Chapter Text
The thought was always there, scratching and twitching in the back of his mind. It was more present in these moments, though, when his father was behind him with his hands on his shoulders.
“Do we have to cut my hair, dad? I like it better when it’s long,” Robert said as he was pushed into a chair, positioned on top of a tarp in their garage. His dad’s grip tightened, and he instantly wished he could take it back, even if it was true. He liked when it was long, he liked how soft it was and how it started to curl at the tips.
“No, son,” his dad replied with a sigh. “How many times do I have to tell you this? Be a man, Robert. Men don’t have long hair.”
Robert flinched as the clipper was abruptly turned on, the buzzing loud in his ears, the points of the guard stabbing at the base of his neck.
“...Okay, dad,” he muttered.
Be a man.
He wished that his dad would stop saying it.
Chase was a small comfort in Robert’s even smaller world.
It was late at night when Robert made the confession. His father should’ve been home hours ago, yet neither of them were surprised when the clock only continued to tick on with no sign of him. Chase was settled next to him on the couch, an arm slung over the back of it and his feet propped up on the coffee table. Robert was curled up, his arms cradling around his own legs, and he tried to ignore his swirling thoughts and listen to the idle TV show Chase had set up to play. He couldn’t focus.
“I don’t…”
He spoke before he could think better of it. Robert’s voice was croaky—they had long since been sitting in silence after Chase’s attempts at cheering him up went unsuccessful. As soon as he began, his sentence petered out.
How was he even supposed to continue from there?
I don’t think I can be Mecha Man.
That was out of the cards. He’s not sure Chase would react to that well, even as supportive as the other was.
I don’t think I can be a man at all.
Both of the thoughts were sickening to him, the idea of disappointing everyone, failing to do what he was quite literally born for the explicit purpose of.
Who was he, if not Mecha Man’s son?
Robert startled as Chase’s hand came to rest on his shoulder. He didn’t realize that he’d been silent for a bit too long. He looked up to find the other’s expression concerned, though his words didn’t show it.
“You forget how to speak, kid? C’mon, what’s up?”
He averted his eyes, looking down at his hands, clasped tight around his knees. He fiddled with the cloth rippling there. He didn’t want to look when he asked—he knew it was wrong, knew it was weird, but…
“Do… Do you ever feel like you’re not a boy?”
Chase didn’t respond for a long while, long enough that Robert grew concerned. His hands tightened, letting go of his pants to begin clenching in on themselves, focusing on feeling the points of his nails bite his palm. The answer came eventually, calm and even.
“...Well. Whaddya mean by that?” was his response, uncharacteristically gentle, lacking his signature mocking or teasing.
Robert only shrank further. “I just… Dad’s always telling me to be a man. Not to do girl stuff, or you’ll seem weak. I don’t… I just—”
He didn’t truly know how to explain it. How could he, when all he knew was the restrictions placed on him all his life? This was just another one of those. Be strong, don’t mess up, and be a man. There was an uncomfortability to all of the rules placed on him, but every time he was warned off for doing something girly, he felt like there was something crawling under his skin. When Chase set up a TV show or movie for him to watch, there was always that sense of jealousy, of want. He wanted to go to school, too. He wanted to make friends, to hang out with them, to be able to choose what he wanted to do.
But above all else, he always looked at the girls.
He thought it was puberty, for a long time. That was something that his father deigned to explain to him himself for once, the changes in his body. That he might start seeing girls differently.
All that really changed was the way he saw himself. The longing he felt when he watched the TV never went away.
He pulled his hands away to rub at the nape of his neck, feeling the short, cropped hairs there. His arms tugged at the overly large T-shirt. Most importantly, he felt a heat behind his eyes, a building of tears, which he did not let shed.
“...Sometimes I wish I was a girl instead,” he whispered, shameful and embarrassed at the admission. It was barely audible, muttered into his knees, but he knew that Chase heard nonetheless because of the way he stiffened at his side.
There was that silence, again. The characters on the TV laughed, and Robert continued to shrink and shrink further in on himself. Maybe he could disappear that way, if he tried hard enough.
Of course, that didn’t happen. He knew that wishing and trying hard didn’t mean much.
Chase’s hand stayed on his shoulder, squeezing. “You… that’s. That’s fine, Ro—kid. Doesn’t mean nothin’ bad. There’s nothing wrong with you, you hear?” His voice was genuine, yet Robert could still tell he was unsure, almost as hesitant as he himself was. “Do you… want to try that?”
Robert crinkled his nose at that, eyebrows furrowing. How did you try being a girl? “...The fuck does that mean?”
Chase snorted, some of his hesitance melting away at Robert’s words. “Means that I can try treating you like a girl, see if that makes your ass feel less weird.”
“You can just do that?”
“Sure you can. How’d you think Lady Lightning became Lord Lightning?” he shrugged, pulling his hand away from Robert’s shoulder to go back to resting on the back of the couch. Robert never really thought about that—he didn’t know much about Lord Lightning to begin with, other than that his father mentioned him with much more respect than Lady Lightning.
“I thought they were, like, a duo!” he cried defensively, crossing his arms.
“Fuckin’ hell,” Chase laughed.
Robert’s dad came home not long after that conversation, bringing it to a halt, but it stuck in his mind. Chase’s too, if the stack of pamphlets he hid in his bag next time he came to babysit hangout was any indication.
Chase didn’t know much more than Robert did, but he made the effort to find out, to help him understand that he wasn’t alone in what he was feeling. They scanned through the colorful pages, shoving and laughing with each other as they read through what being transgender meant, about pronouns, about all of these people who felt the same things that she did. (She found out that she liked she much more than he).
Her name didn't take much longer to come.
“How ‘bout… Roberta?”
“What?” she laughed. “Ew. No.”
Chase leaned back on the armchair, crossing his arms. “What! It’s a perfectly respectable name that I would not use to make fun of you whatsoever!” he lied, like a liar.
She scoffed, falling over on her side to lay down on the couch, sprawling across it.
“What about Robin?” she hummed, and Chase’s ensuing insults only made her want to laugh and smile, and that was that.
It was easy. So much easier than she thought it would be, when she brought it up to Chase that night with her arms hugging around herself and claws deep in her own palms.
The only problem was—
“So… does that mean dad will understand, then? That I’m really a girl? I mean, I'll still know how to use the mech and stuff, and I can still fight. I'd just be... Mecha Woman, I guess.”
Chase faltered, his smile noticeably dimming, and Robin could tell that she’s said something wrong.
“Maybe… we wait for a bit to bring it up to your dad, kid.”
In between training sessions, lessons, instructions on the mech, and son, son, son, son—she never did end up bringing it up.
Chase could be as accepting as he wanted. He could call her Robin, never mess up her pronouns, sneak her hairclips, but that wouldn’t change anything.
It wouldn’t change the fact that her dad only ever called her son. Nor the fact that her body would never reflect the way she felt. It wouldn’t change the hours of training, of bitten back tears, of don’t show weakness, you’re a man, Robert.
It wouldn’t change that she was Mecha Man’s son.
And then her dad died. And then she was alone, fifteen years old in a machine built for a man, handed down to a son. And then she had a new name, Mecha Man Blue, and no one called her Robert again, let alone Robin.
The people didn’t want a mentally ill, queer, transgender girl protecting them. They didn’t want Robin.
They wanted Mecha Man.
And so he was Mecha Man, because he could not afford to be anything else.
Only one other person knew that Robin ever even existed. Chase’s calls went to voicemail, and then eventually, they stopped coming at all.