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You watched from the side of the road while he snapped that monster’s neck and screamed like it was his own world that ended. You have never felt more helpless.
(That’s a lie. You try not to make a habit of lying to yourself, but you’re considering an exception for this lie, because you don’t need that old scar opening back up. You’re considering a lot of exceptions to your rules, lately. But it’s better, isn’t it, to compromise the small for the sake of the large? The moral calculus of motive has never been this gray.)
You were holding a child to your chest while you watched him, and you didn’t know her name, or where her parents were, or why she thought you could protect her. But she was a child, so you made sure to hide her face when it happened.
(No one was there to do that for you. But you’re not talking about yourself. You’re talking about the child, and her grubby cheeks, and your failure to cover her ears when the other alien's spine cracked like a gunshot through the air. You need to stop talking about yourself.)
You'd never seen a thing like this man, like a Michelangelo angel, his eyes full to the brim with the nine circles of hell. You made sure he didn’t see you, though he didn’t seem to be seeing much of anything beyond the lethal angle of the monster’s neck. It’s important that he doesn’t know who you are until you know how to kill him.
(This is one of the exceptions you thought you’d never make. But you won’t pretend you haven’t been walking that line like a high wire for months already, and this man scares you. You don’t like to think in terms of fear.
More to the point: killing a monster did not make him a hero. It just made him too strong to let stand.)
You’re not sure what happened to the girl, and you try not to obsess over it. You remember giving her to someone in a uniform, so you have to believe they got her to somewhere permanent and safe. You know better than to hope it’s somewhere loving.
You have more vital things to obsess over: who the man is, where he lives, what he does, when he’s not killing monsters in disaster zones he created. What his weaknesses are. How can you exploit them. What color are his eyes, under that Dante’s inferno.
You’ve never even killed a regular man, so you’re not sure what you need to know to kill someone like him. You refuse to consider practicing on someone easier first.
(There are lines you drew when you became who you are, and these boundaries gave you form in the chaos. You don’t like to think in terms of fear, but: measure the fear of this man against the fear that killing him will unmake you.
The answer might unmake you anyway.)