Chapter Text
Something was scratching him.
His first thought came molasses slow, thick and syrupy in a way he didn’t know a thought could be.
From there, the thoughts flowed easier, like that first inane observation was all it took for the rest to get unstuck.
His back ached. His left arm was numb. There was a pressure against his skull that was giving him a headache. Can it stop, please? He was trying to sleep.
... When had he fallen asleep? How long had he been asleep? He didn’t know the answer to either. A part of him didn’t care. A part of him wanted to let his thoughts dissipate again so they’d let him go back to resting.
But resting isn’t a thing that Robertson men do, is it?
"Get up."
He tried to collect himself. To feel where the rest of his body was. His other arm doesn’t feel as heavy. His hips throbbed from being stationary for too long. He could barely feel his legs, in that way they’re hard to feel after sleeping for longer than usual. Like the concept of having legs at all was alien. When was the last time he’d slept late enough to feel that?
He tried to move his right hand. It just barely twitches. He thought he heard someone startle, a hushed question asked into an open room.
He tried again. There was a slightly stronger movement. He heard the voice again, louder this time. He couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. Whoever it is, they must have come to his side, because when the sound repeated, it was much closer than before.
He felt bad he still didn’t know what they were saying. The person, thankfully, was patient. They repeated themselves. Over, and over, and over, until finally he could make out the syllables.
“Robert?”
Opening his eyelids was like lifting granite, heavy and uncomfortable. After a while, however, he managed.
The world he saw was painfully bright, Yellow-white light surrounded him, only obscured by someone looking down at him.
A familiar shade of blue covered a sharp face. Brown eyes identical to his own gazed at him with concern.
“Robert! Oh thank God!”
Robert squinted up at the figure, breathless. His pulse fought to quicken against the haze slowing his mind. He knew this man, deep in his bones he swore he knew him.
His tongue sat thick in his mouth. He could barely force it to move. “Dad?”
The figure leaning over him flinched, looked behind him, then back to Robert. A smile spread on his face, nearly brighter than the lights behind him. “No, Bertie. Not your father. But close! Can you take another guess for me?”
Robert took a better look at the man. His eyebrows were smaller than his father’s. His smile was missing the titular, well-groomed facial hair he’d been known for, instead perfectly clean-shaven.
The blue surrounding his eyes wasn’t from a cowl but from a domino mask tucked under a bright yellow aviator cap, the flaps of which dangled against the sides of his face. The same blue as the mask reached all the way up to his chin, the material not quite skin-tight but close. Around his shoulders, all Robert could see was white fur.
It painted a picture that Robert could vaguely recognize. He wracked his brain for where he’d seen him before, his thoughts still lagging behind him considerably. Finally, an answer came in the hazy memory of a newspaper clipping framed in his childhood home.
The answer was a jinx. A confirmation of the worst case scenario.
But if it really was him, what else was there to say?
“Grandpa?”
The figure laughed. “Bingo, kiddo. It’s so nice to finally talk to you.”
Robert stared up at the man, unsure of what to say. His grandfather. The man who first created the mech suit. The man who turned it into an icon of human strength and ingenuity. The man who had died long before Robert was even born. The fact that he was talking to him could only really mean one thing.
Relief and bitter disappointment warred in his head. It was finally over. His life, the family legacy, everything. How did he-
Heat. Electricity. Wind and chunks of metal rushing past him.
An explosion.
The thrill of escape.
The cold light in the eyes of his father’s killer, shining behind a red mask.
Robert failed his mission. Walked right into a trap, thinking he could still scrape by like he always had, only to be blown clear out of the sky, the mech falling to pieces around him.
What a sad end to a three-generation-long story. But maybe it was better this way. Poetic, in some shape or form. After all, here he was: the last to die inside the suit talking to the first.
If only the second were there.
“Where is… Is he disappointed?”
His grandfather’s smile slipped. “Who’s disappointed?”
“Dad. If you’re here but he’s not,” Robert’s voice broke, raspy from disuse. He tried to soothe the dryness in his mouth. “I know I fucked it up, but I’d hoped he be there when I died.”
The insinuation dawned on his grandfather. “Oh! Oh, Bertie, no. It’s not that, I promise. You’re not dead! You survived the crash!”
It takes a moment for the words to process, but slowly he recognizes the lights above him as fluorescent hospital fare. The itch that had woken him up was from his hospital gown rubbing against the tops of his legs. He flexed his left hand and felt the familiar weight of a plaster cast alongside the aching pain of an arm not yet fully healed from a fracture.
The relief from earlier fled entirely, as though it were never there at all.
“Shit…” His eyes grew wet despite himself. “Fucking… God Damnit.”
“Robert? Hey, bud, what’s wrong?” His grandfather asked, shifting until Robert felt a cold weight squeezing his right hand.
He turned his head to get a better look at his grandfather. “So what then, huh? What are you here for? To haunt the shit out of me forever?”
His grandfather’s face contorted in horror. “What? Why would you- No! No, I am not here to- where on Earth did you get that idea?”
