Chapter Text
The cashier manning the checkout of a 24/7 convenience store doesn’t look up from her screen until his card declines. Robert ruffles one-handed through his pockets for spare change. It is 3:15 am. He’s four dollars and fifty-five cents short.
Robert picks up a pack of baby diapers and a bottle of whiskey from the counter. Glances at one, then at the other.
“Do you sell rope here?” he asks.
“Nope,” the cashier says, popping the p. Robert allows himself three seconds to mourn, sets the diapers down and goes to put the whiskey back on the shelf.
The overhead lights flicker. There's a buzz coming from one of the fridges, sounding on the verge of breaking down. Robert passes two shift workers haunting the snack aisle and then a student squinting blearily at the nutritional label of canned soup. It's hard to tell if the kid is on something or just simply twitchy. Robert gently wrestles the can out of his grip, plucks out a different one from the lower shelf, and places it in his hand still curled around nothing.
“This one’s got vegetables in it,” he says.
The kid blinks. Robert pats his shoulder and goes on his way.
As he's about to put the bottle back, the automatic doors swoosh open. Robert is only half-aware of the footsteps pounding on the ceramic tile until he hears the distinct click of a gun being cocked. The concave mirror in the corner shows one thug waving the weapon at the cashier while the other sweeps the aisles one by one. He has cybernetic streaks in his arms—some kind of strength or speed enhancements, Robert thinks—that glow bright red.
It is a robbery. A plain, run-of-the-mill, 3 am kind of robbery that has nothing to do with this particular store or Robert's presence in it.
He’s still holding the whiskey when the thug reaches the liquor shelves. “The fuck's wrong with your face?”
“Stood too close to a firework. What's wrong with yours?”
The fist connects with Robert's jaw almost sooner than he finishes speaking. Speed enhancement it is, then.
He is shoved out to the front of the store, dazed and lamenting his inability to hold his tongue. The other shoppers, sans the kid, are already there. Robert hopes for his own sake that he escaped through the back door.
That hope vanishes when a third thug appears. She drags the kid out by the scruff and slams him into a fridge with enough force to risk a concussion. The fridge gives one final death rattle before going out completely. A phone—the kid's, presumably—is sent flying through the air and lands squarely in the leader’s palm.
“The little bitch phoned the SDN, boss. Who would've thought that someone in this shithole would be dumb enough to waste money on a subscription.”
The bossman zips up the bag on the floor and slings it over his shoulder. Robert forces himself to stay still as he strolls past the shoppers huddling together on the floor. Slowly, he holds up the phone, then flips it around to show the silicone case painted with a bright blue M. His henchemen laugh.
“Mecha Man, really?”
“Didn’t the guy die, like, a year ago? They held a funeral service for him and everything.”
The boss tosses the phone away and levels his gun with the back of the kid’s head. “I’ll show you where hero worship gets you.”
“Ten months,” Robert mutters, wrapping his hand around the bottle on the floor.
Heads turn. The gun swivels around to point at Robert instead. “What’d you say, dipshit?”
“I said, your math sucks.”
Robert springs faster than any of them can react and hits the boss over the head with the bottle. The whiskey, rather anti-climactically, does not break—but the impact sends him crashing into the Best Deals stand. He's out cold before he hits the tile.
The fast hencheman lands the first punch, and the next three. It’s all just red streaks as Robert is pushed back between the aisles. He grunts through the pain, tanking strike after strike, until he sees an opening. There’s a loud crunch as he kicks the thug’s knee in, followed by a sharp howl of pain. The lung capacity on this guy is rather impressive.
The last robber emerges with the gun pointing directly in Robert’s face. “Don’t you fucking move.”
Robert lifts his hands in the air. “Please don’t shoot. I have a family.”
“You think I give a shit about—”
Robert ducks low, rugby-tackling her to the floor. The gun goes off. The lights sputter with sparks and die as they wrestle for control over the weapon. The thug rolls them over, pinning Robert down between her legs, and clocks him in the face. She yanks the gun free as his hold on the barrel loosens and pulls the trigger.
