Twelve Empty Chairs

There are twelve chairs in the main briefing room at the Utah facility. I've counted them more times than I can explain. It's become a habit — walking in at 0600 with coffee going cold in my hand, and counting.

Four of them are filled most mornings now. Brit at the head. Black Samson to his left. Bulletproof wherever he drops his bag. Shapesmith, usually last in, still occasionally forgetting to fully solidify before he sits down.

Four out of twelve.

I've been Guardians support staff for going on three years. I came on after the Invincible War — which means I missed the worst of it but arrived in time to see what it left behind. The east wing of the facility still has a door that sticks because something structural shifted and nobody's had time to fix it. There's a locker in the junior bay with Rex Splode's name on it and nothing inside it. Dupli-Kate's personnel files are still in the system because nobody updated the access controls, and if you run attendance reports wrong they come up as overdue for review.

These are the things support staff notice. Not the fights. The residue.

Black Samson told me once that showing up is its own kind of courage. I wrote it down. I write a lot of things down — that's the job, technically, but it's become something else. A record. Because someone should have one.

The team held this week. They'll hold next week. I'm not writing this because I'm worried about that. I'm writing it because I want there to be something that says: it was four chairs, and we all knew it used to be more, and we showed up anyway.

Rex would have complained about the coffee.

— E. Cordova Guardians Support Operations, Utah Facility