Chapter Text
Robert Robertson the Third had known he was cursed since he was 7 and a half years old. Maybe longer, but the childhood trauma tended to make his early memories a fuzzy mess of color and pain. So did the traumatic brain injuries.
Nevertheless, finally capturing Shroud and finding some semblance of balance and safety in his new life surrounded by Chase, Mandy, the Z-team, and the other people at SDN didn’t change the fact that he was always going to be cursed.
“Mr. Robertson, you need to understand that this next piece of news is going to be hard to hear. Would you like someone to be here with you?”
The doctor’s words didn’t even make Robert’s heart drop at all. It was inevitable after all, that with everything else in his life going (relatively) well, the curse had to even it all out.
“No, I’m good. Go ahead.”
“Okay…” The doctor cleared her throat. Her glasses were sliding down her nose but she didn’t push them up, just stared down at the clipboard in her hand, her fingers twitching as she gripped it.
“I’m afraid you’ve been diagnosed with OSD, or Omegan Separation Disorder.”
Robert stared at her. It clearly wasn’t the reaction she expected, because she took another breath.
“If you don’t know, OSD is–”
“–I know what it is,” Robert cut her off. It was a bit rude, but he couldn’t make himself feel too bad.
“So, you know how serious this is–”
“But it doesn’t make any sense.” This time, Robert winced when he cut her off for a second time.
“Sorry, he apologized. “But that doesn’t make any sense.”
The doctor sighed a little, flicking through her notes.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I’m not an Omega.”
The doctor almost dropped her clipboard entirely, and Robert let himself take a little spiteful joy in causing that, since only he would know about it.
“Mr. Robertson–”
“Robert.”
“Okay, Robert, I’m sorry but your bloodwork is unmistakable. You are designated as an Omega, and your levels tell us that you have a very bad and very long history of touch-starvation, which has now manifested as OSD. Were you…unaware of your designation?"
She asks the last part delicately, and Robert thinks very hard about getting up and leaving the small medical room tucked in the back hall of the SDN office. He doesn’t, if only because his back is still in a brace and his shoulder is still recovering from dislocation, and he really doesn’t want to try and scoot back into the wheelchair he’s been stuck in since the final fight against Shroud.
This was supposed to be check-in after his initial hospital visit with the rest of those involved in the fight. Just a way for SDN to officially clear him to go back to work. And to have a reason for his friends coworkers not to pester him about resting more before going back to the Mecha Man suit.
“How would I have been unaware of something like that?” he hears himself ask, though it feels a little like someone else is talking.
The doctor finally pushes her glasses up her nose and carefully sets the clipboard down on the table next to Robert’s abandoned wheelchair.
“Do you remember getting very sick as a teenager, perhaps? Something like the Flu?”
Robert nodded slowly. There were a couple times, starting when he was 13, where he had caught a horrible Flu, and his dad had locked him in his room to sweat it out. It paled in comparison to other events under his fathers care, and he hadn’t thought much of it.
“Okay, and did a parent or guardian keep you away from others during this, and perhaps gave you medication afterwards that they told you would help you get better? Something you had to take for a long time afterwards?”
Robert nodded again, trying to recall how to move his fingers. Right now, it felt impossible, his hands buzzing with an odd ambient numbness.
“And when you took this medication, did it stop the sickness, but made you feel very nauseous for a long time afterwards? Maybe it even made you feel more sad than normal?”
That made Robert want to laugh. He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been a little sad, and mostly empty. It was the Robertson way. But he just nodded again.
The doctor hummed sadly. She sounded tired. “Okay. I’m so sorry, but this is something we don’t necessarily see often, but happens enough that I can probably guess what was given to you. There are a couple options out there, but given the timeline, and your current levels, it was likely one of the nastier strains of illegal suppressants that have been circulated in the area. You were probably given it after your parent or guardian realized what the sickness was, which would have been your first heat. If you had been taken to a doctor, they would have officially marked your designation in your medical records but… Well, the suppressants are illegal because they have long-term side effects. These strains were made with the intent of nulling Omegan hormones with no space for healthy heats or balanced levels. They get rid of heats for years, even after you stop taking them, and can permanently cause damage to fertility, hormone levels, and your internal organs. This combined with…” She sighs and picks her clipboard up again. “This combined with prolonged lack of a pack or healthy touch, can cause very bad cases of OSD. The kind that will affect a person for the rest of their life. The kind that’s permanent.”
