Chapter Text
Snow clung to my jacket in uneven patches, melting slow enough to be annoying but fast enough to make me look like I’d been caught in the rain.
My hands shook a little as I flicked my lighter, the wind nearly killing the flame.
Malevola stood a few feet away, arms crossed, tail swaying lazily like she was bored.
Her eyes were tracking every twitch of my fingers like she was reading a code only she understood.
“You’re bleeding,” she said.
I blinked, looked down at my knuckles. A thin line of red welled where my glove had torn.
“Oh,” I said. “Yeah. That happens.”
Her gaze slid back to my face. “It shouldn’t.”
A strange heat crawled up my neck. I took a drag from the cigarette.
“I’m fine.” I answered with a puff of smoke.
“You always say that,” she said, stepping closer.
Snow evaporated in the air around her before it could touch her skin. “You’re a terrible liar, babes.”
My pulse jumped embarrassingly hard at the way she said babes. Ears starting to redden
She leaned in, studying my hands. “You break things,” she murmured. “Your body. Yourself. On purpose or on accident?”
“That’s—” I pressed my mouth into a tight line. “Complicated.”
“It usually is.”
Her tail brushed my hip. Not aggressively — not even teasingly. More like a question she didn’t feel like asking out loud.
I swallowed. “Why do you care?”
Her eyebrows lifted slightly, like the answer was obvious.
“Because you’re interesting.” Then, after a heartbeat “And because you look at me like I’m something more than what I am.”
That hit deeper than it should’ve. I looked away, staring at the snow-smeared skyline instead of her glowing eyes.
I felt her step even closer, warmth rolling off her like a furnace.
She didn’t touch me again, but she didn’t have to — the air between us felt magnetic.
“Robert,” she said softly.
The way she said my name always did something weird to my chest.
“You’re shaking.”
“Cold,” I lied again.
She hummed, low in her throat. “No. Not cold.”
Her fingers looped gently around my wrist, warm and sure.
Not pulling. Just holding.
My breath hitched.
Hers didn’t.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” she said.
Her fingers brushed the inside of my wrist, and suddenly
bright light, antiseptic burn, the beeping of a monitor.
I was back there again. Waking up.
________________________________________________________________
Smoke curled off the ruined armor, hissing where it met the snow.
One of the lenses had cracked straight across, and I watched the world through spiderwebbed glass that kept tilting like the ground couldn’t make up its mind.
My ears rang so violently it felt like someone was shaking a bell inside my skull.
Every breath tasted like burned metal and ozone. My tongue felt thick, like I’d bitten it during the blast.
When I tried to move my arms, nothing happened.
The suit should’ve compensated—but instead it stuttered, jolting my ribs with a burst of electricity that was more apology than support.
Heat still licked across my back where the bomb had gone off, a phantom fire crawling under the plates of the armor. My vision flickered in and out in pulses—bright, dark, bright—like someone was flicking a switch behind my eyes.
The world kept spinning.
Or maybe I was spinning.
Hard to tell.
A hot line of blood slid past my ear, pooling under my jaw inside the helmet. The smell was coppery, sharp, almost sweet. It mixed with smoke until I felt sick.
I tried to stand.
My knees didn’t even twitch.
The suit tried for me—
once, twice—
then collapsed with a groan of dying metal. Something inside hissed and went cold. The last systems flickered out with a single, pathetic beep, like it was saying sorry before going dark.
Sirens wailed far away.
Maybe real.
Maybe imagined.
The stars above me were too bright. Wrong-bright.
Like someone had turned the world up too high.
My eyes blurred.
My heartbeat slowed.
The news drone hovered overhead, its red recording light blinking like it was counting down the seconds I had left.
Mecha Man had fallen.
Again.
________________________________________________________________
A sound — soft, rhythmic — echoed in my ears.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Cold sheets under my fingertips.
Taste of metal in my mouth.
Pain blooming somewhere distant, like my body was a map and I’d forgotten how to read it.
My hand twitched, pulling against the IV line. The needles burned under my skin like someone had injected cold fire into my veins.
The room hummed—machines, vents, fluorescent lights—and for a second I thought the ringing in my ears was still the explosion. But no. This was softer. Almost peaceful.
Almost.
I forced my eyes open fully and scanned the room.
White walls.
Monitors.
A half-closed curtain.
And nothing else.
No visitors’ chairs.
No jackets tossed over the back of one.
No flowers wilting in a plastic vase.
No hand-written card that said Get well soon in someone else’s messy handwriting.
Just empty space where people should have been.
A tightness crawled up my throat. I swallowed it down.
Of course no one was here.
Who would be?
Somewhere in the hallway, a nurse laughed softly at something. A door clicked. Someone talked in a low, comforting voice to another patient.
Those sounds drifted in like reminders—background proof that somebody out there had people who cared enough to show up.
Just not me.
I flexed my fingers. They didn’t stop shaking.
My heart thudded hard and hollow in my chest, the kind of ache that didn’t come from the explosion. The kind that came from waking up and realizing the world had kept turning perfectly fine without you.
A stupid part of me had expected—what?
A friend?
A familiar voice?
Someone sitting at the bedside, sleeping in the chair, waiting?
Someone who remembered that Robert Robertson existed?
My laugh came out dry, more breath than sound.
Ever since Dad died, I’d had no one.
And the one person who actually cared—I’d pushed them away.
Because that’s what I do. Break things. Ruin things. Bleed on everything I touch.
The room felt too big. Too quiet. Too white.
“Why did you have to die?” I whispered, voice scraping like gravel.
“And why couldn’t I have died with the suit?”
Silence answered.
Of course it did.