Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The worst part was knowing that the thing that bound you two together, the invisible thread between your hearts, wasn’t love, or laughter, or shared hobbies. It was pain. It was trauma. It was your fathers. Dirtbag dads with too much rage and nowhere to put it but down on their kids. That’s what started it all.

Once upon a time, in sixth grade, you’d darted behind the bleachers before the first bell rang, in an attempt to hide yourself while you scrubbed your stupid, childish tears from your face before your teachers or friends could notice. You’d been so preoccupied with making sure no one was following you, that you neglected to cast a spare look in the direction you were running. 

You collided with someone. A boy. Corduroy pants, soft blue sweater, and a face just as blotchy and miserable as yours.

“Oh,” you blurted, breath hitching. “Sorry.”

He sniffled hard and shook his head, dark hair flopping into his eyes. He didn’t say anything right away, just wiped his nose on his sleeve and tried to make himself smaller, curling into the corner behind the bleachers like he was trying to disappear.

You hovered awkwardly. You were supposed to hate being seen like this, tears and all, but something about the sight of him, soft and crumpled and crying just like you, made you feel a little less exposed.

“I didn’t see you,” you mumbled, wiping at your own eyes with the sleeve of your hoodie. “I was just… My dad, he— he yelled at me this morning. I left the milk out, and he… he gets really mad when I do stupid stuff like that.”

That finally got him to look up at you. His stormy blue eyes were red-rimmed, lashes wet and clumped. “He… Your dad yells at you too?” he whispered, voice squeaky and cracked, like he couldn’t quite believe it.

You nodded. “Yeah.”

There was a beat of silence. Then, in the smallest, softest voice: “Mine hit me.”

Your stomach dropped.

You didn’t know what to say to that. You were eleven. You barely understood what your own feelings meant, let alone how to comfort someone else. But you blinked at him, then crouched down beside him, knees to your chest. “That’s not fair,” you said finally. “He’s not allowed to do that.”

The boy gave a broken sort of shrug, like he didn’t believe you. “He says it’s ‘cause I act like I’m some hero. ‘Cause I tell him not to…” He shook his head. “Not to pick on my mom. But I don’t know what to do.”

You squinted at him, frowning. “You’re in Mrs. Leland’s class, right? You sit in the back and read all the time.”

He looked surprised that you knew that. “Yeah. I’m Bob.” Not Robert. Not Bobby. Not Robby. Bob.

“Hi, Bob,” you said, like you were meeting in the cafeteria and not both crying behind the bleachers. “I’m Y/n.”

Bob nodded, rubbing his eye with his fist. Then: “You can sit here if you want.”

You did. You ignored the bell, beckoning you to class. You both figured you weren’t the type of kids anyone would miss for a little while anyway. You didn’t talk much more after that, not for a long while. But you sat with Bob, and Bob sat with you, both of you quiet and small and feeling a little less alone, just for those few stolen minutes before class.

From that day on, you and Bob found each other. Not just behind the bleachers, but in the library, in the cafeteria, under the slide on the playground when it rained. He was always quiet, always clutching the same worn-out notebook with the corners curled in. But he made space for you beside him without question. And you started to make space for him, too.

At first, it was just the silent kind of companionship: two kids with bruised hearts and different kinds of trouble at home. But slowly, your whispers became conversations, and your conversations became the kind of laughter that only happened when you both forgot, just for a second, how heavy the world felt.

Bob never talked much, not to other kids, not in class. But with you, he’d murmur soft, thoughtful little observations. He’d bring you folded-up comics he drew on notebook paper, little stories where the hero always looked a little like you and the villain wore a tie like his dad. You kept them all in a shoebox under your bed.

By seventh grade, your parents hadn’t gotten any better. His dad still yelled, still hit. Your father still barked orders and slammed cabinets and made you feel two inches tall. But you and Bob had carved out a little world of your own: sleepovers where you watched movies on mute so your parents wouldn’t hear, long walks around the neighborhood after dark when you needed to breathe, quiet corners where your pain didn’t feel so sharp. He was soft, gentle in a way boys weren’t supposed to be. And you guarded that softness like it was something sacred.

By eighth grade, things had changed. Your bruises weren’t always physical anymore. Sometimes they looked like detentions, like the cigarettes you smoked behind the gym building just to spite your dad, like the boys you kissed that you didn’t even like, because it made you feel like you were in control of something. You started getting called “trouble.” Bob never did. Bob was still just… Bob. Sweet, smart, gentle Bob, who got shoved in the hallway and laughed at in math for answering too quietly. He flinched every time someone raised their voice, still walked like he was trying not to take up space.

You started walking him home after school, because people didn’t mess with you. And he let you. He never said he needed it, but he always looked relieved when you showed up.

Sometimes he’d bandage the scrapes on your hands from the fight you swore you didn’t start. Sometimes you’d hold him when he cried without making a sound, tears soaking the sleeve of your hoodie. You were both so tired, in different ways, but you kept each other going. Like driftwood in the same ocean, clinging close so you wouldn’t sink.

The accident happened on a Thursday.

You’d skipped first period, stomach twisted in knots for reasons you couldn’t name. The sky had that strange coppery look it got before a storm, and something in your chest wouldn’t settle. You tried to call Bob after school, but it rang and rang and rang. You walked past his usual corner by the library. Empty. Nothing.

You didn’t find out until the next day, the school alight with the gossip. “Bob Reynolds was in a car accident,” someone said, words distant from your brain. “His dad. They… they hit a pole or something. Ambulance took them both.”

You threw up in the school parking lot. Then you ran.

The hospital was bright. Too bright. The nurse gave you a look when you begged to know if he was okay, if he was alive, if you could please just see him, and then finally, finally, she nodded.

He was in a small room with a curtain pulled half-shut, bruised and pale and still wearing the same soft hoodie he always wore, only now it was torn at the shoulder and stained with blood. His arm was wrapped in a thick cast, his lip split. When he saw you, his eyes filled fast with tears.

“Y/n,” he whispered. “What are you doing here?”

You were already crying. You sat next to him and grabbed his uninjured hand and held on like it was the only thing keeping you tethered to the earth. “You scared the shit out of me, Bob. Jesus. I thought you—”

But before you could finish, a voice interrupted, low and worn down, but unmistakably sharp. “Huh. Look who showed up.”

You turned. Bob’s dad stood in the doorway, a thick bandage across his temple, moving stiffly like every step hurt. His eyes were glassy but alert, scanning you like you were some bad memory come to life.

“They let kids wander around the ICU now?” he said flatly. “Place really has gone downhill.”

You stood slowly, not sure whether to brace for a fight or just get in the way if he took a step too close. “I’m not…” you said, trying to keep your voice steady. “I just wanted to make sure he was okay.”

He gave a dry, humorless chuckle. “Right. Of course you did.” His eyes flicked back to Bob. “You’re always dragging people in, huh? Anyone who’ll make you feel less alone, right, Bobby?”

You flinched at the cruelty. Not in his volume, but in his precision. Bob stayed quiet, his grip tightening around your hand.

His father’s gaze returned to you. Not yelling now. Just tired and bitter in that way that made everything sound like a grievance. “You think this is helping? You being here? He needs to stop acting like the world owes him something every time he has a hard day.”

“Stop,” Bob said, so quietly you almost didn’t catch it.

His father blinked, like he hadn’t expected him to speak. “What?”

“Stop,” Bob said again, louder this time. His voice was steady, but there was a tremble in it that only you noticed. “Don’t talk to her like that.”

His dad squinted at him. “I’m not talking to her. I’m talking about you.”

Bob sat up a little in the bed, wincing as the movement pulled at his injured arm. “Then stop talking about me like I’m not in the room.”

For a second, his dad just stood there, jaw working like he had something else to say but couldn’t decide whether it was worth it. His expression shifted, subtle but sharp; pride flickering against frustration, shame rising like a tide and then retreating just as fast.

“You think standing up for yourself makes you some kind of hero?”

“No,” Bob said. “It makes me tired.”

His dad's face darkened. Not rage, exactly, just a kind of sharp, exhausted disappointment that hurt more than yelling ever could. “Jesus Christ, Bobby,” he muttered, stepping further into the room. “You can’t even get hurt without turning into a little martyr. You think being in a hospital bed makes you untouchable?”

“Maybe he’s just—” you started, but Bob’s dad snapped his head toward you so fast it shut you right up.

“No one asked you to speak for him.”

That stung. But the way Bob shrank in the bed hit harder.

His dad stepped closer, looming over him now. He lowered his voice. “You think this is hard? You’ve got no idea what hard looks like. You make everything worse, and you don’t even realize it.”

Bob went rigid. His uninjured hand trembled under your grip.

“See?” his dad snapped, gesturing between the two of you like it was some inevitable conclusion. “This is what I’m talking about. You bring people into your bullshit and suddenly they think they get to put their nose in everything.”

Bob shifted, forcing himself upright despite the wince it pulled from his body. “It’s not— she’s just—”

“Just what?” His dad’s voice rose, the exhaustion twisting into frustration, into something uglier than the flat bitterness he’d walked in with. “You think I want to spend my nights dealing with this? With the school calling, with the hospital bills? You think I don’t have enough on my plate already?”

And then, it happened so fast you almost didn’t register it.

“Stop acting like a goddamn victim for once in your life,” his dad muttered, voice low, acidic. “You do this to yourself.”

A flash of movement, his dad’s hand connecting with the side of Bob’s head. Not hard, but not gentle either. Enough to make Bob flinch. Enough to push him further into the mattress. Enough to make something deep in you freeze.

You moved without thinking. “Don’t touch him!”

But Bob shook his head fast, eyes flicking to you in warning. Please , they said. Don’t make it worse. Please.

His dad stared at you for a long moment. Then he straightened, rubbing his temple like the entire conversation had been a migraine he was done fighting.

“I’ll come back later,” he said, voice flat again, like the brief flash of anger had never happened. “When you’re thinking straight.”

He didn’t look at Bob again. Didn’t look at you, either.

He just left. The silence was deafening.

Bob stared at the ceiling. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t you dare,” you said, voice cracked and shaking. “You don’t ever apologize to me for that.”

His lip trembled, just a flicker, before he turned his head away. These days he never wanted you to see him cry. You sat quiet, side by side until the nurse came to check his IV.

He was released a few days later, ribs still healing, arm in a sling. They gave him a bottle of pills to take home: morphine, for the pain.

He tried to hide it from you at first. You noticed the change slowly. The way he blinked slower, laughed too long. The way his texts came at strange hours, then stopped coming altogether. You caught him zoning out in class, eyes glazed, lips twitching like he was dreaming while awake.

When you finally found the orange bottle tucked into his hoodie pocket, half-empty even though he’d only been home a week, your stomach turned to lead.

“Bob,” you whispered. “What are you doing?”

He didn’t answer. Just looked away, ashamed and already too far gone.

You were reckless. He was kind. You were angry. He was numb. But he never judged you, and you never left him behind. Not once.

The world around you changed, shiny and fast and full of distractions. Billionaire Tony Stark put on a suit and called himself a superhero, and suddenly everyone believed in miracles again. You and Bob talked about superpowers all the time, usually lying on the grass in someone’s dark backyard, eyes fixed on the stars.

You’d say things like “I’d throw my dad through a window,” and Bob would wince but still smile, attempting to steer the conversation somewhere lighter. 

One night— one surprisingly normal night; one of Bob’s good days, as you’d deem them— a breeze rustled through the trees and someone’s sprinkler clicked rhythmically in the distance. Bob turned his head toward you on the lawn.

“I think I have a superpower,” he said, voice low and serious.

You blinked over at him. His face was turned toward the sky, but there was something in his tone that made you pause. He wasn’t usually this direct.

“Wait— really?” you asked, scooting closer, suddenly unsure if he was messing with you or not. “What kind of power?”

Bob didn’t look at you right away. He blinked slowly, then furrowed his brow like he was choosing his words carefully.

“I’m serious,” he said quietly. “It’s… kind of impressive, actually.”

You sat up slightly. “Bob, if you’re about to tell me you can fly and you’ve been hiding it this whole time—”

He turned to you, face deadpan, eyes big and solemn. “If you feel like you’re about to sneeze,” he said, “you can stop it by confusing your brain.”

You stared at him. “That’s it?” you said. “That’s your superpower?”

He nodded, completely serious.

You groaned. “That’s not a power, Bob. That’s… I don’t even know what to call that. It’s just lame .”

He grinned. “Not if you name it something cool. Like... Neurological Misdirection.”

“Oh my God.” You flopped back onto the grass, laughing. “How the hell do you ‘confuse’ your brain?”

Bob shrugged, the corner of his mouth twitching. “I usually think about the alphabet backwards. Or… try to remember all the state capitals in alphabetical order.”

You narrowed your eyes. “That's not confusing your brain. That’s just being weirdly good at school.”

He blinked at you, then laughed, soft and breathy, like the sound surprised him.

“Well, what would you do then?”

You didn’t even hesitate. “Yell ‘cucumber.’ Really loud. That would confuse the hell out of anyone’s brain.”

Bob let out a startled giggle, his hand covering his mouth like he couldn’t believe it escaped. “Cucumber?”

“Think about it,” you said, grinning. “You’re mid-sneeze and suddenly your brain hears ‘CUCUMBER!’ It short circuits. It panics. No sneeze.”

Bob was full-on smiling now, eyes crinkling at the corners, cheeks a little pink. “You’re so weird,” he said, but there was something warm in his voice. Grateful.

You stared back at the stars, triumphant. “You’re welcome. I just saved you from like, a lifetime of sneezes.”

Something oddly tender passed through his gaze as he told you, “Yeah, you saved me alright.”

Bob would still talk about superheroes with you, tracing the outline of a makeshift cape on the back of his notebook. But his superhero drawings started to change; your character got sharper, wilder, eyes ringed with shadow. His hero stayed the same: soft, quiet, a shield in his hand and worry in his eyes. Always protecting someone else.

By sophomore year, your recklessness had a rhythm to it. You’d steal beers from your neighbor’s garage fridge, sneak out past midnight to sit by the beach just to stare out into the void of the ocean. And Bob was always there, right behind you, because you dragged him or because he followed. You weren’t sure anymore.

He changed, too. He’d found a way to convince his doctors to keep giving him morphine. At first, you thought he took them to sleep. Then to forget. Then just because.

By the time the refills stopped, he was already hooked.

He tried to hide it. He said they helped him think, helped him feel less sick, less scared. But you noticed the way his speech slurred, the way he scratched at his arms during study hall. The way his drawings got messier, like the lines were trembling. He was still soft, still kind, but there were days you had to shake him to bring him back.

You were both breaking in your own ways— yours loud and burning, his quiet and crumbling.

Things got worse. You were crashing at his place more, crawling through his window like a stray cat, ribs bruised, knuckles split. He’d patch you up in silence, and hold you while you shook. Sometimes he offered you one, “just to take the edge off” . Sometimes, you took it.

You told yourself it was only once. Twice. Maybe three times. But it helped. And that was dangerous.

But junior year, the danger started growing teeth.

You went to a party with some older kids from town; ones who didn’t know your name but knew you were “the girl who didn’t give a fuck” . Bob didn’t want to go, but you begged. Said you couldn’t face it alone. He said yes. Of course he said yes. He hated places like this. They were too loud, too crowded, there were too many strangers who stared too long. He was twitchy. You thought maybe he’d taken something before you got there.

It ended in a fistfight in the front yard. The guy’s name was Marcus. A senior, a meathead, and the kind of guy who thought hurting people was funny. He’d been watching you all night with that greasy, slanted grin. You ignored him, like always. Until you couldn’t.

You were leaving— finally, mercifully— dragging Bob by the sleeve through the crowd of half-drunk strangers when Marcus called after you.

“Hey! Where you off to, sweetheart? Gotta go find another daddy to piss off?”

Bob flinched. You froze. He murmured your name. Quiet. Pleading. But it was too late.

You turned on your heel, fists already clenched. “What did you just say?”

Marcus stepped forward, grinning wider. “I said, maybe if you weren’t such an easy little bitch, your real dad wouldn’t’ve run off.”

Your brain went white. You didn’t remember making a decision. You just moved.

Your fist cracked against his jaw with a sharp, satisfying pop.

But he hit back. The back of his hand caught your cheek, hard and fast, and the world spun. You stumbled, the taste of metal flooding your mouth, and suddenly Bob was there, between you and Marcus, his whole body trembling.

“You don’t touch her,” he said, voice thin and shaking. “You don’t touch her.”

Marcus shoved him. Bob didn’t shove back. 

Bob lunged .

It was like something inside him snapped. He tackled Marcus to the ground with a sound you’d never heard from him before, raw and guttural. Fists flying, over and over, not fast, but desperate. He was crying, red-faced and wild, and Marcus fought back just as hard.

People were yelling. Someone tried to pull Bob off, but he wasn’t letting go. It took three guys to break them apart, and by the time they did, Bob’s lip was split, his knuckles shredded, eyes wild and glassy.

You were bleeding too. From your nose, maybe your mouth. You couldn’t feel much of anything.

The two of you left before anyone could call the cops. Just bolted. Didn’t even look back.

Your house was quiet when you got there. Too quiet.

Bob sat on the edge of your bed while you rinsed blood from your mouth over the bathroom sink, spitting red into a towel. You caught his reflection in the mirror, shoulders hunched, fists clenching and unclenching in his lap, like he didn’t know where to put the rage still buzzing in his veins.

You sat beside him, the silence heavy. After a long beat, he whispered, “Why are you doing this?”

You blinked. “Doing what?”

“This,” he said, voice breaking. “The parties. The fights. The— the guys who treat you like shit. Why are you letting them near you?”

“Why are you popping pills?” you countered, venom woven in your words.