Nothing happens. Robert, grinning with bloody teeth, shows her the magazine in his hand. He throws it across the store, bullets spraying like candy.
She drops the gun to choke him with both hands. Robert sputters and struggles, but can't get enough leverage in the narrow space to throw her off. As black spots start to dance in his vision, police sirens sound in the distance. The thug gives his throat one last vindictive squeeze before she lunges to her feet and vanishes out of the store.
Robert's ears are still ringing from the gunshot. He sits up slowly to see the shoppers and the cashier staring at him without blinking. “Anyone hurt?” he asks. To his great relief, he receives an uneven chorus of no’s. He braces himself against the shelves and stands up.
“Sir, your shoulder…”
Robert feels it almost as soon as the kid speaks — a sharp, burning pain in his upper arm. He grits his teeth and peers under his jacket to find the shirt underneath rapidly reddening with blood. “Fuck my life,” he mumbles. Out loud, he says, “Just a graze. I'll be fine.”
The cops will be here any minute now. Robert needs to be gone by then. He limps gingerly towards the register and drops a pack of crumbled bills on the counter. When the cashier puts his items in a bag, the whiskey from earlier somehow ends up inside along with a sealed bottle of Advil. She makes no mention of the costs, so Robert doesn't, either.
“Anything else, sir?”
He considers her for a moment. “Do you mind if I use the back door?”
The alleyway behind the store is dark and blissfully empty. Robert double-checks that his bag is secure before he starts to walk. As he's passing the dumpsters, he hears the door opening behind him. The kid from earlier is standing at the top of the stairs, clutching his phone to his chest. His eyes are wide and almost reverent with hope.
“You, you’re—”
That look burns worse than the gunshot wound does. Robert pulls his hood up and turns way. “Let the ghosts stay ghosts, kid.”
Robert is extra careful on his way home. He takes the long and scenic route and circles unnecessarily around some landmarks in hopes of throwing off any potential pursuit. On his way, he comes across a Mecha Man mural on the wall of a public park. Little tributes like this began to pop up all over Torrance and Los Angeles shortly after the explosion was telegraphed on every news channel in the county. The flowers and the candles tapered off with time. This mural in particular has suffered frequently from acid rain and graffiti dicks.
Tonight, though, someone cleaned it up. Touched up the old paint and brought newspaper clips of Mecha Man in three different generations. Robert intends to walk past the mural, but the face staring back at him from a photo frame pauses him in his steps.
It's him, at sixteen, stopping a bank robbery. Three days after his father’s very brutal, very public death, Robert climbed out of the suit before a crowd of onlookers to show that Mecha Man lives on. In another three days, he had dropped out of high school in his sophomore year to spend the rest of his youth fighting crime and collecting scars.
As Robert stands there, lost down the memory lane, the streetlights go out. He checks the time on his phone, curses loudly and breaks into a sprint.
He's running up five flights of stairs and all the way to the door of his apartment. Wedges the keys in and practically throws the door open in his hurry. The silence that greets him is stifling, foreboding.
A sliver of pink light cracks through the curtains, illuminating the silhouette of a crib in the back of the room. Robert drops the bag to the floor and rushes forward, expecting—blood, or tears, or the cooling coals of a disaster—and sees instead a baby curled up peacefully next to a black-and-white chihuahua.
Beef opens his eyes and gives a soft, snort-like bark of greeting.
Panic rushes out of Robert with a forceful, shuddering exhale. All that worry, all the images in his head of the baby screaming himself hoarse in the empty apartment, and the little shit has slept peacefully through the night.
He sinks down to his knees and rests his forehead on top of the rails.
Beef licks his hand. “How'd you get in here?” Robert ruffles his head, and sees a splatter of dried blood on his knuckles. He wishes he could stay like this forever, just listening to the baby snore, but he needs to clean up. The apartment, his clothes, himself.
Just the thought of moving fills him with dread. Robert pulls his hand back and clenches his eyes shut. The echo of a hundred fights burns through his veins. He may not be Mecha man anymore—most days he doesn’t even feel like Robert—but there’s one thing about him that will not change until the day he dies.
