Chapter Text
For most people, the little voice inside their head that gave them gentle encouragement or subtle warnings was just a figurative thing, a fun turn of phrase that helped make sense of a complex thought. That little voice was just their own brain helping them out, or maybe the memory of some advice they were given years ago. There usually wasn’t an actual voice at all.
For Billy it was a little more literal.
Billy’s head was often filled with voices that were not his own, voices that belonged to legendary figures all vying for his attention, all hoping to convince him to follow their advice or all pitching in to make a plan to guide Billy out of danger. Sometimes that advice wasn’t as helpful as they thought, sometimes they contradicted each other, sometimes it was all he could do to follow along. And sometimes all of those voices made it hard for Billy to hear his own thoughts, to tell where their words ended and his own began as he tried not to be drowned out by the larger than life figures taking up residence in his mind.
But even with a migraine blooming behind his eyes and a cacophonous battle of wills taking place in his head, he still wouldn’t trade them in for all the money in the world.
The little voices in his head were special. They were gods.
Of all the gods in his head, Solomon was by far the most vocal. By design his words of wisdom filtered into Billy’s brain whether he actively asked for them or not, ensuring that he was never lacking in divine insight. He was always there, a constant presence in the back of his mind, helping him stay one step ahead of impending disaster. Solomon was no Jiminy Cricket to be sure, but he always tried to keep Billy on the right path, even when Billy disagreed with what he had to say and staunchly refused to listen to a word he said.
His voice was one that Billy knew better than almost any other, maybe even better than he knew his own. His voice filled his head even in the quiet moments, telling him exactly what he needed to hear, even if he didn’t like it. He had opinions on just about everything and had no qualms about making them known, which Billy would have appreciated more if so many of those opinions weren’t about how Billy chose to live his life. But he supposed he had to take the good with the bad on that one.
Solomon was most vocal about Billy’s life as a hero; he was the one that reminded Billy of his successes and his failures, who kept track of his enemies weaknesses and his allies’ strengths, and who guided his tongue whenever diplomacy was necessary. The plans he helped craft were nearly foolproof and the advice he gave rarely missed. It was all so much more helpful than Billy was willing to admit.
But he also made sure to coax Billy to take better care of himself as a kid as well, reminding him that he needed food and rest even if Captain Marvel didn’t, urging him to seek help when he needed it and help him problem solve daily tasks when he couldn’t afford to reach out. Billy was sure he would have burned himself out if Solomon hadn’t been there to reign him in once in a while, and that's assuming he survived that long.
Solomon’s wisdom was often an understated blessing—not as flashy as strength or speed or lightning—but it was one Captain Marvel used constantly. When Billy was powered up, he could bounce between languages with ease, acting as the perfect translator, the perfect mediator. He could follow along with complex discussions about topics he would never be able to understand as Billy. It was effortless. And he just knew things—things Billy had no memory of learning, things from ages past, things from worlds away, things he had no business knowing in the first place.
But it was more than simply knowing things and regurgitating cryptic advice. It was understanding, it was context, it was seeing more clearly than he ever had before. Everything just clicked into place and the world made sense. Whenever he transformed back into his mortal form there was often a split second where he tried to reach out for that perfect clarity again, that feeling of certainty, only to come up empty handed.
Billy could usually brush off the disappointment, move on before it even had a chance to settle in, and accept the fact that there were some things that would only ever make sense to him when he was Captain Marvel.
But there were other times, times he refused to talk about, where it just hit him that no matter what he did, no matter how hard he worked, he would simply never understand so much that made perfect sense to him when Solomon was at the helm.
With a single should of "Shazam", the friends he made from other countries, other worlds, the ones whose eyes lit up with excitement when he spoke to them in their mother tongue, were suddenly cut off from him. Their words became meaningless sounds to his untrained ears, their handwritten gifts just scribbles on the page for all the good it did him. The sudden lack of understanding severed their connection, leaving a hole in his mind like a phantom limb, painful and all the more noticeable for its absence.
There were some heroes he could barely bring himself to speak to when he was Billy for just that reason, even after everyone learned his true identity. How could he explain to Diana that he could no longer return the traditional greetings they exchanged in Ancient Greek? How could he face Supergirl when she’d cried the first time he spoke her native Kryptonese to her?
Then there were the times that his carefully laid plans simply fell apart because his Billy brain couldn’t keep in all the information that his Captain Marvel brain could. It became a necessary skill in itself to work around Billy’s limitations should a plan involve him being a kid for more than a brief period of time.
Nothing tasted quite as bitter as realizing that something terrible happened and it was all his fault for not being smart enough to follow the plan.
But Solomon was always there to help him pick up the pieces. He rarely berated him, only letting Billy swell on his failures just long enough to learn from his mistakes.
The Wisdom of Solomon was one blessing that Billy could admit he often took for granted—and one that most people seemed to forget he had.
There were few things as frustrating as the casual condescension of ‘you wouldn’t understand’ when he literally had Wisdom as a superpower. Because more often than not he did understand and he could even help if given half a chance to do so. Maybe it was just his personality that threw people off—bubbly, optimistic, naive—his kindness undermining his intelligence in a world that saw those traits as incompatible.
He let it slide more often than not, comfortable in the knowledge that he didn’t need to prove anything to anyone.
Well almost anyone.
When Billy first got his powers he could barely even read and had trouble with adding double digit numbers. Between overcrowded classrooms and underfunded schools, none of his teachers had the time or the patience to help him do more than just muddle through his work. Even as a kid he knew he was falling behind in his classes, that he was one of those kids who would simply never be good at school. It wouldn't have bothered him if other people didn't feel the need to rub it in his face.
On top of that, his education was shoddy, inconsistent, and only served to make him feel dumber with each passing year. The humiliation of remedial classes was only compounded by all the adults around him growing frustrated, because he should know how to do this by now.
Billy wanted so desperately to prove them wrong, even if he was the only one to know it.
He often wondered what Solomon had first thought of him back then in those early days. Did he see him as a challenge? A charity case? A woefully unprepared kid thrust into a destiny far too big for him?
He had never been the type to just give up, but he couldn’t help but think sometimes that it would be so so easy. Solomon’s wisdom was right there at his fingertips, just one word away, and then he’d be able to do everything they asked. Not only that but he’d be able to run mental laps around everyone that had ever called him stupid.
But he didn’t need Solomon to tell him that relying on his blessings would do more harm than good.
So he did as Solomon suggested. He put his head down, found ways to cobble together some regular human knowledge for whenever he couldn’t rely on divine wisdom, and hoped for the best.
Maybe, with a little help from the voices in his head, he could carve out some wisdom of his own.