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Kid Danger dies up there.
Swellview goes still and silent for a long horrible moment. The news catches Captain Man stumbling through the wreckage face streaked with so much dust and dirt even without the mask identifying him is impossible. Blood drips down his chin, stains his white teeth a spittle-filled crimson.
Trent pauses in his report. The cameras focus on his hands as he desperately scrabbles at rock and long strands of steel. Fire licks up his arms and he doesn’t seem to notice. He’s leaving blood on everything he touches.
They cut the cameras, the news crews shuffle away, avert their eyes.
When the feed flickers back to life Trent is steadfastly ignoring the hoarse cries. Again, and again.
“Kid!”
The actual crash site is just out of frame, firefighters solemnly conversing amongst themselves in the background.
At some point they try to drag him away. Captain Man breaks someone’s nose, another walks away with an orbital fracture, another cracked ribs. They leave him be.
There’s no survivors to rescue and under careful watch the fire doesn’t spread, but begins to die instead. Captain Man is a bloody spot on the horizon whenever the cameras inadvertently catch his hunched figure. The sunset sets him aflame.
It turns to a low crackle. The news crews pack up, Trent wringing his hands the whole time. He stills in horror as they’re climbing into the van.
Captain Man has finally stopped. He’s cradling something in his arms, soft humming carrying across the sounds of the smoldering wreck. He’s smiling. He tips back, bares the pale of his throat to the smoke-covered sky and laughs.
Trent swallows. His gaze catches on the unmoving child in the superhero’s arms.
Kid Danger died up there. Trent’s not so sure Captain Man survived.
The boy wakes in fits and spurts. Maggie had brought a cloth and a warm bowl of water in to carefully pry away the dust clinging to his skin and hair but the man at his bedside, his father she had thought at first, had held out his hands with that desperate look she saw in so many parents in his eyes.
The man—Ray, he whispered when she asked quietly—had his own injuries. A nasty set of gashes across his cheek and chin that had been carefully glued shut and hands and forearms that had been cleaned and wrapped. He was lucky he hadn’t lost his hands, but she wasn’t his nurse and he wasn’t asking. She handed him the cloth, set the bowl on the rolling tray.
She pulls up the boy’s records on her computer outside the glass walls of his room. Henry Hart is seventeen, his boss Ray Manchester is listed as his first emergency contact in place of his parents Jake and Kris. Maggie schools her face when she notices a sloppy signature on a form attached stating Ray is a medical proxy for the boy. It’s not that unusual in neglect cases, but it’s not exactly enough for the hospital to raise more than a few eyebrows. The boy hasn’t been hospitalized regularly either aside from a broken arm and some minor injuries that could be chalked up to teenage boredom.
There’s a note from the broken arm, a psych nurse was called in to observe. Manchester is mentioned, but only briefly. The kid had sung his praises and Manchester hadn’t raised concern. Maggie bites at the side of her cheek, glancing up at the man tenderly wiping at Henry’s face. He shifts, combing the cloth through sweaty strands of dirty blond hair awkwardly. He doesn’t seem aware that the glass wall means anyone can see them, maybe he doesn’t care.
Henry won’t be here for long. Despite being caught in debris from the fight earlier that day, the worst he had was a likely concussion and some bruising aside from refusing to wake for longer than five minute intervals. Maggie wonders what happened to Ray, why his hands looked like he clawed someone out of a burning grave when the kid he had carried into the ER looked none the worse for if he had just taken a tumble into a shallow dirt ditch.
There’s another note about this visit. Manchester refused further treatment in an effort to stay with the boy. Maggie winces, those hands should definitely be monitored.
The next day on her way out, Maggie stops by Henry’s room. The lights are dimmed for the headache the boy is sure to have and Ray is talking to him intently. She watches as he pulls him into a careful embrace. Sandra sidles up to her.
“I’m keeping an eye out for him,” her colleague hums, careful not to point, “he’s set for discharge tomorrow if he stays awake today. Don’t find any other reason to keep him.”
Maggie nods and tries to settle her mind. No use taking it home. Still, she hopes her first impression of them is right. Ray has Henry’s hand in his as the boy settles back. Maybe he is the kid’s father in the ways that count.
The quiet is unbearable. Wayne has no clue why they’ve chosen not to play music before the ceremony. He shuffles in his seat, crosses his legs, then uncrosses them. He smooths out the sheet of paper on his lap. He’s not entirely sure how he ended up here, reading a eulogy at a child superhero’s funeral.
Wayne had joined the Swellview Writers at the beginning of their group's career, publishing a few books under their imprint to moderate success. He lives off the royalties and his part-time at the grocers at the end of his street.
He knows he’s in the news after a release, the small signing events a Swellview claim to fame. It’s not like the news reports on much aside from their local superheroes and villains. He still didn’t expect to get a call from the Vice Mayor asking if he could “type up something sweet for the Kid’s funeral”.
The money had really been the deciding factor, a good portion of next month’s rent.