He gets up.
Every next step is easier than the last one. Robert is running on a sort of autopilot as he puts away the groceries, picks the trash off the floor and prepares breakfast for the three of them. With Beef chowing on kibble, and a bottle cooling on the counter, he finally pops off his prosthetic.
If he’s lucky, he’s got another half an hour before the baby wakes up. He leaves the bathroom open as he drops his clothes on the floor and climbs into the shower. The pressure is shit, and the water doesn’t get hotter than lukewarm on the best of days, but he feels a little more like a person when the cold numbs the aches in his body.
He rolls off the suspension sleeve. The water at his feet turns red. He cleans the wound as best as he can, wraps it with gauze, and prays that the bleeding will stop enough that he won't need stitches. The state of his med kit, like the state of his finances, is depressing.
At least it's his bad arm that got shot, Robert reasons. It would suck real balls to have a baby and two non-functional hands.
By the time that he leaves the bathroom, he’s ready to wash down another handful of Advil with a shot of whiskey—or better yet, with three. He doesn’t know how he survived those early months when the baby would startle awake every other hour. He’s half-convinced that he’s locked those memories away like a particularly lengthy case of dissociative amnesia.
Not getting shot in the middle of the night probably helped.
Robert pauses in the doorway with his face buried in a towel and just gives himself a moment to think. The Red Ring influence is spreading. He nearly got killed in a robbery today. He’s got no suit, no Astral pulse, not even a gun to keep loaded under his pillow. If Shroud hears about the incident at the store and gets suspicious about the combat-ready citizen beating up his goons…
Robert makes up his mind there and then. They must leave. This apartment, this city, and preferably this state altogether. Sentimentality and a sense of longing for the past has kept him from leaving Torrance, but they aren't safe here. They never were.
He gets dressed and pulls out a suitcase out of the wardrobe. There isn’t much to pack—just the baby clothes he picked up at Goodwill, some old photos with his dad and the Brave Brigade, replacement parts for his prosthetic—but his mind is running at speeds which make the whole process as haphazard as a tornado.
Beef finishes his bowl and trots over to nip at Robert’s foot. “Not now, Beef,” he says, unearthing the emergency bag with the fake documents. He tears the lining open to take out the two grands hidden inside. Rainy day fund, in case he ever needed to make a quick escape. Once this money's gone, Robert will be officially, undeniably bankrupt.
Beef bites him again. It doesn't hurt much, but when Robert turns to reprimand him, he sees the door handle twitch. Something, or someone, is trying to get inside.
The prosthetic is still sitting on the counter. Robert sneaks across the room, light as a whisper, and connects it to the socket. He grabs a knife from the drawer and hides behind the door.
There are two voices coming from the hallway. Robert can only hear bits and pieces: they sound like they might be arguing, but there is no urgency in their words. They don't expect an ambush.
The lock clicks. The door swings open.
“—still got it.”
“That's not the flex that you think it is.”
A shadow falls over the threshold. Robert pounces, aiming to disable. The first woman—the one who lockpicked his door—swivels out of the way. The knife only catches the edge of her jacket.
“What the fuck?!”
Robert doesn't give her time to recover. He lunges again, only to slice at nothing when the woman suddenly vanishes from sight. Must be some kind of teleportation power—
“Insivigal!”
—or invisibility.
He keeps his back towards the wall, eyes sweeping over the room for any sign or clue that his opponent is near. The second woman, blonde and muscular, retreats into the hallway when he makes a warning slash in the air.
“Robert,” she says, hands raised in front of her, “we just want to talk—”
The use of his name catches him so off-guard that Robert misses the moment when Invisigal reappears. She grabs his wrist and twists it so he drops the knife. A knee to the back knocks him prone. When he reaches for the knife again, she kicks it away and pins him down with her boot.
“What in the Michael Myers is this? I thought this guy is supposed to be a hero.”
“He is,” says the blonde, nudging Invisigal out of the way. “I just think that strangers breaking into his apartment at six in the morning doesn’t exactly instill much trust.”
