Chapter Text
Robert Robertson the Third woke like he always did, in pain.
He took stock of his body without opening his eyes; the same way he used to catalogue the various functions of his mech suit before a patrol. His body just another old, worn-out machine, a tool; running through the aches and pains like inventory.
His lower back, a gnarled mess of scar tissue and flinching, wound-up nerves. His left shoulder, still supported via sling and already radiating pain, ring and pinkie fingertips numb from nerve damage. Bad knee, bad ankle, cartilage and tendons crunching like gravel. Both would probably need their braces today; braces that Robert had been issued by the mandatory hospital physiotherapist post-coma but pre-release from rehabilitation. He hated wearing the braces. At least he had graduated to neoprene, now. The first couple weeks shuffling around, hobbled by rigid plastic encircling nearly his entire right leg had left Robert feeling painfully, dangerously exposed.
Months after waking from his coma, Robert was still working through the slow, grinding process of recovery, gaining back all the strength and weight he’d lost lying in that hospital bed. It wasn’t the pain that bothered him. Robert was used to pain, was good with pain. He knew how to swallow it, to work through it; if pain was a country, Robert was a natural-born citizen, born and raised.
Pain was a privilege; that’s what Robert Robertson the Second, Mecha Man Astral, perpetually disappointed trainer, father, had always told him. Pain that came from protecting and defending, upholding the mantle as Mecha Man, it wasn’t just a necessary part of the role, not just a reminder to be better, faster, stronger. Not just a constant reminder of his responsibilities, of what would happen when he was too slow, too weak. What would happen if he failed. A privilege. One that Robert should be thankful for.
“Pain is not an excuse to stop. You think your enemies will stop when you’re hurt? Mecha Man doesn’t slow down.”
Robert never got it properly, as a kid. Would just stand there, balling his fists to stop the visible shake, schooling his face into obedient blankness. Nodding in understanding, eyes trained on the hardwood floor. Trying not to press a small hand into aching ribs or a stinging cheek.
“You should be grateful, fucking grateful, boy. This is a privilege. Now get up, we’re going again.”
He understood now.
His father’s methods may have been...questionable, sure. But he’d ended up being correct - as Mecha Man, pain was a part of Robert’s life.
And when Robert thought back to the people he had saved, villains he had taken down, well. Maybe he wasn’t...grateful, per se. But he wouldn’t take it back, everything he had incurred while helping people as Mecha Man. It was expected, and it was manageable, and it was what he was good at. That was enough. No point crying over it. Not that he could technically cry anymore, but, you know. Semantics.
Forcing his eyes open past the dull, resounding ache in his head was a small battle. Today would be a bad pain day, a migraine already unfurling deep, blooming flowers of red in his jaw, in the hollows behind his eyes, caressing his temples. The base of his skull was worst - stupid, stupid, fucking chair.
Robert should really just sleep on the floor. He knew that. Even if his anemic bank account couldn’t afford a mattress after his impromptu interrogation with Toxic, months ago now. Anything had to be better than the plastic abomination currently digging into what felt like every bone of his body.
But he felt oddly protective of the chair. Yes, it was terrible, but it was his. And really, Robert was terrible too - mech suit destroyed and slumped empty in the corner of the room; Astral Pulse still missing despite Robert’s nightly (and ever increasing in desperation) searches. Lifelong mission to avenge his father’s death and take down Shroud, failed - couldn’t forget that one. He deserved the stupid fucking chair.
He should probably eat too, if the growing ache in his jaw was any indication. And swing by the hospital. No plans today, just the press conference in the evening. The one he was dreading. Where he would address the world again, for the first time after his (literal) fall from grace.
Robert groaned and ran a hand over his mouth, tonguing mindlessly under his canines.
A small yip caught his attention, a familiar furry body in his peripherals. Tiny black and white tail wagging whip-like with excitement now Beef had realised his owner was awake. Robert felt his mouth curl up in a smile. At least he had Beef.
“Hey, buddy.” Robert reached down with a wince, caught the little dog’s ears in an affectionate scratch. Beef nosed insistently at Robert’s hand, and he chuckled.
“Alright, alright, breakfast coming right up, you little terror.”
He went through the ritual of feeding Beef quietly - kibble in the bowl, the best Robert could afford with his meager savings. Fresh water, a small towel down to mop the inevitable mess. Another scratch of Beef’s ears as the chihuahua-corgi mix chowed down like Robert hadn’t fed him in decades.