‘The kind that you have’ went unsaid, but hung heavy in the air between them.
“Robert, I really recommend having some kind of support after finding out about a diagnosis like this, especially given your…circumstances. I’m happy to set up an appointment with the SDN support office? We have several therapists specifically trained for designation trauma that I believe would be able to help a lot with this. Probably more than me, though I am of course here should you need me.”
“Okay.” Robert whispered. He didn’t even really know what he was agreeing to. The blur that made up his time spent in his father’s house warped and twisted, the weeks of his teenage years spent sobbing and sweating in a room locked from the outside coming back in shards that stabbed painfully into the migraine that was already forming.
“I can see from your levels that it’s already been several years off the original suppressants, so that means that while the OSD has severely affected your blood pressure and hormone levels, there’s still a chance we can treat it. Your body is likely in survival mode right now, and in the coming months will try and regulate itself. I’m going to prescribe you a very low dose of hormone supplements, which should help as your levels start to change. We’ll need to keep a very close eye on everything, though, so I expect to see you here in one and a half weeks. I’ll schedule your appointment with the support office for tomorrow, if that’s okay with you.”
“But what about work?” Robert heard himself ask. He couldn’t focus on the rest of the information that was just thrown at him, but he knew he had been supposed to start back on a dispatch shift tomorrow, once the doctor cleared him.
“I’ll let Blonde Blazer know you need another two weeks off, minimum.”
Robert wanted to argue, but his head was stuffed with cotton and his hands felt like they were encased in blocks of ice. He really wanted to sit on the floor under his desk and hug Beef, and pretend this conversation had never happened.
“What will you tell her?” His voice didn’t sound like his own. It was raspy and quiet, and delicate in a way that Robert hated.
“I can uphold a level of confidentiality with this, since you are not in immediate danger, but Robert…” The doctor looked over her clipboard, staring directly at Robert. Her eyes were kind, but she looked very sad. Robert couldn’t quite puzzle out why. “I really think you need to tell people in your life about this. Your therapist will walk you through more of what the social changes may look like tomorrow, but you can’t keep going the way you have been. Medically speaking or emotionally. “
“Okay.”
Robert didn’t remember pushing himself back into the wheelchair. Didn’t remember wheeling himself out the door and down the hall back towards his desk, where Beef was napping on his pillow under Robert’s desk. The dog barked when he got there, wiggled his way up into Robert’s lap, and Robert numbly tugged his backpack up from his office chair to hang from the handles of the wheelchair. He was supposed to be cleared for standing and walking in the next couple days, and was supposed to have started working tomorrow, with his shifts as Mecha Man beginning before the end of the month. Now, he couldn’t help but wonder if it was all crashing down around him. If the curse was finally deciding to ruin his life once and for all.
Mandy passed him as he stared absently at Beef in his lap, the wheelchair halfway blocking the aisles between the cubicles.
“Oh, Robert! I just got an email from Dr. Rodriguez about two more weeks off. Is everything okay? That’s totally fine of course, a couple of the other members won’t be back until Friday anyhow, so you won’t be the only one out…” She trailed off as Robert didn’t respond to her or look up. She slowly moved in front of him, leaning back against his desk. In her normal form, Chase still using her amulet, she found his eyes easily as she bent down a little. Scratching Beef, she lowered her voice significantly.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me, but… Well, as your friend I want you to know that I’m here for you. Not as Blonde Bazer, or your supervisor, or whatever. As Mandy. Okay?”
Robert forced himself to look back up at her, digging his fingers between Beef’s fat rolls in a way that the dog loved.
“Yeah, okay,” he rasped.
“Let me drive you home? I finally got a car since, well, no flying now,”
Robert nodded slowly, and let Mandy take the handles of the wheelchair as they headed out the door. He usually hated when people did that over the past couple weeks of his recovery, but he found he didn’t mind now. It felt safe, like he still had control.
“Thank you.”
He tried to convey that it wasn’t just the ride he was thanking her for. That his life had just been shattered apart, more than he ever thought possible, and he had no idea what was going to happen next. That it meant everything that he had a friend here in the aftermath as he tried to take in the shards glittering around him, even if she had no idea about any of it.
Her voice was warm when she answered, and Robert tried to believe that she understood.
“No problem, Robert.”