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"Special," Blue repeats. The word is prickly hot on his tongue. Like a thorn from a cactus, it's a plant he can't refrain from pressing a finger to touch, can't stop saying; comparable to a roaring fire whose flames burn brighter than the sun, eyes aching as he glimpses over it, but still looks anyway, out of innate curiosity.
"I want to be special too!" A smaller, much more tender version of someone long gone sputters beside him, eyes erupting with blooming, carnelian starbursts of opportunity.
What the other doesn't know won't hurt him, Blue knows, but fact does not stop his own chest from sinking at the eagerness in the child's tone, nor does it stifle the tears dredging from the corners of his eyes. He rubs a sleeve against his face, sniffling.
He already knows what comes next.
In a few years, those starbursts will be eclipsed by nothing but a cobalt, coaxed out by the idea of hope. They will sputter, fooled by it, heat thinning to something cold, cold, cold; until only a faint ember remains, and then not even that. That child's dreams, hopes, inner ambitions, once held tightly in the palm of their hand as if willing into existence a golden promise… will burn and fog away as if they never existed at all.
In their place, someone else will flourish and relish the life the other had always wanted.
“Special,” he echoes. It’s a cruel word, for one under the pretense of living privileged. There was no question of ‘living day-to-day’, no worry of money, where to rest his head at night, where to wash his clothes and what to eat. A singular problem stemming from a barely wilted root. A question of ‘when will you come home?’, ‘why don’t you talk to me anymore?’, ‘is it because I keep getting into trouble?’
'what can I do to make you notice?'
'what else can I do to make you notice me?"
'just go. I know the drill by now. don't pity me.'
And ‘maybe you should’ve died during that last rescue of yours and really left me alone for good, if you still care”
(if you'd just left me behind with a good image of you maybe I wouldn't care so much and maybe we wouldn't be in this position and maybe I could've been in a different spot in life and maybe i wouldn't be so far behind from someone who should be far beneath me by now and I can only see your back as you walk further and further away)
It's prickly hot loathing. Cruel and nonsensical scorning reserved for a man whose back was always turned and eyes set toward a fading horizon, but it was his scorning nonetheless. It is privilege and it is not privilege all at once. A burning singularity, ignited by a meagre obsession of longing, for difference. To his great shame, he is not rendered sheepish and apologetic by the realization of never suffering the consequences of the real world; it is mere and not a problem.
He learns to get over this contrite quickly.
It is not long after that when the singularity predating it overwhelms in its place.
Feelings of vexation and blood boiling as he huffed, a 14 year old leaning against locked bedroom door, cursing himself for daring to be born, daring to feel such a wretched, unbecoming way. Privileged and yet, ever yearning idly, for a man whose caring gaze washed solely over the faces of hurt citizens and his team, eyes ever set toward the distant blue sky where Robert could not follow.
His own son, drowned out like a gill-less fish. Choking and choking, a serving of prey on a plate for someone allergic. A pitiful sight to behold, something even he would’ve cried about, if his chest had still been rising and falling by the time the realization crawled into his skin.
(A realization that shifted into yet another yearning for past horizon, a horizon before the title of allergic became one of the dead, single shrouded bullet digging into the chest of someone who never cared, a sun setting and the world ticking on as if nothing had happened at all, even though it did. A cacophony of the public's mourning calls, a funeral for the boisterous hero who did everything and an absent mind for the deadbeat father who did nothing, the one they never knew. It's rational. Grieving is a private grace; the 15 year-old him back in his room, door unlocked, knows this. It's a good thing that the person he's been grieving for has finally died after so long. He's left unsure if the acknowledgement of that is a good thing.
Maybe it doesn't matter.)
Robert was intrusive, a set back, a distraction.
Robert was convenient. A second chance, another torch to light after the second dimmed out.
Robert was everything. He was a hero. Someone who brought a smile to his friend’s faces despite everything else. He didn’t need to be Mecha Man (Blue) just yet. He was a hero, human, entirely human, and he saved people just for that, through humanity.
Robert wanted to be a hero. The mere existence of heroes was golden and shimmering, lucid, colourful credence stirred ablaze.
They flickered from just being a presence in the comic books to something vivid - spurred into something real - and extended a palm to him.
He was only human.
Robert was nothing. He was a boy who died shivering in the confines of an inherited metal suit much too large and too grand, that his fragile heart burst upon skin making impact with the levers of the cold cockpit. Left wondering if he'd imagined his life ablaze and if, rather, he'd imagined nothing at all.
So, he couldn’t help wanting to reach out with his own, too. Raising a stinging palm, for just even the sliver of something warm colliding with his own.
He was only human.
(We’re real, they say. We will save you.)
Robert is a star.
The sun will fade in a billion years.
Robert is the sun.
(They lie. They do save him.)
Robert was lowered into the ground a decade ago. In the past. Not in a billion within the future. There is no funeral. No body. No explosion of light to indicate something had been altered, stormed away from the norm, to signal something buried within the stars murmuring and shifting to make room for a dead star.
