Chapter Text
Morgan started planning to leave home two days after their thirteenth birthday. They had considered the idea before, usually after their parents finished an impassioned, self-righteous speech on justice or the news reported another villain’s crushing defeat by one of their hero relatives with the villain’s death as a footnote. However, they didn’t start planning until after their powers came in.
Specifically, they started planning their escape 36 hours after their birthday, 40 hours after discovering their powers, and 14 hours of sleep after enduring their mother’s desperate spree of experiments and training as the Sterlings tried to find a way to turn Morgan’s simple power into something “worthy” of the Sterling legacy. Coincidently, the beginning of their planning coincided with the end of their desperate quest for parental approval at the risk of their own health and sanity.
The Sterlings had children because it was the thing to do. The public liked seeing their heroes get a happy ending, and nothing said happily ever after like a perfectly staged Christmas card with 2.5 kids and a dog. As a toddler less than half their height, Morgan counted Chad as the 0.5th kid. Their parents presumably agreed, since their father had a vasectomy soon after Chad’s birth.
For the first few years of life, Morgan felt like ornamentation. They had a large family of capital G “Good” people with Good parents who were “very busy saving Capital City, sweetheart. Much too busy to play right now”. This meant they were mostly raised by a collection of slightly less busy aunts, uncles, and older cousins. It was only around first grade that Morgan learned the other reason the Sterling heroes had children.
According to their mother, “Six is plenty old enough to start learning how to defend yourself and others. It is important to start training early if you want to be able to uphold our legacy, sweetheart. After all, we do have a Sterling reputation”.
This sentiment was repeated often over the years, first to them and then, six years later, to Diego. At three years old, Chad was still too young to start training, but Morgan knew it was only a matter of time until their littlest sibling heard their first legacy talk.
Morgan’s first escape plan had been revised many times over the years, sometimes to the point of scrapping it and starting over. The one part that never changed was the people Morgan planned to take with them. It made their own life harder and was probably incredibly stupid of them, but if Morgan was going to escape the family legacy, they would be taking their siblings with them.