He willed the tears to stop. They didn’t. “I had one job. One fucking job. And now Shroud is out doing God knows what, and I can’t do anything to stop him. The suit is gone, and without it, I’m-”
He swallowed his words, taking a deep breath in and out. He couldn’t remember the last time he had so little control over his emotions, but he needed to get a hold of himself before he said something he’d regret.
Robert’s grandfather, ignorant of his struggle, pressed on. “Robert, you’re not done on this Earth yet. You have so much more ahead of you-”
“No I fucking don't.” Robert cut him off, hating how much he sounded like he was whining. “I can’t- I have nothing left to give, Grandpa. Everything I had went into the mech, and now that it’s gone- even if I’m alive, Mecha Man is dead.”
His grandfather frowned. “He’s not dead. He’s right in front of me.”
Robert tried to shake his head. It only sort of worked. He opted to close his eyes instead.
He felt his grandfather shift closer. “Bertie, the mech was a tool. A fantastic tool that I was very proud of, sure, but a tool is only as good as its user, and you used it better than anyone else could have.”
Robert’s breath caught in his throat. His eyes opened. “What?”
His grandfather’s lips curled up. It was almost strange, watching a face that looked so much like his father have that much warmth in it. “I’ve been watching you, kid. From the very beginning, I’ve watched you get into that cockpit and grow into the best damn pilot I’ve ever seen. You drove that suit with all the strength and humility that makes a good hero who they are. There was no challenge you wouldn’t tackle, no person you wouldn’t help, no villain you’d let go without a fight. You overcame adversity again, and again, like it was all you knew how to do. Like failure wasn’t even in your vocabulary!”
A cold hand ran itself through Robert’s hair. “Even outside of it, you were every bit the kind of hero I had hoped to inspire in others when I became Mecha Man. Robert, how could I be anything other than proud of you?”
Something ached behind Robert’s rib cage. Tears flowed down his face in earnest. He opened his mouth to say something, but all he could manage was a broken whimper.
His grandfather leaned even further, wrapping his arms around him. They seemed to encompass him completely, impressive given the bed he was laying on. A soothing chill washed over him as a man he’d never gotten to meet held him while he cried.
After a while, the sobs slowed enough for him to spit something out. “How can you mean that? Even with Shroud still out there?”
“Oh Bertie,” his grandfather started, then paused. In that time, the nickname finally registered in Robert’s head: “Bertie.” It was… Childish. Familiar. Comforting.
Finally, his grandfather chose his words carefully. “I would rather you be here than lose two people I love to the same man.”
Something in the intentionality of his words stuck in Robert’s mind. He tried to read into it, but his thoughts were still wading through the deep muck left behind by sleep and whatever painkillers he must be on. Instead, he swallowed harshly. “I have no idea what I'm gonna do,” he admitted.
“You do what you’ve always done,” his grandfather insisted. “You get up. And you keep going. Not as Mecha Man, this time. Not for now, maybe not ever again. But you’ll find a way to keep going. It’s going to be hard, kiddo, but I know you’ll find your footing eventually.”
A hand covered in a brown glove comes towards Robert’s face and bops him on the nose. His face scrunches up in response, and his grandfather laughs. “And I’ll be watching you every step of the way.”
Robert nodded as best he could. Crying, it seemed, took a lot out of him. The headache from the thin pillow under his head was only getting worse, and his eyes were still heavy. He struggled to stay awake, to keep talking to the man who started his family on the track to heroism.
His grandfather must have noticed him fading anyway. “Looks like you need more rest, slugger.” He smiled softly as he leaned back up. “You’ll probably not see me when you wake up. But I'm so glad I got to talk to you, even if it’s just this once. I promise you, whenever you think there’s no one there for you, know that I will be right beside you the whole time.”
The man took his right hand once more and squeezed. “I’m proud of you, kiddo. I always have been.”
Weakly, Robert squeezed back as he fell back asleep. The cold sensation stayed with him until the flow of his thoughts trickled back to a stop.
—
Waking up was much easier the second time.
All it took was the click of a door opening and the soft beat of footsteps for Robert to come to, albeit with a lot more effort than he would have liked. He groaned as he struggled to open his eyes. The pace of the person entering- a nurse maybe? -quickened in response, rushing up to the left side of his bed.
“Mr Doe? Sir, can you hear me?”
He groaned, weakly giving a thumbs up with his left hand. “Loud n' clear. My name’s Robert.”
The nurse swore under her breath. “That’s- good to know? I’m glad you’re awake, sir! Could you give me a moment? I should go grab the doctor, he’ll really want to talk to you.”
“I'm not going anywhere.” He tried to joke.
“Fantastic!” he could hear the nurse’s footsteps hurry away, then double back. “Congratulations on waking up!” and with that, she was gone again.
While waiting, Robert successfully opened his eyes and took in the room. Even now that his brain was more solid than liquid, the lights still felt ungodly bright. The space was bare of any color or decoration: white walls, grey ceiling, cream floor tiles he could just see over the side of his bed.