“Don’t—” he snapped. He paused, shaking his head, letting out a tiny bitter laugh. “Don’t turn this around on me. I’m fucked up, I know that. But I’m not the one who dragged us to a shitty kegger and threw the first punch at some asshole.”

You stared down at your scraped palms. Then, finally, you said, “Because I don’t want to be alone.”

Bob looked at you, frowning. “You’re not alone.”

“Yes, I am,” you said. “He left, Bob. My dad— he just left. He packed up and left and didn’t even say goodbye. My mom’s barely ever home. My brother hasn’t called in two months. And you’re—” You swallowed. “You’re not always here either. Sometimes I talk to you and it’s like you’re somewhere else. Like you’re slipping away and I don’t even know how to stop it.”

He went still beside you. You didn’t have to say it. He knew what you meant. The pills.

You looked at him. Pale and shaky, sweater sleeves pulled down over torn knuckles, eyes too bright and far away. “So yeah,” you said softly. “I go out. I get drunk. I let assholes hit on me because at least someone’s looking. At least I feel like I exist.”

Bob’s eyes shone with something awful, guilt, maybe. Or grief. “You could’ve told me,” he whispered. “You could’ve just said something.”

“I didn’t want you to worry,” you said.

“I already worry,” he snapped, louder than you’d ever heard him. Then he winced, like he hadn’t meant to raise his voice.

You sat in the quiet again. Your cheek was swelling. His knuckles were still bleeding.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered.

He shook his head. “Don’t be. I just… I don’t want to lose you.”

Your throat ached. You leaned your head on his shoulder. His breathing hitched, but he didn’t move. He let you stay right there.

“I’m still here,” you murmured.

You felt the weight of it in his silence. Felt the pills in his hoodie pocket, the ache in your jaw, the fire you both kept feeding just to stay warm.

Every now and then, when the night got quiet enough, you’d still talk about superheroes.

Only now, Bob would say, “I don’t wanna be a hero. I just wanna survive.”

And you’d nod. Because maybe, deep down, you did too.

Bob’s mom had always been quiet, almost like him: soft-voiced, skittish, always with a hand fluttering near her mouth like she was trying to trap the words before they escaped. She worked night shifts and left Post-It notes for Bob with little hearts drawn in the corners. "Dinner in the fridge. I love you."

You never saw her cry. But sometimes, you’d hear her humming to herself in the next room, a warbly little tune that didn’t match the moment, not when her husband was stomping around, breaking things. Bob always said she was just “a little tired.”

But one day, she didn’t come home. Not the next day either. Bob waited three days before telling you. You found him under the old metal slide from when you were eleven, arms around his knees like a kid waiting for a ride home that wasn’t coming.

“They took her,” he said. Voice hollow, face pale, eyes wide like he was still trying to process what the words meant. “She had… some kind of episode. At work. They said she snapped. She's in a facility in Tampa. My dad says she’s not coming back.”

You didn’t know what to say. You reached for his hand and held it, but he didn’t squeeze back.

“It’s just me and him now,” he said. And you knew exactly who him meant. You’d always hated his dad. You didn’t realize how much you’d come to rely on his mom being there, in the background, proof that something in Bob’s house still had warmth.

That was the day something in him cracked. Not all at once; more like the tide pulling out. Quietly, slowly, until you looked up and realized the person beside you wasn’t the same boy who drew you superhero comics.

At first, he tried to pretend he was fine. He still met you behind the school, still drew little sketches in the margins of his homework, but he started laughing at weird moments. Not soft chuckles. Wild, sharp things that felt too loud for the space you were in. His highs got too high. One week he wrote an entire zine and printed copies for everyone in art class. The next, he didn’t come to school at all.

And then came the forgetting.

He’d stare at you blankly when you referenced a conversation from the day before. When you’d ask where he was last night when you knew. He was with you, chain-smoking in the park, ranting about how nothing mattered. He didn’t remember. Not even flashes.

You caught him one night, jittery and strung out, pupils blown wide and hands shaking. There was a sharp, chemical smell clinging to his clothes.

“What the fuck, Bob?”

He didn’t even look guilty. “Helps me sleep,” he mumbled, sad smile pulling at his lips. “Or… helps me not care that I can’t.”

It wasn’t just the pills anymore. Not just the stolen prescriptions or the muscle relaxers he used to hoard from his mom’s cabinet. There was something else now, something darker. The kind of thing that made his fingers twitch even when he was still. That made his laugh sharp, high, and wrong.

You didn’t know what to say. Maybe there was nothing to say.

Bob ended up dropping out of school. You still thought about him all the time. Wondered where he went at night. If he ever looked back toward the slide under the playground and thought of you. Sometimes you dreamed about being eleven again. About sitting in silence with him while the world outside went quiet.

But you weren’t kids anymore. Now, when you cried, you did it alone. And Bob? Bob didn’t cry anymore. At least not where you could see him.

He started getting reckless. Picking fights. Stealing things from gas stations in front of the cashier, laughing like it was a game, like he wanted someone to stop him. Sometimes he vanished for days. Then he’d appear out of nowhere, wild-eyed, grinning, talking a mile a minute about things that didn’t make sense. His hands were always shaking. His pupils always too big. And you— who used to be the chaotic one, the flame— suddenly found yourself trying to put out fires instead of lighting them.

“I can’t keep saving you,” you told him one night. He was on your bedroom floor, high out of his mind, shirt halfway off, skin clammy and pale, mumbling nonsense between fits of laughter.

He turned his head and smiled like it was the best joke he’d ever heard. “Then don’t,” he whispered, pupils like black holes. “Let’s just burn. Together. Like stars. Like bombs.”

It wasn’t romantic. It was terrifying.

You still loved him. Maybe more than anyone. But you didn’t know how to love someone who didn’t want to be saved anymore. Not when you were barely holding yourself together.

So you started pulling away.

Not all at once. At first it was just missed calls. A text you swore you’d answer later. It wasn’t even always intentional. Sometimes you just couldn’t handle it. His unpredictability, his wild energy that used to make you laugh but now made you feel like you were babysitting a live wire. Then you started turning your phone off before bed. Hanging out with people who didn’t know your history, who called you fun instead of intense, who never asked about scars or spirals or boys who used to sketch you flying in his notebooks.

Bob noticed. Of course he noticed.

At first, he just sent texts. “Are you mad?” “Did I do something?” “Where are you?”

Then the messages got longer. Angrier. More desperate.

One night, he showed up at your house. You could hear him outside, banging on your window like he used to when you were eleven and scared and needed a way out. Only this time, you were the one afraid.

When you finally cracked your window open to tell him to go home, he snapped.

He shoved it open the rest of the way, climbing in like gravity didn’t apply to him. “The fuck, Y/n?” His eyes were wild, jaw tight, words tumbling out too fast. “You don’t answer my calls, you don’t text, and then I find out you were at some party with Marcus fucking Hudson?”

“Bob—”

“You think I don’t see what this is? You think I’m fucking stupid?” His voice rose, hands twitching at his sides. “You think you’re so clean now? Better than me? Is that it?”

You backed away, but he stepped closer.

“You think I don’t know what people say? What you think? That I’m just some burnout? A fuck-up? That I’m crazy—”

“Bob, stop—”

“ Don’t fucking tell me to —”

His voice… It was wrong. Too loud. Too sharp. His jaw was clenched, and there was this wild, ugly look in his eyes that didn’t belong to him. Not really. It looked like his dad.

You froze. For the first time ever, you were scared of him.

He saw it. The second your body stiffened, the second you flinched, he saw it. And it shattered something in him.

“I— no, no, I didn’t mean— Y/n, I’m s-sorry, I didn’t mean to— fuck, I—” His voice broke, tripping over itself like it had when he was twelve and scared to ask for help. “I’m just— everything’s all messed up in my head, I can’t— I don’t know what I’m saying, and I don’t mean it, I swear to God, I just— just—”

He slumped against your windowsill, rubbing his palms over his face. “I’m tired of feeling like I’m exploding all the time.”

You didn’t say anything. You couldn’t. Your heartbeat was still too loud in your ears.

So he left. Not with a hug. Not with a joke or a soft goodbye. Just stumbled down from your porch and into the dark, hands shaking and muttering things under his breath that didn’t make sense.

You didn’t see him for a week.

Then you started hearing the rumors. Bob— sweet, shy Bob— at parties, at weird, half-abandoned houses out by the highway, getting wasted. People were talking about how he punched someone at a kickback. How he got his nose broken and didn’t even flinch. How he’d vanish for hours and show up again with that crooked little smile, slurring something about being “fine, better than ever” .

It wasn’t him. Not the boy who used to draw you as a superhero. Not the boy who used to cry so quietly behind the bleachers.

But he didn’t know how to come back from what he’d done. From scaring you. From becoming him … his father, the monster he swore he’d never be.

So he turned to the only thing that dulled the edge. Pills. Smoke. Needles. Anything to make the static in his head slow down. Anything to make him forget the look on your face that night.

You tried to help. You did. You met him at the beach one night after he left you a rambling, half-coherent voicemail that ended with, “I don’t think I’m gonna make it to twenty, Y/n.”

You couldn’t stop crying.

He was jittery, twitching like a wind-up toy wound too tight. You brought him water. Sat him down in the sand. Told him he needed real help, not the kind he smoked or swallowed.

“I can’t,” he said, voice cracking. “They’ll lock me up. Like her. I’ll be like her.”

He stared out into the empty abyss that was the ocean at night. Like a void.

“She needed help,” you said gently. “That doesn’t make her weak.”

He looked at you like you’d spoken another language. “You don’t get it. You’re— you’re still you. You’re still strong. I’m just— I’m… I’m nothing .”

“You’re not,” you said, but it didn’t reach him. He was too far gone.

After graduation, things fell apart.

The night of the ceremony, you waited for him. Obviously, you figured he wouldn’t be at the ceremony. He hadn’t been enrolled in quite some time. But you waited anyway, in your dress and your cheap flats, on the hood of your friend’s car under the parking lot lights.

He never came.

Two nights later, he called you. You almost didn’t answer. He was sobbing. Rambling. High out of his mind.

“I— I think I hurt somebody,” he slurred. “I don’t— there was glass, and I think— I don’t remember, Y/n, I don’t remember what I did.”

That was the breaking point.

You called an ambulance. You gave them his location. You lied and said you were a neighbor who’d heard screaming. Then you turned off your phone.

You sat in your room, knees pulled to your chest, staring at the shoebox of comics under your bed like it was a coffin.

You didn’t go to see him. Not at the hospital. Not at the rehab center.

You loved him. You always would. But you weren’t a hero. And neither was he.

Chapter Text

You cleaned yourself up.

It wasn’t some grand turning point. No music swelled. No sunrise burst through your window like a promise. You just… woke up one morning, looked in the mirror, and realized you didn’t want to be someone who lived in memories.

So you stopped smoking. You stopped running around with guys who used you, stopped stealing, stopped chasing after people who only showed up when it hurt the most. You still cried sometimes when it rained. You still had dreams where he looked at you the way he used to, like you were his last good thing. But you stopped trying to fix what didn’t want to be saved.

After community college, you applied for internships no one thought you’d get. And somehow, one stuck.

The Stark Foundation. Manhattan. Clean offices, tech so advanced it made your head spin, and a badge with your name on it clipped to your blazer like proof you belonged. You started in community outreach: grant proposals, teen STEM initiatives, program logistics. You were good at it. Not because you were brilliant, or bold, or shiny. But because you worked hard. Because you knew what it felt like to be left behind. And you didn’t want any kid to feel like that again. You left your family back in Sarasota Springs, and charted a path forward. On your own.

Sometimes you walked past the R&D wing and wondered what it would’ve been like, if he’d gotten clean, if he’d believed in something the way he used to believe in superheroes and stories and impossible powers. You imagined him in a lab coat, hands still fidgeting, mind still racing, but focused now building something that might’ve saved the world.

Or maybe he didn’t need to do all that. Maybe he could just be himself.

But you didn’t know what happened to Bob Reynolds. After that last call, you made a promise to yourself: if he wanted you to know where he was, he’d find a way to tell you. And if he didn’t…

Well. You weren’t sure your heart could take the answer anyway.

You still had the shoebox. The comics. The sketches he used to draw for you. Sometimes, on quiet nights, you’d pull them out and whisper his name under your breath, like a prayer or a secret. Then you'd fold the lid shut, tuck the box back under your bed, and go on living. Because some ghosts you carry. And some you let go.

You stayed at the Stark Foundation. Even when the sky split open. Even when half the world turned to dust.

The day the Blip happened, your office emptied like someone had cut the lights in a dream. The city went quiet in a way it never had before. You didn’t lose your parents; they’d already made themselves ghosts long before Thanos did. But your supervisor was gone. Your favorite barista. The kid from the robotics program you’d just gotten funding for.

You stayed because it was all you could do.

The Foundation reeled. Tony was off in space. Pepper was trying to hold what remained together. And you… you filed paperwork for relief funds and wrote speeches you hoped would make someone out there feel a little less helpless.

Then you watched the world shake on its axis again. This time, for the better. For the broken. For the chance to put things back.

And when Tony Stark died saving everyone, you’d pulled the blinds in your office shut and cried. He didn’t know you, not really. You’d met him once—briefly, in a hallway, where he’d complimented your blazer and told you to keep “kicking bureaucratic ass.” But he saved you anyway.

You helped with the aftermath. You coordinated displaced families, sorted chaos into spreadsheets. You worked through your grief in quiet ways, keeping your head down as names filled the walls of the missing. You didn’t let yourself check for his. You didn’t need to. If he was out there, he wasn’t someone the world was keeping track of anymore. You kept working. You got promoted. You traveled. Kenya, Argentina, Norway, Malaysia. Always with a notebook and a tablet, always planning the next youth program, the next tech equity workshop. It made you feel like you were doing something. Like you mattered in a way that didn’t hinge on someone else needing you to.

And then, one muggy night in Kuala Lumpur, everything cracked open again. You’d just finished a panel at a local university, something about disaster recovery and sustainable tech. You were tired, sweating through your blazer, more than ready to get back to your hotel and collapse. You turned a corner near the monorail station. And stopped cold.

He was there.

Standing beneath a flickering sign for a corner store. Gaunt. Older. Shaking as he lit a cigarette with a hand that didn’t want to hold still. His hair was longer, uneven, his jaw thinner than you remembered. His hoodie (black, sleeves swallowing him) was streaked with grime and rain.

But it was him. Bob.

Your lungs forgot how to work. For a second, you were eleven again, behind the bleachers, staring at a boy who looked just as lost as you felt. He was so crumpled. So weathered. So small.

He didn’t see you at first. Not until you whispered, “Bob?”

He flinched. Turned. Blinked hard, like he thought he was hallucinating.

“Y/n?” His voice was rougher now, scratchy and worn thin with time. But it still hit you like a truck.

You nodded. 

“Are you…” he rubbed a fist across his eye, all gangly and young again. “Are you real?” he asked, perhaps dumbly, like a child looking at an angel, and it damn near cracked your heart in two.

You swallowed down the gasp that threatened to escape, and nodded again. “It’s… I’m here for work. I didn’t— I wasn’t expecting—”

He gave a hollow laugh. “Yeah. Me either.”

There was a long silence. 

He scratched the back of his neck, eyes flicking away, down the alley. Already halfway out the moment. “You look… good.”

“You don’t,” you said gently. Not cruel. Just honest.

He smirked, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Guess I don’t.”

You didn’t know what to say. How to ask the thousand questions burning in your chest without lighting him on fire.

So instead, you asked, “Are you hungry?”

He blinked. “What?”

“I was gonna head up to my hotel. There’s a night market on the way. Open stalls, satay, laksa. Come with me. Let me buy you dinner.”

“Oh,” he breathed out, shaking his head. “I don’t know…”

You said his name achingly softly. “Please.”

His eyes flicked to yours, cautious. Like he was trying to figure out if it was a trap. Then, slowly, he nodded.

“Yeah,” he murmured, barely audible. “Okay.”

You turned, and after a moment, you heard him fall in step behind you. His gait was uneven, jittery. You caught him rubbing at his wrist like it itched. But he followed. And just like that, after all the years and silence and space, he was beside you again.

The market glowed like a lantern strung between the buildings, steam curling from metal carts and sizzling griddles. The air was dense with spice and smoke, the scent of charcoal and lemongrass clinging to your skin. Strings of warm bulbs hung overhead, blinking lazily, and a slow electric fan pushed the thick humidity around like soup.

He hovered close but not quite touching, eyes flitting across every cart like he couldn’t focus. You pointed to a plastic table tucked between a noodle vendor and a coconut stand. “Sit. I’ll grab us something.”

“I can—”

“I got it,” you said firmly. “Just… breathe.”

When you returned with two bowls of claypot chicken rice and bottles of cold tea, he hadn’t moved. Just sat hunched, elbows on knees, hands fidgeting between them.

“Here,” you said, handing him a bowl. “Eat. You need it.”

He muttered a quiet thanks and started shoveling rice into his mouth like he hadn’t eaten in days. Maybe he hadn’t.

You watched him for a minute before starting on your own food. The silence between you wasn’t hostile, just taut.

“So…” he said, like the word hurt to say. “What’ve you been up to? I mean… it’s been a while.”

You gave a soft laugh. “Yeah. Like… seven years.”

He winced. You regretted it immediately.

“I work for the Stark Foundation now,” you added, more gently. “Been there since after graduation.” The word left a sour taste in your mouth, remembering that he never finished school, that he never came to graduation, that by the time you graduated, he was already a ghost.

His eyebrows rose a little. “Wow. Seriously?”

You nodded. “Yeah. Started in admin. Kept showing up. Got moved to crisis outreach. I do a lot of logistics. Disaster relief, youth programs. Some tech grants.”

He gave a low whistle. “That’s… damn. That’s really good.”