Robert, now free to move, rolls over and eyes the intruders with suspicion. “Now that we've got that straight, would you two leave, preferably forever?”
“Rude,” Invisigal bites back.
“I told you to wait for me to knock.” The woman turns to Robert. “My name is Blonde Blazer—”
“I know who you are,” Robert interrupts her, pushing himself upright. One could not walk a mile in Torrance without coming across a banner ad or a magazine cover plastered with her face. He drops the knife back in the drawer. “What I don't know is why the SDN's top poster hero is sneaking into people’s homes like some common thief.”
“More like hovels,” Invisigal mutters, leaning against the counter. She picks up his whiskey, pops off the cap to take a swig, and immediately starts spitting and coughing. “Fuck, where'd you get this? Fuckin’— 7-eleven?”
She spills cheap liquid all over the floor. Robert catches the dog at his feet before he can try and lick some. “Beef, no!”
“Who the fuck names their dog Beef?”
Blazer pinches the space between her eyes. “Invisigal, can you leave us alone for a moment?”
Invisigal purses her lips. “Whatever.” She shoulder-checks Robert on her way out and leaves the door wide open.
Blazer stares in her wake, as though to compose herself, then turns to Robert. “As I was trying to say, I’m very sorry for startling you. Can we just—start over, Robert?”
Robert weighs the chances of him, in his current state—short on sleep and limbs alike—kicking out a superpowered woman out of his apartment. He puts Beef down and shuts the door closed.
“Look,” he says. “I don't know who you think I am, but you're wrong. My name isn't Robert, and I'm not—”
“Mecha Man?”
Robert shuts his mouth with a click.
Blazer smiles a little ruefully. “I didn't believe it at first when Invisigal said that she found where you live. The footage of the explosion, the forensic evidence… The world thought that you were dead, and you preferred it that way.”
It's as though a bucket of ice was dropped over Robert’s head. One part of him wanted to deny everything, but… “Was it the kid from the convenience store, or the amount of time I spend staring at my own obituaries?”
“Your DNA, actually. We've had some suspicions before that, but you kind of bled all over that alleyway.”
Robert drops his head in his hand. “Damn it.”
All those months of hiding, all the lengths he went to to keep them safe… None of it mattered. None of it mattered at all.
He hears Blazer move, then a strong hand settles on his shoulder. “We’ve kept it out of the databases, if you're worried about that. Whatever caused you to fake your death, you must have had a good reason.”
It's the dark, the sound of her voice next to his ear, the burn of her fingers so close to his neck—the fear thrumming beneath his skin surges into a catastrophic wave. It is too much. Robert stumbles away and knocks the bottle over in his hurry to put distance between himself and Blazer.
It shatters. Loudly, showering the whole apartment with glass.
There are exactly three seconds of complete silence when Robert thinks that he's gotten incredibly lucky—
—and then the baby starts wailing.
He rushes to the crib and picks up his daughter. Her little face, so peaceful in her sleep, is twisted with fear and confusion.
“Shhh… It's okay, you're alright, we're alright.” He holds her against his chest, wishing he could do more than pace and rock her, wishing he still had his other hand to pat her with. She hates the feel of the prosthetic almost as much as she hates waking up alone, and his glove still needs washing from the last diaper change.
It takes some time, but she starts to calm down. Robert knows that she's done crying when she wipes her face, tears and snot, on his shoulder. Good timing, too. All this walking has made him lightheaded. He's pretty sure that his wound bled through the gauze and is beginning to soak his last clean shirt.
As soon as he tries to set her down, she digs her hands into his shoulders. For someone who's less than a year old, the strength of her grip is rather impressive.
The thoroughly impressed, but poorly anchored Robert feels the room tilt at a dangerous angle.
“Here.”
Blazer puts something behind him. Robert half-sits, half-collapses into the lawn chair. His daughter twists around in his arms to glare at the stranger with squinting, distrustful eyes.
Blazer, for her part, gives them space. She keeps looking between Robert and the baby like trying to solve a Millenium Prize problem. “I’m sorry…” she says as he meets her eyes. “Track Star never mentioned anything about a child.”
