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From time to time Sylvia finds herself sitting beside Logan on the concrete bench that has become his throne, or maybe just his hunter's blind.  While she's spending more time with Donnie these days, sometimes he's busy with Rob, and she hates to feel like one of those clingy girlfriends.  Sylvia's no groupie.

Often, sitting with Logan entails nodding hello, sliding onto the bench beside him, and looking out at the tangle of teens, a little microcosm of snobs, posers, geeks, and fanatics.  Logan's super power, it seems, is turning invisible when he's on this bench, and when she's beside him, she feels a sense of suspension from the politics and drama that play out before her.  No one bothers her when she's sitting with Logan, and the stray thoughts she catches from the lunchtime crowd don't feel as personal or as threatening.

Today she came, nodded at him, and passed him a present--something small and neatly wrapped in glittery paper with coils of scissor-stripped ribbon springing off of it in a ludicrously festive way.  "Merry Christmas," is what she says, as if it were a matter of fact, and not a hackneyed sentiment.

"Thank you."  he replies.  "This is unexpected.  You're on my Christmas card list, but I hadn't thought to get you a gift.  Should I wait until it's actually Christmas, or is there a reason I should open it now?"

Sylvia has to give that some thought.  "No reason to open it now.  It won't spoil or anything.  And Christmas isn't about reciprocity.  It's about. . . . "  Long pause.  "It's about wrapping paper.  And gingerbread.  And it's just about the only excuse you have to wear red and green at the same time.

"What does your family do over the holidays?"

Logan nods.  "I'll put this under the tree than."  he says sitting the box down.  "We do the regular things you see in those Christmas TV shows.  We have a tree, and we open presents, gorge ourselves on food.  It's the details I like.  Mom will make popcorn the night we put up the tree, which is always a fake tree because my mom can't see killing a tree.  We string popcorn and she gushes over all the ornaments that I made from the time I was in pre-school until that stopped being part of the school cirriculum.  Dad brings his own traditions, like watching the horrible Star Wars Christmas Special, and opening one gift on Christmas Eve.  He and mom always go out the night after, because she works so hard in the kitchen before the day."  He takes a drink from his water bottle and looks at nothing for a moment smiling, "It's nice.  I sometimes wish they'd had more children, I think they'd have liked to have more of us running down stairs on Christmas morning.  We used to get together with other family, but they've all moved away so we see them less often.  When I was eight to about twelve we had a house full of people every year.  Since then it's been fewer and fewer until the last three years I guess it's just been us."  He looks at Sylvia, "What about you?"

"Mitzi roasts something--which at our house is a big deal because of the vegetarian thing.  Back in San Francisco, we'd have a few people over, people so close they were like family, and we'd do pretty much the normal things.  Dinner, gifts, Christmas karaoke, the burning of the Yule log.  Mitzi does some other stuff that she never really explained, like there's this doll she burns.  I didn't find out about that till I was twelve.  It has something to do with Juno, I think, and--"  She laughs at herself a little.  "--I could never figure out what in the world the doll had to do with the capital of Alaska.

She looks at him.  "What's with your dad and the Star Wars thing?"

"My dad is one of those guys that got into the aerospace industry because of Star Wars.  He's a mega fan, and if mom hadn't been passed out from giving birth to me she'd have strangled him for naming me after a comic book character and a character from a movie.  In his defense he was exhausted from driving eight hours to be with mom and then the sixteen hours of labor.  If he doesn't eat regularly he gets loopy."

"I'm sorry," she apologizes.  "I don't know that much about Star Wars or comic books.  Who're the characters?"

"Well, Logan is the real name of Wolverine from the comics and movies The X-Men.  Darklighter is a bit character from Star Wars.  He grew up with Luke Skywalker, was a little older, and he went off to join the Rebellion which is why Luke wanted off Tattoine so badly.  Darklighter dies in the movie, Darth Vader kills him while he's trying to protect Luke as he makes his attack run against the Death Stars thermal exhaust port."

"Okay.  I can kind of see why your dad would want to name you after two heroes.  What's his name?  His last name?  I mean, did he change his name, too?"