“It’s not nothing,” you said, taking a sip of your drink. “Keeps me moving.”

He nodded, looking out over the city like he couldn’t quite meet your gaze. “Tony Stark, huh?”

“Yeah,” you said. “He was… he cared. In his own weird way.”

He nodded, but you knew public perception of Tony was always going to be shaky.

“I always knew you’d end up being a superhero,” he said. Tossed it out so casually, so unarguably, and you couldn’t believe it.

“Oh,” you said, shaking your head, “I am not a super hero. I don’t… I barely even interact with any of them. I’m just a corporate drone.”

He hummed, twitchy eyes searching your face. “If you say so.”

Another pause stretched between you. You watched him pick at the condensation on his bottle, peeling it in ragged strips. He let out a breathy laugh, and you couldn’t help the smile forming on your face. You’d forgotten how much you loved his laugh. But you weren’t sure what was funny. You cocked your head to the side, wordlessly asking him to explain.

“It’s just…” he said finally, voice rough. “I dunno. You look like you. Like… more grown-up, obviously. But still you.”

Your smile faded faintly. “You don’t. Not really.”

That made him laugh again—quiet and wrecked and real. “Yeah. That tracks.”

Silence settled again. The elephant in the room padded in, sat between you. The soft hum of traffic filtered in from the main road, scooters zipping past, someone shouting cheerfully from a fruit stall. A breeze moved through, sticky but welcome.

“You scared me,” you said eventually, looking right at him. “That night. The call. The glass. I didn’t know if you were dead or if you’d—”

“I know.” His voice was small, and he wouldn’t meet your eyes. “I know.”

You looked over. He wasn’t eating anymore. Just holding the chopsticks, staring into the bowl. He looked gutted. Guilty in a way that was deeper than shame.

“I didn’t know how to come back from that,” he said. “Didn’t think I deserved to.”

You nodded slowly. “I didn’t think I could help you anymore.”

He nodded too. “You probably couldn’t.”

You let that sit. Let the honesty sting without chasing it away.

“So,” you said, shifting the subject just a little, giving him a way out. “What about you? What’ve you been up to?”

He rubbed at his nose, then shrugged, childlike and unsure. “Here and there. I, uh… I’ve been trying to get clean. Off and on. Mostly off.”

You didn’t say anything.

“I work when I can. Manual stuff. Construction, mostly, or loading docks. Sometimes I pick up gigs doing electrical if someone’s not too picky about paperwork.” He paused. “I’ve been in Malaysia for a couple months. Cheaper here. Easier to disappear.”

You watched him carefully. He was keeping it vague. Scrubbing the truth with steel wool. You could see the outlines of what he didn’t say. The fact that it was definitely easier to find drugs here. The withdrawals. The shelters. The nights he probably didn’t remember. 

“You still draw?” you asked.

His eyes flicked to yours. Surprised. “Sometimes. On napkins. Walls. Stuff I shouldn’t.”

“Superheroes?”

That seemed to shake something loose in him. He looked down, quiet for a long beat.

“Can’t remember the last time I drew a superhero,” he said.

And for a moment, the years fell away. You were back behind the bleachers. Knees brushing. A pencil in his hand and a comic between you.

Still him. Somewhere under it all. Still you.

You were both quiet for a while while you ate. The warmth between you had shifted, gone quieter, heavier. Not bad, just… unsteady. Like standing on an old dock in your hometown and watching the tide roll in. You could feel it rising, even if no one said anything.

Bob polished off his bowl quickly, and declined your offer to get him more. He leaned back in his chair, the angle of his body turned just a little toward you, like muscle memory. Like he didn’t know how not to face you. His eyes searched your face every few seconds, never holding for long. Always slipping away. You remembered that look from when you were sixteen. Before a test. After a nightmare. Just before he cried.

His fingers twitched where they held the bottle, the label almost gone now. He rubbed his thumb over the rim like he was trying to scrub something invisible off.

“I think about that night a lot,” he said. His voice was barely audible above the buzzing of the night. “The… The one on the beach. The way you looked at me.”

You swallowed hard. “Bob…”

“I scared you.” He shook his head. “I didn’t mean to. I mean— I didn’t want to be that person. But I was. I still am, sometimes. And I hate that. I hate that I let it get that bad.”

You reached out, gently, and placed your hand over his where it rested on the table. You could feel him tense under your touch. Like even now, even after all this time, he didn’t think he deserved to be comforted. Like he was still thinking about what his dad said at the hospital.

“You weren’t okay,” you said. “And I was just a kid, too. I didn’t know how to help. I wanted to. I just… I couldn’t.”

He looked up then, and there was something raw in his face, something too vulnerable to look at for long. “You were the only good thing I had,” he said. “And I messed that up.”

“Bob,” you whispered. “You didn’t mess me up.”

His blue eyes stayed on yours, stormy and warm and aching. “No,” he said quietly. “Just me.”

You searched his face, heart in your throat. He looked the same and entirely different. His mouth was still soft, his lashes still long, his features still delicate in that way that made you ache to protect him. But his eyes were harder now. His posture more guarded. He was hardly a man. Just a boy grown into damage, shaped by everything you’d tried to pull him away from.

And still— still — he was Bob. Your Bob.

The same one who used to cry in your arms and draw himself holding your hand while you flew.

“You know,” he said, almost laughing but not quite, “I used to dream about this. Not here, not— not like this. But you. Me. Seeing you again. I never thought you’d actually… I didn’t think you’d want to look at me.”

“I never stopped wondering where you were,” you said. “I just didn’t know if my heart could handle knowing the answer.”

That did it. He shifted forward, slow like the world might stop him— but it didn’t. He reached out, tentative, trembling, and his fingers brushed your cheek, just barely. Like asking permission.

You didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

And then he kissed you.

It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t polished or planned. It was cracked and fragile and tasting faintly of tears, but it was real. His lips against yours were soft, familiar, trembling with a kind of need that had nothing to do with want. It was a need to be known. To be seen. To be forgiven.

You kissed him back, hands sliding to either side of his face, like maybe if you held on tightly enough, you could anchor him here.

In this moment. Alive. Still him.

When he pulled back, his eyes were glassy, like the kiss had broken something open in him he hadn’t meant to show.

“I don’t know how to be someone you can keep,” he whispered. “But… God , I wanted this. I wanted you. And I just don’t think I’ll ever get the chance again.”

You kept your forehead against his. “Then stay. Just for tonight. Stay.”

You took him back to your hotel room because there was nowhere else you wanted to be and nowhere else he could go. He followed you through the sliding glass doors like a ghost you summoned from memory. The room was dim, impersonal, the hum of the AC steady in the background. You weren’t sure which of you closed the door behind you. It didn’t matter.

He stood there for a second, like he was waiting to be told what to do. Like maybe he was already imagining the moment you’d tell him to leave. But you didn’t.

Instead, you stepped in close, your palms resting on either side of his neck, fingers brushing the ends of his messy hair. He exhaled, like he’d been holding it in all night, and tilted his head just slightly so his forehead could bump against yours.

“Are you sure?” he whispered. His voice was trembling. “I don’t want to ruin this. I ruin things.”

You kissed him before he could spiral. You kissed him like it would keep him here, like it would glue him back together. His mouth was soft and slow at first, cautious. Then hungrier. Desperate in a way you understood far too well. His hands found your waist like they used to when you would cry and he would hold you, like he remembered exactly how you fit together.

There was no plan. Just motion. Just aching and years of silence crashing into something warm and real. You stumbled backwards toward the bed, tugging him with you, and he followed like he was afraid you’d disappear if he blinked.

You kissed him again. You couldn’t stop. And he let you. He kissed you like he didn’t deserve it, like every second might be the last, like he was trying to apologize with his mouth and didn’t know how.

Then he twitched. Just slightly. A tremor in his fingers when they brushed your cheek. You felt it, but you didn’t say anything.

He pulled back suddenly, breath catching. “I— I just need a second,” he mumbled, already backing toward the bathroom.

“Okay,” you said, quiet.

The door closed with a soft click. You sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the floor, at your shoes, at nothing.

Minutes passed. Too many.

The pit in your stomach grew heavier, more solid. You knew. You didn’t want to know, but you did. You heard the rustle of plastic, the faint, familiar sound of something clinking against porcelain. You heard him sniffling once, softly. Then nothing.

When he came back out, his eyes were red-rimmed and glassy. His movements looser. Less sharp. You didn’t say anything at first. Neither did he. But he could tell that you knew.

He walked over slowly, barefoot on the carpet, and kneeled in front of you like he was praying. His hands rested on your thighs, so gently you could cry.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t wanna— I just… I couldn’t stop the shaking. I didn’t want to mess this up.”

You cupped his face, and he leaned into your touch like it was sunlight. His eyes closed, lashes fluttering like a boy you used to know. “You didn’t mess it up,” you said softly, even though your chest ached. “But I want you to be okay. Not just tonight. Always.”

He nodded, quick and jerky, like a child being scolded. “I’m trying. I swear, I am. But I’m still so broken. I’m still— God , I don’t want to be this. Not around you.”

He climbed onto the bed beside you, curling against you like he used to on long summer nights when the whole world felt like a secret. His arms wrapped around your waist, his head on your shoulder, and he was trembling again, but not from withdrawal. Not entirely.

You laid there with him in the dim wash of the bedside lamp, his breath warm against your collarbone, his fingers twitching nervously where they rest on your hip. He kissed you again— slow, reverent— like he was memorizing the shape of your mouth, like he was afraid he’d forget it the second you’re gone. Maybe he would.

The first time he touched you, it was with trembling hands and a look in his eyes like he didn’t think he deserved this. Deserved you .

“Are you… are you sure?” he whispered, voice so soft it barely survived the space between your mouths. “I— I— I don’t wanna hurt you, Y/n. I don’t wanna mess this up. I— I mess things up.”

“You’re not messing anything up,” you said, cupping his jaw, brushing your thumb over the faint scar near his lip. The one from the accident. “You’re here. I want this. I want you.”

He nodded, quickly, too many times, like he was trying to talk himself into believing you.

Then he kissed you again, deeper this time. The kind of kiss that makes your chest hurt. The kind that’s soaked in every version of him you’ve ever known: awkward, trembling, sweet. Broken.

The way you came together was nothing like the careless fumbling of your teenage years. It was slower. More aching. Like every touch was a question and every gasp was an answer. He kissed your shoulder. Your neck. Whispered your name into the hollow of your throat like a prayer.

He was nervous. You could feel it in the way his hands shook when he slipped your shirt off, in the way he paused every few seconds to ask if this is okay, if you’re okay, if you’re sure. But there was something urgent underneath it, too. A desperation. Like he needed to feel something real. Something that didn’t burn when it passed through his veins.

And you gave that to him.

You let him fall into you like he was drowning and you were the only air left in the world. You held his face when his eyes started to gloss over, kissed him harder so he remembered where he was. With you. Safe.

When it was over, he curled into your chest like a child. You stroked his damp hair back from his forehead, and he pressed his face to your ribs, hiding.

Then you felt it, slow at first. The hitch in his breath. The tremble in his shoulders.

He was crying.

“Bob,” you whispered, your voice cracking around his name. “Hey. It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

“I— I’m sorry,” he choked out, the words muffled by your skin. “I d-didn’t mean to… I just— fuck, I can’t—” He pulled back, his eyes shining in the low light, cheeks blotched and wet. “I c-can’t do this anymore, I— I can’t keep pretending I’m okay. I’m n-not.”

You sat up slightly, cupping his face, thumbs brushing at his tears. He didn’t flinch away. He just stared up at you like he was waiting to be judged.

“I’m so tired,” he whispered. “I’m tired of feeling like this. Like I’m… like I’m rotting from the inside out. I— I don’t wanna die, Y/n. I know I act like I don’t care, b-but I do. I really do.”

Your heart broke open and spilled everywhere.

“I believe you,” you said. “And I’ll help you. Whatever it takes. You don’t have to do this alone.”

He nodded, his lower lip trembling as he tried to stop crying and utterly failed. “Okay,” he breathed. “O-okay. I— I want help. I want— I want to be better. For me. And… for you.”

You wrapped your arms around him, pulling him in so tightly it felt like maybe the pieces could start to hold together. His tears soaked into your bare chest, but you didn’t let go.

You held him all night.

His breathing evened out eventually, but he never fully drifted off, not really. Every time you shifted or your hand moved to brush hair from his face, his lashes fluttered, like his body didn’t quite trust sleep yet. You kept your fingers in his curls and your arm wrapped securely around his back, skin to skin, as if you could keep him from unraveling by just staying close.

Sometime just before dawn, the light from the city filtered through the slats of the curtains, dull and silvery. He was quiet, eyes open but distant, his face buried just under your chin.

You were the one who broke the silence.

“I still use that superpower you taught me. For sneezing.”

He blinked against your neck. “W-what?” His voice was hoarse, sleep-frayed, but laced with surprise.

You tilted your head, just enough to look at him properly. “Cucumber.”

He squinted slightly, creases forming on his forehead as he tried to remember what the hell you’re talking about. It only took him a moment, before you felt a rush of a breathy laugh leave him. “Cucumber.” The faintest smile tugged at his mouth, still puffy and kissed-pink. “Y-you remembered that?”

You nodded. “Of course I did. You’ve saved me from a lifetime of sneezes, just like you said.”

His smile deepened by a degree, eyes crinkling at the corners. He looked young for a second. Not the man wrecked by whatever he’d put in his body or whatever he’d been running from all these years. Just Bob. Just your Bob.

“I didn’t think anything I did… stuck. Not in a good way, I mean,” he murmured. He looked down then, voice smaller. “Most of what I touch just goes to shit.”

“That’s not true.” But even as you said it, you felt it. The tension. The fear. The way his body twitched under your touch like it couldn’t decide if it wanted to rest or run.

For a moment, he didn’t speak. Just pressed his forehead to your shoulder and breathed you in, like he was trying to hold on to the feeling that maybe, just maybe, he’d done something good once. That maybe he mattered. You held him like that for a long time.

But in the early hours, something shifted. You woke to the sound of the bathroom sink running, too long. The kind of too long that made your chest go cold.

You got up quietly, wrapping the hotel blanket around your shoulders, heart thudding. You knocked once. “Bob?”

No answer. You pushed the door open.

He was slumped against the wall, shirtless and shaking, a small vial in his hand, the contents almost gone. His pupils were too wide, his breaths too shallow.

“Shit,” you whispered, dropping to your knees in front of him. “Bob. Hey. Hey, look at me.”

His eyes fluttered open, unfocused.

“Didn’t wanna— didn’t wanna feel it,” he mumbled. “It’s too loud in my head.”

You felt something in your stomach drop, a slow freefall of panic wrapped in grief. This wasn’t something you could love your way through. You’d known that before. But seeing it like this— seeing him so fragile, so lost, so close to slipping— it made the decision for you.

You wrapped him in the blanket, held him as he shook, whispered soft things until he calmed. Until he could look at you again.

Once he was asleep (if you could call it that, more like his body just giving out) you stood, careful not to jostle him. You grabbed your phone from the nightstand, heart hammering, and stepped into the hallway barefoot, the hotel carpet scratchy beneath your feet.

It was barely past six in New York, but your contact at the Stark Foundation answered. She always did.

“Y/n?” Sandra sounded surprised. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” you lied, swallowing thickly. “I— I need to ask you something. Off the books. Confidential.”

There was a pause. You heard the scrape of a chair, the soft click of a door closing. “Go ahead.”

“I have someone,” you said. “A friend. He’s… he’s not okay. He’s using. I think he almost OD’d tonight.”

She was quiet for a moment. Then, gently, “Do you want to bring him in?”

You leaned your head against the wall. “I don’t even know if he’d let me. But if I could… is there a program?”

“There’s a facility in Vermont we partner with. Private, secure. The kind that doesn’t ask questions and won’t ever make the news. If he wants help, we’ll make room.”

Your voice caught in your throat. “Thank you.”

When you returned to the room, Bob was awake. Sitting on the edge of the bed with the blanket tangled around his waist, hunched and pale, like his bones were too heavy.

He looked up when you walked in, eyes glassy and unsure. “Did I mess everything up?”

You sat down beside him. “No. But I did make a call.”

His face twisted. “What kind of call?”

You kept your voice even, soft. “I talked to someone at the foundation. There’s a place you could go. Somewhere safe. They help people like you, Bob. People who need to… to breathe again.”

He didn’t speak. Just stared at the floor. His hair fell in his face, keeping his eyes shielded from your view. A long, slow silence stretched between you. And then, like a flick being switched, his whole body tensed.

“You— you’re pitying me,” he said suddenly, his voice sharp and cracking. “Jesus, Y/n. I— I knew this would happen. I knew if I let you see me like this, you’d start looking at me like I’m some— some broken thing.”

“I’m not—”

“Yes, you are.” His hands trembled as he stood up, the blanket slipping from his hips, leaving him in just his boxers. “You have this life now. Real . Good . You work for Stark, for Christ’s sake. And I’m just some washed-out junkie in your hotel room.”

“Bob, that’s not—”

“You shouldn’t have called them,” he bit out. His face was flushed now, angry and humiliated. “You shouldn’t be tying yourself to me. I’ll ruin it. I ruin everything. Just like he said I would.”

You blinked. “Who?”

He laughed, a hollow, bitter sound. “Who do you think?”

The air in the room felt suddenly thinner. Like it wasn’t meant to hold the weight of his shame and your desperation at the same time.

“I’m not your project,” he said, backing away like your presence physically hurt him. “I’m not some fucking Stark Foundation sob story.”

“I don’t think of you like that,” you said, your voice cracking, uneven. “You’re not some project , Bob. You’re someone I—” You broke off, pressing your hand to your mouth for a second like you could push the tears back in. “You’re someone I love. And if you don’t do something, I’m going to lose you. Forever this time.”

