“I don’t know why you bother with these people,” Finch said, legs dangling off the edge of the rooftop like gravity was optional. “You could literally blow up the sun.”
Vox didn’t look at her. The city sprawled beneath them in a tired sprawl of yellow lights and sleepless windows. He could hear sirens somewhere far away, distant enough to feel theoretical. “Why would I blow up the sun?”
She shrugged, peeling the label off a bottle she wasn’t drinking. “You don’t have to. But you could. That’s the point. Everyone should do what you say because if they don’t, you could—” she made a small, explosive gesture with her fingers “—you know. The Sun.”
He exhaled slowly. “Blowing up the sun seems like an overreaction.”
Finch snorted. “So does letting people walk all over you, but here we are.”
They sat in silence for a while after that. The kind that only exists between people who have already said the worst things to each other and lived through it. Wind tugged at Vox’s coat. The night pressed close, like it was listening.
“You ever think about it?” Finch asked quietly. “What would happen if you stopped holding back?” He didn’t answer right away. He never did. Because the truth was...he thought about it all the time.
Vox had learned early that power wasn’t loud. It wasn’t lightning or fire or the way stories told it. Power was pressure. It was the way reality leaned toward him when he wasn’t paying attention. The way probabilities bent. The way impossible things waited, patient, like dogs trained to sit until called.
The sun was just… convenient. A metaphor with teeth.
He could feel it even now, far away but tethered to him by something ancient and quiet. A humming awareness. If he reached for it, really reached, it would listen. But he didn’t. Because he remembered the first time he realized what he was.
He’d been younger. Angry. Alone in a way that hollowed out his ribs. The world had pushed and pushed until something in him pushed back. The sky had darkened for a fraction of a second. Just a hiccup. No one else noticed. Except him.
He’d felt it then: the terrible, intoxicating truth that there was no ceiling to what he could do. And with it came the other truth.
That if he ever stopped choosing not to… there would be nothing left to stop him.
“You know what happens if I do that,” Vox said finally. “If I start using that kind of leverage.”
Finch tilted her head, studying him. Her eyes were sharp, always had been. Too sharp for comfort. “Yeah. You become a god.”
He shook his head. “No. I stop being human.”
She went quiet at that.
The wind picked up, tugging at her hair. The city breathed below them. Somewhere, a car alarm went off and then died, like it had remembered its place.
“You could fix things,” she said eventually. “End wars. End suffering. Make them listen.”
“By terrifying them.”
“By saving them.”
Vox finally turned to look at her. “Those aren’t the same thing.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it. Thought better of it.
“You know what scares me?” he continued. “It’s not that I could destroy everything. It’s how easy it would be to justify it. How good it would feel to finally stop explaining myself. To finally be obeyed.”
Finch’s voice softened. “You’re not a monster, Vox.”
He smiled faintly. “No. That’s the problem. Monsters don’t worry about becoming monsters.”
They sat there as the night wore on, the world blissfully unaware of how close it was to catastrophe, to salvation, to something worse than either.
After a while, Finch bumped her shoulder into his. “You’re still not going to blow up the sun, are you?”
He snorted. “No.”
“Even if they deserve it?”
“Especially then.”
She laughed, quiet and tired. “You’re impossible.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But I’m choosing to be.”
They watched the horizon lighten just a fraction as dawn threatened to exist. Vox felt the pull of the sun again steady, patient, obedient.
Waiting.
He ignored it.
And in doing so, saved the world for one more day.
Not because he couldn’t end it.
But because he could.
And chose not to.
