Super Wishes and Leotard Dreams, Epilogue

“Christ,” I muttered, wiping sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand. The bathroom light buzzed faintly overhead, casting sharp shadows across my ordinary face in the mirror. My fingers traced the slight paunch—no sculpted abs, no alien muscle fiber humming with cosmic energy. Just fifty-one years of decent-but-unremarkable living.

The damp fabric clung to my thighs as I peeled off the soiled Wonder Woman bikini briefs , tossing them into my secret stash of dirty, female laundry with more force than necessary. The scent of sex and shame lingered in the air?* I turned the shower knob with a shaking hand, letting the water scald my skin as if it could burn away the phantom sensations of that other body—those impossible curves, that godlike strength.

The shower door rattled open before I could even reach for the soap. Benna—*Benna*, not Ben, her soft stomach brushing against the shower wall as she leaned in—blinked at me through steam-clouded glasses. “Morning,” she grumbled, voice thick with sleep. She scratched at her frizzy, bed-mussed hair like it was any other Thursday.

“Morning,” I returned automatically, my voice too tight. Steam curled between us as I watched Benna grab her toothbrush, the mundane scrape of bristles against molars somehow louder than a gunshot. My pulse thundered in my ears. “So, uh,” I cleared my throat, forcing casualness into my tone, “anything exciting happen these past few weeks?”

Benna spat toothpaste into the sink and gave me that look—the one where her eyebrows did that little skeptical twitch she’d perfected over fifteen years of marriage. “Same old routine,” she mumbled around the foam. “Why should anything be different?” The tap water roared as she rinsed her brush, drowning out whatever pathetic noise escaped my throat.

The morning routine felt like walking through wet cement—every motion sluggish, every ordinary action requiring twice the effort it should. I buttoned my white button-down shirt with fingers that kept fumbling, my mind still half-trapped in the phantom memory of blue spandex stretching over impossible muscles. Downstairs, Asher’s door remained shut. The silence behind it was wrong. At eighteen, he’d blast punk rock at 6 AM sharp while doing push-ups. Kryptonians don’t need sleep. Now, twelve-year-old Asher would sleep through tornado sirens if we let him. Same with Crystal; she would be on superhero patrol or pimping her hair or whatever at this hour when she was 18 years old.

I knocked on Asher’s door—three short raps that felt absurdly loud in the predawn hush. No response. I glanced at Benna, who shrugged and pushed the door open with her hip, balancing a mug of coffee in one hand. “Rise and shine, bud,” she called, too cheerful for this hour. Asher’s room was a time capsule of boyhood: baseball posters curling at the edges, mini-LED, blue lights strewn all over the room, socks fossilized into carpet lumps. The lump under the comforter groaned and burrowed deeper. Not the sculpted eighteen-year-old who could bench-press a carrier. Just our kid. My throat tightened. Asher’s eyelashes fluttered against his cheeks— smooth as a baby not the stubble of Superboy’s profile. I swallowed hard and reached out to shake his shoulder, my fingers hesitating just above the fabric. His collarbone felt fragile under my palm. “Five more minutes,” he mumbled into his pillow, his voice cracking on the last word. Pre-pubescent. Ordinary.

The knob of Crystal’s door turned with a muffled click, the kind of sound that only exists in real houses with real hinges that haven’t been oiled since last winter. Not the whisper-smooth doors of the mansion-that-wasn’t. I paused halfway through the threshold, one foot hovering over a discarded hair tie on the carpet—pink, glittered, the kind a ten-year-old would lose track of by Thursday. She was curled into her pillow like a comma, one arm flung over her headboard where she’d tacked up a poster of Simone Biles mid-vault. The hall light caught the delicate wrist bones that couldn’t possibly have once twisted steel beams into pretzels. Her breathing was deep and even, the rhythm of a kid who still trusted the world enough to sleep through alarms. I didn’t want to wake up Crystal yet. Her school was a later time. So I went to eat breakfast.

At breakfast, the newspaper crinkled under my fingers as I flattened it against the kitchen counter, the ink smudging against my thumb. The headline glared up at me: *President Alvarez Signs Climate Accord*. My coffee went cold in my throat. Alvarez? The same Alvarez we’d—*I’d*—installed after… I scanned the article with frantic precision, searching for any mention of the previous administration. Nothing. Not a single reference to the man whose smug face I’d vaporized, whose last words had been a sneer about stafing unarmed sailors. Innana at least didn’t allow that monster to exist.

Before I left for work, I made sure I gave Benna a deep, passionate kiss. Her lips tasted like coffee and toast—ordinary, human, perfect. I kissed her with the desperation of a man who’d spent a month in another universe, pressing my palms against the small of her back. Benna made a muffled sound against my mouth, her fingers twitching at my shoulders like she wasn’t sure whether to push or pull. When I finally broke away, her hazel eyes were wide behind smudged glasses. “What the hell got into you?” she breathed, thumb swiping at her lower lip like she could still feel the ghost of my teeth there.

“Nothing,” I lied, pressing my forehead against hers. The warmth of her skin grounded me—real, alive, *hers*. “Just remembered I forgot to tell you I love you before leaving yesterday.” The words tasted like rusted hinges, stiff from disuse. How many years had it been since I’d kissed her like that? Since we’d touched without the perfunctory brush of cohabitation?

The door clicked shut behind me, sealing Benna’s baffled smile inside the house like a photograph I couldn’t stop staring at. My briefcase swung awkwardly against my thigh—too light without the weight of superheroine responsibilities. Halfway down the driveway, our cat Raccoon streaked past my ankles with a startled chirp, her tail fluffed up twice its normal size. She froze mid-stride, ears swiveling toward some sound only cats and superheroes could hear. For a disorienting second, I strained to listen too—before remembering I no longer had superhearing.

