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The first time Eddie Kaspbrak met Lady Flameheart, he had been on a roof.
Eddie wasn’t sure what clarity he had been hoping to find on the roof of his office, but fresh air had ended up being wind, which paired with the height, gave him vertigo, so he was just milling around the middle of the roof like a jackass, not even enjoying the view. He had a letter of resignation sitting on his desktop that he had rewritten eight times over the past two weeks. He tried to turn it in at least three times a day but he could never stomach it. Instead, he just kept his head down and worked on whatever project got shoved under his nose, and then went home to lie to his fiancee about how “work was good.”
He had wanted the knowing to help. He had hoped that if he knew what was wrong then he would do something about it instead of just quietly letting it happen to him, quietly going through the motions of it. That the root of his problem, why he sat patiently with the awfulness that pervaded his life, was ignorance. That if he just knew, if he just saw it in its terrible entirety, he would stop being such a spineless piece of shit. When he saw his design for a freeze ray being wielded brazenly by a villain on the news, he knew all at once that every warning sign he had willfully ignored had been right.
Yet, here he was, pacing circles around the roof like a rat on a wheel.
He smelled smoke.
Concerned, Eddie turned to see a woman in a garish yellow and red costume had let herself quietly onto the roof. She was smoking, not cigarettes, but gray trails of smoke were wafting off her skin and being pulled away into the wind. Belatedly, Eddie recognized her.
He blanched. “Oh, Lady Flameheart. Sorry, I’ll get out of your way.”
Lady Flameheart glanced up and waved the smoke out of her face. “No, it’s okay. I’m just up here to cool off. Don’t let me chase you away.”
Eddie leaned to step forward, and then leaned back. “Oh, well, if you say so.”
Despite working for Super Corp for the better part of the past decade, Eddie rarely brushed shoulders with heroes. Every so often they would come down to techdev to test prototypes or get fitted for gear, but more often than not he got handed projects from his managers who got them from their higher-ups, and then Eddie would hand them right back and never see his creations again. He was rarely even told who pieces were designed for. He supposed that should’ve been his first red flag.
Still, even if he had become overwhelmingly disillusioned with corporate superheroes, it was something to behold. Lady Flameheart in her full regalia, billowing smoke and radiating heat like a furnace. He wondered absently if this was increasing his risk of lung cancer. He stayed anyway.
Through the smoke, he could make out that Lady Flameheart was wearing lipstick, the bright red making her face easier to find in the haze. "I think I work next to the woman who engineered your makeup,” he said.
"Really?" She asked. "Send her my thanks. It got me out of cosmetic tattoos."
"Cosmetic tattoos? Seriously?"
"Yeah. Everything they put on me melted off, so they almost made me get my lips and brows tattooed on."
"Jesus,” he breathed. “I'll let her know."
Lady Flameheart nodded and smiled at him. The smoke had started to thin around her and was being pulled away by the wind. "So, you're in techdev?" she asked.
"Uh, yeah. Yes." Eddie wasn't exactly sure why Lady Flameheart was still talking to him. He was a nobody, a middling techie, and Lady Flameheart was a hero of global renown.
"How is that?" she asked.
He turned to look at her. The smoke was mostly gone, and the heat had faded. Her face was a little hard to read, but her head was cocked in bizarre and genuine curiosity. "It's alright" he replied, and then, before he could stop himself, "It's bullshit."
Eddie froze, horror crashing over him like a wave as he realized exactly what he had said and to whom he had said it. Lady Flameheart was just staring back at him from under her mask, unmoving. Then she smiled, wide and lopsided, all teeth. "What's your name?"
"Oh, Jesus Christ, I am so sorry, I didn't mean to—" Eddie rambled.
"No, no. You're right. It's all bullshit. What's your name?" She was still smiling, but there was nothing predatory in it. She mostly seemed amused.
"Eddie. Eddie Kaspbrak," he choked out.
