Chapter 8 – Casting the Future
The storm didn't let him rest.
Even after Louise had dragged him to bed and pinned him under the weight of her calm, even after the city outside finally fell quiet, his mind kept running like film through a projector that refused to jam. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the circle on the whiteboard glowing like neon. Every time he tried to breathe, he heard Stan's voice: You ready for that weight, kid?
He was. He had to be.
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By dawn, Northern Star's offices were lit like a war room again. Not fluorescent, but warm lamps, scattered across desks crowded with empty cups and full schedules. Louise arrived first, braid tight, blouse unwrinkled despite three hours of sleep. She slid her coffee onto Ivar's desk before he even asked.
"You look alive," she said.
"I look loud," he muttered, scribbling names across the board.
"You look like you're already auditioning in your head."
"Casting isn't auditions," he said. "It's prophecy."
She arched an eyebrow, amused but not mocking. "Then prophesy."
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He started with the X-Men, because they carried the most ghosts.
"Cyclops," he said, writing the name under the circle. "Not wooden. Not boring. A man who believes leadership is a punishment and still takes it."
Louise nodded. "We'll need someone young enough to grow into the responsibility, old enough to wear the wounds."
"Wolverine," he continued, the marker squeaking. "Not just claws. Loneliness with a mouth. Pain wrapped in sarcasm. And the sense that he's already lived this scene a hundred times."
Louise tapped her pen against her notepad. "He'll steal the movie if we're not careful."
"Let him," Ivar said. "Rogue will take it back."
Her smile flickered—half professional, half personal. "She will."
"Storm," he said next. "No token. No background. A queen. She carries weather like other people carry grief. Regal even when she's washing dishes."
"Magneto?" Louise asked.
Ivar hesitated. Then he wrote the name slowly, each letter deliberate. "A man who survived the camps. Who looks at the world and sees the same fires starting again. Charisma that makes you want to follow him even when you know you shouldn't."
"And Xavier?"
Ivar leaned back, marker tapping against the board. "Hope in a wheelchair. Not pity. Not saint. Hope that gets tired but doesn't stop."
Louise studied him. "You sound like you're casting gods."
"I am," he said simply. "Gods with mortgages and migraines."
---
Spider-Man was easier. In some ways.
"A kid," Ivar repeated, as if the word itself was a shield. "No thirty-year-old pretending. A teenager who sounds like his voice might still crack if he laughs too hard. He's skinny, awkward, but his eyes—his eyes carry the whole city."
Louise tilted her head. "You're describing yourself at fourteen."
"Yeah," he said, half-smiling. "Except he makes jokes instead of plans."
"And villains?"
"Green Goblin," Ivar said without hesitation. "Not a cartoon. A businessman who believes chaos is evolution. A mirror of what I could become if I stopped caring."
She gave him a look that said she'd never let that happen.
---
Iron Man, though—that was war.
"I need someone who can wear arrogance like a second skin," Ivar said, pacing now. "Someone whose charm is almost a curse, because you like him even when you know he's poison. Someone who can laugh in a cave while dying and make you believe he's building salvation with scraps."
Louise studied him. "That's dangerous casting."
"All great casting is," he said.
"And Pepper?"
He softened for a moment. "A woman who won't be background to genius. Someone who will call him out, clean up his messes, and then refuse to be defined by them."
Louise smirked. "Sounds familiar."
He threw the marker cap at her. She caught it without looking.
---
The Fantastic Four were the hardest.
"Reed," he muttered, scribbling the name. "A man who bends not because he wants to, but because he can't stop reaching. A brain that breaks his body."
"Sue?" Louise asked.
He underlined her name three times. "The heart. Invisibility as metaphor, but never as erasure. She is the foundation, not the afterthought."
"Johnny?"
"Joy with teeth," Ivar said. "Fun that hurts when it burns out. A star that knows it'll go supernova."
"And Ben?"
He paused longer here than anywhere else. "The friend who became the punchline of God's bad joke. A monster who makes you cry when he says 'clobberin' time' because you know he's trying to remind himself he's still human."
Louise's pen stopped moving. She just looked at him. "You're going to make people cry in a superhero movie."
"Good," he said. "They'll remember it."
---
The rest of the day blurred into calls. Casting directors, agents, managers. Some laughed. Some scoffed. Some whispered back yes like conspirators.
Megan texted a photo of her cape fitting, a grin bright enough to burn. Batwoman's ready. When do we play?
Louise forwarded her first audition tapes for Rogue. Not hers—hers would come later—but others. Pretenders. She watched them with an unreadable face. Ivar watched her more than the tapes.
By midnight, the board was a battlefield of names, some crossed out, some circled, some scrawled in bigger letters as if volume equaled destiny.
Ivar stood before it, exhausted, alive, storm-bright eyes refusing to dim. Louise leaned against the table, arms crossed, watching him with a kind of wary pride.
"You've lit the board," she said.
"It's not enough," he answered.
"It never will be," she reminded him. "That's why you'll keep going."
He exhaled, then finally—finally—smiled.
"Tomorrow," he said, "we start the screen tests."
Louise pushed off the table, came to stand beside him, close enough their shoulders touched. "And tonight?"
"Tonight," he said, "we dream bigger."
And for once, when she led him toward the door, he didn't resist.
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Word Count: ~1,000 (pure prose) ✅
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Do you want Chapter 9 to dive into the first screen tests (Ivar overseeing, chaos in the audition room, tension with Hollywood types who doubt him), or pivot into the CW/TV side—Batwoman, Titans, Doom Patrol pilot development?