Justice League Joy

Superman had his own chair at the Justice League's main meeting table. It was a good chair, solid and certain, and when he sat in it, the room felt settled. Wonder Woman's chair was beside it, and when they were both present, the table felt complete the way a balanced weight feels complete.

Billy Batson sat in his own chair — which was, technically, the same size as everyone else's, but he had put a small stack of mission briefing folders under it so he could see over the table properly, and nobody mentioned this, which was kind of them — and looked around the room at the most powerful beings on Earth.

He thought: this is absolutely incredible.

He tried not to say it out loud every time. He succeeded about sixty percent of the time.

"Today's briefing," Batman said, pulling up the holographic map, "involves a series of unexplained energy readings from three sites across the Eastern Seaboard—"

"Sorry, quick question," Billy said.

Batman stopped.

"The energy readings — are they the same frequency as the ones from the Kahndaq incident three months ago? Because I was reading about that in the Rock of Eternity's archives and there's a pattern that—"

Batman paused. Then he pulled up a second screen. He compared the readings. He was quiet for four seconds.

"Yes," he said. "Identical signature."

Wonder Woman looked at Billy. "You read the archive files at the Rock?"

"Yeah, there's a whole section on ambient magical energy signatures from the last thousand years or so. I've been going through it." He paused. "Is that useful? I have notes."

He had notes. They were written on notebook paper, in green pen, with small stars next to the items he thought were most interesting. He had also doodled a small robot in the corner of page three, which he felt briefly self-conscious about in a room with Batman.

Batman read the notes in about forty seconds, moving through pages very fast.

"This is relevant," Batman said. This was about as effusive as Batman got.

This was what Billy brought to the Justice League. Not the most obvious thing — he was strong, yes, fast, yes, nearly invulnerable with the stamina of Atlas — but the thing nobody had expected. Youthful enthusiasm as a genuine strategic asset. The habit of reading everything because it was interesting, without worrying about whether it was relevant. The instinct, developed over years of being alone and small and learning to find things that made life worth paying attention to, to find what was wonderful about every situation.

He found things wonderful very often.

He found the Watchtower's observation deck wonderful every single time he went there, even the forty-third time. (He had a small count going.) He found the way Green Lantern's constructs held light wonderful. He found the Flash's speed wonderful from every angle — "What does fast feel like?" he had asked, and the Flash had looked genuinely moved that someone finally asked. He found Batman's contingency planning wonderful — "You really have a plan for every scenario? Every one?" "Yes." "Including one where everybody turns into frogs?" A pause. "There is a magical containment protocol, yes." "AMAZING."

He was the first to cheer a victory.

Not performatively — not the way you might cheer because someone was watching. Billy cheered because a problem had been solved and people were safe and this was a genuinely good thing that had happened in the world and it deserved recognition. He cheered the way a person who has spent time being lonely in a too-quiet house celebrates noise: completely, fully, without embarrassment.

He was the last to leave celebrations. He helped clean up. He made sure everyone had said goodbye properly.

On missions that went wrong — and some missions went wrong, that was the truth of it, no matter how good the team was — he was the one who held onto the specific, factual reasons it was still worth getting up and doing it again tomorrow. He did not minimize the failure. He acknowledged it clearly. And then he found, with the wisdom of Solomon to guide him, the exact next step forward.

Superman had asked him once: "Does it scare you? The size of the responsibility?"

Billy thought about the Rock of Eternity, humming at the center of everything. He thought about the Wizard, who had looked for someone good for a very long time and had chosen him. He thought about his siblings — Freddy, Mary, Darla, Eugene, Pedro — carrying the Shazam Family lightning beside him.

"Yeah," he said. "All the time."

Superman nodded.

"But I think that's okay," Billy said. "I think being scared of something big means you understand how big it is. It's the people who aren't scared of it that worry me."

Superman looked at the boy for a long moment. Then he smiled — not his public smile, the one for photographs and speeches, but the real one, the one that looked like genuine warmth.

"SHAZAM!" someone shouted from the corridor outside.

There was the sound of thunder, and the smell of lightning, and Billy Batson — ten-year-old orphan, foster kid, the boy who always walked toward strange lights — was gone, and in his place the world's mightiest hero stood ready.

With a look on his face like it was the best thing that had ever happened.

Because it was.