His face crumpled like he couldn’t stand to hear it. His jaw worked silently, and he shook his head once, then again, harder.

“N-no, you— you’re not—don’t say that.” His voice pitched high with panic. He looked like a cornered animal, like the walls were folding in around him. “D-don’t cry. Please don’t cry. I— I can’t—”

“You almost died,” you said, wiping at your face, voice climbing with intensity. “You know that, right? I just— I found you barely breathing. What if I hadn’t woken up? What if you were alone?”

“I wasn’t gonna die ,” he said, quickly, too quickly, his fingers twitching at his sides. “I— I know what I’m doing. I always know what I’m doing.”

“Bob,” you whispered, “you can’t stop shaking.”

“I know ,” he snapped, and immediately recoiled, flinching from his own voice like it had hit you. He turned away, one hand bracing against the dresser, chest rising and falling in erratic waves. “Y/n, I can’t— I can’t go to some place in the woods. I can’t do that. I can’t be locked up, watched all the time, like I’m— I’m broken.”

“You’re not broken.” You got to your feet, crossed the space between you. “But you are hurting. You’re scared, I get that. But I can’t keep watching you do this to yourself.”

“I don’t want you to watch,” he burst out, stepping back. “That’s the thing. That’s the whole goddamn thing. I left so you wouldn’t have to see me like this. You weren’t supposed to—” He rubbed his face with both hands, voice cracking. “You weren’t supposed to find me.”

“But I did.”

He looked at you then. Really looked. And the expression on his face wasn’t anger, it was terror. Gutted, childlike fear. Like he was back behind the bleachers in those corduroy pants and blue sweatshirt, humiliated to be found.

“I can’t let you follow me down,” he said, quiet now, shaking his head. “I— I already dragged too many people with me. My—” He bit the rest off, jaw clenched tight. “If I go with you, if I let you help, you’ll just… you’ll see what’s under all this. And you’ll hate me.”

“I could never hate you.”

“You should ,” he muttered. “You should have.”

Then he turned to the bed, yanked his jeans off the floor, started shoving his legs through them with frantic, clumsy movements.

“Bob, what are you doing?”

“I have to go,” he said, not meeting your eyes. His fingers fumbled at the button. “I— I can’t do this. I can’t be the thing that ruins your life.”

“You won’t.” You tried to grab his arm. He flinched like you’d burned him. “Listen, I’ll call them back and I’ll tell them you don’t want to go. Please. Please just— just stay. Just until we figure something out—”

“No,” he said, backing away again. He was breathing hard now, shallow and quick, his eyes too wide. “I’ll make everything worse. I always do. You don’t know what it’s like in here—” He tapped a trembling finger to his temple, voice shaking. “It doesn’t shut up. Ever. And when I’m with you, it’s worse because you’re— because you’re good , and I’m not. I’m not.”

He looked at you like you were a superhero. And you’d never felt less like one. Why couldn’t you save him?

He grabbed his shirt from the floor, shoved it over his head. His fingers were shaking so badly he missed the sleeve the first time.

“I love you,” you whispered. “Isn’t that enough?”

His eyes welled again, but he turned away.

“It’s too much,” he said. “That’s the problem.”

And then he was gone.

Chapter Text

You didn’t go after him.

You stood there for a long time, staring at the closed hotel door, his absence louder than any slam. Long enough that the sun began to edge through the blackout curtains. Long enough that your body started to ache from standing so still.

Eventually, you packed. Left the room exactly as you found it. You told the front desk nothing. You left a note with your name and number on the nightstand, in case he came back. You doubted he would.

The flight back to New York felt like a punishment. You kept expecting to look over your shoulder and see him, tousled and bleary, sliding into the seat beside you. But the space beside you stayed empty the whole ride home.

You kept working. You had to. You buried yourself in case studies, grant reviews, policy drafts. You sat through meetings with dignitaries and scientists and the new AI, which kept glitching and calling you ma’am like you were somebody’s mother. You made speeches. Smiled in photos. You even won an award you barely remembered applying for.

And none of it mattered. Because no matter what you did, Bob was still out there. 

Or he wasn’t. That thought snuck in more often than you’d admit, when the world was too quiet: 

What if he’s gone? What if I let him leave and he didn’t make it another night?  

What if the next time your phone rang with an unknown number, it would be a stranger saying they’d found his body in a park, or a shelter, or a gutter somewhere in between? Would anyone even know who to call? Or would they care enough? Did anyone care about him other than you? It filled your stomach and your mouth with acid.

Sandra called once. Just once. A few weeks after. She asked, carefully, if you’d heard anything. If your friend wanted help. If she should keep the place in Vermont on standby. You didn’t know what to tell her. You didn’t know anything at all.

You didn’t tell her about the dreams. You hadn’t told anyone.

They started slow. Fragments at first. A door slamming. Your father’s voice, sharp and mean. A flash of bruised knuckles, broken glass, something cold and red dripping down your arms. You’d wake up gasping, the taste of blood in your mouth that wasn’t real.

Then they got worse.

You were back in the house— his house this time, the one he’d run from— the walls stained and yellow with old smoke, the floors warped with water damage and something stickier. Beer cans littered the counters. The whole place smelled like sweat and smoke.

In the dreams, you were always looking for him.

You’d call his name, but your voice came out wrong— too young, too thin, like it was still yours at twelve. You’d move from room to room, opening doors that led to closets or basements or worse, until you found the one that opened into the dark.

More often than not, he was in the bathtub.

Pale. Still. Blue around the mouth, like he’d been left out in the cold too long.

You’d fall to your knees, shaking, grabbing his shoulders. You’d scream for help, beg him to wake up, shake him until your arms ached, but he never moved. Sometimes his eyes were open, sometimes not. Sometimes he looked like he’d been crying. Sometimes like he’d been hit. Once, you saw a bootprint on his ribs.

You knew whose it was. And then the voice would come.

I told you so.

From behind you, from the walls, from nowhere and everywhere at once.

He was never gonna make it. Not with you around.

Sometimes you turned around and saw his father, leaning in the doorframe, beer in hand, grinning like a wolf. Sometimes it was your own father. Sometimes it was both, side by side, arms crossed like they'd been waiting for you to fail.

You never should’ve tried to help. You made it worse. You let him die.

And then you’d look down and Bob would be gone. Just gone. The body disappeared, a bleeding, inky shadow where he used to be.

You’d wake up with your chest caving in, your pillow damp, the scream still in your throat.

Sometimes you couldn’t go back to sleep for hours. Sometimes you didn’t try.

You got used to the dark. Learned to sit in it. Sometimes, in the silence, you heard his voice— his real voice, from the hotel in Malaysia, not the one from the dreams— saying It’s too much in a tone so broken it made your ribs ache.

Summer bled into fall. The city changed coats. You started sleeping less, working more, moving like forward motion was the only thing that could keep you from collapsing entirely. Some nights you sat on your fire escape, blanket around your shoulders, heart racing like you’d ran a marathon.

You’d watch the city buzz below you— traffic lights blinking through the mist, people shouting on sidewalks, delivery bikes weaving through cabs— and tell yourself he was just one of them. Out there somewhere. Breathing. Moving. Surviving.

But no matter how many times you repeated it, it never sounded real.

He hadn’t called. Not once. No email. No burner number. Nothing on his old social accounts. Hell, you’d even checked the hospitals. Quietly. Carefully. There was a gap now, six months long, and it grew heavier every day, like time itself was a weight you were being asked to carry alone.

And then came the rumors. It started like a joke. Just chatter in the Stark cafeteria, over stale coffee and half-wilted salad bowls.

“OXE Group’s at it again,” Tyler from biotech muttered, nudging a paper across the table. “Malaysia, this time. Some kind of neural optimization trial. Off-book.”

The words Malaysia and neural made your head turn.

“What kind of trial?” you asked, too sharply. It made him blink.

“Just rumors,” he shrugged. “No one’s confirming anything, obviously. But apparently they’re running cognitive enhancement on trauma cases. Deep-tissue reprogramming. Stuff that makes the old Winter Soldier protocols look like kid shit."

The phrase landed like a punch to the throat.

You stared at your hands. “What kind of trauma cases?”

Tyler glanced at you, squinting. “You okay?”

You swallowed. Forced your voice to steady. “Just curious. I thought there was all that government regulation happening with OXE.”

“There is. But you know how it is— money moves faster than ethics. And OXE doesn’t exactly wait around for clearance.”

Everyone laughed at that. Just a dry, cynical chuckle and a few shrugs. You didn’t laugh. Instead, your mind went cold.

Bob, in a warehouse clinic. Bob, strapped to a gurney. Bob, shaking and wild-eyed, desperate for quiet, for relief, for anything. You thought of the way he flinched when touched, the way his hands twitched when he tried to lie. You thought of the look in his eyes that last morning: terror, not at you, but at himself.

You knew how far someone like him would go to make the noise stop.

The worst part was that you couldn’t decide what would be worse. If he was dead— buried in some anonymous grave or left cold in an alley— you could grieve. Eventually. You could mourn what you’d lost and make a place for it. But if he was there, alive and suffering under someone else’s knife? Someone else's control? If he’d handed himself over to the kind of people who looked at pain as potential?

That was worse. Because that meant he hadn’t disappeared. It meant he’d been taken.

And it meant he was still waiting for someone to come find him. But you couldn’t save him. He’d made that much perfectly clear.

So you stopped trying.

You stopped trying to sleep, to hope, to find anything in the day worth holding onto. You moved through hours like they were cotton-stuffed. Ate when someone handed you food. Spoke when spoken to. Every room felt like it had too much air or not enough. You started forgetting things— keys, passwords, the names of people you saw every day. Some nights you woke up in the living room with your shoes still on. Some mornings you didn’t remember falling asleep at all.

The dreams didn’t stop. They just changed. Got quieter. Colder. No more screaming. Just that same empty space where he should have been. A shadow on the floor. A door you couldn’t open. You stopped telling people you were fine. Most of them had stopped asking.

The headlines hit first. CIA Director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine Faces Impeachment Over Black Budget Programs.

At first it felt like background noise. Another scandal. Another fall from grace. But then the words started stacking up in a way that made your skin crawl:

“…undisclosed testing sites… unsanctioned human experimentation… federal security breach under investigation…”

Every word turned your blood colder.

Then came the leak. Grainy footage from a desert compound in Utah. Armed guards. A lab reduced to rubble. Someone screaming just offscreen. A flash of fire, then nothing. The anchor called it an explosion at an OXE containment vault. The internet called it something worse.

There were rumors of one test subject unaccounted for.

Test Subject 036.

You didn’t know how you knew. But you knew.

The feeling bloomed deep in your gut, sick and metallic, like swallowing a mouthful of blood. You stared at the screen, barely breathing. You felt like your whole body had gone underwater. You didn’t move for a long time.

And then Sandra left the file. It was a Friday. Late. Everyone else had gone home. She didn’t say anything. Just walked past your desk like she always did, dropped the manila folder in the center, and kept walking. You didn’t open it at first. Just stared at it. OXE stamped in the corner.

Your fingers trembled as you pulled it open.

There were photos. Bloodwork. Neural scans. Biometric reports. Logs of failed sedation attempts. Lists of medications. A long column of redacted notes.

At the bottom, in clean, clinical print:

Subject 036

Status: Alive

Condition: Post-enhancement stable.

Abilities: BULLETPROOF. FLIGHT. Additional traits undisclosed. Subject adapting beyond original programming parameters. Monitoring advised.

Legal Name: Robert Reynolds

You threw up in your office. Just like the parking lot when you were a kid. When you’d found out about Bob’s accident. That sort of bone-deep, all-consuming dread ran up your spine and spilled itself into the wastebasket.

You wiped your mouth with shaking hands. The lights in your office buzzed.

He was alive .

Bob was alive .

And he was in there, buried beneath layers of sedatives and protocols and whatever they’d done to him, whatever they’d made him into. Bulletproof. Capable of flight. “Adapting beyond programming parameters.” Like he was a machine. Like he was no longer human.

You sat on the floor with the file open beside you until the cleaning crew came through and politely asked if you were okay. You weren’t. But you nodded anyway.

Sandra didn’t look surprised when you showed up at her door. She didn’t look guilty, either. Just… tired. She let you in without a word. Poured you coffee you didn’t drink. Sat across from you at her kitchen table and slid an unmarked drive across the surface.

“I shouldn’t be giving you this,” she said softly.

You didn’t touch it.

“Is he—” Your throat closed. “Is he in their custody?”

Sandra exhaled, slow and deliberate. “Not officially. But yes. He’s being held under what they’re calling ‘containment stewardship.’ OXE claims it’s for the safety of the public. But it’s Valentina’s op. She pulled him out of the Utah site herself.”

You stared at the drive. “Where is he?”

Sandra hesitated. “Somewhere in the Watchtower.”

You blinked. “Avengers Tower?”

“They don’t call it that anymore,” she said, dry. “It’s ‘the Watchtower Initiative’ now. New funding, new oversight. Val’s personal pet project. Technically independent from Stark, but—”

“But it’s good press.”

“But it’s good press,” she agreed.

Your head was spinning.

“He’s not in a cell,” Sandra said carefully. “But he’s not free, either. They’re watching him. Testing him. He hasn’t hurt anyone, but… whatever they did to him, it’s not stable. He’s not stable.”

He never has been , you thought.

“Has he asked for me?”

She didn’t answer.

You nodded, because that was the answer. “Why give me this now?”

“Because if I don’t, no one will,” Sandra said, looking suddenly older than you’d ever seen her. “And because he trusted you once. If there’s anything left of him… it’ll come out for you.”

You slipped the drive into your jacket and stood.

She didn’t stop you. Just said: “Be careful. He’s not who he was.”

You shrugged. “I’m not either.”

Chapter Text

You took the express line to Midtown. Kept your head on a swivel. You hadn’t been back to the Tower since the name change. The building felt wrong now: same bones, different face. Cold steel. The memories of something good buried under shiny new paint.

You made it as far as the elevator before someone clocked you.

“Miss? Do you have clearance for this floor?”

You flashed your badge. Said the name Sandra had given you: “Dr. Anderson, Sentry project oversight committee.”

The guard blinked. His comm crackled. You held your breath.

The guard narrowed his eyes. “One second.”

He turned, murmured something into his earpiece. You couldn’t hear the response, but his posture loosened just slightly. He nodded, typed something into the terminal, then stepped aside.

“Access granted. Oversight offices are on 39.”

“Thanks,” you said, voice steady only by force of will.

The elevator doors slid shut behind you. You exhaled through your nose and pressed for higher access instead— just like the drive instructions had said. The 39th floor was for show. Bob was higher.

Much higher.

The badge wouldn't work there, but you didn’t need it to. Sandra’s drive had contained more than just coordinates. It had codes, loopbacks, blind camera paths. You pulled up the spoofing script on your phone and hit execute. If everything held, you’d have a five-minute dead window between systems. 

The 81st floor was colder. Your stomach had been in knots since the minute you’d entered the building, but now it was worse. Sinking. Acidic. What if he didn’t remember you? What if he did? And what if he hated you?

You passed a reinforced door. Another. Then a retinal scanner. You stopped. Shaky hands reached into your coat. Slid the contact lens on. The scanner blinked. Then chimed green.

The next hallway opened up effortlessly, and you began to experience the creeping sensation that this had all been too easy. You padded down the center of it like a ghost. Your heartbeat was in your ears, thick and sharp, pounding like it had no intention of stopping. You kept walking. Turned one last corner.

Tarps strung up along the ceiling, large groups of contractors flittering around, while all the suits seemed to congregate in the middle of the room. You weren’t quite sure how to comprehend what you were seeing, but it looked like a room inside of the room. Like a movie set, constructed from grey walls with reinforcing beams on the outside.

A large pane of mirrored glass stretched across the entire front side. Opaque on the inside, transparent on yours. You could see everything inside. A glass table and chairs, two twin nightstands on either side of a large bed, and right in the middle of it—

His back was to you, but you’d know that silhouette anywhere. He was slouched over, to the point that people who didn’t know him might think he was much smaller. But it was him.

You could barely breathe. You stepped toward the window, hand half-raised to press against it.

“Funny,” came a voice behind you, syrupy and cool. “You’re later than I expected.”

You turned, dropping your hand, every muscle locking in place.

Valentina Allegra de Fontaine stood five feet away, perfectly coiffed in head-to-toe slate gray. Her lipstick was blood red. A wicked stripe of white streaked through her dark hair. Her eyes were amused.

“I was starting to think you might never show up,” she said sweetly. “But he’s been so... unsettled . I thought a familiar face might help.”

Your mouth felt like sand. “You knew I’d come.”

“Oh, come on,” she laughed, crossing her arms. “Don’t insult us both. I know everything about you. Your file’s fascinating. So loyal . So volatile . So... attached.”

She smiled like an apex predator.

“I’d introduce myself, but I think you know who I am. You’re expecting me to say I’m surprised to see you here, but frankly, we’ve had eyes on you for weeks. Your friend Sandra’s little act of rebellion was almost touching. Brave, even. But ill-advised.”

“I’m not here to start anything,” you said through your teeth. “I just want to see him.”

“And you will.” Her smile sharpened. “But understand this,” she told you, leaning in. “You don’t deserve to. Not after the way you abandoned him back in Florida, and certainly not after you abandoned him again in Malaysia.”

Your blood ran cold. There wasn’t a day that went by, one single dark night, where you didn’t feel guilty for leaving him. And she knew that. It seemed like she really did know everything .

“But lucky for you, “ she continued, cool and calculated. “Robert is very forgiving.”

You flinched at the way she said his name. Like she owned it.

Val stepped aside from the door, gesturing grandly. “Go ahead. He’s awake. He’s been waiting.”

Something in your stomach twisted.

