Chapter Text
The red planet was silent. There were few ambient sounds, only the crackling of the fire engulfing their once glorious spaceship and the sounds of George wandering around aimlessly, looking like the world was a puzzle and he was trying to connect the pieces together. Sue felt oddly detached from it all. Kind of like it was a dream.
And what a dream it would be. Just hours ago they were flying through space on the most important mission they'd ever faced, terrified it was going to go horribly wrong but full of life at the adventure that they spent their lives chasing as Galactic Superheroes. Now all that pent up energy and hope faded as reality set in. There was no getting out of this. Dread fought its way up into Sue's throat, and yet felt like it was happening to an entirely different person. Someone other than her that had to deal with this mess.
“SUE, DO SOMETHING!” Fred's scream cut through the fuzzy ocean Sue was wading through, her vision seeming to lag behind a few seconds as she tried to focus back in on him. Trying to get her bearings back on reality and feel her limbs once again was a process— In a flash the heat from the fire registered, and the ache in all of her limbs made itself known. The dread that had settled in her throat was actually her meager breakfast from earlier that day trying to make a reappearance, and it took all of her effort to keep it down.
At her silence, Fred only began to flash red faster, his rage building up so much it threatened to explode. Normally she knew how to fix that, to give him a few words as a soothing balm to his fiery temper, but this time there was nothing. What could she possibly say?
Sue was the older sister. She was supposed to fix everything, and yet she could only think of one thing, the simple fact ringing through her mind this whole time that refused to let her completely drift away.
“His arms…” Sue said aimlessly, eyes tracking George as he tried to look through the non-smoking wreckage of their ship, seemingly searching for something unknowable that a hidden part of his brain pushed him to look for.
“I don’t care about his arms, fix his mind! He’s the only one that knows how to fix the damn ship!”
The corners of Sue's mouth turned down as she robotically turned her head away finally to stare at her other brother. Fred had the wherewithal to shy back slightly at the waves of her emotion battering against his special sense.
She knew that wasn't the only thing Fred cared about. She was one of the few people in the galaxy who could understand why he was acting so callous, focusing on the one thing he could possibly control at that point. His deflective nature and complete inability to admit when he was scared meant he would lash out and blame everyone but himself so he wouldn't drown in his own guilt, and she knew that. But she couldn't handle it. Not right now.
"I don't think I can fix this Fred." Her voice rang hollow.
Desperation etched itself into his face. "You have to! That's what you're good for!" Fred froze after he spat the words out, but he didn't take them back. They stared at each other, silence echoing.
Oh to be anywhere but here in this moment. The siren song of removing herself from her body and these emotions was alluring, and yet her responsibility kept her firmly grounded in this awful reality. Because that's what she was good for, wasn't it? This was her job. If she couldn't do this, then what was all this for? If she couldn't save her brother, what was the point of her powers?
The staring contest ended, Fred a hollow winner as Sue turned towards her other brother. Her hands shook.
"George, can you come over here?"
Nothing— only the low murmur of collapsing metal and distant crackles of steel burning.
Sue cleared her throat. "That's you, the person looking through the space rubble right now."
Her brother turned around, head darting side to side like there would be anyone else around she could possibly be talking to before finally concluding that she had to be talking to him. He floated over, landing softly on the ground in front of her. Fred had already retreated away the second George started to move, wrapping his arms around himself as he stared from a distance, leaving Sue to deal with this.
"Yes?" George asked. He looked so lost and alone, and Sue resisted the urge to cup his face and place her forehead against his. Coming from a stranger, it would only add to his confusion, and she couldn't add more onto his burden just for her own creature comforts.
"I'm going to help you, I just need you to focus on me, okay? Just me and my song. Can you close your eyes?"
He slowly closed them, face scrunched up like it used to on the days he poured himself into solving a particularly difficult problem. The days he would spend on their ship calculating the most minute details of plans until they were perfect. Days she needed to get back.
Sue took a deep breath that ached in her lungs and opened her mouth, letting her song pour out. Her head left her body as her voice echoed through the cosmic ballet, resonating through the strings making up every living being and following their tune as it sung back at her. She navigated through the celestial chorus, following the melody strung along between connections until she reached George.
Her song reached into his brain, bouncing between the synapses and echoing a rhythm back at her as she gauged the pitch of his soul. His melody fired between the neurons of his brain, trying to link together with her song as a guide, but the refrain was incomplete. No matter how many loops it tried to go through to complete the tune that made up George, there was something missing. Notes out of place, jumbling together, rhythm faltering.
Beings were made up of music, of song. Sue’s voice was a guide to bring things back together, but a melody needed all of its parts. A symphony could not play without drums, the orchestra wouldn't march forward without the conductor, and a man could not be whole when his arms were somewhere in the galaxy far away, resonating the missing piece of its own song.
It would be another thing if they had been destroyed. Their part in his song could be rearranged, sewn back together to create something new. But they were still beating in rhythm, and so the song tried to move forward, limping along as it stretched itself thin reaching between galaxies to desperately find its missing half.
There was no fixing George. Not without that missing piece.
For the first time in her life, Sue was powerless. But she already knew that when she started. She continued singing until her voice broke, and continued on even still. Perhaps she was hoping for a miracle, like back when she first met George. Back when they were all little kids, and she stood above his broken body that had taken its last breath moments before she realized she could bring people back to life with her song. A miracle like that just about now would be real helpful.
Fred couldn’t understand. He wasn’t one with the music like her, he just saw her as someone that could fix everything. As his older sister, she held all the answers. His song was rough edges, angry snare drums and guitar riffs punctuated by flares of emotions he struggled to keep ahold of. He felt so much that it burned through his music, distorting it until it was unrecognizable under the unregulated wave of his emotions.
Fred's power meant he felt the music in a different way. He could hear it clearer than she could, picking apart individual emotions that skipped between beats, constantly changing the tune in minute ways. He leached from the emotions of the people around him, feeling theirs and being unable to tell what was his and what was others. It was just as much of a curse as a power.
She remembered him as a child, crying himself to sleep as the noise was too loud to think. Eventually it became too much, and he shut himself off from the world just to keep himself sane. Yet he still kept that fire alive to help the universe, even if he couldn't bring himself to open up and connect with its struggles like he once could. It's what she loved about him, and hated all at once.
George’s hold of the music was more personal than Fred and Sue's, being able to amplify his own song. It echoed through his muscles, powering them and letting him work through the fatigue. It raced through his brain, letting him think and process quicker than anyone else. The song was strong and loud, klangfarbenmelodie clear between the big booming pipe organs and the delicate harp strings. While not as obvious as Fred and Sue's, it was just as powerful, if not surpassing theirs in pure usefulness in superheroism. Yet he acted like it didn't even matter, like he was just an ordinary person helping out because it was the right thing to do. He was the essence of being a Galactic Superhero, something Fred and Sue could only hope to achieve.
That's why George was the core of their group, the one that held them all together. He balanced out both of them. Fred's staunch adherence to the rules, and Sue's flagrant disregard of them. Without George there was no Galactic Superheroes. There was just a broken family.
Sue's melody broke, and didn't continue.
"What are you doing? Keep going!" Fred's voice felt far away. She could vaguely see his colors flashing from a distance, could make out the smudged confusion of George's distorted features, but that was it.
Sue was in an ocean of her own, and she was drowning.
"I can't fix this. I can't fix this."
Not George. Not them. Not their family.
Not when it mattered most.
Sue turned and ran.