Blazer's reputation is good; Robert is even reasonably sure that she wouldn't try to hurt a kid, but he twists in such a way as to better hide his daughter from view. “Track Star doesn’t know. We haven’t talked in…” he blows a loud breath, “almost sixteen years, now.”
“He thought you died, Robert.”
“Then there’s one thing I didn’t fuck up completely.”
Blazer sighs and crosses her arms on her chest. “I’m guessing, from the lack of this information on your file, that your name isn’t on the birth certificate. I’m also guessing that it’s hard to hold a job as a single parent hiding from the Red Ring.”
Robert says nothing. He doesn’t need Blazer to point it out to know that he’s doing poorly as a father. From the mold in the bathroom to the constant power outages and the same three sets of clothes getting rewashed in the sink, every corner of this place reeks of failure.
His daughter grumbles. Robert presses a mechanical kiss to the top of her head.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Blazer continues with a softness in her voice. “SDN can protect you—both of you. We’ll give you a job, new identities, a new home. You won’t have to worry about Shroud. With all the sources that SDN has to offer, you could be Mecha Man again.”
Robert stands so abruptly that he startles Beef running circles around his feet. “I don’t need your help,” he says, pointing to the door. “Now, get out.”
“Robert—”
The bathroom door creaks. Both of their heads swivel around to see Invisigal materialize, frowning at the tear in her jacket. “Told you this guy was a fuckin’ coward. While people mourned for him and tried to avenge his death, he was out there, playing house.” She takes two puffs of her inhaler, then notices the weight clinging to Robert’s chest. “Holy shit, is that a fucking baby?”
Robert is done. His patience has run out long before this conversation even started.
“We were fine until you two sabotaged my cover. This is the problem with you heroes. You think you know what’s best, and act with no regard for what people want or need. By showing up here, you might have as good as killed us both.”
The look on Blazer’s face drains the anger out of Robert. He feels tired all of a sudden, and very, very old. He rakes his free hand through his hair and looks away. “Please, just leave.”
Invisigal surges forward, ready to argue, but Blazer stops her. “Invisigal, let’s go.”
Robert doesn’t move until the front door closes and their footsteps fade into the hallway. Only then he looks up to survey the mess in his apartment, the glass shards on the floor and the half-packed suitcase in the corner. Beef is quietly licking the puddles, and the baby smells like she’s due for a fresh diaper.
“This is going to be one long day.”
⊰⟐⊱
It takes three more hours for Robert to roll out of the apartment with his daughter in a carrier, suitcase in one hand and Beef’s leash in the other. Despite the thin walls and the leaky faucets, he’s sorry to leave it behind—the only oasis of stability that he’s had in the last year. Who knows when he will next have a place to put his head down.
At least the little ones are excited. Beef sniffs at everything within the leashes’ reach, and the baby waves her toy truck at passerbies as they sit waiting for the interstate bus. He sold his car with the rest of his belongings before he went into hiding—too easy to track, too expensive to maintain. It’s an unfortunate consequence of his unique appearance that he’ll be memorable to other passengers, but he’s hoping, despite the surprise visit from heroes this morning, he still has a few hours of a headstart before Shroud’s goons fall on his trail.
Robert is bouncing his knee, lost in thought, when an old black man comes up to the bus station. He scoots over to make room on the bench. His daughter babbles at the stranger, then nails a wicked forkball—the toy truck, plastic parts and all, smacks the old man squarely in the forehead.
The kind of curses that follow from the old man’s mouth shortcircuit Robert’s brain for a few moments. “I’m so sorry. This doesn’t usually happen.”
The old man grunts as he picks up the toy off the floor. Beef uses his chance to roll over and beg for belly pats. “At least this one’s nice. Figures that your kid of all kids would be a fuckin’ asshole.”
No. No fucking way.
“Track Star?”
“What other miserable idiot would chase you around bus stations at nine in the morning, kid? And it's just Chase, these days.”
If there wasn't a very happy-trigger baby currently strapped to his chest, Robert would be hugging the death out of the man. He has to settle for a firm arm squeeze instead. “But you’re all—”
“Old and wrinkly?”
