I Fell For My Nemesis

It was stupid that Jocelyn was letting this get to her. She had heard much worse from all sorts of people. Jocelyn the Ice Queen. Jocelyn the Wallflower. Jocelyn the Robot. Jocelyn the Invisible Girl. Nobody cared about the kid who hadn't so much as had a favorite color or a spark of life in her dull eyes.

Boring. She knew she was boring—she had heard it her whole life—but she didn't want to be boring. If she was boring Keith wouldn't want to be her friend anymore.

He didn't think she was boring, did he? Why would someone like him want to hang out with a boring person more outside of work? At the very least he seemed to think she had interesting things to say. Even if she had unintentionally horrified him with that fact about pigs the other day. He hadn't seemed angry about it or anything.

Jocelyn had never card what anyone thought of her before this. It hadn't mattered because the people in question hadn't mattered. Not on any meaningful level. Things were different with Keith.

He didn't know her well but he still seemed to like her more than most people did. At the very least he wanted to spend more time with her and get to know her better. No one else cared enough to bother with that. How was she not supposed to care about what he thought?

If he thought she was boring too once he got to know her better…then what? He would still have to bring her food she ordered from his restaurant but he might not want to be her friend anymore.

That wasn't what she wanted at all. She finally found someone worth having a life outside of work and hero duties for and she didn't want to lose that.

Getting dinner together the other day was the first time she had taken for herself (though technically it had been for someone else it still counted!) in longer than she could remember. She had been happy, which wasn't a terribly common occurrence in her rather repetitive life.

Jocelyn hadn't thought it was possible to be happy because of another person. She had seen so many of the ways people could hurt each other and had thought it better not to get involved on more than the surface.

She wanted to help people so that was what she did. She helped broken children, parents, couples, and families the way she wished someone had helped her when she was younger.

She helped people as a hero too. A lot of them. More than she could count.

Helping people was all she knew anymore. It was better than being in survival mode all the time but only because of the sense of satisfaction she got from feeling like she was making a difference in the world, no matter how small.

Jocelyn hadn't had anything else she wanted to do until now. But since she had found it she couldn't let go of it. She wanted to experience what it was like to have a real friend rather than simply a classmate or colleague. How could she let this opportunity pass her by?

It was hard to put everything she was feeling into words. Even so, she shouldn't have snapped at Delta like that.

He didn't know her. Just like everyone else. They didn't know and they didn't understand so what they said didn't matter. That was how it had always been…until he hit a nerve.

A nerve she hadn't even realized could be hit because she knew better than anyone how boring she was. Her life consisted solely of work because she couldn't bear not to be so busy she couldn't think.

People who had been hurt tended to go one of two ways. They either wanted other people to suffer the way they did or the opposite.

You saw this a lot with heroes and villains but it could be much more complicated than that. Like with Nox. She tried not to box people in with generalities. To judge without sufficient information.

Jocelyn had no idea who Delta was or what his life was like. She didn't know why he became a hero, why Mercury's retirement had lit a fire under him, or why he always had to give her a hard time about things. Sometimes she wondered if he disliked her but if he truly did he wouldn't keep working with her, would he?

He did give her a hard time an awful lot. It had never gotten to her like it did today though.

She sighed as she made it back to the alley next to her apartment building. She had retrieved her belongings though it was difficult to carry them with the rest of the popcorn.

She might have to bring it with her to work to snack on tomorrow. It would certainly take her a while to get through it. But she was determined to eat all of it, even the flavors she wasn't as big a fan of, because it was proof that someone appreciated her.

Jocelyn didn't need Delta's appreciation or good opinion. If he thought she was boring she saw no need to associate with him further. He could do his own thing and she could do hers like she had done before meeting him and realizing how effective tag teaming was with their powers.

A seasoned hero like her didn't truly need anyone's help. It simply made things go a bit faster.

That was what she told herself but when she made it home she was barely able to force herself to shower before crawling into bed and pulling her weighted blanket over her head. She needed to feel the comforting pressure right now more than usual even if she didn't get cold.

===

Keith had been looking into his career options whenever he had a minute after his talk with Joss. He simply wasn't feeling any of the options he was reading about that only required a bachelor's degree or trade school.

Were those his only options? Did he need to just find one and force himself to stick to it in order to get what he wanted out of life?

Questions like this were still haunting him when he met up with Frostine and she unexpectedly shared her obscene amount of kettle corn with him. He had been surprised to find out that she ate sugary things for breakfast. That hadn't seemed like the woman he thought he knew at all.

Keith hadn't originally intended to go to her for career advice at all since he already had Joss's but when he realized he was treading in dangerous territory it was the only thing he could think of to change the subject.

He hadn't expected her to compliment him despite the fact that he had been fishing for compliments—he felt like all he got from her was criticism—or for her to ask him what he thought his strengths were. It was a sensitive topic since he didn't think he was good at anything but being Delta.

Suggesting he go along with his hero tendencies was actually pretty smart. He hadn't anticipated the conversation going in that direction.

He didn't think anything but doctors (which required way too much school) would make enough money but it gave him something to consider. He would have to do more research once he got home.

Unfortunately, that was where everything went wrong. Keith had been teasing her as usual when she actually reacted. And not at all in the way he would have thought.

He had been hoping for a laugh or something but she got defensive. The coolest, calmest, most collected person he knew fumbled with her words because of something he said. He never would have seen that coming!

That really threw him off so he happened to say what was on his mind. "You actually got flustered! I didn't think that was possible."

The very air around Frostine seemed to freeze and her cold eyes were the stormiest he had ever seen them. "Everyone gets flustered, Delta! I'm not actually made of ice. Keep the cheddar. I'm leaving."

Keith called after her but she was as good as her word. In the blink of an eye she had vanished. He had genuinely offended her. How? What was it exactly that he said? He had only been messing with her like usual!

He hadn't thought he cared what a know-it-all like her thought but it was oddly distressing watching her go. Especially since she left the popcorn behind. It was a reminder that she had been trying to be nice to him and he ended up driving her away.

It hadn't been intentional. He would have to apologize the next time he saw her.

The problem was that Frostine seemed to be purposely be avoiding him after that. He heard about her exploits from word of mouth but it seemed that she was trying to hit areas they normally didn't cover as often so she wouldn't run into him.

Keith tried thinking back on what he said exactly. He had been teasing her about thinking she didn't joke around and then said something about her getting flustered in disbelief. That was when she snapped at him.

Specifically, she said she wasn't actually made of ice. Maybe he struck a nerve.. She never seemed bothered by people thinking she was cold before though and they had worked together on and off for the past four years.