And then to his own little kitchenette. Old coffee machine - black coffee was one of the only things Robert could stomach, these days. Dinged-up fridge graced with a bright yellow smiley sticker he swore was ironic, but secretly rather liked. And inside...Robert’s stomach sank.
Two bags of blood, neatly contained in clinical translucent packaging.
Only two, though. His supply always ran out faster than he expected, despite all attempts to ration himself. He’d definitely have to go to the hospital or butchery soon - today or tomorrow.
Robert picked up one of the bags, weighed it casually in his hand, ignoring the way his gut twisted in response. He could smell it through the plastic; A positive, 450 milliliters, approximately one pint of human blood.
His breakfast.
His stomach twisted angrily with impatience as he regarded the bag - Robert tamping down on it with little effort. The feral, animalistic part of him reacting was familiar now, something he’d spent years, years, taming. Controlling.
The attack that turned him hadn’t been controlled, Robert knew that much. He remembered very little of it, truth be told. Flashes.
A report about a mugger in downtown Torrance, picked up on his always-active police scanner. Arriving at the mugger’s last known location, a charming little slice of the city where cramped, twisting apartment complexes started to meld into Torrance’s industrial area. Exposed concrete adorned with graffiti, flickering streetlights, and dark, narrow, alleys. Smog from warehouses and steel-works, winding thick and heavy through the rapidly darkening sky. Fluorescence emanating from a laundromat and a 24/7 supermarket on the corner, bathing Robert’s mech in a sickly cast.
A scene torn out of a crappy B-grade horror movie, and an environment too narrow for the mech to navigate.
“Just fucking great. The report couldn’t have mentioned that the mugger was Freddy fucking Kruger?”
Robert’s grumbles fell on empty ears as he extricated himself from the mech, and reluctantly ordered it into aerial surveillance mode.
“Mecha Man, Murdered on Elm Street.”
Robert fell silent as he moved into the nearest alley, all senses on high alert as the gloom swallowed him up like a stomach. He’d done plenty of jobs like this now, on the surface; following a perp into an alley or other enclosed environment. He’d done plenty of night patrols too. This felt...different. Bad. Like Robert was a kid again, seven years old and awake at three am, rigid with terror and convinced there was a monster under his bed.
The mech suit pinged him quietly, notifying him of movement and a faint heat signature further in. No exact location - the overabundance of concrete and densely clustered buildings meant the mech’s scanning capabilities were limited. Robert shook off the sick, cold feeling with some effort, and moved forward.
It wasn’t until months later, when Robert realised he could control his basal body temperature with ease, that his temperature was always automatically regulated to exactly that of his surrounding environment unless he deliberately altered it, that he began to wonder if he’d been lured. If the creature had wanted him to step deeper into that network of alleys, following a heat signature deliberately raised to entrap him, alone and exposed outside his armoured shell.
The memory of the attack itself always came in flashes, maybe because it had been so fast.
Robert, stopping in an intersection between two alleys, glancing up to see a little patch of night, stars emerging through the smog.
A thick smell, iron and animal musk. Time pulled taut like a fishing wire, a perfect, ringing, silence.
Sudden, blinding pain in his temple and ribs (possibly broken, definitely bruised) and the sensation of force as he was thrown bodily against a wall, then pinned against it before he was even able to collapse forward. Forearms like an iron bar against his collarbone, his shoulders. What felt like a clawed hand tearing warm stripes through his hairline and across his scalp, wrenching his head to the side, baring his neck, his jugular-
A shrill alarm blared through the chill air of Robert’s apartment, shaking him from the memory. Right. Breakfast.
Robert poked a metal straw through the eyelet of the bag usually reserved for I.V. attachments. Quick and efficient. Sometimes he’d pour the blood into a glass cooking bowl, heat it over the stove. (He’d discovered he liked his blood warmed double-boiler style. Like melting chocolate. Robert didn’t indulge like that often, though. It meant messily cleaning the bowl with his fingers and tongue, and drinking cold blood with a straw was preferable to the low, odd twisting in his gut he had to suppress when he licked it off his fingers.)
Hospital blood or raw meat was sufficient. Just sufficient, though. It fed him well enough, but never satiated him. It always tasted...flat. Lifeless. Robert had never technically fed from a human directly, but he didn’t need to. It was enough. More than enough, for a creature like him.
He knew he probably wasn’t eating enough. He also knew his iron control over the hungrier side of his nature was maintained through strict discipline - just like his father had always preached. Self-control, or he would grow lazy, weak - things that were not tolerated in the Robertson household. (Never mind Robert Robertson II had been dead for decades now. His father's voice had never really left.)
