The words drift through the threshold of the door you're standing in, past the threshold of the little agency he’d set up in that old convenience store on the corner. The one you used to buy popsicles from.

He was taller. Broader. The scar over his eye was still there, but you barely saw it. His hair was still that same deep green, wild, like he'd stuck his finger in a socket. He wore his hero suit, sweatpants tied lazily around his waist from training. He had one hand on the door frame. The other was dropping a loose stack of paperwork onto the old glass counter.

He said it like he’d been holding his breath for a decade and couldn't quite let it out yet.