“I was going to say well-seasoned.”
“That’s even worse.” Chase picks Beef up into his lap and launches into an explanation about the unforeseen consequences of his super-speed. At forty years old, his body has the wear and tear of someone twice his age.
“But if you ask me, half of those gray hairs are from tracking your sorry ass through the city,” he concludes, punching Robert in the shoulder. “That was real shitty of you, to let me think you imploded to pieces in that suit. Would’ve it killed you to send a Christmas card or—I don’t know, leave a Twinkie in my bed?”
“Please tell me that you didn’t just make a Godfather reference. And it wouldn’t be wrong to say that some of me imploded.” Robert points at the part of his face that doesn’t need pointing out. “I’m one person you can’t complain to about your reflection in the mirror.”
Chase chuckles, but the humor doesn’t last long. “So that was all real? The explosion, the destruction of the Astral Pulse?”
It was all so real that it still haunts him: the force of the blast, the all-consuming heat, the searing pain of his skin literally melting off his bones…
Robert shudders and leans back on the bench.
“When Shroud broke out of prison, I knew he’d come after the Pulse eventually,” he says. “So, I gave him what he wanted. The destabilized Stellar Core took out the steel mill and all the goons inside. The suit protected me from the worst of the impact, but not all. Vitalia patched me up. I would be dead if she hadn't agreed to help me.”
“I can't fucking believe that you would tell fucking Vitalia that you're alive, but not me.”
“Between you and her, only one of you has the power to bring back people from the brink of death."
His daughter starts to yank on his hair — a tell-tale sign that she's getting bored. Robert wins himself another sixty or so seconds of peace by pulling out a stress ball he stole from a physical therapy office.
“I guess she felt bad for saving Shroud all those years ago,” he continues. “Vitalia is the last person he'd suspect is involved. If I'd gone to you—if I let you know that I'm alive—he would know. I couldn't take that risk.”
“Hey, I understand. I may not agree, but I do understand,” Chase says, squeezing his arm again, conveniently putting himself within throwing distance. Robert catches the ball before it can follow in the truck's flight path. “So, how'd you end up with a baby?”
“Well, when two people love each other very much…” Robert starts. Chase smacks him on the back of the head.
“Don't gimme that attitude. I was the one to give you The Talk.”
“I don't think that keep it covered and don't tell me the details constitutes as Sex Ed, Chase.”
“Well, clearly not.” Chase leans towards the baby and squints at her like she's a criminal sitting across an interrogation table. Robert knows he named her right when she matches his expression one-for-one. “At least tell me you didn't follow the stupid family tradition. We're running out of nicknames for Robert that ain’t Bob.”
A weight lifts off of Robert's chest. Some unseen, fractured pattern comes to completion, and the joy of it is pure and simple. “Chase,” he says, not knowing whether to sob or laugh, “she's named after you.”
It didn't quite dawn on him yet, clearly. Chase snorts and scratches Beef's ears. “Yeah, right. First name Track, last name Star?”
Robert hoists the baby up to the full twenty-eight inches of limb and menace. “Chase, meet Chase.” Beef barks. “And Beef,” Robert amends. “But the two of you are already cozying up to each other without my help.”
The reveal of the baby's name is so monumental that Chase stops petting Beef to digest it in full. For the first time since Robert has known him, he has no witty come back, no easy insult ready to jump from the tip of his tongue.
“You really named your kid after me?” he asks, oddly quiet. “Not after your father?”
“No, Chase, after all the bullying I experienced in middle school, I would call my daughter Robert Robertson the Fourth.” Robert rolls his eyes. “Yes, she is named after you. Chase, why are you—are you crying?”
“Fuck off.” Chase wipes his face with his sleeve. “Let me have this.”
“Would you like to hold her?”
“Fuck no.” But Chase is already reaching out to take the baby with both hands. Robert gently passes Chase to her namesake. Beef, not disheartened by the pause in affection, jumps off his lap and goes to chew at the lamppost.
