30 Day Image Prompt Contest - CLOSED

Heros

If one were to ask Jimmy what he thought a hero was when he was ten, he would have  told them that they were guys and sometimes, though rarely, gals, whose general choice of costume was capes and tights and rubber boots. Their sole purpose in life was to fight crime and save the day. Superheroes usually also had some sort of super human strength that made it possible to fly through the air like a speeding bullet or stretch their body parts to impossible lengths. Iron Man and Batman were two of the only exceptions he knew of, who, rather than being born on different planets or bit by radioactive spiders, were born and raised wealthy. They had unlimited free time to make their own elaborate costumes which were partially for show and partially to make up for their lack of super powers. 

At age twenty-nine and twenty-three hours old he knew the difference between a hero and a superhero. At age 19 he had lost his brother to a war that neither of them really understood. As an adult he had learned to see that it was more than just about freedom and democracy or the happiness of a regime. The war had been going on more than ten years now and there was no end in sight. Every day people were dying trying to defend their homes, families, and cultures. Every day there was new slander coming from every side about who’s fault everything was. There was always some new threat, some dictatorship feeling ‘threatened’ by the rest of the world, so it had to make its own stand. There was no easy fix to what divided the people of the world, let alone two people in a broken childless home. They just kept fighting and hoping that somehow more violence would cure them of their ailments.