Work Text:
Scar
Scar stared down at the bracers tossed out on his bed. He was sat in his wheelchair, leaning on one arm, glaring across at the things tiredly.
The tremors had gotten worse. it had been a week, and damage was starting to occur in less highly developed neighborhoods of the city. Thankfully, it had yet to cause any serious injury, but people were terrified. The university had shut down, and many people had either fled the city entirely or were boarding themselves up in their homes. It was hard to find people, get in touch with people, no one understood quite what was going on.
In a strange way, it was a good cover-up for the hybrids and mutants who’d all returned to the under-city as the threads of starlight knitted together tighter and thicker, pulsating red. Scar didn’t know if it was already impossible to make it back and forth between the over-city and under-city yet. He assumed it was.
The problem was that the pressure was triggering a crime wave. With shops and homes abandoned, break-ins were at a high, and things were already growing worryingly desperate.
Scar knew he ought to go out and put a stop to it. Cry out his signature lines, fire some shots, and remind the city's criminals that fighting monsters wasn’t his only job.
Instead, as the sun sank for the seventh time since he’d seen Grian off, he just sat and stared.
Scar had considered for a long time that he was just a puppet.
Now, he took no offense at the fact. Because it was just that, a fact. He’d been plucked from poverty and obscurity, seen as a useful test case in the biotech institutes attempts to turn a boy into a super weapon.
Hot Guy.
It had worked.
Sure, by today's new standards, Scar’s biological enhancements weren’t cutting edge, but they were the first ones that’d actually worked—some of the only ones to have ever actually worked.
Taken a wheelchair-bound fifteen-year-old orphan and transformed him into a rooftop-bounding superhero. With enhanced eyesight, higher processing capabilities, increased speed and strength, and an intuition that let him land every shot.
In all that time, ever since he’d given himself over as a ‘volunteer’ to the program, he’d long since stopped complaining. At first he had, protesting the long hours of training, the suspicious isolation, the intensity on severing him from anything that’d come before.
In all of it, he was almost lucky his enhancements had taken such a relatively short amount of time. But it had still been years, and they were formative ones.
Now, Scar didn’t hate his abilities. He wasn’t about to go the ‘jaded hero’ route, just because his path here might’ve been pretty coercive. He’d always only wanted the same thing. To make the people of the city feel safe.
For the past twenty years, obeying the council and patrolling the streets had been enough.
But recently, as the council continued to turn over, and the biotech institute was overhauled with incoming ideas and purged of former workers, Scar came to a new place. A place where he’d gone from being a statistic in a folder to the old guard.
Someone unknown, even by the head councilman, only seen as a sexy superhero with his own money line to his private tech department, and nothing else.
Still to be used to the councils' advantage to keep the public happy.
Still nothing but a puppet on strings.
Scar took a deep breath in, then pushed himself up, turning quickly to sit back into the edge of his bed. It was methodical, how he began to buckle on his bracers, the cold metal digging in against his legs. The familiar buzzing ache as the biotech linked in with his nerves, making them respond as if they were another part of him. He’d just begun to latch on his second bracer when he paused.
He’d done it all without even thinking, no consideration on his part. He’d patrol because it was what was expected of him. Because if he didn’t, he’d be called to the Institute or held before the Council, and the strings would get tighter. He’d risk being stripped of these bracers and his bow, and tossed back into a narrow obscurity where he could fade away and no one would ever remember his name.
He bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste blood.
That’s not true. Not anymore.
No matter what they did, the council could never erase Hot Guy. The city had depended on him for two decades. There were people walking these streets who couldn’t even remember a time before the archer had swung across the streets over their heads, managing the rifts, defeating monster outbreaks, and halting crimes in progress.
They would all remember him.
And down below, there was a birdie with red, blue, and yellow wings who’d always keep his name in his heart. Even if only as a signature at the end of a snickerdoodle recipe.
Scar threw back open the ratchets of his bracers and stowed them beneath his bed again. Then he flopped back into the mattress and stared wearily at the ceiling. Jellie came in after a few seconds, jumping onto the bed beside him. He felt her impact through the sheets, and pretty soon she’d wandered her way atop his chest, where she sat herself down in a neat cat loaf. Not before making muffins against his teal turtleneck.
“Hey, Jellie…” He murmured, reached up to stroke his cat, the softness of her fur grounded against his calloused fingers.
She gave a soft krill at the attention, and he hummed. “…yeah, girl, I think I’m gonna stay in tonight. Just you and me.”
Another tremor hit, and Jellie shot up on his chest. He steadied the panicked cat with a hand as he held his breath. The whole city felt like it was groaning, tearing apart at it’s very foundations.
Then it stilled again, and he slowly let his breath out. Jellie’s ears had pressed back against her head, and Scar carefully delivered some comforting scratches to her neck.
“It’s ok, sweetheart, it’s gonna be ok.” He assured.
He didn’t believe it, and he knew he was talking more to himself than to Jellie.
But the cat gave him the outlet to say it aloud, and he laid their petting her for awhile longer. His heart jumped unsteadily as the sun fully set, leaving his apartment dark except for the light beaming through from the street below. Much less crowded than usual.
Scar felt around on his bed for his phone, to fire off a text to Cub. His best friend turned guy-in-the-chair would be at the ‘Hot Cave’ by now, ready to serve as an extra set of eyes and ears for him, keeping tabs on terrors across the city. To let him know he could pack it in and turn out the lights early.
He paused upon reaching.
I'm so tired.
Cub was still at it, trying to figure out what was going on with the bedrock, and yet, Scar was still lying here, and he let his arm fall to his side on the mattress again. Tried to ignore the gaping hole in the hammock still set up on it's stand to the other side. Closed emerald green eyes, and breathed.
Hot Guy was taking the night off, because Scar Goodtimes didn’t feel like pretending.