“She don’t look much like you. Are you sure she's, you know?” Robert's daughter, after a thorough inspection of Chase's face, tries to tear off his mustache. “On second thought, the brat’s definitely yours.”
“I did consider naming her Robin,” Robert admits, taking the baby back before Chase's facial hair can suffer further damage, “but I had already destroyed the suit and the Astral Pulse. The Mecha Man legacy, and all that it entails, dies with me.”
“Is that why you blew off Blazer's offer sooner than she's finished listing off the childcare benefits?”
A bus rolls up to a stop at the station. Robert checks his ticket, then the time—he's got five minutes to board. “Listen, Chase, I know that this is very abrupt, but would you take care of Beef for me? It wouldn't be forever. Just until I settle down somewhere. He deserves a stable home.”
“And your kid doesn't?”
It's good to know, at least, that years haven't taught Chase to pull his punches. “We don't exactly have a lot of options.”
“That's a load of bullshit, and we both know it.”
Robert stands up and tugs on Beef's leash gently to get his attention. “Nevermind. Pretend I didn't ask.”
Chase’s voice catches him before he can make two steps forward. “Sit your stupid ass the fuck down. Will you listen to me for two fuckin’ minutes?”
Robert checks the time again and lowers himself back on the bench. “You've got three.”
He's felt, up until that point, that Chase tried to keep the conversation light. Neither of them wanted to spoil the moment by addressing the herd of elephants in the room. But Chase is looking at him now—really looking, without dilute or evasion—and Robert is not ready for the things that he might uncover.
“When was the last time you've slept for a full night?”
“I'm a new parent, Chase. Sleep-deprived is kind of in the job description.”
“Alright, then. In the last ten months, how many times did you uproot your entire life because some motherfucker breathed wrong at your paranoid ass?”
“It’s not paranoia if I'm right.”
“Answer the fucking question, Robert.”
“Five times? Maybe six.” Robert sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose. “Listen, if you're trying to make a point, can you just get to it already?”
“My fucking point is that this is not a fucking way to live. I don't know when was the last time you've looked yourself in the mirror, but the way I'm seeing things, every second that you don't keel over where you stand is a fuckin’ miracle.”
Chase jab a finger at Robert's chest to really emphasize his words, which means, by extension, jabbing a finger at Chase the Junior. She doesn't take kindly to that and bursts into a streak of angry babbles. Shakes her fists and everything.
“Uh-huh. Now you've made her mad.”
“Not my fault that her dad's a fucking idiot,” Chase grumbles. “If you'd listened to Blazer for more than five damn seconds, you would've known that SDN's help is not convergent on Mecha Man's revival. That suit can rot in the harbor for all we care. There are good people out there who just want to help.”
Robert thinks of the cashier at the store, of Vitalia and the elderly neighbor across the hallway who would babysit little Chase while he worked odd jobs and stood in line at food banks.
“Yeah, I know. I think I just… forgot, for a while.”
The stream of passengers boarding the bus thins, then ends. Robert wagers another thirty seconds in his mind before his chance will be sealed. He can always wait for the next one, but he feels it, in his heart, that this decides it: he will go, or he will stay.
Chase is right. The life on the run, the constant move and fear, is draining him. He can’t remember the last time he was not in pain. Even if it works out somehow—even if he runs for years without getting caught by Shroud or the CPS—what happens when Chase gets old enough for school? When he no longer has the strength to work?
“You know I don't have patience for your cryptic silences. Are you going to accept the offer or not?”
Robert watches as the bus doors draw shut. One weight lifts from his chest, and the other sinks lower. The fears and worries he puts away for another time.
“I guess I don't have much of a choice,” Robert sighs.
“Like hell you do,” Chase says. He picks up Beef and holds him under his arm like one might a particularly chunky purse. “i don't got another sixteen years for you to pull your head out of your ass and ask for help. We're doing this my way, and that means driving you to the nearest drive-through and putting some meat on those bones.” He elbows Robert in the side. “C'mon. I'll even let you pick the place and everything.”
Against all odds, the corner of Robert's mouth quirks upwards. “Whatever I want?”
“Whatever you want.”