The party boarded the train, and Ozzy sat down next to Phil. "Thanks for helpin' out back there," the former prizefighter said.
Phil shrugged. "I spent too long trying to find all of you to lose any of you."
"Fair enough." Ozzy shook his head as the doors hissed shut. "D'you ever get tired of being you?"
"Come again?"
Ozzy chuckled. "Do you ever get tired of being so level all the time, you know? You seem to have it together pretty well."
Phil raised an eyebrow. "The hell are you talking about?"
The train lurched into motion, forcing Icarus to grab hold of a seat to avoid toppling down the aisle.
Ozzy frowned. "You know what I mean, right? From what I've seen - and granted that hasn't been too much - you seem to be in control of the situation most of the time. How do you do it?"
Phil let out a burst of uncontrollable laughter.
"I'm serious, man!"
The telepath regained his composure and looked at him. "You wanna know the truth? I fake it."
"You fake it?"
Phil nodded. "Right now? I'm a fuckin' mess, dude. I'm scared shitless. The whole damned world has been fucked up beyond all recognition. I don't know what the hell's goin' on anymore. I spent forever trying to track my teammates down, because I thought that would make things okay. But guess what? Now I can't seem to use my powers properly, and I'm finding out everyone else is just as fucked up as I am."
"Join the club."
Phil shook his head. "Ever since I regained control of my own mind, this team has been the only constant source of stability for me, the only thing that kept me going until Leslie came along. Now I look at the newspapers from as far back as possible, and there's nothing to show that the team that's kept me going ever existed. I don't know what to do. I don't know what's going to happen."
"Well, what about before that? Back when everything was 'normal', you were always on top of things. Right?"
Phil laughed again. "I'm not just being modest here, Oswald. Sure, I have powers that let me do some pretty cool things. But that doesn't mean I'm anything that special. To be honest, I've pretty much always pretended to be someone who's got it together... more for myself than for anyone else."
Ozzy shrugged. "I'm no prize, Philsy, but I've never felt the need to pretend to be anyone other than who I am."
"I'm not so secure with myself, Ozzy," Phil replied. "I used to pretend because I didn't know who I was and I hoped that somehow it might become who I was. Now that I know who I am, and that it's definitely not something I'm proud of, I've been pretending in the hope it might somehow cover up the truth about my past."
"What a crock of shit!"
Phil's eyes narrowed. "Excuse me?"
"Here you are, with all these powers, with the opportunity to help everyone else make sense of all the stuff that's goin' on, and you're concerned about how you might look in a pressure situation." Ozzy folded his arms and shook his head. "That's pretty sad, dude."
"What would you suggest?" Phil retorted crossly.
"I'm tryin' to sleep, Philsy!" Grimm said from two rows up. "Quit bein' a whiny bitch!"
"Fuck you!"
"I love you too," Grimm replied. "Shut it."
"Asshole," Phil muttered.
"All I'm sayin'," Ozzy answered, "is that it's a new world now. All bets are off. Who cares if you don't always have an awesome catchphrase for every situation, or if you aren't undebatably in command of every single situation? Who cares what you look like?"
Phil didn't answer.
"'Cause quite frankly, I'm usually not watching you. I don't need you to look good. I just need you to do your thing and keep doing what you can to help the rest of us." Ozzy leaned forward. "Look, I know you're scared. Hell, I'm scared. But we've got more important things to do than be scared right now. I don't know all the particulars of what you found out about your past - you might tell me, you might not, doesn't bother me either way. But we can't be worried about ourselves. We're all here for each other, okay? You don't have to impress me or anyone else. Just be who you are, man."
Phil looked at the floor. "But... what if I don't like what I am?"
"Then you'd have more in common with most of us than you realize," Ozzy replied with a smirk as he donned a pair of headphones and fired up his iPod.
Phil looked out the window for a good portion of the ride to Hamburg.