The steering wheel felt alien in my hands—too small, too light, like gripping a child’s toy after wielding celestial power. My Blue Mazda CX-5 rattled over a pothole, the suspension jolting my spine in a way flight never had. I caught myself instinctively flexing my shoulders, as if expecting cape fabric to ripple behind me. The dashboard clock read 06:12. Twenty-five minutes to cover seventeen miles. Pathetic.

The old office-the domicile of an old history professor-was just as I remembered it. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead as I settled into my office chair, the familiar squeak of the wheels sounding louder to my ears. My desk was the same mess of annotated papers and coffee-stained Post-its. Across the aisle, Lieutenant Colonel Hendricks shuffled past with his usual gruff nod, his gaze sliding right over me without pause. No double-take. No raised eyebrows. Nothing.

There was nothing to do but to prep my lesson plan. The same ole, same ole. Then teach. I was teaching the last of 25 lessons today to one of the staff groups. Our subject: the Iraq War in the 2000. The PowerPoint slide flickered to a grainy satellite image of Fallujah, 2004. I cleared my throat, tapping the laser pointer against my palm. “Now, if we examine the urban warfare tactics here—” It felt like the last February 17^th. But this time there was no day dreaming about students turning into superheroines. The majors stayed majors. Their starched ACUs blurred uniforms didn’t melt into skintight spandex or gleaming leotards. Captain Rodriguez—not, *Super* Rodriguez—and Major Kim scribbled notes as I spoke on the bullet points about counterinsurgency logistics. No fantasies. Major Kim and all the woman in the class had their regulation-length dark hair pulled into tight buns, ACUs crisp and unyielding. No glowing jade staffs. No skintight emerald bodysuits. I guess I was tired of day dreaming. It was back to the old grind.

The laser pointer slipped from my fingers, clattering against the linoleum floor. Sixteen uniformed heads snapped up—just polite professionalism, not the rapt attention Superwoman commanded with a glance. I bent to retrieve it, my knees protesting in a way that made me grit my teeth. No effortless floating now. No hovering midair while adjusting my cape. Just a fifty-one-year-old man with creaky joints and the lingering phantom weight of power that never was. I clicked through slides mechanically, my voice steady while my mind screamed. Something vital had been carved out of me, like a surgeon had taken my heart and left only the hollow space where it used to beat. I still regretted I killed two people, but missed all the good I could have done as Superwoman.

After class, the click of my dress shoes against the linoleum echoed hollowly—too slow, too human—when the scent hit me first. Myhhr and frankincense. Then the footsteps: precise, weighty, yet effortless. A shadow stretched long across the institutional fluorescents. “Professor Jenkins.” Her voice resonated like plucked harp strings. “Gabrielle Michaels. Tactics. May we speak in your office?”

The air thickened as Gabrielle Michaels before she fell into stride beside me, her silhouette framed my vision like some Renaissance angel cut from marble. At six-foot-six, she made the standard academic hallway seem suddenly inadequate—her white leather boots adding another half-foot as they clicked decisively against the tile. The scent of myrrh intensified when she moved, clinging to the heat radiating from skin that looked polished rather than tanned. Up close, her proportions defied logic—broad swimmer’s shoulders tapering to a waist I could’ve circled with my hands, then flaring again to hips that strained against the white leather skirt. Every button left open on her dress shirt revealed a crescent of cleavage so perfect it looked sculpted, the shadow between her breasts deepening with each breath. The white tinted pantyhose shimmered slightly under the fluorescents, catching the light like liquid mercury poured over muscle-toned legs.

Colonel Hendricks’ voice cut off mid-sentence when Gabrielle stepped through my office doorway behind me. His hand holding the phone receiver froze mid-air as his pupils dilated unnaturally wide—the whites nearly disappearing behind black saucers. Without another word, he stood with robotic precision, hung up the phone with deliberate care, and walked past us with the stiff gait of a sleepwalker. His shoulder brushed mine, but his eyes remained fixed ahead, unseeing. The door clicked shut under Gabrielle’s elegant fingers with finality that made my pulse jump.

Gabrielle made herself comfortable, sat in my officemate’s chair as I grabbed my own chair, and got right to the chase before I could say anything. “Your confession has been processed,” she said, crossing legs that stretched impossibly long in the cramped office chair. The scent of frankincense thickened as she leaned forward, her cleavage shifting like tectonic plates beneath the starched white shirt. “And your sin has been absolved.”

Before I could even process the meaning of Gabrielle’s words, she continued in that velvet voice that made the hairs on my neck stand upright. “Your good works—and your family’s moral character as Kryptonians—are being rewarded by the woman upstairs,” she said, tapping one manicured nail against my desk calendar. The sound rang strangely metallic. “Even when some much lesser gods below jeer your efforts.” A slow smirk curled her lips as she leaned back, the chair creaking under her improbable weight.

Before I could ask who she really was, she leaned forward and whispered, “Continue to fight for truth, justice, and the American way.” Then she was gone. Not vanished, but with the impossible grace of someone who’d practiced disappearing for centuries. One moment her thigh pressed against the edge of my desk, imprinting the wood with residual heat; the next, the chair spun lazily from the momentum of her absence.

Next, my scalp prickled with impossible sensation—*hair*, thick and silken, cascading past my shoulders in golden waves. My thighs clenched instinctively around sudden absence, that familiar heaviness between my legs replaced by smooth, recently familiar contours. Then the weight came—two crushing pressures against my sternum, stretching the fabric of my button-down until stitches popped. I tore at my collar with shaking hands. Blue spandex gleamed beneath, stretched taut over curves that defied physics. The red “S” crest strained across massive breasts.

I am Superwoman reborn!