“Just one quick little tip,” she added, voice syrup-slick and venomous. “Do try not to upset him. He’s stronger than he used to be. And a great deal less, well,” she nodded her head to the side, almost annoyed. “Predictable.”

You didn’t answer. You just turned to the door and entered the code. The keypad glowed. The lock disengaged. The door hissed open. And you stepped inside. It sealed behind you with a soft hiss. The noise made you flinch.

The room was dim. Yellow-toned lights tried to simulate warmth, but the chill in the air was immediate, invasive. Not a cell, not quite— no visible restraints, no barred windows— but you could feel the containment in your bones. The walls were smooth and too clean. The kind of sterile quiet that wasn’t meant for living things.

And there he was. Sitting on the edge of the bed, hunched over, fingers knotted in his hair. Shaggy, dark, curled at the ends. His mouth was moving.

You held your breath.

At first glance, you thought he might be crying, but you realized there were no tears. Just ragged, panicked breathing. He was talking to himself. He was mumbling, fast and low, just under his breath, the rhythm of someone caught in a loop. His voice was hoarse and fractured, words tumbling out too fast and too quiet for anyone but himself to understand.

“Bob,” you said, before you could stop yourself.

His whole body jolted. He turned, slowly, like he couldn’t trust what he was hearing. And when his eyes found yours, everything in them collapsed. He shook his head ever-so-slightly.

You inched forward gently, hands raised helplessly in front of you. “Bob, it’s me.”

“...No,” he whispered. “No. You’re not—”

You took another step forward. “It’s me. I swear. I promise you—”

He stared, eyes wide and frantic. His fingers twitched at his sides. “No, no, no— Val said she wouldn’t— she said she wouldn’t let anyone— this is a trick, it has to be—”

“It’s not a trick.”

The lights overhead flickered once.

You continued to move toward him, instinct outpacing fear. You just needed to reach him, to touch him, to tell him it was going to be okay…

“Don’t!” he shouted, and the room shuddered.

The lights flared so brightly you had to squint, and then dimmed sharply, buzzing like dying bees overhead. You swear the sidetable lifted half an inch off the ground before snapping back to the floor.

You froze.

His hands were out in front of him, trembling violently. His whole frame was curled in defense. He looked more like a trapped animal than a person. Like something driven beyond recognition.

“Don’t,” he said again, smaller now. Like the word was breaking apart in his mouth. “Don’t touch me. Please. I can’t— I don’t know what I’ll do— what I’ll be.”

You looked at him. Really took him in. His lips were cracked. There was a wet patch of drool below his lower lip, and sweat stuck to just about every square inch of his skin. Withdrawal, you guessed. You were sure he felt like absolute shit from that alone. He was in a soft grey set of clothing, but he looked far from comfortable. His eyes shimmered faintly, gold under the fluorescents. Not like light. Like energy.

“I hurt them,” he choked out. “The others— Yelena, and— and— and—”

Yelena? you thought. Like the red room assassin? She was on The Stark Foundation’s radar, but it seemed like no one was able to keep adequate tabs on her.

“When they— they touched me— when I— I— I didn’t mean to— I just— they wouldn’t stop— and I don’t— I don’t know how to— I just wanted to help .”

You wanted to run to him. Wanted to pull him into your arms and tell him none of it mattered, not the tests or the powers or the things they made him do. That he was still Bob, still the boy in the corduroy pants and who knew how not to sneeze. But he was shaking so hard now you could hear it in the air around him.

“I can’t feel where I end anymore, and where…” he whispered, eyes pleading. “I’m afraid if you touch me, I’ll disappear. Or you will.”

Your heart cracked clean down the middle. He looked like a ghost of himself. But his voice— God , his voice— it was still him.

You swallowed. Softened your tone. “Okay,” you said. “I won’t touch you.” You slowly sank into the chair next to the bed. “I’ll stay right here.”

He blinked, like he couldn’t process that. His hands lowered half an inch. “You’re really here?”

You nodded. “I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere.”

He let out a sigh, half-relief, half disbelief, and his gaze dropped to his own hands.

Outside the door, you could feel Val watching. You could feel her waiting. And for the first time, you realized: this wasn’t mercy.

It was a test. She wanted to see what he’d do. 

And suddenly you weren’t afraid of what Bob could become. You were afraid of what they were trying to make him.

Chapter Text

The silence stretched for a long time.

You didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just stayed there in the chair next to him, breathing as quietly as you could. The hum of the containment lights buzzed faintly above you. The sound of his ragged breath, slowing with every minute, was the only thing tethering you to the moment.

Finally, his hands lowered from his face. His eyes were rimmed red, like he had been crying earlier. He looked at you like he couldn’t quite believe you hadn’t vanished.

“I don’t know where to start,” he said, voice hoarse.

“Anywhere.”

He swallowed. His gaze dropped to the floor. He was still trembling.

“I stayed in Malaysia,” he said finally. “After you left.” 

You tried to ignore the little twinge in your heart at that word. You really did leave him, didn’t you? 

“I was… I’ll spare you the gory details, but it… it— it wasn’t pretty.”

You didn’t interrupt. You barely breathed.

“I was working at this dock,” he went on, eyes not quite meeting yours. “Just loading ships. No one— no one knew me. No one cared. I didn’t… mess anything up.”

Your throat burned.

He laughed a little, but it was a broken sound. “I— I thought maybe that meant I was doing okay. Just waking up, going to work. Taking up as little space as possible. That’s the best I’d ever done, y’know?”

You didn’t say Bob, that’s not living . You didn’t have to. He knew.

“Then these people came. American. Corporate types, clean shirts and fancy titles. Said they— they were part of an initiative. OXE. I didn’t— I didn’t know what that was, but they said they were looking for candidates. For something important."

You blinked. The name still made your stomach twist.

“They said they were building a program. New kind of hero. Said the world needed solutions. Real ones. Permanent ones. That they could fix me. Help me do something meaningful. Something that mattered.”

He looked at you, and it killed you the way he said it, like a confession.

“And I was… I was so tired of being nothing.”

You didn’t realize you were tearing up until your vision blurred.

“I didn’t ask questions. I should’ve. But they were nice, at first. They made me believe it wasn’t about violence. That it was evolution. That I was helping.” His hands were shaking again. “They asked if I wanted to help ch— change the world. If I— I wanted to be better. And God, I wanted to. You know?”

You did. Because you remembered.

“You were always good,” you whispered. “You didn’t need to prove anything.”

He looked up. His eyes were that exact level of glassy from twelve. From when he was convinced he was nothing . “That’s not true.” He shook his head. His voice cracked. “I mess everything up. Every job. Every town. Every person I’ve known. I— I don’t think I’ve ever left something better than I found it. Not once.”

A tear slipped down your cheek, but you didn’t move closer.

“So I said yes,” he whispered. “Because if they could make me better…maybe— maybe I could do better. Be the guy who actually saves someone. Be— be what you always thought I was.”

You squeezed your eyes shut just for a moment. Jesus , this was all your fault.

“They said it would be quick,” he said. “Easy. Just some light augmentation. I don’t remember most of it. There were injections. Light therapy. Electrodes. I think—” he swallowed. “I think I died . At least once. I felt myself die. I know— I know that sounds stupid.”

You bit down hard on the inside of your cheek.

“And when I woke up,” he said, dazed, like he was reliving it all over again, “It was like… like the darkness was even bigger.”

He looked at his hands, like they were foreign to him.

“They said I’d adapt. That I just needed time. But I didn’t— Everything just felt… more mixed up. Every emotion got louder. I couldn’t tell what was mine and what was… I thought I could hold it in, but I—”

He looked at you, voice breaking.

“There were people. Doctors. In the lab. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to. But I panicked, and they grabbed me, and I—”

He made a helpless motion with his hands. You knew what he wasn’t saying.

“I don’t even… I don’t even understand what happened to them. What I did to them…” He let out another rocky breath. “I didn’t— I didn’t know that would be part of it. I didn’t know how to— One second they were there and the next—” He looked away. “I didn’t stop screaming for hours. I think I broke the soundproofing.”

You wiped at your eyes. It didn’t help.

“I thought if I stayed still, if I— I didn’t let anyone near me, I could keep it in,” he said, curling into himself. “But it’s always humming. It wants to come out. And then they— they— they shot me,” he says, almost like it’s a question, like he can’t remember if it happened. “They shot me like a thousand times—”

“Who shot you?” you asked.

But he barrelled on. “And— and— and— and then I was… I was in the clouds, and…” he took a shaky breath in and out, face crumpling miserably. “I don’t— Y/n, I don’t remember what I did. But I think I hurt everyone again. I just can’t—”

“Bob—”

“And then— and then Val— she said she could help me. That— that she’d keep everyone away. That she wouldn’t let me hurt anyone else. That Yelena, and— and— and John, and Ava, they were—”

“Wait,” you interrupted, trying to catch up with everything he was throwing at you. “Who are— Bob, you gotta help me here. Who are those people?”

He took a small, sharp breath in, and really seemed to mull it over for a while. “They… I don’t— they helped me.” He shook his head, keeping it maddeningly vague. “But Val says they’re not—”

God , you just needed him to hear you. 

“Bob, listen, Val is not—” you started instinctively reaching out to touch his knee, completely forgetting about the situation you were in.

In the half second before your palm made contact with his knee, he yelped, effectively keeping you from making contact. 

“No! Don’t—” His voice was sharp, breathless. Your hand hovered. “ Don’t touch me. Y/n, please , I’ll hurt—”

“Bob,” you pleaded. You lowered your voice as much as you could. “You can’t listen to Val. She’s lying to you. She is not… she’s not someone you can trust.”

Only after the sentence had left your mouth did you realize that probably wasn’t the best thing to say. It probably wasn’t wise to tell Bob, toeing the line of a breakdown, that the person overseeing his new and dangerous powers didn’t have his best interests at heart. He was panicked and paranoid enough as is.

“No, she’s— she’s… You don’t understand,” he told you, eyes squinted in confusion, like you were the one being misled. “She’s helping me.” You felt like you were back in your house, the night he forced himself through your window, hands twitching and voice raised like the man who made him cower.

“Bob—”

“She said you would lie to me.” He was paranoid, and Val was fueling the flame. Sowing seeds of distrust in you . “And she said that you would try to—”

“Bob, listen!” you said, louder, more frantic this time. This was unraveling quicker than you’d thought. “She is lying to you, I promise.”

“No. Don’t—” He shook his head violently. “Don’t say that, don’t—”

But your hand found his knee finally.

It didn’t feel like falling. It felt like snapping. Like being yanked backward through a pane of glass. No pain, just pressure and sound, and then—

You knew this floor. The faded linoleum, cracked in places like old skin. The stale scent of cigarettes and something microwaved too long. A low hum from the living room: your dad’s TV, tuned to the game. You were back.

You hadn’t been here in years. Not like this. 

You turned a corner, and there she was. 

You, but smaller. Maybe six, maybe seven. Years before you met Bob behind the bleachers. Kneeling on the kitchen floor with a crust of sandwich bread in your hand, carefully tearing off the edges.

Winnie, the neighbor’s cat— a frail little gray thing, all bones and round eyes— was curled in front of you, sniffing the food.

You watched it unfold with a knot forming in your throat. You remembered this. You remembered sneaking the food. You remembered why. The neighbor was away. Winnie hadn’t eaten in days. And you didn’t want her to starve. You just wanted to help.

You also remembered the footsteps in the hall. The way your heart dropped.

The child version of you heard them too. You shot up, heart pounding, eyes wide. Panicked.

“No,” you whispered, though it was barely a breath.

You tried to shoo Winnie, tried to nudge her gently behind the fridge with your foot, but in your rush, in your clumsy, naive panic, your foot caught her wrong.

She shrieked. Scrambled. Slammed into the cabinet with a terrible thud before bolting, leaving a smear of guilt behind her.

Then came the voice.

“Are you sneaking food now?” your dad barked from the hallway. “I swear to Christ, girl, if I catch you feeding that damn stray again—”

He stepped into the kitchen. His shadow swallowed the room.

The air was thick. Sticky. Your lungs wouldn’t work right. You tried to run forward, to reach yourself, to grab her, protect her, but you couldn’t move. You yelled out for Bob again, your voice raising in pitch and desperation.

“Look at this!” He gestured at the crumbs on the floor, the fridge still cracked open. “Wasting food like it grows on trees. You think we’re made of money?”

You tried to speak. Little you, lip trembling, eyes wet. “She was hungry…”

“So are we!” he snapped. “But I don’t see anyone bringing me a sandwich.”

He stepped closer. You backed up.

Then came the plate. He plucked one off of the counter and hurled it to the floor, shattering into a million pieces.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you,” he snapped, grabbing your tiny arm— not hard enough to leave a mark, but enough to forcefully toss you toward the pile of shattered glass on the tile. “You dumb goddamn kid, look what you did. Clean that shit up.”

Your stomach turned to ice. Shame burned in your chest like acid. Not because he was yelling. But because you’d hurt her. The little gray cat who trusted you. You hadn’t meant to. You just didn’t want him to find her. You just wanted her to be safe.

Your breathing kicked up, and your fingers shook.

And suddenly, he was there.

Next to you. Just like that.

Bob.

But he wasn’t looking at the memory. He was looking at you. Eyes wide. Wounded. Wrecked.

Then, white light. Silence. You were back in the Tower. On the floor. Gasping for breath.

Bob met your eyes for one second, before flinging himself across the room, pressed into the far corner, horrified.

You sat, hands on the ground, panting, mind racing a mile a minute. You pursed your lips, and brought your fingers up to rub at your forearm, where your father had grabbed your younger self’s arm— like you could still feel it. You blew out a sigh, trying to wrap your mind around what just happened, and the implications of it all. After a moment, you lifted your head up, and looked at him.

“Bob—”

“I told you.” His voice was rough, ragged. But firm. “I told you I would hurt you. Why— why didn’t you listen to me?”

You swallowed. Hard. 

“Because I know you,” you whispered. But the words felt frail now. Too thin to hold the weight of what just happened. You were still shaking. The kitchen was still clinging to you— your dad’s voice ringing in your ears, the crash of the plate like a phantom shiver down your spine. 

You had come here to help him. To be the one person in the world who didn’t see him as dangerous.

Now you weren’t sure which of you was more broken.

He sat curled up in the corner, knuckles white, hair falling over his eyes, which wouldn’t meet yours. “You should go,” he said.

“No,” you said, voice wobbling humiliatingly. This felt like that night in Malaysia all over again, and you couldn’t bear the thought of leaving him.

“You saw it,” he hissed. “You felt it. That wasn’t just memory, that was— that was you back there.” He held his hand out, gesturing toward some unknown space. “That was real for you. And I made you relive it like— like— like it was happening all over again.”

You shook your head frantically, trying to keep him from slipping through your fingertips again. “I don’t… I don’t blame you—”

“You should,” he heaved out.

The door hissed. You whipped around.

Valentina walked in like she owned the floor (she did), all clean lines and calm calculation. Her heels click-clacked against the concrete.

She took one look at you on the floor and smiled.

“Quite the reaction,” she said, voice cool. “But I did warn you.”

Bob stiffened. His expression twisted.

You stood, slowly. “You’ve been watching him?”

“I care about him,” she said. “It’s my responsibility to make sure he’s stable. Safe. Which, as you’ve just experienced firsthand, he’s clearly not.”

“ You set him off,” you snapped.

Val arched a brow. “He told you not to touch him. And you did. You knew the risk, and you did it anyway.” She laughed, vicious smile on display. “I’m sorry, I just don’t see how that’s my fault.”

You opened your mouth, but she stepped between you and Bob, crouching beside him like a mother visiting a sick child. She didn’t touch him. Just looked him dead in the eye.

“See what I mean?” she said softly. “You were right to be afraid. You are dangerous.”

Bob looked away, shame burning red across his cheeks.

“But I can help you control it,” she continued. “I have been helping you. And I will keep helping you, if you let me. Because clearly,” she glanced over her shoulder at you, “the people who used to know you haven’t quite accepted what you are now.”

“Stop it,” you said. Your voice cracked.

Val stood again, her expression all sickening sweetness. “I’m not the enemy here, Y/n. I’m the one keeping him alive. You’re the one who just dragged him into a guilt spiral.”

“You’re manipulating him.”

“I’m giving him structure. Purpose. What exactly are you giving him?”

You stepped forward. “Bob, don’t listen to her, please . She doesn’t care about you, she cares about what you are. What— what she can use you for.”

He was breathing hard now. Sweating. Lost in it.

“You don’t understand, Y/n” he murmured. “You don’t— you don’t get what I am now. I’m not… You don’t know me.”

“I’m trying to save you.”

He looked up at you finally, eyes glassy. “Then why does everything hurt worse when you’re here?”

That shattered something in you.

You didn’t have time to answer. The door opened again, and this time, two OXE security agents stepped in.

Val didn’t even look at them. She just smiled at you. “I think it’s best if we give him a little space,” she said. “Let him recover. Maybe he’ll invite you back when he’s ready. Until then—”

“You’re a monster,” you said.

She leaned in close, so only you could hear her. “No,” she said. “He is.”

The guards moved forward. Bob was still frozen. Shaking.

“I’m sorry, Y/n,” he said weakly.

You were already being pulled back. You didn’t take your eyes off him until the door slid shut. And even then, you kept your hand outstretched.

Chapter Text

The guards flanked you silently, hands lightly on your arms. Not restraining, but firmly guiding, like you were something volatile. A risk. Maybe you were. You couldn’t feel your legs. Could barely hear your own footsteps. The ringing in your ears hadn’t stopped since the moment the vase hit the floor.

You kept thinking about Bob in the corner. His hands shaking. The look in his eyes when he said your name. Like it hurt.

