A Hero Growing Up

It is only a few days later, Earth time, but almost six months later, internal Rock-time, when , while walking the halls after an intense study and learning session, he sees the Door. There are many Doors in the Rock, leading via magical portals to many different dimensions and places.

Now, normally, he would not know what it is, but since beginning his studies, he has learned some magics, and the most potent of those is complete knowledge of the Rock and all it's ways and means. His senses have been sharpened and alerted to magic in every way the Book knows how. So when he sees the Door it is only a moment later that, with a shock, he knows what it is.

A Door to Milliways.

Over the next few days he tires to forget it. His position at the Rock is permanent, he is needed to hold it there, and cannot leave the rock or it will shatter and it's magic will rain down on the Earth again, causing untold misery and destruction.

He tries to put it out of his mind, but it doesn't work too well.

After several days of this, he takes a different tack, instead using all his growing powers to investigate the Door. He finds it to be permanent, a gate of some kind, and one that has been there for awhile, but just gone active. He learns how to control it and how to keep it shielded. And he learns that it is a genuine gate to Milliways.

He stares at it for long hours son end and then finally, knows he has no choice.

He has to go to the Darkcave and consult the Oracle.

***

At the doorway to the cave, he almost hesitates, almost stops, but then he grins as he gets the image in his head of the Batcave. And, grinning, he passes within.

Within, all is dark. In the center of the room, a greater darkness, the Oracle.

"ASK."

He takes a deep breath, and then he does.

***

When he exits, over an hour later, he walks out and then leans against a wall, sliding down to sit on the floor. He shivers for a long time, thinking.

He can go.

He can go!!

It will be hard, and require sacrifice, and will have limitations, but he can go and spend time away from this place!

He finds himself crying, slightly, from relief, from fear, from the utter strangeness, after six months, of knowing he will be able to be among other people.

He smiles through the tears and begins to plan.

In a small room, in a burning city, a boy cries.

Soon, he will have to get up.

Soon he will have to face the world.

Soon he will have to try to fight demons and villains and old and new enemies.

Soon.

Right now, he is lost in himself, in his sorrow and pain and fear, in his horror at what he has done.

For the first time ever, he has killed a man.

He killed a human being in the midst of a fight against demons. He knows it must have ben a trick, a man somehow switched at the last moment with the demon he knows he saw, but that doesn't change what he did.

He has never taken a life before and he always thought he could find another way. even when things seemed darkest and most violent, he found other ways, other chances. Suddenly, with no warning, everything is different. The whole world, seemingly in chaos, now is revolving around this simple idea... he killed a man.

Heroes don't kill.

It is a rule he has always known and always kept to.

It is right, and he knows it, feels it to his bones. And now he has killed a man and it feels like... he is tainted, made less, and somehow... broken. Tears haven't stopped. It seems like he has been crying for days, or longer. He isn't even sure, really, how long he has been in this room. He found it in a ruined building, somewhere high, secluded, and far from where he had been.

He did kill! But now he had. What could he do and how could he deal with something like that?

He doesn't know, and so he cries.

It is long hours later when he hears a cry for help. His tears have subsided some, mostly for lack of moisture, and he lays on his side, even after he hears the cry. After all, he isn't a hero anymore. Heroes don't kill. Someone else can save her, someone else will. In the next minute he hears something else though, something that freezes his blood.

The laughter of demons.

A surge of anger fills him. And he rises. The next instant he has spoken the word, and even as he rises on a stream of willpower, he knows the demons tricked him, he knows he has to stop them, and he knows he will.

He also knows that no matter what else the Wisdom of Solomon tells him, he will never be completely the same again. He has killed a man and that isn't going to go away.

He arrows through the night, to save a woman and to get back to doing his job. For the first time ever, he doesn't take joy in the flight. It is just part of his duty, part of his job. part of what he has to do.

He flies off towards the woman crying out. To get to work in a job that has lost it's joy.

The ground is swelling fast, and Billy is panicking. He has been falling towards Gotham for an Eternity now, and he isn't sure how long it really is, but shouldn't he have hit by now? He groans as he sees the ground coming so close now and closes his eyes again.

In the midst of his panic a voice sounds in his ear/

Remember me...

And his mind explodes with color as he concentrates and feels things slot into place.

The ground comes ever closer, and, then, at the last moment, he opens his mouth and speaks.

"Shazam."

Lightning flashes and blinds the driver of a car. There is a horrible crash and the car comes to a halt suddenly. People come to look and in the ruins of the car's engine they see a man in a red suit laying, groaning.

Above them, the skies still look red and abused, where the Rock of Eternity once stood, and there is now only destruction.

Captain Marvel opens his eyes and looks around, seeing the destruction.

Raguel was right. I failed, and everything is ruined now. What use am I?

He lays back for a moment, for a moment strangely wondering how Stephanie is doing. Did she ever get uncursed, helped? Did she still hate him? He shakes his head, tears forming. For a moment, the wisdom of Solomon is overwhelmed by the mind and heart of a boy.

But, even as he cries, he hears a cry of pain, and a cry for help, and other cries in the night...

His eyes close for a moment in absolute weariness, then he tenses and... he staggers to his feet, banishing pain and tiredness.

He casts about for someone to help them, anyone, but here isn't anyone else. He closes his eyes and then straightens and people nearby step back at the look on his face that slowly transforms into a reassuring smile. Or he hopes it is a reassuring smile. he cant tell as his face feels frozen. He leaps and then he is in the air, flying, and heading into the night towards those in need.

No time to think.

No time to mourn.

Time only to get to work and just try to survive and help others.

As Billy passes through the Door, his sense of Hellspawn fades immediately, and he almost is struck a moment later by a bolt of ethereal energy.

The Spectre is there, burning eyes looking at him from down the hallway of rock, smoldering with green energy. Billy's heart leaps with panic and fear as he remembers the ease with which Spectre had dismissed him before and the nightmarish ride through eternity.

He shivers as he summons courage and it answers from somewhere. His mind is bent on the task now and he forgets even the existence of Hellspawn as he starts towards Spectre. Everything is about who he is, what he is, what he has to do. Try, do, fight...

Billy opens his mouth to speak, and there is a wave of force that reaches out to slam into him and drops him to the stone.

He cant move, or breathe at all, and he panics, trying to do something, anything, but consciousness fades, and darkness overtakes him. He falls into dreams and nightmares, and then...

...somewhere in the darkness, there is an explosion...

...and a body falls from the sky as the Rock of Eternity explodes into fragments.