"My mother would have probably divorced him if he had.  She keeps telling me that I should legally change it when I turn eighteen, if I think it'll cause me any problems.  His name is Voggelson, so I'm okay with Darklighter."

Sylvia tilts her head and nods contemplatively.  "Given those choices, I'd be okay, too," she adds.

"Have you caught a lot of flak about it, your name?"

"Mix of hey that's cool and hey that's totally geek lame.  I tended to hang out with geeks, so I got more compliments than insults.  Probably less crap than you get for having two moms."

"In San Francisco it was kind of uncool not to swing with it, you know?  If that kind of thing bothers you, most people are like, 'Move out!'  Here--"  She wrinkles her nose.  "I don't like the stares sometimes.  Not at me, but at Mitzi and Carolyn.  It takes extreme self-control not to. . . . "  She looks at him, hard, and seems to come to some kind of decision about him.  "It takes self-control not to drive off those mean looks somehow.  I guess nothing gets to you like someone being mean to someone you love."

"Yeah.  I guess that hurts more than people being mean to you.  the need to protect someone, it's driven great people to madness and mad people to greatness."

Sylvia smiles at that.  "So I'm reading this book on this woman who was like the supermodel of eighteenth-century England, Emma Hamilton, and parts of it have to do with Horatio Nelson.  You know anything about him?"

"He's on my list of people who I find interesting.  Today he'd seem like any other rich and powerful guy, but in the day he was quiet the trend setter."

"He was this little guy, only about 5'5", completely maimed from his war injuries.  Bad eye, missing an arm, losing his prematurely white hair.  But he had a lust for fame and glory, and he knew how to maneuver.  I mean, he knew how to maneuver his ships, sure, but he also knew how to make sure he was at the forefront of the most crucial and glamorous battles against, I dunno, France and Spain--whoever the English thought were the bad guys.  Kind of a weird character.  He sprang to mind when you mentioned inspiring mad people to greatness, but I guess he wasn't really doing it to save someone he loved."

She thinks that through for a second.  "Okay, essay question:  is he a hero?  If you do great things and inspire adulation solely for the glory of it, are you still a good guy?"

A Colin dressed in one of his gloriously uncool handmade sweaters comes walking by the bench. It's a maroon sweater. It would be deadly embarrassing if he hadn't this serene way of wearing stuff other kids wouldn't be caught dead in. He looks casually in their direction, and his eyes seem to pierce Logan's bubble of invisibility because he waves at Sylvia. He looks at Logan, then back at his friend, with a look that seems a mix of curiosity and worry. It's just a moment, then he goes back minding his own business.

"Hero.  That's a term that has to be applied from a point of view.  He saved England.  He cheated on his wife.  He inspired men to valor, he was raised in rank through nepotism.  In the end it's who's looking at what you did that labels you a hero or not."

As Colin continues on his way Logan nods in his direction.  "I puzzle him, and he scares me.  Something about him just doesn't add up.  I'm guessing it's magic, it always makes people harder to figure out if they're involved in magic."

Sylvia looks Colin's way and misses her opportunity to wave because she feels, for a moment, caught fraternizing with the enemy.  "Well--"  Her throat is dry suddenly.  She falters.  "Colin and I were having a talk earlier this week about who he thinks he is, what his self-concept is."  She tracks Colin till he's gone and then gives Logan a weak smile.  "What do you know about what he does, apart from that it's magic?"

"Just what I've picked up here and there.  It's important, he's something of a celebrity in the mystical circles, or he will be when he gets older.  Some kind of visionary."

Sylvia nods to confirm.  "I keep wondering what it's like to have someone come along and tell you you're supposed to be the archetypal chosen one, you know?  I wonder if it wouldn't tempt you to think that everything you do is automatically right.  That's what scares me about him."

"Or worse."  Logan begins, "You over think everything and paralyze yourself into inaction."

"Anybody can do that," Sylvia says.  She picks a bean sprout out of her seitan sandwich.  "Do you do any sports?"

"No, was never very athletic, and now that I'm not a clutz I can't think of any that really interest me except maybe cross country running."