Ultimately, there's a vague, blurred awareness that someone alive and dead wouldn’t be deserving of such grace. It is a paradox of words, oxymoron, and too disorienting, perplexing to demand of someone to understand immediately. It is okay.
He is special. Was special.
He is only human.
(They do not save him.)
Their hands grip his own, and they do not drop him. They drag him off the edge of the cliff and bring him to dry pastures. Their fingers curve around his own, warm and comforting. Robert looks up, utterly thrilled, only to be left with his mouth agape and pupils blown wide with something akin to fear. He is met not with the smile of a hero like he’d imagined, but of a farmer picking out a harvest, eyes dim with a piercing cold; he can already feel the frost scaling over his fingers and embellishing the sweet heat. It is a far cry from the saviour of before. It is the boreal expression of an executioner, and thus, a howl wretches from the child’s throat as he begs for his father - not the father, the hero - to save him.
To no surprise, it does not work. They grip him tighter, tauter, so stiffly that it’s enough for blood to spill down his finger and past the exposed bone where muscle was squeezed out. They promise him sweet nothings, meaningless rationalities, desolate hope that murmurs ‘You can be a hero. We believe in you. We just need you to do one little thing for us, okay?’
Deep within, there’s a resigned acknowledgement the favour is nothing that he wishes for. ‘One little thing’ means nothing in the grand scheme of things, especially the ‘little’ part. He recognizes this fully. There is also something else he recognizes: the starbursts will erupt again once he completes this favour, but they will not belong to him. They will be free and they will not be associated with him. They will never erupt in the same way they did, but their explosions will reach far wider and soar much higher than he ever would. By not rushing to complete such an offer, the dreams will evaporate, water in a desert clinging to verdant, stinging barbs of thorn, and thus it is foolish not to bear the responsibility of the deal.
‘Okay,’ he says slowly, inhaling. The wilting thorns, necromanced to essence, stretch over his arms, sopping, saturated edges grinding into sun-kissed skin. It doesn't hurt. Not like it used to. It just makes him want to press harder, to feel something other than the numb. His body, stinging body, betrays him; the ardent spasms flowing into his fingers from the other itch and sting and nip at the seams.
Some semblance of relief washes over him when their grip laxes, sting subsiding, the muscles in their palm slackening at the clear-cut response. He's pulled further and further away from the edge he once feared, and then, the spasms arch away. Both he and the other know where this is going, after all. He's vaguely aware of it being an unequal bargain; on his end, the sight of this 'new beginning' is unclear, blurred, but they clearly see something in store for him, so it can't be all that bad. It can't be an end. Not if they're so contented, eager to enrapture him in the veil of their shared ambition. Ambition doesn't end. He won't end either.
‘Okay,' 15 year-old him repeats gruffly, exhaling, "I want in. I want to be special too. What do I have to do?”
Robert ignores how his chest tightens at the sight of blood dribbling down their chins as they smile, looking away.
'Just one little thing,' they assure once more. Something inside him baulks at the softness in which they say it, recoils, clenching his jaw. He disagrees with the sentiment. It's not the truth. How can it be assuring in the slightest? How can they try and make it so?
It doesn't matter.
Huh. It doesn't, does it?
Heroes lie all the time.
'You're going to be just fine.'
The civilian dies before their head even hits the floor.
'Everything will be alright, now that I'm here!'
Said hero forgets that they'd said such a thing during the press conference, only managing to bow and stammer out an apology onto wrong ears. Burdened solely by the wave of animalistic, bloodthirsty reporters shoving mics and recordings of the departed and deceased they'd oh so blatantly lied to, jaw clenched tight in utter, meaningless sorrow, because the citizen they'd lied to was already halfway to the morgue, present in life only in the news' tasteless photos of their warm corpse.
So it didn't matter.
Heroes lie, all the time, and even if they help, it is always too late.
He knows this by now. Why would, and should, really, this be any different? He's not special. Nor is he special for finally being able to come into terms with such a fact. It is just the truth; heroes lie, for the greater good, for the greater bad, for their own, selfish, sickening desire, to help.
Maybe he just wants help. For them to come earlier.
If he accepts this, he won't get help. But that's okay.
He wants to be a hero.
So instead, he just squeezes the other’s hand, shivering only once, or twice, at the dampness,
and lets himself slip away into the blue glow of whispering spotlight.
You'll be a special hero, Mecha Man.
Ah, right.
Blue, now, is it? You're not Mecha Man at all. He's in the sidelines of our stage, waiting to be beckoned for the curtain call, isn't he? That's right. He's been gone a while. So has that Robert of yours. Ever since that grand explosion, they've been cast to the side like extras. How dramatic...
...My deepest apologies for the slip. It's a weakness of mine, forgetting names. I'm sure you understand.
Now, onto what I was saying. I'd like to offer a little advice. Glimpse up at the stars and tighten your chest when you feel blue, Blue. Home awaits you under the gaze of everyone who's ever loved you, after all. There's no need to weep so mournfully for a child who never should've even existed in the first place. Count your blessings, and stop reminiscing on a past that doesn't belong to you, and return home. You are loved. You are welcomed.
You are home.
And, Blue?
Remember your own origin.