Hunger was constant in Robert’s life now anyway, gnawing and low-grade, almost blending in with the other assorted aches and pains. Manageable.
Robert had thought, at first, that his wounds would heal seamlessly. That his scar tissue would melt away, leaving nothing but smooth, unblemished skin. That’s what happened in all the movies, right?
It was true Robert healed much faster than a human would, now. It was what had protected him when his mech had fallen from the sky like a broken bird. It was what kept his body from dissolving like candyfloss in boiling water under the combined detonation of his mech suit’s reactor and solid pound of attached C4, courtesy of Shroud.
But that healing wasn’t painless, nor was it without cost. No, as Robert had found out, through years of trial and error, complete healing was contingent on an available blood supply. And the more severe the injury, the more agonizing the healing process.
When he was 24, he'd fought a B-rate villain that went by the name Wolf-man (terrible name, terribly sharp iron claws). Robert misjudged a swing, Wolf-man feinted low, Robert too slow to fully dodge -too slow, too fucking slow, his father’s voice grating with disappointment- and the villain’s talons had caught him and severed his femoral artery. The injury should have killed him - Robert’s thigh had been shredded, borne a closer resemblance to mincemeat than human flesh. A normal human would have bled out in minutes. Robert’s leg healed in a fraction of a moment, mutilated flesh melting together almost instantaneously, fully healed before Wolf-man had turned back in for another swipe. The agony was indescribable. Every bit of pain that he would have suffered during the healing process, should he have survived the injury normally; condensed into the space of a second. Only the fact that Robert had been in an active combat situation had stopped him from crumpling to the ground.
And God, had he been fucking ravenous afterwards.
Almost bared his teeth at the arresting officer, in fact, when he’d handed off a limp, unconscious Wolf-dick to be bundled into the back of an ambulance. All he’d seen, before he excused himself hastily from the scene, was the thick, pulsing vein in the officer’s throat, practically lit up like a neon sign. FEED, FEED, FEED.
Limited blood supply to fuel his body during the healing process had meant scarring, nerve damage. He’d healed enough to function, but his inner thigh was still scarred with four distinct claw marks from that battle, and probably would be forever.
Robert very rarely had enough blood to heal completely, to leave a battle unmarred in some way. It wasn’t like he could haul his rationed blood bags or chunks of raw steak with him on every patrol. He’d eat when he got home, or after he could get supplies. But his system worked. He drank enough blood to heal his injuries, to stay functional and efficient, and controlled his intake enough to maintain self-control.
So yes, Robert’s...condition had prevented him from vaporization during the explosion. His bones and flesh and blood reformed in the same moment they were erased from existence - he'd amused himself later by imagining he might have left a Looney Toons-esque outline silhouetted in the sky; Wiley Coyote vs. Roadrunner.
And Robert had felt Every. Fucking. Moment.
The movies never showed that part, did they?
He was glad the fall had left him comatose. That the energy it took to heal his body from the explosion hadn’t lasted to pull him up from the crater, from the wreckage of his suit. While falling, the small part of his mind still conscious had known, implicitly, there would be no controlling the hunger. Not this time. He would have killed the first creature he saw, torn its throat clean out, moved by nothing but pure survival instinct.
He was under control now, though. He knew how to ration himself properly, couldn’t, wouldn’t, allow a loss of control. Not after the last - and only, Robert swore to himself - time. Mecha Man didn’t fail, didn’t falter, and neither did Robert.
He felt the ghost of his father’s disappointment hovering, cold, contemptuous eyes burning holes in the back of his neck, even as his stomach twisted in hunger. It felt familiar.
***
Maybe agreeing to attend this conference had been a mistake.
Robert stood at the podium, squinting a little under the intensity of the stage lights. He felt exposed without the mech suit, left arm still trapped in its sling. The buzz of the cameras trained on him was almost a physical thing, pressing against his skin.
“There’s been a lot of speculation about my health and the state of the Mecha Man suit, and I’m here to put that speculation to rest.”
Robert took an inaudible inhale, throat tight. “The suit has been damaged beyond my ability to repair, so I will be stepping from superhero work...effective immediately.”
He kept his tone neutral, wooden, eyes trained to the statement on the paper, and hoped the underlying exhaustion wasn’t obvious.
A flurry of camera flashes and questions, none which Robert wanted to answer. He wanted to go home to Beef, to sit on his stupid plastic chair, pretend to ignore the remaining blood packet in his fridge.
He settled for a (hopefully not too obviously beleaguered) sigh, and an outstretched hand towards the press.