"I shouldn't tell you my name," she said. "But it's all bullshit, isn't it?"
Eddie hesitated. "Yes?" he replied.
"You can call me Bev," she said conspiratorially.
Eddie still felt decidedly disoriented. He was still struggling to piece together why Lady Flameheart grinned at him for insulting her life to her face and then against all protocols, told him her name. He extended a hand. "Nice to meet you, Bev."
She took his hand, and Eddie could feel the heat through her glove. "It's a pleasure, Eddie."
Before Eddie had the chance to clear his head and ask her what the fuck had just happened, the door onto the roof flew open with a clang and Bev dropped his hand like it had burned her.
In the doorway stood a tall man with a pale grim face. "Flameheart, what the fuck are you doing?"
Bev's crooked smile had been replaced with something that could technically be called a smile, but Eddie felt it shouldn't. "I'm just getting a little air," she explained.
"Well, you've had plenty. Get back inside," the man ordered.
Bev disappeared back through the door without saying goodbye, and the man followed closely behind.
Eddie crossed his arms and took a deep breath. It still smelled faintly of smoke.
—
The second time Eddie Kaspbrak met Lady Flameheart was in a testing room in techdev.
Eddie had been hunched over his computer for the past several hours, pouring over blueprints and tweaking designs, and thinking about how he should probably design some kind of discreet posture corrector because his neck was killing him. He preferred being in the workshop, building prototypes, or fixing broken gear, but he did enjoy the satisfaction of seeing a project through from rough draft to final product. He was tapping his foot, in time with whatever overly energetic playlist he had put on, pulling them off Spotify because he didn’t care enough to make them himself. He could never listen to classical music or lofi while he worked, like some of his coworkers preferred, it always felt out of pace with the speed of his thoughts. Someone was talking nearby, but Eddie tuned it out.
"Kasprak!" Henry shouted and Eddie startled and pulled a headphone from his ear.
"Sorry, yes?"
"They want you in Testing Room 8."
"What?" Eddie furrowed his brows. "I wasn't scheduled to run any trials today."
Henry shrugged and pushed his glasses up his nose. "The hero requested you specifically."
"They requested me ?” Eddie asked, befuddled. “I don't design for any specific heroes."
"I don't know man, just get over there."
"Right. Sorry."
Henry wandered off and Eddie rifled around for his tablet, a loose notepad, and some pens before heading to Testing Room 8.
In the short walk from his desk to the testing rooms, Eddie had still not puzzled out which hero had asked for him. He pulled his lanyard off from his neck to badge in and nudged the door open with his foot.
Sitting cross-legged on a stool in the middle of the testing room was Lady Flameheart, grinning and waving to him. "Hi Eddie!" she called.
"Oh, right, of course," he said. "Hello, Lady Flameheart."
"It's Bev!” she corrected and then flicked her eyes meaningfully to the observation room. “My manager is busy putting out some fires if you know what I mean," she said.
"Uh, not really?"
"Oh, I accidentally lit a couple of trash cans on fire."
"So, literal fires."
"Yep!"
"Well, alright," Eddie said. He had met more maladjusted heroes than this. "What are we testing today, Bev?"
Bev held out her arms and wriggled her fingers. "Suit check-up. Gotta make sure it's still holding up alright against me."
Eddie nodded and pulled up the techdev files on Lady Flameheart, detailing her powers and what tech had been designed for her. He let out a low whistle. Even among heroes, Lady Flameheart had abilities with force you didn't see often. "What's it feel like to be so powerful?" he asked her.
Bev studied him a moment. She smiled wryly and said, "I'll let you know if I ever find out."
That comment irritated Eddie for a reason he found hard to name. He raised an eyebrow and held his tablet out in front of her. "I'm pretty sure you could reduce me to ash if you felt like it."
Bev skimmed over her file and sighed. "No, I can't. Those powers aren't mine."
"What? Is there something wrong with the file?"
"No, this is all true."