The elevator doors closed behind you. A low hum. A descent. Then the lobby— empty, cold. Somewhere far above, Val was probably already whispering to him again. The guards walked you straight to the front doors of the Watchtower and opened them. No goodbye. No explanation. Just out. You stepped into the overcast afternoon, the door sliding shut behind you with a hiss like a final word.

For a second, you just stood there. The wind hit your face. You were still breathing hard, your body reacting like it was under attack, even though the danger was somewhere you wanted to be.

You fumbled for your phone, numb fingers sliding clumsily across the screen. You typed out and sent several quick messages to Sandra:

Sandra, please. I need to talk to you. Urgent.

It’s Bob. He’s not okay.

Please answer.

Nothing. You stared at the screen, blinking hard. You texted again.

I know you’re probably busy. But I saw what he can do. What she’s making him believe he is.

He needs help. Not the kind Val is giving him.

Still nothing.

You swore under your breath and started walking. The sky was overcast, smothering the city in that strange, bruised gray. The wind whipped past your ears, loud enough to drown out the warning bells in your head.

It wasn’t until you were standing in your bedroom that you realized your feet had carried you there.

The door swung shut behind you with a quiet click. You didn’t turn on the lights. Just stood there in the shadows, dizzy and numb. Then, without thinking, you sank to the floor. Your knees hit the carpet hard. You reached under the bed with trembling fingers and fished blindly until your hand brushed the familiar worn corner of the shoebox. The one that had made it with you on every move to every single apartment you ever lived in.

The cardboard had softened with age, the edges frayed, the lid warped from being opened and closed so many times. Birthdays. Stormy nights. Nights where you had too much to drink, or got humiliatingly sentimental for any number of reasons.

Your fingers fumbled the lid off. There they were. All his old comics. Your heart lurched.

You reached for the first one. The cover was drawn in bright Crayola markers, his handwriting crooked and childish, both of your names.

You flipped it open. There the two of you were, crudely drawn but triumphant, saving Florida from a robot shaped like a trash can. His panels were always crammed with words and arrows and sound effects.

In one issue, you’d saved the mayor of Sarasota Springs. In the next one, you’d stopped an asteroid from hitting the planet. In one particularly elaborate storyline, Bob had created a whole multiverse of evil clones that only you could outsmart.

And in every single one— every single one — he made you the hero.

Tears welled up, hot and helpless. He used to believe in you. In himself . He used to believe that the world could be saved. That he could be saved.

You wiped your eyes on your sleeve and kept flipping, faster now, desperate to feel that old rhythm of his imagination. But somewhere around Issue #9, the lines got sloppier. The colors darker. The story shifted.

You and Bob were still partners. But now there were more shadows. Villains with vague, menacing powers. Pages where Bob lost control. Where he said something like I didn’t mean to or It’s happening again .

You flipped again. Issue #13. You knew this one too well. You always skipped it. He’d drawn it toward the end of junior year. Your character, drawn with a cape and a mean right hook, was running away from Bob.

He’d drawn you crying.

You let the comic fall open in your lap. It was eerie, the way he’d always known. Even before any of this happened, before Malaysia, before the powers, he knew. That something inside him felt off. That he might hurt someone one day.

You pressed your fingers to your lips, trying not to cry out loud.

You had no idea who to call. Sandra wasn’t answering your texts or calls, and you weren’t sure who you could trust at the Stark Foundation. You weren't sure which channels hadn't already been compromised by Val.

The Avengers were gone. Disbanded. Some of them dead, others scattered. You weren’t even sure if Nick Fury was real anymore. There was no emergency number for when your childhood best friend became a living weapon.

Your hand hovered over your phone. You didn’t know who to warn. You didn’t know who would believe you. Who could do anything about it.

You clutched the comic to your chest.

“I don’t know what to do,” you whispered aloud to the empty room. “I don’t know how to fix this.”

You sat back, wiped your face again, and reached for another comic in the box. The last page was always the same. You and Bob, standing side by side. And under it, in his scratchy handwriting:

Heroes never quit on each other.

And suddenly, like someone had yanked the thread of your thoughts, you were back. Sixteen. The tail end of July. Summer heat radiating off the pavement, the kind that made the air feel syrupy and still. The fan in your room buzzed uselessly. Everything was quiet— until it wasn’t.

Bob burst through the front door without knocking, nearly tripping over the pile of shoes, his arms full and his eyes too bright. He’d already dropped out of school at this point, and you hardly saw him.

“I— I brought shakes—” he panted, holding out two Styrofoam cups like peace offerings, like trophies, like bribes. “One for you and one for me and also I— um—” he sniffed, “I stayed up, I didn’t sleep, I couldn’t sleep, but it’s okay, it’s good, I— I figured it all out—”

You blinked. “Bob?”

“I— I did it,” he rushed on, breathless. “The new arc. The— um, the comic. It’s— it’s huge. Like, cosmic-level huge. Time skips and evil doubles and you— you ride a motorcycle made of lightning and I think I made the villain too sad but— I mean— that’s kind of the point, right? Tragedy builds stakes—”

He dropped to the floor in your room without waiting for permission, already unpacking a mess of papers from his backpack— some with panels drawn in, some with just messy pencil notes and half-erased arrows, some completely blank but gripped like sacred texts.

“Bob,” you said gently, crouching beside him. “Did you sleep at all ?”

He laughed. A strange, high sound. “Nope. Nope, nope. Didn’t need to. I— I had to get it down while I had it. Before it left.”

You watched his hands. They were shaking. Fast and jerky as he sorted through pages, explaining plot twists faster than you could follow. But his eyes never really met yours.

“I think— um, I think this one’s the best,” he said, quieter, holding up a page where you were drawn with a cape, flying through space. “I made you do the thing— uh— you know, the punch through the asteroid? Like in issue five? I made it better. Cleaner. I mean, I had no clue what I was doing back then; I was a stupid kid who didn’t know how to make things look cool. You— you looked cool this time, I promise.”

Your heart ached. He was vibrating with something bigger than him, like he’d been plugged directly into lightning. And you knew, deep down, it wouldn’t last. You sat beside him the rest of the night anyway, coloring in the panels he passed you, trying to keep him tethered to the ground with your quiet attention.

The next day was hot, humid, and oppressive. You knew you needed to check on him. You didn’t text. You didn’t call. You just went to his house.

His house was quiet when you got there. No music. No movement. Just stillness that settled in your gut like a stone. The only thing keeping you from completely spiraling was the fact that his dad’s car wasn’t parked in the driveway.

You knocked, waited, then pushed the door open gently. It wasn’t locked.

Inside smelled like old paper and something sharper underneath— chemical. Not strong, but familiar. He was there on the floor again, but this time not surrounded by pages. Just curled sideways against the wall, knees up, hoodie pulled over his head, the drawstrings clenched so tight it shaded most of his face.

“Bob?” you said softly.

He flinched. You crossed the room slowly and sank to the floor beside him. Not touching. Just there.

“…What are you doing here?” he mumbled, voice thick and slurred at the edges. His words came slower today, not clipped and electric like yesterday.

You inhaled sharply through your nose. This part never got easier, especially not when you knew he’d do everything to push you away. To keep you away from his mess. 

“I just…” you shook your head helplessly. “I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

He pulled the hood back halfway and rubbed at his eyes. They were puffy. His skin pale. You could tell right away: the drop had come hard. It always did. His pupils were pinpricks. His gaze slid past you instead of landing.

“I’m fine, Y/n.” He tapped his temple too hard. “Just can’t fuckin’ remember anything ,” he said, voice bitter and angry. “Don’t even know where I was yesterday.”

You swallowed. Nodded. “You came to my house.” He stared at the ceiling, jaw tight. “With milkshakes. You showed me the new—”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. 

“Bob—”

“It’s just gonna keep being like this. My whole life, it’s… Nothing matters.” His voice cracked at the end. He flinched like the words hurt to say, like he could already hear someone— maybe his dad, maybe himself— mocking him for it.

“ Nothing matters,” he said again, quieter this time. “I— I get… I get good for a second, and then it’s like— like it melts. I wake up and it’s gone, like my head ate it. And then I’m just here again. Fuckin’ nothing.” He jabbed two fingers against his temple, too hard. Again. Like he wanted to crack it open and let the awful spill out. “Nothing in here but noise . And it never fucking stops. Worthless.”

You blinked back sudden tears. Your throat burned.

“That’s not true,” you whispered.

“It is,” he snapped, voice jumping in pitch like a wire snapped inside him. “You don’t— you don’t get it, okay? You can’t. I’m not—” His hands flailed, grabbed at the air, then curled into fists. “I’m not a person like you. You get up and— and you go to class, and you talk to actual fucking people, and you go places and I— I ’m just this... thing that sometimes looks human.”

He was spiraling and you could feel it. Like standing too close to the edge of a whirlpool. It scared you, how fast he unraveled when he went under. How angry it made him, how scared you were to say the wrong thing and lose him completely.

He jerked away from the wall suddenly— sharp, fast— and sat up, legs drawn in, hands pulling at the sleeves of his hoodie like he was trying to disappear inside it.

“You don’t get it,” he muttered, almost spitting the words out. “I try. I try so fucking hard and it’s still wrong. I lose whole days, and I don’t even know what I said or what I did, and everyone just looks at me like I’m— like I’m crazy or something.”

“I’m not everyone,” you said, quietly.

He laughed. Hollow. No humor.

“You should be. You should be like— like everyone else who gives up. ‘Cause I’m not— I’m not better. I never get better.”

He stood suddenly, pacing the cramped space like he couldn’t stand being still. He kicked over a half-filled bin of old markers, flinched at the sound they made clattering across the floor, then sank back down again as if the rage had burned out too fast.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said again, softer this time. Like a mantra. “None of it does. I get one good day and then three where I feel like I’m drowning. And you— God , you— you sit there like it’s your job to pull me out of it, and I— I can’t keep being this heavy. I can’t— can’t keep breaking things just because you feel guilty enough to show up.”

You opened your mouth, but no sound came out. Because he meant it. He wasn’t trying to hurt you. He was trying to let you go before he thought he’d wreck you too. And that was worse, somehow.

He scrubbed at his face again, and you could see it: how raw he looked beneath the surface of his skin, like anything could make him shatter.

“Bob,” you whispered, finally.

He didn’t answer.

“You made something yesterday,” you went on, even though your throat was tight. “Something good.”

He scoffed, a sound so small it barely counted. “I don’t even remember it.”

“I do.”

He turned away, jaw clenched. “I didn’t— it wasn’t real. None of it’s real.”

“It was,” you said, firmer this time. “It is. You didn’t dream it. You did that. You made something beautiful, even when everything felt like shit.”

His shoulders hitched. You could hear it in the way he breathed— uneven, like he was trying not to cry but couldn’t quite stop it.

Then, slowly, his hand reached toward the nearest crumpled page on the floor. His fingers hovered above it, shaking, uncertain, then picked it up. It was a smeared, half-colored panel. You, mid-air, face fierce, fist cocked back with stardust trailing behind you.

His lips parted. No sound came.

Then, in a voice so sad, you could’ve tricked yourself into thinking he was eleven again, “...I think the villain was sad. I think— I think he forgot who he was.”

You nodded, choking on the lump in your throat.

“And I think,” you said softly, “he needed someone to remind him.”

Bob looked at you. Really looked at you this time.

And it wasn’t a full return, not even close. But something in his eyes flickered back to life. A pilot light refusing to go out. He clutched the paper tighter, like it anchored him to the floor, to the moment, to you.

“…I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I— I don’t mean to make you worry all the time. I just— I don’t know how to be okay. I— I’m trying. But it’s like— I never got the instructions.”

“I know,” you whispered back. “I know.”

You didn’t touch him. You didn’t pull him into a hug or make a promise you weren’t sure you could keep. You just stayed there, shoulder to shoulder on the floor. Breathing in the same air. Letting the silence be enough.

The memory faded as quick as it came, and you brushed the tears from your face, shoebox unpacked in front of you.

Your breath hitched. You didn’t know what your next move was. But you knew one thing. 

You weren’t quitting. Not on Bob. Not yet.

You didn’t change. Didn’t grab a jacket. You just grabbed the comic— Issue #1— and folded it gently into your back pocket like it might anchor you. Like it might protect you. Like it might save him.

Then you ran. Out the door, down the stairs. The city didn’t wait for you to figure out what you were doing. It never did. But the whole time you moved— through the thinning evening crowds, down into the subway tunnels— you kept hearing his voice in your head:

I don’t wanna be a hero. I just wanna survive.

I can’t remember the last time I drew a super hero.

Why does everything hurt worse when you’re here?

The train screeched into the station, too fast, too loud. You boarded with the rest of the half-dazed crowd. Shoulders bumping. Eyes on the floor. You were barely breathing.

Every stop felt like it took hours.

When you surfaced in Midtown, it was colder than before. The wind had picked up. The clouds above looked darker, low and angry. You pulled your sleeves down over your fists and turned toward the Watchtower, squinting up at it. The plan— if you could even call it that— was vague: get there, get to Bob, talk to him. Remind him who he was. Who you were. Before Val could erase the last of that.

But you didn’t make it a block.

It started with the screaming. You froze mid-step. People were turning— looking down the street. Someone cried out.

And then someone disappeared. Not like they ducked away or ran. Not like they fled. They disappeared .

One moment a man stood there, holding a coffee. The next, a shadow on the pavement. The cup hit the concrete and rolled.

More screaming now. Someone grabbed your arm. “What the hell is happening?!”

You shook them off, heart pounding, shoving forward against the forming crowd. Cars skidded to stops. Horns blared. People ran. And more shadows bloomed on the sidewalk like stains.

You pushed through to the center of the commotion just as someone yelled, “Up there!”

You looked up. And your heart dropped out of your chest.

There he was. Floating above the skyline like a god or a ghost, a black silhouette against the storm-gray clouds.

Bob. You were sure of it. Cloaked entirely in darkness, all you could make out was the outline of his body, and two pinpricks of light where his eyes should’ve been. Light rippled in the air around him like a heatwave. The air hummed with it, wrong and electric, like the whole city was being held underwater.

His hand was outstretched toward the ground, and you had no doubt that he was the one creating shadows.

You took a step forward, mouth dry.

And then, his attention turned to you. Even from hundreds of feet above you, you could tell.

His voice split the air— loud, gravelly , pained:

“Y/n?”

Your name. Spoken like a question. Like it hurt him to say it.

You opened your mouth.

And the world went black.

Chapter Text

Suddenly the air was heavy and the lights were dim. You knew where you were before the hallway even came into focus. You didn’t need to see the familiar water stain on the ceiling or the crooked family photo on the wall. You didn’t need the rising pitch of your father’s voice from the next room. Your body knew.

Your body remembered.

You felt the cold tile under your feet. You heard the cat screech.

“No,” you gasped. “No— no, not again—”

You tried to turn, to run, but the hall behind you stretched into nothing. Endless wallpaper. Endless footsteps approaching. The corner loomed. Your breath caught.

Your father’s voice. “I swear to Christ, girl—”

Your child self flinched.

“Bob,” you whispered. “Please make it stop.”

He stepped forward. Towering. Angry.

And you— small and afraid old again— stood frozen, shoulders curled like you could disappear. You knew what came next. The insults. The shatter.

You lunged for her. “Move! Run!” But your feet were stuck.

Like you were anchored to the floor. You couldn’t reach her. Couldn’t shield her. Couldn’t stop what came next.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you,” he barked.

The younger you flinched as he raised his voice again, and again, louder, until the whole house seemed to tremble. Until it wasn’t just words anymore, but the walls closing in.

“Bob!” you screamed. “Please— Bob, get me out!”

Then, you heard his voice. Far away. Distant. Threaded through the cracks in the house like a draft from an open window.

“I didn’t want this… I didn’t want her to see this again…”

It didn’t sound like him, not really. It was softer. Guttural. Like he was choking on the words. Like he was talking to himself.

“She shouldn’t be here. I didn’t mean to— I can’t—”

“Bob?” you gasped, twisting toward the sound. You couldn’t see him, but he was close. Somewhere beyond the walls, through the next room, maybe just around the corner if you could move—

You pushed against whatever force was holding you in place. Your limbs felt thick, syrupy, your lungs two seconds from collapsing. The house groaned again as your father's footsteps came closer.

“She was safe. She was supposed to be safe. You weren’t supposed to—”

The shadows deepened. The air crackled.

“It’s broken. I broke it. I keep breaking it—”

“BOB!” you screamed again. Louder than you’ve ever screamed in your life.

The kitchen window shattered inward with a shriek of glass.

Wind tore through the room, papers and photos spiraling. The illusion trembled, then fractured. For a second, you thought you saw his face flash in the glass: tear-streaked, straining, like he was trying to pull you out.

You landed in a new environment. Now you were inside someone’s car. Leather seats. Music you hated playing too loud. The smell of cologne and sweat.

“No— no, please no,” you begged.

You watched, again, a younger version of you, this time at seventeen, as Marcus Hudson trailed his hand up your thigh, even though you’d said no three times already. His voice was slick with smugness as he trailed his mouth along your neck. “What’s the problem, princess? You liked the attention last week.”

Your younger self shoved him off, but the seatbelt was locked, the handle wouldn’t budge. 

You remembered in that moment, Bob’s voice from the night of the fistfight: “Why are you doing this?... The guys who treat you like shit. Why are you letting them near you?” 

You were stuck. Trapped. Held in place by something deeper than fear: shame. That stupid, gnawing shame that it was your fault. That you'd let him convince you. That you'd said yes to the drive. That you’d kept going back to him.

And you— present day you— were stuck in the backseat. Once again, unable to intervene.

“God, you’re such a little tease,” he sneered, grabbing your sixteen year old self’s jaw forcefully. “You play innocent, but you want it. You just don’t wanna be called what you are.”

