The first age began during the second world war when men and women with incredible powers came to save us from ourselves. The second age came during a time of optimistic peace overshadowed by violent tendencies when high tensions brought new mutiny. The third age is when it all fell apart, when sins of the past came to rest on the shoulders of children.
I wish I’d never met my father. I wish the Legacy would’ve stayed buried instead of crawling into my life like a zombie – what I thought was dead come back to life. And then I realized that the truth meant my memories betrayed me, all those times I watched my father shoot through the sky and defeat yet another no-name hell bent on ruling the world or taking down capitalism or ransoming a city or whatever. They say you should never meet your heroes, that you’ll only be disappointed – I killed two birds with one stone. My father was the greatest of them all, yet all I could see was the man who abandoned me.
When you admire something or someone, it can be difficult to separate yourself from confirmation bias, from finding the truths that support what you already believe and filter out any objection. Digging into my father’s life meant differentiating the man from the mask for the first time in my life, and what I found was not pretty.
On the surface, the man was a hero amongst heroes, a shining beacon of true justice and genuine equality at times when those ideals were up to interpretation. Even when all the odds were stacked against the capes and masks, my father stood strong as the voice of reason in the most chaotic of times. My father was a good man, unless you knew him.
Under the glitz and glamor and press releases waits a quagmire of darkness, hundreds of accounts of lewd and lascivious conduct, hateful speech, and junkie clichés. I found the stories no one likes to remember, the terribleness now stuffed away in the cracks between leading the Allied forces to victory or saving the planet at least a dozen times or being a flawless icon. His good justified the bad more times than I could count, his vices swept under the rug because we needed him more than meting out real justice.
I had brothers and sisters, too – at least ten that I knew of, probably more. Some were already dead, like his first daughter who spent her entire 63 years defending herself against nepotism and racist tendencies, or first his son who overdosed on heroin at twenty-seven. Some wanted nothing to do with their Legacy, so they disappeared or they rejected him. Some he never acknowledged him at all. In 1984, one followed in his father’s footsteps, to this day still waiting for approval that will likely never come. The one thread that connected them all, though, was their contempt for their father in name only, a man who separated himself from his mistakes and resented being reminded of his failures, who needed approval yet rarely gave his own.
Then tragedy struck – the entire League of Heroes stood at my father’s side in the hospital at the end of his life. The best of them to watch him become a shell of himself, a pale ghost of the hero he once was reduced down to a frail facsimile of greatness. The Legacy was dying, and he – not unlike many at the gates of hell or heaven – took deep account of his life, the moments he treasured and the ones he couldn’t face until the end loomed so close. The world mourns the fallen, the individuals who sacrifice their lives to defend and protect us against insurmountable odds. And here laid a Legacy knowing his time was up, so he was made to watch while the world grieved before he had gone.
His friends took to their laboratories and ancient texts looking for a solution that didn’t exist. His allies worked harder to make up for the dynamo they’d lost, channeling their grief into action. His enemies even laid down arms for a short time, a gesture of rare contrition in a world so twisted within its own drama. His fans wept standing vigil in parks and plazas and churches across the globe, hoping and praying the Legacy would survive. I waited for a call, maybe a letter or email or even a text – anything that showed he cared about me for even just one second.
One of my father’s children spoke at the funeral – just the one. I thought I could make out a few familiar faces when the camera panned over the attendants inside – at least two I recognized from researching my half-siblings. The unending parade of masks and capes stood in earnest, most of them attempting to be stoic and failing miserably when cameras are pointed anywhere near them. The Legacy was old and affected the lives of countless individuals over his career – most of them were made to stand outside the small church in Brooklyn to pay their respects to a man they didn’t know while a circus ensued within.
I didn’t cry when the Legacy died because I had nothing to be sad about. It had only been six months since my mother told me the truth, and the one time I met my father, he disappointed me more than I could have possibly imagined. I tried to remember how I saw the man before I learned who he was, to find that emotional connection to the hero that inspired me as a kid and made growing up without a father just a bit easier. For weeks after his death, all I did was try to feel something for the Legacy I never truly knew or understood, the Legacy that made me what I am today, however inadvertently…the Legacy that never cared enough to tell me I mattered to him.
That was the beginning of the end for the League, the first heroes who flew over Korea and debated over Vietnam, the team ready to defuse the missile crisis and help NASA get to the moon, the protectors who lost their leader and found it harder to justify the draining work as the years took more and more away. The death of their Legacy was the end of an era, the retirement of tradition for its own sake and splintered clarity through divisive values. And it was long overdue, an entire generation desperately staving off obsolescence even though their children were ready to take the mantle finally throwing in the towel far past when was appropriate.
The Legacy was gone, and with him any chance at redemption or closure. No one would answer for his sins or give credence to truth behind the veil of fame. The world would always remember the Legacy as a hero and savior, more than just a man, a shining beacon of hope in a world growing darker each and every day. The death of the Legacy was just the birth of his legacy, the advent of sainthood he did not deserve in a time when we needed that ideal of good the most.
I wish I never met my father, because then I could feel something.
(Original Draft: April 19, 2017)
Author’s Note: Though originally intended as a stand-alone short story, “Legacy is Dead” has been retconned as an alternate timeline narrative in the C-List universe. Legacy – the first, strongest, and most benevolent hero of them all – is here reinterpreted through a darker lens, as a vindictive, pedantic chauvinist who hides behind his glory and power to undermine and abuse others.
THE SUPERFLUOUS 