Captain Man is fidgeting, he realizes. He’s only sitting a few seats down from Wayne, his superhero uniform not exactly funeral attire. He bites his cheek when he notices the uneven nature of Captain Man’s gloves, white bandages peeking out from the tops.
The superhero shifts again, clearly restless. His cheeks are sallow and pale, Wayne imagines underneath the domino there must be dark circles. He’s seen the news footage, everyone had. The thick fear and tension that the rest of them wear isn’t prevalent in this Captain Man. He seems more hurried to leave than grieving.
But, Wayne has never lost someone so close to him. He likely doesn’t understand how someone responds to it, not really.
It’s as Wayne is watching Captain Man hurry away, back-breaking grief dogging his every step that it clicks.
Yes, Wayne thinks he’s very lucky to not understand what it’s like to lose your child.
Mary does in fact know what her colleagues think of her. She’s the first to admit that she’s not always the sharpest tool in the shed, but she earned her spot as co-anchor and she’ll be damned if she lets Trent take over this interview tonight.
Technically, she knows the interview is supposed to be about Danger Force. But, she had added a few questions about Kid Danger to her email to Captain Man’s contact. Surprisingly, the email back had simply read, With the exception of number five, all questions have been approved..
Question five had in fact been a stretch.
Captain Man walks through the door with the air of a man used to being confident in himself.
Mary struggles for a moment to decide whether to stand or stay sitting and ends up awkwardly half-crouching while she shakes his hand. With both of her hands.
“Hi!”
Her list of questions fluttered to the floor somewhere during the handshake, the paper crumpling when she hurriedly dives after it. She smiles as she rises, watching the superhero intently as he takes his seat opposite her.
The camera crew are flicking switches and adjusting stuff she frankly doesn’t understand. The familiar red light settles her stomach though.
“Hello, Miss Gaperman,” Captain Man greets, charming grin firmly in place. His new uniform is more structured than the last she realizes, the same silver that had once adorned Kid Danger’s suit laced throughout the new design.
“Hi,” she tries again.
Silence lingers for a moment.
Captain Man leans forward in his chair, chin coming to rest on his fist, “Say, Mary (can I call you Mary?), could we maybe get started? I am a busy man, after all.”
Mary blinks, then asks in a rush, “So! What is it like working with this new team Danger Force?”
The smile doesn’t waver, “It’s fun!”
She waits, expecting more. Mary hasn’t spoken to him like this much, but any reporter in Swellview can attest to Captain Man’s tendency to ramble even when interviewing mid-battle. The curious buzz in the air she’s always associated with him is absent.
He’s still watching her. She moves on.
“We’ve all seen your new base, and the new uniform,” she can’t resist the glance up and down, “the new sidekicks though, can you tell us a bit about them?”
He blinks, unsteady behind the smile in a way that’s unsettling. His answer is slow, halting, “They’re…training still. As I said, they’re fun.”
Mary wavers. It’s a bit like scaling a glacier, this, even the careful rephrasing she learned in college hasn’t seemed to extract much more from him. She bites her tongue, clearly the pre-prepped questions aren’t working, suddenly, she knows what to ask.
“How do they measure up to our beloved Kid Danger’s legacy?”
He jolts back like he’s been shocked. His warm expression is gone. The chair clatters back as he stands. Captain Man barely keeps from sneering at her. He’s breathing heavy and uneven.
Mary stills, surprised at herself. She’s realized what’s missing. The energy under his skin, the one that makes criminals and villains squirm, fills your chest with hope when he walks in the door is gone, silent and dormant.
He’s quiet in a way that even this outburst can’t cover. She’s pressed a button here.
“I think,” he says slowly like Trent tends to anytime she mentions his ex-wife, “that’s enough questions.” The superhero turns on his heel, half-way across the room before she can blink.
Mary curses under her breath, glaring down at her crinkled page of questions and the scribbled out number five.
- Were you Kid Danger’s father?
The kid and his dad still haven't left the diner. Well, maybe Courtney’s exaggerating, the kid’s probably late teens, but the slouch to his shoulders makes him seem younger. The tacky polyethylene table is tinged a low pink from the sun setting through the windows and they haven’t moved in three hours.
They’d sat down earlier with a BLT, a burger, and a pot of coffee and basket of fries between them. Court really wouldn’t have paid them a second thought, but when they’d switched plates halfway through their meals she’d done a double take. When she’d gone up to make sure their meals were ok the tomatoes had been picked off the BLT and the onion off the burger, though both of them were half-eaten.
The matching pair of black coffees hadn’t switched hands at least.
Court was reminded of her mom when she hadn’t been able to pick between the kid’s nuggets or the kid’s burger at the local diner. Her mother’s solution had always been to order them both and they each ate half.
The diner is quiet today, the oil-thick aftermath of the latest villain attack muffling regular activity. It’s the worst attack she’s experienced since moving from out west a year ago. From what her roommate says, it was the worst attack point blank. Someone’s child died, never mind that he was a hero.