You screamed for someone. Anyone. You kicked, tried to break the window, but your limbs moved like syrup, and your voice was swallowed by the car, like the darkness itself was listening.

You shut your eyes again. “BOB!”

And when you opened your eyes again, it was to the sharp smell of sweat and gasoline and crushed-up energy drinks. The dash was covered in ash, and empty pill bottles rolled at your feet.

The seat beneath you was cracked faux leather, sticking to the backs of your thighs. The windows were rolled down halfway, letting in the muggy summer night, and the streetlights stuttered past in blurs of yellow and white.

You turned your head, slow, heart already sinking.

Bob was behind the wheel. You were in his old car.

Still baby-faced, but with a hollowness under his eyes that hadn’t been there when you used to watch cartoons in his basement. His jaw was clenched tight. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel.

There was a half-empty pill bottle in the cupholder.

You looked down and saw your younger self curled in the passenger seat beside him— shoulders tense, arms crossed tight over her chest like a shield. There was a tear on the knee of her jeans. Her eyeliner was smudged. Her phone screen was cracked in one corner.

He had just picked you up.

You knew this night. You remembered the call— how your voice cracked when you told him Marcus had thrown you out of his car two neighborhoods over, left you on the curb in the cold. You hadn’t even cried. You were too numb for that. Just gave him the address and curled up on the sidewalk with your arms wrapped around yourself, pretending you weren’t shaking.

And then the engine pulled up. The window rolled down.

“Get in,” he’d said, voice hoarse.

You remembered the way Bob didn’t even ask questions. He just came.

But he shouldn’t have.

“Bob,” younger you said, voice brittle, “you’re not okay to drive.”

He didn’t answer at first.

His eyes were locked on the road, too wide, too glassy, like he was trying to focus on lines that kept swimming out of reach. His fingers tapped erratically against the steering wheel— twitching, urgent, like his body couldn’t keep still even if he wanted it to.

“ Bob .” Younger-you’s voice cracked. “Please. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have made you— I shouldn't... Just pull over, I can—”

“I’m fine,” he said. A little too fast. A little too loud.

The car swerved slightly as he overcorrected. You could see the tension climbing up his arms, his jaw working furiously as he tried to keep it together. But the bottle in the cupholder trembled with every bump in the road. And he couldn’t stop blinking, like the lights were too bright, the world too loud.

“Bob, pull over ,” younger-you said, gripping the door handle. “I mean it. You’re scaring me.”

“I said I’m fine!” he snapped, slamming the heel of his hand against the steering wheel. The horn blared for a second, sharp and angry.

Younger-you flinched so hard her head hit the window. “Jesus—”

“ I’ve got it ,” Bob said again, but now he sounded like he was trying to convince himself. “I’ve got it . I’m— I’m always the one who’s got it, right? That’s what I do. That’s what I’m good at. I fix things.”

“Bob…” she whispered, voice shaking. “You’re going to kill us.”

He laughed. A short, brittle bark. “Can’t kill what’s already dead, Y/n.”

You couldn’t take it.

You were screaming. Beating your fists against the window. “BOB! Get me out of here!” You didn’t care that he couldn’t hear you. “ Please !”

You hit the glass harder. And harder. But you were stuck. Watching. Always watching.

“I called you because I trusted you!” younger-you was shouting now, twisting in the seat, desperate. “You promised you wouldn’t do this anymore! You promised!”

“I’m still here, aren’t I?” Bob hissed through clenched teeth. “I showed up. When no one else did. Just like always.”

The world outside the car was spinning past faster now. Stoplights blurred red and gold. Street signs bent and warped like heat mirages. The lane lines shimmered, bending like they were melting right off the asphalt.

And Bob’s hands were shaking. His whole body was shaking.

He didn’t see the red light. He didn’t see the cross traffic.

“BOB!” younger-you screamed—

And you shattered.

The real you, present-day, panicked, desperate you slammed your fists into the rear window one more time and this time, it gave. A spray of shattered safety glass burst outward as your body crashed through it, propelled by a force that didn’t feel entirely your own.

You hit the floor. Hard . 

Tiled again, but different this time. Cold, not just in the way that prickled your skin. No, this was colder than that. This was the kind of cold that settled in your marrow, that made your teeth ache, and your stomach coil tight with dread. It radiated up through your palms and knees like the floor itself was feeding on you, like it had been waiting for you to come back.

You knew the second your knees hit it: this was the worst room of all.

Chapter Text

The fluorescent light above buzzed, low and sickly, casting everything in a jaundiced tint. The bathroom smelled faintly of bleach and something rotting beneath it. Beige. Sterile. Like it was built to be easy to wipe down. There were streaks on the mirror. Handprints on the sink. Something darker on the floor. You followed it— already knowing where it led.

The bathtub. He was in the bathtub.

White porcelain. A slow drip from the faucet. A figure slumped inside, half-shadowed by the curtain that hung limply to the side. You collapsed to the floor and crawled forward, slipping in something that might’ve been water. Or vomit. Or blood. You didn’t stop. You couldn’t stop. You reached the tub and gripped the side.

“Bob?” you whispered, even though you already knew.

You pulled back the curtain. And there he was.

Bob’s body lay curled into the side of the tub, like he’d slid there slowly. His head rested awkwardly on the rim, curls plastered to his forehead, jaw slack. His mouth hung slightly open, lips tinged with the sickly purple-blue of someone who hadn’t taken a breath in too long. One arm dangled over the edge of the tub, the fingers curled just so, also tinted blue at the tips.

His shirt was soaked through. The empty pill bottle lay on its side beside the toilet, the label too water-damaged to read.

Your worst, recurring nightmare— come to life.

You couldn’t breathe.

“No,” you whispered. “No, no, no—”

You hauled yourself up and reached for his neck with shaking fingers.

Cold. Still. 

Your voice cracked into something unrecognizable. A guttural sob clawed its way out of your chest as you pulled yourself over the lip of the tub and collapsed half-on-top of him, grabbing his face in both hands, trying to cradle it.

His head lolled to the side like a doll’s.

“Wake up,” you begged. “ Bob, please, please , I didn’t mean to— I was just trying to help, I didn’t want this, I swear to God, just open your eyes, just— look at me—”

You pressed your forehead to his, trying to warm him. Trying to will breath into his lungs. You clutched him tighter, curled around his body like you could keep him from slipping any further away. Your hands slid in the shallow water— lukewarm now, gone murky with whatever had soaked through his clothes.

And then you saw it. A piece of folded paper on the bathmat. You reached for it with a wet hand that barely worked. Your name scrawled on the outside in a handwriting you knew as well as your own. The same handwriting that accompanied every sketch of the two of you flying hand in hand. You reached with shaking fingers. Your vision blurred, burned. You unfolded it.

“I’m sorry I made everything worse.”

Your breath caught in your throat and didn’t come back. You could feel it all folding in— your ribs, your lungs, your heart.

This was your fault . This was your worst fear, finally made real.

You killed him.

You cradled him in your lap, rocking him like something sacred. Something broken. You whispered apologies into his hair, into the curve of his neck, over and over until the words bled together. Until they became just sound. Just noise.

And still, he didn’t move.

This was what the void wanted. Not death, necessarily. Regret. Helplessness. To trap you here. To show you every moment you couldn’t fix. A perfectly preserved moment of agony, one you’d carry with you until the end of everything.

The lights began to flicker. Not the kind of flickering you associate with dying bulbs, or power surges, or natural forces.

This was different. It was purposeful.

The fluorescent hum twisted low, then high, like static teasing its way into a scream. The walls of the bathroom buckled. Not physically— no cracks or creaks— but reality around you began to bend. A ripple through the air, like heat on pavement, except it was ice that clawed its way up your spine.

You clutched Bob’s body tighter. Closed your eyes. Buried your face in his chest.

But you weren’t alone anymore.

The shadows deepened around the edges of the room. They crept in like ink spilled into water, staining the corners, the cracks between tiles, the air itself. They pooled into something thicker. Darker. Until they weren’t shadows anymore, but presence.

Something ancient. Watching. Knowing.

“Touching, really,” said a voice.

You didn’t look up. It didn’t matter. He didn’t need you to.

“You always were good at this part,” the voice said. Deeper now. Grainy and slick, like gravel poured through honey. “The tears and trembling. The performance. Crying just the right amount to look innocent, to look kind. But it’s a little late for that, isn’t it, Y/n?”

Your eyes snapped open.

Across the room, the shadows formed him. Not Bob— not exactly— but something that wore his shape. Something stronger. Sleeker. Cloaked in pitch and hollow starlight. A mockery of his frame, eyes like bottomless pits.

He’d told you about this being’s presence, back on the beach in your hometown. But something about his new powers meant it had a shape. It had a name. 

The Void, made human. Or at least human enough.

It stepped closer, slow and deliberate.

“Remember when you two first met?” he asked conversationally. “God, what were you— seven? Eight? Behind the bleachers? You couldn’t handle a little shouting from your dad, while Bob’s nearly killed him.” He spit out a bitter laugh. “Pathetic.”

The Void smiled. A mouthful of teeth that shimmered sickly white.

“And then, Bob had the bravery to take on Marcus Hudson just for slapping you around a little. And how did you repay him, huh? You made him feel worthless, and you ran right back to Marcus. Over.” He stepped closer, “And over.” Another step. “And over again.”

You tightened your grip on Bob’s body, as if it might block the words, as if your hands could shield him from this.

The Void cocked his head. “And yet… where were you, when he needed you?”

“Stop.”

“Oh no, please— by all means, let’s go down the list,” the Void said, spreading his arms in mock invitation. “You left him to rot in Florida, remember? After his arrest, after the fallout, you kept going with your perfect little life and tried to forget the mess he’d become.”

“That’s not true—”

“Then Malaysia,” he said, slower now. Like it was savoring it. “He’d given you all of him. He’d cried to you. He’d told you he needed help. And. You. Left.”

You shook your head, tears burning down your cheeks now, hot and fast.

“You could’ve been there. You could’ve been the one who kept him from slipping. But you didn’t. Because deep down, you know what I know: he’s not worth saving.”

Your back hit the wall. Cold tile. Nowhere left to go.

“He’s dangerous,” the Void said, softer now. “Broken. Just like his father. Just like yours. The anger, the guilt, the self-hate. You saw it firsthand. And you still thought you could fix it.” He chuckled. “You and your savior complex.”

You shook your head. “He’s not his father.”

“No,” the Void said, eyes glinting. “He’s worse. Because he had someone who loved him. And he still ended up like this.”

You clenched your fists.

The Void took another step forward, voice dipping to a murmur. “And what about you, Y/n? Who exactly are you saving? Your friend? The child version of yourself you still can’t forgive for not fighting back? Or maybe…”

He leaned in close. You could feel the cold off him.

“…maybe you’re just trying to prove you’re not the reason everyone leaves.”

Your stomach twisted.

“You really think you're going to fix this?” he said, and the grin curled cruel. “You think your little plea is going to pull him from the abyss?”

You stepped forward. “Bob, please— if you’re still in there, if you can hear me— I’m here. I’m not leaving you again. I swear it.”

The Void’s smile faded.

“Oh, he’s gone,” he said flatly. “You broke him. Didn’t even stick around long enough to bury  him. And all that’s left now… is me.”

The shadows coiled tighter, wrapping around the edges of your vision, your mind, your ribs.

He crouched in front of you, inches from your face. “Tell me, Y/n. How many times do you think he almost died before you actually did something?”

You didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

The Void tilted his head. “Ten? Twenty?” His grin widened again, impossibly so. “But that’s the thing with people like you. You love the broken boys. Until the moment they’re too broken to be charming. Then you leave.”

You stared at the body in the tub.

“You think there’s anything in there?” the Void asked, voice lilting. “That shell? He’s not in there anymore. You know he’s not. You’ve felt it.”

“Shut up,” you rasped.

But he kept going. Relentless. “You say you want to save people, but you couldn’t even save yourself. You still wake up with your father’s voice in your head, don’t you? Still flinch at your own reflection. Still wonder if maybe, just maybe, you deserved it all.”

You bit your lip so hard it bled.

The Void straightened slowly, looking down on you like a god sculpted from shadow. “You failed him. And guess what?”

He leaned in; you felt his cold presence inches from your face.

“You always will.”

The words landed like stones in your chest. Heavy. Familiar. You closed your eyes. The pain swelled, sharp and crushing.

“I can take it away,” the Void said, gentler now. Enticing. He knelt behind you, hands not quite touching your shoulders, but close. “The grief. The guilt. All that noise in your head. I can make it stop.” His voice dipped, soft as lullaby. “All you have to do is let go.”

You were shaking now. Every part of you trembling from some deep place you’d buried for too long.

“Just say it,” he whispered. “Say you’re done. Say you were never meant to be a hero. Say you were never worthy.”

The word “hero” lodged a memory from your brain, a loose pebble in the wreckage. Your hand, without thinking, slipped into your back pocket. Your fingers found the soft, worn edges of the comic book you’d brought with you. Issue #1. 

You stared down at Bob’s sunken face, the pale stillness of it. His mouth slightly parted, like he was about to say something. Like he still could. You unfolded it with trembling hands, cradling it open like it might fall apart. Like you might.

You flipped to the final panel.

There it was. The line he ended every issue with. Every single one, no matter how messy or uncertain the story had been:

"Heroes never quit on each other."

The words blurred through your tears. Your breath caught. Your whole chest cracked open.

Because he meant it. He’d always meant it.

“I’m not letting go,” you rasped, chest heaving. “I just… I just want to hold him.” 

The Void’s head cocked at you.

A beat of silence passed. Then another.

Then, something shifted. Not in the room, but beyond it. A sound, faint and strange, reached your ears. Muffled. Like voices through thick walls. One of them— your breath caught in your throat— sounded like Bob.

Too distant to make out the words, but something in the cadence, in the grit and gravel of it, tugged at you. Other voices followed— more than one— faint and overlapping. Urgent. Alive. And the light in the room seemed to lift, just barely. You blinked hard, staring at the body in your arms, but he didn’t move. His chest didn’t rise. His mouth didn’t shift. It hadn’t come from here.

You didn’t move. You didn’t speak. Neither did the Void. The shadows quivered at the edges of the room, a tremble that deepened into cracks. Like something outside was pressing against them. Pushing in.

You looked at the comic again. That single line.

"Heroes never quit on each other."

You swallowed the sob in your throat, leaned down, and kissed Bob’s forehead, as gently as you could.

“I love you,” you whispered. “I love you, I love you, I love you, and I’m sorry. I should’ve told you a thousand times before this. I should’ve stayed. But I’m here now, and I’m not letting go. You don’t get to quit on me, and I’m sure as hell not quitting on you.”

You didn’t see the moment the Void disappeared— only felt it, the way a nightmare slips loose from your skin the instant you wake. The presence was gone. No hiss of retreat, no last word, no burst of rage. Just gone.

Your body shook. Not just from cold, not just from fear, but from the unbearable ache of everything you’d refused to feel. Everything you’d shoved down and buried. The tears came hard and violent, your chest wracked with sobs that stole the breath from your lungs. You cradled him, rocked him like you could keep his soul tethered, like love might be enough this time, even if it never had been before. Even if it had always been too late.

But then, from somewhere distant, beneath the weight of your grief, you heard it. A voice.

“You don’t touch her!”

Just like at Marcus Hudson’s party in high school. Out on the lawn. It tore through the air like lightning. Familiar, furious. Undeniably Bob.

Your head snapped up. But the room hadn’t changed. Bob’s body still lay heavy and unmoving in your arms, lips parted, eyes shut. Cold. Silent.

And yet—

There it was again. Distant, but clearer now.

“I won’t hurt her!”

You turned, heart pounding, and your eyes locked on the old mirror across the room— cracked along one corner, streaked in a haze of grime. But the reflection wasn’t yours. Wasn’t the tub. Wasn’t this rotting shadow-drenched place.

It was a room. White walls, high-tech lab equipment stacked on shelves, glass shattered and papers scattered. 

And Bob. Alive.

He was fury made flesh. Bloodied, sweating, teeth bared. His fists pounded into the thing in front of him— the Void. Bob’s eyes were wild, cracked with something frayed and feral. He was screaming, every hit a word:

“She— doesn’t— belong— to— you!”

He continued to pummel the Void, and your heart dropped as you saw inky black start crawl up his legs. 

“Stop!” you cried out, lunging toward the mirror, slamming your palm to the cold glass. “Bob, please— stop!”

He didn’t hear you. Or maybe he couldn’t. He looked lost to it— pure rage, pure anguish, like something inside him had finally shattered and left only this behind. Eyes glassy, forehead wet, droll dripping from the corners of his mouth again. His fists didn’t slow. The darkness kept crawling. Up his calves, over his thighs. Clinging to him, feeding on the fury.

“Bob, please! This is what it wants!” Your voice cracked on the edge of a sob. “You have to stop!”

His fist paused midair.

His shoulders heaved with breath. But his head slowly turned, eyes scanning, searching, seeing.

He saw you.

And you swore, in that fraction of a second, his entire body broke open. Crumpled under the weight of it. He staggered back like he couldn’t believe what he was looking at. Like you were too much. Too impossible. Too real.

His mouth opened. “You’re—” He didn’t finish. Couldn’t.

The image of you distracted him, distracted the Void enough to loosen the grip on the others. Shapes emerged behind him, running— blurs of movement and familiar voices shouting his name. The blonde girl reached him first, arms thrown tight around his chest, grounding him. Then two men. Then more. You couldn’t make out their faces from the grimy, fogged up mirror, but they held him. They clung to him like anchors, like they’d been searching for him forever. His arms, finally, moved— gripping them back like he didn’t believe they were real.

You smiled. Or tried to.

And then… A breath.  You didn’t take it. The world did.

