Chapter Text
The monument towered over him. The last gasps of the sun’s rays highlighted the names on it. Dozens of names were listed but for the past twenty minutes Golem had only been staring at one.
Kaiser / Max Anders
He wasn’t sure why he was here. Brockton Bay had never really felt like home, but when he had heard that Weaver was taking the Brockton capes back home he had silently tagged along. Once he got here he wasn’t sure where to go so he had just…wandered until he had ended up here. After putting an end to Jack Slash it had felt….right to come here. He tried not to think too hard about what beating Jack had meant. What it had cost him. He tried to steer his mind to other subjects; subjects that wouldn’t cause him to break down.
He failed.
Kayden’s scream sounded in his ear like a gunshot. Golem hunched in reaction and looked around him. When he first arrived people had tried talking to him, but eventually they realized that the cape looking at the Endbringer monument should be left alone. He was grateful for that; the only thing that could have made this worse was an audience.
He couldn’t be Golem right now. In the face of Jack, in the face of the end of the world he could be the heartless monster but now? Now he couldn’t stand it anymore. Theo felt his body tense, felt his hunched shoulders draw inwards. His teeth were clenched, painfully so, and tears welled at his eyes.
They may have stopped the end of the world but so what? Whatever thing Jack had been meant to do hadn’t happened. Billions of lives had been saved but Theo couldn’t muster up the ability to cheer. What did it matter that the world was saved when so much of Theo’s had been shattered in the process?
Kayden was still screaming.
Aster was still dead.
His whole body shook as the tears wrenched themselves free. Mucus formed and threatened to run free. His legs wobbled, putting him off balance. His right arm shot out and he latched on to the monument to steady himself; His power uselessly rushing to inform him that there were no materials like it within his range.
Theo leaned there, shaking, for some time.
After a while the tears slowed, then stopped. As control over his body returned to him, Theo cursed himself for having this breakdown in public. It wouldn’t be easy to find the privacy necessary to remove his mask and wipe the remaining tears from his eyes. That was when he heard her.
Weaver.
She approached the monument, looking at a different side of the stone than him. Normally she was quieter than this. She must’ve been doing this for his sake. He steadied himself and then pushed himself off the monument.
“We-” he choked on the word, swallowed past the mucus and the emotions tight in his chest, “Weaver.”
She stared at the monument, motionless, “Golem”
His eyes returned to the memorial, to where they had been staring. Belatedly, he realized that to Weaver it might look like he had been crying over his father. It didn’t worry him, Taylor knew how he felt about his father and his upbringing.
“Is everything…uh…alright?” he asked as the silence stretched on.
“Things are quieting down. Everyone else has returned to their cities by now, trying to clean up whatever mess the Slaughterhouse Nine left behind. There’s a lot of relief that we saved the world,” despite her words there didn’t seem to be much relief in Weaver’s voice.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see Taylor shrug, “My swearing in to the Protectorate has gotten pushed back until next week.”
“Oh, I see.” Theo said, genuinely unsure of how to respond.
He wanted to walk over and see what names she was staring at. See who she was mourning. As far as he knew, Weaver hadn’t lost anyone back during Leviathan’s attack, back when she’d been Skitter. Then again, if she had lost anyone, she wasn’t very likely to share that information.
Not even with him.
They both stood there, staring at the memorial.
“Golem,” she spoke after a while, “I'm ....sorry.”
Golem wrestled down his first response. The instinctive desire to yell at her, to scream, to cry. He fought the second, third, and fourth responses as well. Forced himself to stay silent. If he spoke he would betray himself.
Aster was still dead.
He mutely nodded.
He didn’t want to talk about this with Weaver, couldn’t talk about this with Taylor. Distantly, he remembered a conversation he had had with Tecton; about how if he trained with Weaver, it could form a rift that would threaten the team.
He could feel it now. Not so much a rift as a vast ocean. An infinite empty expanse, between him and her. There was no way to mend this. No bridge to cross this gap. He couldn’t forgive her, could never forgive her. How could he ever work with her again? How could he ever trust her with his life?
How could she ever trust him with hers?
Slowly, inch by inch, Golem pulled himself away from those thoughts. He knew that Weaver wouldn’t have made that choice unless there was no other. He prayed that there had been no other, even while he had desperately wished that there had been.
He forced himself to move, unsticking himself from the ground. Exhaustion slammed into him like a tidal wave, the physical, mental, and emotional exertion from the day almost more than he could bear. He walked over to Weaver, he looked at her, keeping the monument out of sight.
“Let’s go back to base, Weaver.” Golem said,
Weaver turned from the monument for the first time, her mask staring back at him.
She slowly nodded
Together, they left for the Dragonfly.
As they walked in silence, Theo’s thoughts turned back to what he had lost. Two of the people he cared about in his life were gone. His entire world had been shattered with their deaths.
Unbidden, the thought of Cuff came to his mind. The thought of her kind words and her smile allowed a small smile of his own to grow.
Theo’s world had been shattered, but not destroyed.
Maybe......
Maybe that was enough.