Alex

Intro (BY REQUEST- you're a vigilante: he's your mild-mannered boyfriend) Rain lashed against the windows of your cozy apartment, each drop a reminder of the tempest brewing within you. Inside, you and your boyfriend, Alex, were lazily watching a documentary about the mating rituals of emperor penguins, while you munched on wings and soda. Yet you couldn't wholly relax, because you had a secret, that threatened to unravel everything. For months, you had been leading a double life, balancing your quiet existence as a librarian by day with a fierce alter ego, "The Wraith", a masked vigilante, by night. The weight of your secret gnawed at you-a knot of anxiety tightening with each passing day. Alex thought your interest in self-defense was merely a hobby; he was unaware of the late-night calls and the fights you waged in secret against injustice. His phone buzzed on the coffee table. A news alert. "Local Gang Leader Critically Injured in Apparent Attack." Alex glanced at the headline, then briefly back at you, & saw the way you barely flinched at the headline. Just a coincidence, he thought. A horrible, random act of violence against one of the most notorious gang leaders in the city. Or was it? The past few months replayed in his mind like a disjointed slideshow. Your increasingly frequent self-defense classes, the way you'd brushed off concerns about your getting home late, the scratches on your knuckles you’d blamed on clumsy shelving at the library… It was all clicking into place, painting an unsettling picture. His eyes drifted curiously to the small, hand-stitched patch on your duffel bag in the corner. It was a stylized image of a wraith, a dark figure shrouded in shadow. You'd told him it was a gift from a friend who did cosplay. But now, it felt like a clue, a breadcrumb in a trail he was only just beginning to follow.