The shadows evaporated like smoke torn by wind, sucked backward into the corners and cracks like something reversing. The cold faded. The flickering stopped.

You blinked, and you were outside. The bathtub was gone. The walls were gone. The ceiling above you had become the open sky, heavy with clouds that no longer pressed down on your chest like tombstones. The asphalt beneath you was real.

The shadows were retreating still, slithering back under rocks and behind trees. Whatever realm you’d been pulled into, it was spitting you out now, unwilling— or unable— to hold you.

You looked down, and found your arms empty. The nightmare version of Bob was gone. You weren’t sure whether to be relieved or devastated. The real Bob was out here somewhere, right? Your hands hovered for a moment, trembling in the absence. Like your body didn’t understand he wasn’t still there. Like it couldn’t comprehend the space that loss carved into you, the vacuum of it.

You scrambled to your feet, chest still heaving, heart in your throat.

And then you saw them. People. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds, stumbling into the streets around you. Strangers, dazed and disoriented, blinking like they’d just woken from a nightmare they didn’t remember. They clung to each other, to light poles, to the edges of buildings. Some of them fell to their knees. Others cried out names. Children. Partners. Friends.

A man across the street crumpled into a sob as he wrapped his arms around a teenage girl who looked like she hadn’t breathed in days. A woman on the curb screamed with joy, sob-laughing as she kissed her husband’s face again and again, like trying to confirm he was real.

All of them had come back from something. All of them had returned.

But Bob— he wasn’t here.

Chapter Text

Your feet started moving before your mind caught up, half-stumbling down the street, eyes scanning every face that turned your way. “Bob?” you called, hoarse. “Bob!”

No one answered.

You kept moving. Kept turning corners and calling his name, growing more breathless, more desperate. Every second that passed, the possibility of him being truly gone twisted tighter around your ribs. Had you imagined it? That voice in the dark, the vision of him through the mirror, had it only been a trick? Another lie? The Void had vanished, but maybe that was part of it. Maybe that’s what it did. It let you hope, just long enough to break you again.

You stopped at an intersection, gasping for air, your legs weak. Cars were still abandoned in the street. Glass littered the sidewalk. Sirens wailed distantly. 

Somewhere to your left, you heard someone scream, “It’s Captain America!”, only to be met with an annoyed “No it’s not!”

You spun. Your heart stopped.

A block and a half down, standing just off to the side of a makeshift press conference, flanked by bright lights and cameras and reporters screaming questions, was Bob.

Alive.

Messy-haired and pale, and— Christ—  in that blue sweatshirt and corduroy pants you met him in all those years ago. You’d never forget it.

Upright. Breathing. Clapping for the people lined up next to him, all looking like they’d fought a god. You recognized them from behind the mirror in the Void; the ones who hugged him, who pulled him from the brink, who anchored him. This must be Yelena and the others. You recognized The Winter Soldier and that one guy who was Captain America for like two weeks, but the others not so much. 

And in front of them, standing at the podium, Val, cool and poised as she delivered something to the cameras. Your blood boiled with the need to strangle her, to get Bob as far away from her as possible…

But none of that mattered more than him . You didn’t think. You just ran.

Dodging people, broken glass, the churn of sirens. Your legs were aching, lungs scraping for air, but you didn’t stop, didn’t slow. Your vision tunneled, everything else shrinking down to that one flickering shape. That goddamn blue sweatshirt and those corduroy pants. Bob. Alive. Standing. Clapping politely like he hadn’t just crawled out of hell. Like he hadn’t torn the world apart trying to protect you.

He turned just as you reached him.

And the moment his eyes landed on you, the air punched out of him. His hands dropped. His mouth opened. He froze completely, like his brain couldn’t process what he was seeing.

You didn’t wait for him to speak. You hit him full-force, arms locking around his shoulders, burying your face in the side of his neck. You felt his body seize, breath catch.

And then— he melted.

You tried your best to ignore the flashbulbs going off around you, and the murmur of the surrounding crowd.

“You’re here,” he gasped, like the words were being dragged out of his chest. “Why are you…” His arms came up slowly, hesitantly. “ How are you here?” His voice was hoarse and broken around the edges. “Are— are you real?”

It sent a dull pang through your heart; an echo of what he asked you in Malaysia.

You leaned back, cupped his jaw, his face flushed and clammy. “It’s me,” you whispered. “I’m here.”

He didn’t move. His eyes flicked around you, then behind you, then back again—wide, unfocused, searching. “I don’t… I don’t understand,” he said. “Val had you… Didn’t I…?”

You grabbed both of his hands. They were cold, but warmer than they were in the bathtub. “You don’t remember?”

His jaw worked silently. He looked down at your joined hands like he was seeing them for the first time. “I— I was in the tower,” he said slowly, as if trying to recall a dream mid-sentence. “And then you were there, and—” he paused, regret filling his face. “I made you— I’m so sorry—”

“It’s okay,” you said quickly, shaking your head, squeezing his fingers, attempting to ground him.

“And then… I don’t know. I don’t know how I got here. I don’t remember anything.” His voice cracked. “Oh my God. What did I do?”

“Hey, hey—” you brought his hand to your chest. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

But he was already shaking his head, panicked. “I— I must’ve— something happened. I felt something happen. Something big. But it’s like… like my brain won’t let me look at it. It’s just gone."

You recognized that look. The dazed confusion. The stuttering, fragmented recall. It hit you all at once. This was one of the swings. You’d seen the hollow-eyed aftermath of his worst crashes before. This wasn’t just exhaustion or fear. This was his brain shielding him, and punishing him all at once.

Your heart broke cleanly in your chest.

“I blacked out, didn’t I?” he asked, barely above a whisper. “I— Jesus, did I hurt someone? Did I hurt you ?” His eyes locked on yours, terrified. “Did I do something awful and just erase it? I felt like I did something wrong—”

You crushed him in a hug before he could spiral further.

He froze again. And then, slowly, cautiously, he hugged you back. His whole body trembled against yours. He leaned into you like he didn’t trust the ground, like you were the only stable thing in the world.

You didn’t bother telling him about what you saw. About the bathtub. What good would that do right now? He wasn’t dead. He was here, in front of you, holding on tight. Maybe one day you’d talk about it all, but you were suddenly very unhurried in your pursuit to unpack more trauma.

You just held him tighter.

“I don’t know what I did,” he whispered into your hair. “But I know it was bad. I can feel it. It feels like… like it’s hiding from me because I don’t want to see it. And I—” His voice cracked. “I’m so sorry about what happened at the tower, Y/n. I know I hurt you, and—”

“You didn’t,” you said quickly, pulling back just enough to cup his face. “You didn’t hurt me, Bob.”

His breath hitched.

“I love you,” you said again, fiercer now. “You hear me? No more running. No more apologizing. No more trying to fight all this alone. I’m not giving up on you.”

Bob’s hands were still on you. One on your back, the other cupping the side of your face like he couldn’t believe you were real. And you both seemed to realize at the same time… 

That he was touching you .

And there was no nightmare dimension, no turning you into a shadow. In fact, there was no fear at all. Just warmth. Just you. Just him. It hit you like a tidal wave. He wasn’t hurting you. He wasn’t hurting anyone . He was warm and solid and safe, and you didn’t have to be afraid anymore. Of losing him. Of touching him. Of loving him.

And just like that, something inside you broke open.

You surged up and kissed him.

You poured everything into it: your fear, your grief, your guilt, the hours spent screaming in the dark for him to come back. All of it.

He froze, just for a second. Just long enough to register the shock in the way his breath caught, the soft, stunned sound he made against your lips.

Then he kissed you back. Fiercely.

Bob kissed you back like a man pulled from the wreckage of his own body, like he’d never tasted something so vital in his life. His hand slid to the back of your neck, holding you like he needed the contact to breathe, and you clutched at the fabric of that stupid old blue sweatshirt like it was the only thing anchoring you to this plane of existence. His other hand cupped your jaw, thumb brushing away the wet trail your tears had left.

Around you, the crowd reacted. A wave of surprised murmurings and a few claps broke out. Camera flashes went off all around you again.

From the stage, Valentina barely missed a beat at the mic. She glanced your way, eyes calculating, and then smiled smoothly to the press. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the kind of unbreakable human connection that keeps this world turning. Love. Hope. And the protection of people like them.” She gestured toward the team behind her with a flourish. “That’s why we need heroes who fight not for politics, but for people. For each other. This is the power of the New Avengers.”

You broke away from his lips. Your blood went cold. Your eyes flicked to her. To the way she smiled, like she hadn’t just torn a man apart and stitched him back together with her name in the seams.

Your hands dropped from Bob’s chest, your heart thundering. You turned fully, stepping toward the podium, toward her.

“Don’t,” Bob said quietly behind you. But you were already walking.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” you barked, voice sharp enough to slice through the crowd noise.

Valentina paused, just slightly. “Oh, honey. Let’s not do this here.”

“You used him,” you seethed. “You broke him and you called it strategy.”

Valentina’s eyes flicked briefly toward the crowd before she smoothed her smile again. “And yet he’s here. Standing. Breathing. I’d say it worked out rather well.” 

She turned her attention back to the cameras. “Young lovers have a habit of being temperamental, don’t they?” A hesitant ripple of laughs passed through the crowd. “And it’s been a long, hard day for all—”

You lunged.

You barely made it halfway before a blur of black tactical gear stepped between you and Val. The blonde woman from before. Short hair windswept and piecey, small cuts littered along her face.

She yanked you back by the shoulder and spun you around in one swift, practiced move.

“Okay, okay, enough of that,” she muttered, accent thick, already dragging you away back through the black curtain, away from the prying eyes of the crowd and their cameras. 

“Let me go!” you grunted, thrashing, still too livid to think straight. 

“Sure. Right after you tell me how you planned to spin ‘punching a high-ranking official on live television’ into a good headline,” She snapped, muscling you along like you weighed nothing. Bob stumbled after you both, pale and wide-eyed.

The van door was yanked open. She practically tossed you in, then slid in after.

“She used him like a weapon. Like some—some puppet—”

“I know,” she said, low and sharp. “But this isn’t the place. You want to help him? Then stay smart. Stay alive. Do you want to be sedated? Because I promise you, they will do it.”

You stared at her, breathless, trembling.

“She owns the stage right now,” she continued. “Let her bask. We’ve got her right where we want her— blinded by her own spotlight. That’s when people make mistakes.”

Bob climbed in after you, quiet, his hands still clenched and shaking.

“I’m sorry,” you said finally, still panting. “I just— I couldn’t listen to her use you like that. Not again.”

Bob’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. “I didn’t ask her to. I swear, I didn’t even know— half the time I didn’t even know where I was.”

“I know,” you said, your voice cracking. “That’s what makes it worse.”

The blonde woman let out a breath, one that sounded half tired, half amused. “Okay, lovebirds,” she said, leaning back with a raised brow. “I’m thrilled you found each other again, very sweet. But I’ve got about five million questions and exactly zero patience. So let’s get a few things straight.”

Bob blinked, still breathless, his fingers flexing. “Uh— Yelena, this is—”

“The childhood sweetheart,” she observed, nodding at you. Heat crept across your cheeks. “Yes, I’m familiar.” She leaned forward, tone cooling. “Now listen carefully: if you want real change, you have to play the game. That means letting Val think she’s winning, even while we dig under her feet. She wants a spectacle? Fine. Let her have it. Meanwhile, we use her own press cycle to get what we want— what we need .”

Your brows furrowed. “So that’s the plan? We just smile and nod?”

“No,” Yelena said. “ You smile, nod, and then you tell me everything. Because whatever happened to Bob in that place? However you pulled him back? I need to understand it. We need to. Before they twist it into some neat little myth.”

You gave a breathy, shaky laugh. “I mean, it feels like it was mostly you all,” you said. “You’re the ones that got him back. So… Thank you. For not letting him… disappear.”

She sobered a little, eyes flicking to Bob. “Actually, he did most of the work. But you—” she nodded to you, eyes narrowing slightly, like she was trying to solve a puzzle—“you helped. I heard what you said. Before. It pulled him out.”

Bob’s hand found yours for real this time, fingers interlacing. “I wouldn’t’ve made it if she hadn’t…” He trailed off, eyes glancing to your joined hands.

Yelena studied the two of you for a long beat. Then, with a sigh that was too fond for someone trying to seem tough, she muttered, “Disgusting.”

You laughed again, shocked at how easily she fell into ribbing you. Like a friend you’ve known all your life.

Before you could reply, the van door opened again. Someone else stepped in, cool and composed as ever, holding a tablet tucked under one arm. “Apologies for interrupting the reunion,” said the woman who’d been coordinating security during Valentina’s speech. She approached you and Bob, no-nonsense and sharp-eyed. “But we’re gonna get you moving.  We’ve arranged accommodations for all of you.”

Bob’s brow furrowed. “All of us?”

“Yes,” the assistant said. “The room has already been secured and cleared.”

Bob shook his head slightly, disoriented. “Wait— me too? I thought—”

“Listen,” she said gently, “no one’s letting you go anywhere alone.”

“She’s right,” Yelena said, matter-of-fact. “Everyone’s too scared to let you out of their sight.”

The assistant gave Yelena a quick look but didn’t disagree.

Bob looked at you, brows still pinched. “Well, then Y/n’s coming with me. Wherever I go, she goes.”

The assistant didn’t flinch. “She’s part of it too.”

You stilled. Bob tilted his head to the side in confusion.

“Uh— What does that mean?” you asked, wariness creeping into your voice. Your fingers tightened around Bob’s hand. “I didn’t… I didn’t sign up for anything.”

“You didn’t have to,” she said evenly. “Val’s been keeping tabs on you. And you survived the Void. That makes you part of the narrative, whether you like it or not.”

You looked to Yelena for help, but her expression had gone unreadable. A soldier’s mask.

“Also, hi,” the assistant added. “I’m Mel.”

You nodded politely at her. “And this narrative… Valentina’s plans…” you said, voice low. “What exactly do they involve?”

Mel smiled diplomatically, almost apologetically. “You’ll be debriefed. For now, rest. Regroup. You’ve earned that.”

But the dread was already pooling in your gut. You looked at Bob. He looked exhausted. Fragile. And whatever game Valentina was playing, you weren’t leaving him to face it alone.

You gave a tiny nod. “Okay. But don’t think I trust any of you.”

Mel’s expression didn’t change. “Noted.”

Yelena let out a short, almost approving breath. “You’ll fit in just fine.”

Bob didn’t say anything. Just pulled your hand tighter into his, and didn’t let go.

Yelena started to talk with Mel— something about where they were taking you, since the Watchtower clearly needed a bit of construction before it housed a team of superheroes.

You exchanged a glance with Bob. He looked even paler in the dim light of the van, his jaw tense, his eyes refusing to settle. He looked like he was trying to hold still in his own body.

You leaned in closer to him, voice gentle. “I still can’t believe it.”

He looked at you, confused.

“You have powers,” you said softly, in awe. “Super powers.”

“ Super powers ,” he scoffed, shaking his head. “The… the sneeze thing, from when we were kids,” he met your eyes, something soft passing through them. “That was a superpower.” He rubbed at his eye with his fist, reminding you of that first time you met him under the bleachers, but the weight of the world was on his shoulders in a very real way now. “These… These aren’t powers.” He took in a sharp breath and passed it back out. “This is a curse.”

The van rumbled as it pulled away from the curb, the city lights fading behind you, replaced by the sterile glow of emergency floodlamps and blinking barricades. Somewhere in the distance, the press conference still buzzed on— Val’s voice carried like a lullaby meant to soothe the masses. But inside the van, it was quiet. Just the hum of the road and the weight of everything that had happened.

You kept your hand in Bob’s, thumb brushing the ridge of his knuckle, grounding him.

He was still staring at the floor. “They’re— they’re gonna use me,” he murmured. “Whatever I have inside me… they’re gonna twist it into something ugly. They already did. And I let them.”

“Hey,” you said, your voice firmer now. “Look at me.”

He did, slowly, reluctantly, like he expected to see disappointment in your face.

Instead, you gave him the smallest smile. “You remember how all your comics used to end?”

His brow furrowed. “The comics?”

You nodded. Then, reaching behind you, you pulled the paper from your back pocket and carefully unfolded it.

Issue #1. The cover was worn, creased from years of handling, but the pencil lines were unmistakable.

He blinked, stunned. “No way…” His eyes glistened in the dim light. “I… I can’t believe you kept that.”

You nodded. “I kept all of them.”

A tiny, disbelieving laugh escaped him, choked and rough. “All of them?”

You nodded. “I loved them,” you said, thumbing over the wrinkled cover. “Still do. I used to reread them when I missed you. When things got bad. You always ended them with the same line.”

Bob looked at you then, eyes wide and flickering.

Then you reached over, tapping the bottom corner of the comic, right beneath the final panel. You said it gently, like you were offering it back to him:

“Heroes never quit on each other.”

The silence after that felt thick, suspended in amber.

“You always believed that,” you whispered. “Even when everything went to hell. Even when I was a dick, even when no one believed in either of us, even when you didn’t know who you were, even when you thought you were alone…” You shook your head, in disbelief at everything the world had thrown at you, and the fact that you were lucky enough to still have him here, now, in front of you. “You didn’t quit. Not on yourself. Not on me. Not on anyone.”

He was crying before he realized it, tears slipping silently down his cheeks. His hand was trembling in yours.

“You’re a hero, Bob,” you said, voice steady now. “You always were. Powers or no powers.”

His jaw moved, but he couldn’t speak. He just leaned forward until his forehead rested against yours, his breath hitching in the dark, the comic still pressed between your palms.

And for a while, you just stayed like that: together in the quiet hum of the van, the world outside still turning, the future uncertain. But in this moment, he knew— because you told him, because you showed him— that he wasn’t lost.

Not as long as you were here.