The kid tips back, loud laughter curling up through the nearly empty diner. Court’s other table glare at him, but are quickly cowed when met with the father’s judgmental gaze.
As the greying man she’d been ringing up leaves, change clinks into the Kid Danger memoriam donation jar nearly every business has at the moment. She pauses, considering the quickly filling container.
Behind her, there’s a familiar crash. She winces. Danny, the new dishwasher, has a habit of dropping the mugs. The father and son in the booth both jolt, drawing her gaze away from the stack of receipts in her hands.
The father stretches a hand out to grasp his son’s shoulder, a familiar motion evidently from the way the younger relaxes under the weight. He pulls away after a moment and Courtney watches as their conversation turns softer, heavier than the inane chatter they had been carrying on for the past three hours.
Something in her chest shifts. The father and son’s quiet interaction is overlaid by the muted murmur of old Captain Man and Kid Danger clips the news is playing.
Mary Gaperman’s tear-streaked face is cut into the corner of the screen on the tiny tv wedged in the corner of the restaurant. The rest is a shaky cell phone video of Captain Man kneeling at a younger, battered looking Kid Danger’s side.
His hand is laying firm and steady against his sidekick’s jaw, his gloves dangling from between his teeth as he carefully probes at the kid’s skull with the other. Even in her year here Court knows that this interaction isn’t- wasn’t unusual.
The rumors surrounding the two had always flown, ranging from gross negligence to outright abuse right out to platonic soulmates. Undeniably, though, the widest accepted truth of the two was father and son.
The camera jostles as Captain Man tugs Kid Danger into a bear hug. The clip cuts away to Trent Overman’s tightly professional face.
Courtney cuts her gaze back down to the father and son sitting in her booth. These two are back to laughing now. She hopes this father and son never end up on the news like that. What must it be like to lose your child to your own mistakes?
Ray has been out here for hours, maybe days, time stretches around him like the good Canadian Maple syrup, maybe it’s been another millennia, the stars laughing at his loss. He thinks people tried to stop him earlier, hands coming around his shoulders and his waist, pulling him away from his kid. But, God, he can’t stop, if he does- If he does he’s giving up. And he can’t do that either. He won’t. Not after everything wrong he’s already done. He remembers tossing the reaching hands away.
Pain curls up his arms, flicking long tongues of it up into his shoulders, down into his back. His knees click and groan as he moves, desperate, desperate. All of it is in some distant corner of his conscious mind, locked away in favor of the steady stream of, Got to find Henry.
He just needs to find him. The kid can never talk to him again for all he cares, can move across the world and expose Ray’s identity for every villain they’ve ever pissed off to go after him, but he needs to find Henry whole and alive. He needs his kid breathing.
His voice is wrecked now between the smoke and the strain of screaming over the wind on top of that damn blimp, his throat hurts too, but he keeps going, a soundless croak of, “Kid, where are you?”
The rubble has all blurred together, heat and metal and torn up rock and dirt. He sees it as he’s turning to lift a broad sheet of embering fabric, a flicker of muted blue. He scrambles forward, tearing debris away and he finds a hand, an arm sticking out of a vacant pocket sheltered by precariously balanced bars of aluminum. It takes too long to carefully pry it apart from steel wire and the odd remaining breadths of fabric.
His hands are a low rush of agony in the back of his head, his lungs quickly turning to pounding pain as he smears dark blood across the soot coating every surface. It clings uncomfortably, the strange mixture tacky and thick.
He finds his kid underneath a final stretch of fabric, dirty and battered and mask still half-torn off. There’s no blood, and—after a moment’s inspection—his limbs are all facing the right way.
Ray grabs at his shoulder, wedging his hand under Henry and looping it around to the side of his chest to drag him up into Ray’s arms. Henry’s head knocks against his chin as he pulls him close.
Ray’s humming he realizes, the quiet tune of Henry’s favorite song. The jaunty pop song sounds near tuneless in his cracking tones. He keeps it up, a desperate attempt at comfort for them both. Henry hums it absently every day he’s in the cave bent over his suit fixing nicks and scratches or mindlessly scrolling on his phone. God, Henry.
He can’t feel his fingertips, so he ducks down over his kid’s shoulder to press his ear over his throat, his chest. The familiar thump and push of blood greets him, slightly labored breathing accompanying it. Ray tips back, still holding Henry tight. He grins, laughter spilling out of him in sharp, heady relief.
Euphoria has blood rushing to his cheeks, his extremities tingling. Ray presses a shaking palm to Henry’s shoulder and stays there, gently murmuring to the kid.
“God, I thought I lost you. I couldn’t find you,” he breathes. The joy fades rapidly in the face of how close it came but he still curls over the kid, listens to the steady inhale and exhale. He’ll get Henry to a hospital in a minute, but they’re not dying. Relief turns his limbs leaden and he falls back onto his ass, Henry still held tight in his arms. He just wants to stay here, just a moment longer to sit with his kid, wonderfully alive.