"Then...” Eddie glanced back at the tablet and back to her. “What the fuck are you talking about?"
Bev unfolded her legs and slid off the stool, standing closer to Eddie than was strictly necessary. She grinned, a Cheshire cat smile, and waggled her fingers. "Guns don't kill people, people kill people."
Eddie blinked. "Are you seriously quoting an NRA slogan at me? What the fuck are you saying?"
"I'm saying," Bev said, sitting back onto the stool and turning to look up at the observation room, sheltered behind a thick plexiglass window, "That I'm a gun."
Before Eddie could formulate a response, or even process what she had said, her hand shot out and closed around his wrist and she pressed a scrap of paper into his palm. “A phone number, mine,” she said quickly.
Eddie stared at the scrap of paper, eyebrows pulled together. “What?”
“Text me?” she asked. There was a quality to her voice, something Eddie might have called a little pleading, but he felt sure Lady Flameheart had never pleaded for anything in her life. He looked up at her, but her expression was hard to parse with her eyes hidden beneath her mask. Her mouth smiled.
“I’m engaged,” he blurted, heat flashing up the back of his neck. “I’m gay,” he added, the addendum rushing past his mouth before he could stop it. “I’m engaged to a woman,” he concluded, sincerely wishing he could evaporate on the spot.
Bev wrinkled her nose at him. “I wasn’t trying to come onto you, and you should learn how to lie better.”
“I— Okay,” Eddie said. “I wasn’t lying about, well, any of that.”
Bev grimaced and put a hand on his shoulder. “You should really text me.”
Eddie was, to his surprise, sincerely touched. He didn’t know why Lady Flameheart had sought him out of all people. Sure, she seemed to agree with him, in her vague and inscrutable way, that SCORP was rotten; root and tree. But why reach out to him? What could he offer her? Eddie Kaspbrak was a small, weak willed man, who had lain down in the dirt and taken whatever was dished out to him his entire life.
There was a noise from the observation room and Eddie and Bev both jumped. Lady Flameheart’s manager had stepped into it. He was scorched and seething behind the plex. Bev’s expression shuttered and she rolled her shoulders back. She said nothing else to Eddie until she left.
—
The third time Eddie Kaspbrak saw Lady Flameheart, she was standing outside his apartment in the pouring rain.
Eddie was getting soaked. His clothes were plastered against his skin and the water was washing the gel out of his hair and into his eyes. He blinked furiously against the burning, but it was useless against the flow of rain and hair gel.
Lady Flameheart, however, was dry. The rain evaporated off her, hissing and sizzling on contact. She wasn’t in her costume. She was dressed in a tee-shirt and jeans, and her hair looked like it had been hastily hacked off. If Eddie hadn’t known that it could only be her, that it had to be her, he wouldn’t have recognized her.
It had only been minutes ago when the news broke. Lady Flameheart had attacked her manager and destroyed an entire floor of the Super Corp HQ. Citizens were advised to be cautious and told to contact SCORP immediately if they encountered her.
“I can’t go back,” she called over the rain, over the wind, over the hiss of steam. “I can never go back.”
It had only been three months since he had discovered that not only his childhood, not only his relationship, but his entire life's work had been built on lies. It had been almost two months since Beverly Marsh had shoved her foot into his life and wedged herself the rest of the way in. He descended the stone steps of his stoop to stand with her on the pavement.
Up close he could feel the heat coming off her, could breathe in the steam. He could see she wasn’t quite dry, that the water didn’t burn off instantly, that it clung to her clothes, her hair, caught in her eyelashes. Eddie had never seen her eyes before. He should’ve known they would be sad.
Eddie turned and looked back at his apartment, yellow light pouring out through the glass door from the foyer. He looked back to Bev.
“I can’t go back either.”
Bev took a sharp breath and the hissing faded away. She took his hand. It was hot, feverish against his skin, but it didn’t burn and he didn’t pull away. He held it tight.
“Okay,” Bev said. “Let’s go.”