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50 years.
50 years since Supergroom disappeared from Brussels.
50 years since the GAÏA building was erected.
And more importantly… 50 years since Spirou disappeared without a trace.
He looked as hard as he could. Searched the earth for any sign of his dearest friend, his soulmate. Feeling utterly incomplete without him. Not knowing whether or not he was safe or dead in a pit somewhere.
No, Spirou wouldn’t die somewhere without a last hurrah,
And Fantasio couldn’t resign himself to any fate without knowing what happened to him.
When Supergroom showed up, along with Hunter and Centaur, there was… a spark of hope. Of adoration, a slight sense of safety. The two had disappeared on the same day
“Perhaps you had the same enemies!”
That was his likely explanation.
A darker part of him suggested… in words he wouldn’t dare to verbalize: “Maybe he was in a freezer somewhere too. Nothing but a rotten popsicle.”
When he suggested to the superhero that maybe, just maybe, his missing friend’s disappearance was connected to his. Maybe he had an answer! But all he did was give him this… slightly worried look. Did he not think he noticed? This pity he’s had… that he’s had etched across his face every time he looks at the elderly adventurer.
“Rhhmmm… a strange coincidence”
Just a bit after, he whispered something to Hunter. And Fantasio couldn’t quite catch the words. All he could sense was the pity, the secrecy.
What do you know? Just tell me something, anything.
A few hours later, they recovered the blueprints of the time machine the Count and Aurelien designed. Another spark of hope… the hero’s could fix this, fix everything.
They could save Spirou.
But that wouldn’t be done until the morning, and after they spoke to GAIA of course.
They earned their rest, all 5 of them (yes, Redwing counted. How he missed Spip as well… him having disappeared alongside his beloved owner)
Supergroom didn’t seem to be resting well. Something weighed on him heavily (and it must not be comfortable to sleep with a mask and hat on), he merely stared off into space.
And Fantasio couldn’t help but watch him do such. It was odd… his memory of the hero specifically, while he cherished much of what he lost in the past, he couldn’t recall if this is exactly how he looked back then. Back 50 years ago. He was frozen in time… so surely he’s barely aged a day.
“Got something on your mind?” He tentatively asked, making the hero jump for a second before turning to him.
“Oh, it’s- it’s nothing, don’t worry. Just get your rest.” Supergroom attempted to reassure him, but it didn’t work.
“I can’t sleep either. So we’re in the same boat.” The old man moved over to sit next to him, and he couldn’t help but notice the way the other man tensed for a moment.
“I’ve just had a long day, is all. I can hardly catch a break these days… I won’t either when I can go back home…” He hesitantly spoke, trying to avoid Fantasio's gaze.
“Haven’t we all! Besides, when we send you back to the right time you’ll have your friends again. You have those, yeah? Hunter, Champignac, …Fantastik?”
“…I guess so. But I’d rather not drag anybody into these sorts of things. I already feel bad for dragging Spip- er… Redwing here with me. Though he’s saved my butt a few times aha…” The elderly man’s heart nearly skipped a beat hearing that familiar voice say such a familiar name. Sometimes Supergroom just sounded so much like his old friend.
“I nearly forgot, you both named your squirrels Spip! Oho… everything still reminds me of him.” They both knew who he meant.
The bellhop-themed hero finally turned to look at him, his gaze feeling so distant yet scrutinizing his every feature.
“He really meant so much to you?”
“Of course. I already told you, he's my best friend. Nobody could've replaced him.” Even though technically he tried before, when Spirou had grown distant… leaving Fantasio to try and refill that void. At some point, he admitted to himself that was part of his motivation of trying to be Fantastik. To fight alongside ginger bellhops was starting to seem like what truly made his heart pump. “Sometimes I wonder… if he’d even recognize me now.”
He laughed, it was a thin white tablecloth over the pain. It barely hid the wood grain beneath.
“I did.” Supergroom stated, before quickly clarifying, “So he would too.”
In an odd display of intimacy between the two men, his hand came up to cradle the cheek of that wrinkled bearded face. Holding it tenderly.
“Even if the years caught up to you, you're still clearly Fantasio.”
“I only remember meeting you over the phone once, back then. You really recognized me so fast?”
Supergroom didn't respond. Just stared and retracted his hand slowly.
“Did we know each other? Would I recognize you?”
“...Much too well. I don't… I don't think you could handle the truth of this.”
“I’ve been dying to know what’s under that mask. What more do you have to lose?”
“Exactly, you’ll get a heart attack and keel over. Or go insane! I can't have that on my conscience.”
“Unless you're some eldritch abomination under there, it won't send me anywhere near that edge.”
“You’re saying that now but you have no idea…”
“Please, just grant an old man this one wish” He begged.
The hero turned away, head hanging low. For a moment, Fantasio worried he pushed him too far. But to his surprise, the man slowly began to remove his mask and headgear, looking back at him again with a subtle hair flip (which didn't seem purposeful)
Cryogenic freezing really hadn’t aged him a day.
Supergroom’s hair was fluffy, and his skin somewhere between rugged and smooth, his eyes a window to the melancholy within. But Fantasio had no such negative emotions such as that.
Fantasio had longed to run his fingers through that ginger hair, to touch that soft skin again, to gaze into those brown eyes just one more time.
Supergroom was no young man, yet he had a youthful but jaded look. Fantasio knew its true age.
Supergroom looked like a cherubic angel. Fantasio could almost see an ethereal glow around him.
Supergroom was certainly someone he knew, and a face he would have never forgotten. For it was already long since etched into his heart.
In a way, the old man was left with two cathartic senses of closure. He knew what was beneath the mask of his favorite hero.
He knew what had happened to his best friend.