To his left was a heart monitor, its beeping only making his head pound behind his eyes. To his right was a window letting even more light in the room, a row of visitors chairs below it.
One of the chairs was occupied.
The heart monitor beeped faster as Robert got a good look at a familiar man.
A dark blue body suit, not quite skin tight. Black combat boots. Brown flight gloves. A yellow sleeveless vest with white fur trim over the top. A dark blue domino mask underneath a yellow aviator cap.
Brown eyes looking at him with surprise, concern, and relief.
Robert stared at the figure of his grandfather wordlessly.
His grandfather cocked his head, then turned to look behind him. “What the hell is he looking at?” he asked under his breath.
“You,” Robert answered.
His grandfather jolted in his seat, making an undignified sound as an arm swung through the window behind him. Robert’s eyes couldn’t fully accept what seemed to be solid flesh flying through glass like it didn’t exist.
His grandfather whirled around to face Robert again. “Y-you can still see me?” he asked, wide-eyed and breathless.
“I thought it was a dream,” Robert said rather than directly answer.
His grandfather opened his mouth but was cut off by a knock on the hospital room’s door. “Mr. Robert?” a male voice called out.
Robert stared at his grandfather some more, just to confirm what he was seeing. He’d been too out of it to notice when they’d first talked, but his predecessor left no shadows. If he squinted, he could swear he was more sitting over the chair than on it.
Finally, keeping eye contact with his dearly departed ancestor, he called out to the doctor. “Yeah, I'm up.”
He heard the doctor enter the room and dragged his gaze away from the ghost in the corner to the middle-aged man in front of him. His face was stern, lines weathered into his skin in sharp creases. Salt and pepper hair was slicked back at one point, but it was starting to come loose after a long day’s work. The man pushed a wire-rimmed pair of glasses up his nose and looked at Robert over a clipboard. “You’re awake far earlier than we’d anticipated, sir.”
“How much faster?” Robert asked.
“How honest do you want me to be?” The doctor questioned back.
“Can’t be that bad.”
“It’s historically difficult to accurately estimate when a patient will wake up from a coma, however given the state you came to us in, our best guesses were anywhere from six months to a year, with ‘never’ also being a very real possibility.”
Robert breathed through his teeth. “Fucking… okay. Then I was out for…?”
The doctor walked to the side of his bed next to the heart monitor. “About three months. Which, considering the extent of your injuries,” he flips through the papers on his clipboard, every individual page making its own ‘thwack’ in the air as if to tell Robert exactly how fucked he’d been, “let’s say that for a man with no documented healing factor, it is nothing short of miraculous the extent to which you have recovered in such a short time.”
Robert zoned out slightly as the doctor rattled off the extent of his injuries, losing track somewhere between ‘pelvic fracture’ and ‘pulmonary contusion.’ His eyes drifted over to his grandfather’s ghost, who was looking back and forth between the doctor and Robert rapidly, leg bouncing against the floor yet not making a sound. The doctor hadn’t commented on him once.
“... and finally, several concussions which have likely compounded on each other, however with you unconscious state, it was difficult to deduce the extent of the symptoms.” The doctor finished.
“Right.” Robert confirmed lamely. “Would those symptoms happen to include hallucinations?”
The doctor stilled, looking up from his clipboard. “It is fairly rare, but not unheard of. Is that something you are experiencing?”
In his chair, his grandfather’s ghost stopped bouncing his leg. He pursed his lips. “I mean. I should be insulted, but that’s a fair question.”
Robert looked to the doctor for any reaction to the response. He simply stared back at him, no indication he'd heard the other man in the room whatsoever. Finally, Robert shrugged. “I’m sure it’ll go away on its own.”
The doctor frowned. “Whether you are experiencing lingering symptoms or not is incredibly pertinent information, however if it is not causing you immediate distress, I… can bench the topic. For now.”
The man looked back to his notes. “Anyway, I need to get in contact with our hospital’s PT team and get them to prepare a recovery regiment for you once it’s safe to take you out of bed. For as well as you’ve healed, no one escapes being out as long as you have without drawbacks.”
Robert didn’t need him to tell him that. It was obvious in the way he still could barely lift the hand covered in a cast, in the way his legs still felt like lead, in the way his back twinged at him even through the general numbness provided by anesthetics. Muscle atrophy is something he logically knew happened to people forced still for prolonged periods of time. However, it was never something he considered would happen to him before. He’d never stayed still enough to even consider it.
He must have paused for a bit too long because the doctor continued on. “I can see you’re starting to lag. That is to be expected after having just woken up. I will leave you to rest and we can cover more of your long-term care when you wake again. For now, unless you have any other questions…”
Robert waved him away. “We’ll talk later, Doc. Don’t let me keep you.”
And with that, the Doctor- he hadn’t even introduced himself, huh? Robert will have to get a better look at his name tag later -gave him a final nod and left the room, the door closing behind him with a click.
For a moment, nothing but silence surrounded him and the ghost. Until finally- “I’m not sure how this works, but I don’t think I’m going away on my own,” said his Grandfather.
Robert sighed. “No, no you’re probably not.”