she needed to, stamped each page, and handed them back over to him. And while he retrieved and tucked his paperwork away, he made no moves to leave the office.

As expected.

“Permission to speak freely, ma’am?”

“Off the record,” she confirmed with a nod. Barricade relaxed his rigid posture, walked over to one of the chairs at her desk, and slumped down in it with a sigh.

“Yeah,” he agreed. Then with that simple affirmation, the body language he’d had to hone as Barricade fell away, and Jameson “Jimmy” Taylor took his rightful, civilian place. “Did they get anything?”

“They did, but not as much as I’d like,” Megan admitted. “I… I need to ask: are you still sure you want to hear this?”

“I do.” There was resolve in his eyes, a steel to him that the Megan of a year ago had worried he would never find. “I need closure. Even if it’s all just disappointment.”

“Okay.”

Some amount of leave following a stressful, traumatic event was admittedly more than the usual, even if it was being couched as administrative leave. It wouldn’t keep anybody really determined from digging deep enough into Barricade’s file to find that he’d been seeing a therapist for PTSD, but it would stop enough.

It was also enough time that the young man could realistically take a vacation somewhere, and not be questioned too strongly as to why he chose to travel where he did.

On the record, Megan had assigned him what she’d called “long-overdue administrative leave, as the NMR’s apology for enforced and consistent returns to a traumatic event”. Off the record, she’d taken the initial 14-day leave forms, stuffed them in a burn bag, printed out new 60-day ones, and then asked if he was amenable to a brief detour at the start of his now-longer paid vacation. Megan’s time as Military Police and Judge Advocate General had given her quite a few favors to call in, both at home and abroad.

She just needed a bit of help to keep it from being noticeable enough that somebody asked questions. And, well… somebody had been playing fuck-fuck games in their backyard, which meant they were long overdue for their fuck-fuck prize.

“The fire marshal found the pieces of a time-delay device, which he believes was responsible for starting the fire,” Megan began. “The delay could’ve been anywhere from one hour to one day, but we think it was planted somewhere between fifteen and twenty hours beforehand. Time enough for our perp to have planted the device, driven over the Canadian border, and hopped a plane off the continent.”

“So that’s it, then,” Barricade mumbled — Jimmy mumbled, sullen and somber. “They’re gone. That’s… damn it. I know I said—”

“I wasn’t done,” Megan interrupted. The young man before her gasped in surprise, and she saw something, hope maybe, brighten his eyes. “My friend in Homeland, the one up in Boston?” Jimmy nodded. “He made a few calls after you paid him a visit. Turns out, six people with the same name and no checked bags all boarded international flights headed for the EU, all of them along the route our arsonist would’ve taken to drive across to Canada and then to an airport.”

Six flights — out of Dulles, DCA, JFK, Newark, Boston Logan, and Montreal. Six men, each with an Irish passport identifying him as Michael Kelly, each of them on a flight bound for a different country in the EU.

“We don’t know who the six of them are, or which one was our trigger man, but Interpol already has solid leads on three of them, so I’d say their days are numbered.”

“And… and if they catch them?” Jimmy — damn it, she could barely think of the young man by his civvie name instead of his NMR callsign — pushed.

“Depends where they’re caught. Hopefully, extradition to the US, and trial. But the death penalty is on the table, meaning that may not happen,” Megan admitted with a grimace. “And if it does…”

“No.” The young man before her stood up, hands balled into fists. “Enough people have died over this.”

“Even if that happens,” Megan warned, “you don’t have the power to do anything here.”

“Then point me at whoever does.”

“You already talked to her,” Megan stated.

“Then I’ll just go talk to Foxfire again!”

Megan blinked, somewhat surprised.

“I’d thought you would suggest Lady Liberty,” she probed. And that was true, especially after their initial meeting in early June, followed by the consistent check-in calls she made in the run-up to the trial.

“LL’s got clout, yeah, but she wasn’t involved.” Much to Megan’s relief, Jimmy Taylor sat back down in the chair, though his posture remained tense, almost guarded. “Plus — still allowed to speak freely?”

“Of course,” she allowed.

“Right. Lady Liberty? Everything she said and shared was barely lip service, because she doesn’t fucking get it,” he bit out, venom creeping into his tone. “None of the volunteer sign-ons or re-ups do. It’s — fuck, I wanted to be doing my Master’s in Architecture right now! Instead I’m stuck prancing around in costume for another year, and all I really get for it is hollow praise from the same people who happily tossed me in a cell and all but blackmailed me into this shit!”

There was also material compensation, but Megan knew better than to mention the pay. The knowledge that Barricade was making as much as she did would have been cold comfort to the loss of freedom he’d suffered, the infringement on his civil rights he’d endured.

“But Foxfire gets it, because she was a conscript too,” Megan offered instead.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I’ve had it bad. She’s had it worse. And she was so okay with just — just letting me vent, or ask. Hell, she let me waste the entire time we had for some of those witness prep meetings. She listened to me once. That’s why I think she’ll listen again.”

“Noble of you. And… for what it’s worth, I think she’ll listen too.”

There was nothing really left to say at that point. She’d said what she wanted to say, he’d heard what he needed to hear.

“Ma’am?”

“Hm?”

“This might be overstepping, but…” Jimmy hesitated, but then soldiered on. “What’s your connection to Foxfire?”

Megan huffed in amusement.

“I’m married to her brother.”

“... huh,” he chuckled. “Small world.”

Then he got up, gave her one last salute, and exited her office.

“Small world,” Megan voiced her agreement to empty air.

Her eyes drifted down to the largest drawer in her new desk, which hid her husband’s birthday present far away from even his newfound ability to sniff out every hiding place in their home. It was a special little delight, this little bit of childhood recaptured, if not without unanswered questions. And unanswered they would remain.

“Small world, indeed.”

But hopefully not for too much longer.