“One at a time, please.”
“Ashley Rhiness. San Pedro Daily. Do you have anything to say to your fans? The public outpouring, the vigils. A lot of them were worried you wouldn’t wake up.”
Internally, Robert winced, the question grazing a raw wound. Mecha Man, its pilot a monster. He wondered how many of Mecha Man’s fans would have wanted him to wake up, if they knew.
Externally, he settled for “I suppose I want them to know I did my best. I worked as long as I could, as hard as I could, and that’s anyone can do.” Robert paused. “And...thank you. Thank you for all the support. It was all for you, and it was an honour to serve my community as Mecha Man.”
He took a breath. “Next question.”
“Chris Stratton, Torrance Tribune. Does this mean you’re retiring as Mecha Man? Word on the street is you’re donezo.”
“Are you a hundred years old? Why are you talking like that?” Robert questioned, unable to help himself. Golden age diction from the 20-something old with the slick back hairstyle, and it was a stupid fucking question. Clearly soundbite material - hadn’t he just said he was stepping back?
Chris Stratton persisted, unfortunately.
“Answer the question, buddy boy- (Oh God, seriously?)- are you retiring? My readers need the skinny and I aim to deliver.”
The skinny? Maybe he was actually one hundred years old.
“Look, I’m not retiring. Not yet at least.”
“Any idea what you can do without the Mecha Man suit?”
Another raw wound, and Robert could feel the agitation building. Drain all the blood from your body, to start, he thought sardonically, how’s that for hero work?
Outwardly, he settled for “Not yet”, and hoped it sounded less unsure than he felt. Because it was true. What was he meant to do now? Not that he wanted to tell Chris golden-age-asshole Stratton that on live television, but whatever.
Beef, just think of Beef. And cold, hard concrete flooring somehow still more enticing than this shit.
“Alright, just one more, please. I gotta get back to uh -my dog, my empty apartment, my chair-, just, just one more. Preferably someone from this century.”
A brassy, magnanimous voice piped up from the centre of the room, and Robert instantly got a feeling this question would not be pleasant.
“Charles Kingsley. South Bay Signal.”
Pompous, arrogant. Not a great sign. Robert sighed internally.
So, Shroud kills your father, goes to jail fifteen years, breaks out and immediately dupes you into a trap, where he destroys the Mecha Man suit and puts you in a coma for months...”
He really did not like where this was going. Robert tried not to let his unease show, prepared mentally for what was likely to be public humiliation from an elderly man wearing comically terrible aftershave.
Robert’s tone came out even flatter than intended. “I didn’t hear a question in there.”
Charles Kingsley somehow looked even more smug.
“Two parter. First, why didn’t Shroud kill you? You haven’t been conscious for months. It’d be easy money taking you out.”
Robert had thought about this himself, actually. He didn’t particularly like the answer he’d come to, but it fit.
“OK, Shroud wanted the Astral Pulse, and Mecha Man gone. He got both.“
(Robert didn’t actually know if Shroud had it, but on the off chance the bastard was watching the feeds, he sure as fuck wasn’t going to confirm if he had the Pulse. Or worse, confirm that he’d lost it, for that matter.)
“I’m not sure I mattered much.”
Charles Kingsley brushed past Robert’s answer, which made his next remark somehow even worse.
“Right. You’re unimportant.”
Because he was, wasn’t he. Unimportant. Inconsequential.
“Which leads me to my next question. Most heroes avenge their family. You, did the opposite. You killed their legacy. How disappointed would your dad be if he were here right now? Your father, your grandfather, they must be rolling over in their graves.”
The conference room was pin-drop silent.
Charles Kingsley smirked at him.
Robert’s pulse thudded dully in his ears, washing over him like the tide.
For a brief, mad, moment all Robert wanted to do was walk off that podium in front of all the cameras and reporters, and strike Charles Kingsley in his pompous, smirking face. Even with his sling it’d be easy - a choice headbutt to drop the man, a few solid kicks to the liver, the sternum, the throat. Easier still to simply lean in and bite.
Robert could smell the reporter’s Old Spice and mothballs scent from where he was standing, hot blood underneath, pulsing higher than it healthily should (old asshole had hypertension, probably), and he imagined the spray from Kingsley’s burst aorta would probably get as far as the podium and he felt a sharp pressure in his gums, and FUCK.
His fangs were out.
So much for self-control - he should have known he’d need both bags before something like this.
His fangs were protracted, in fucking public, and a sharp bloom of pain told Robert he'd also somehow bitten through his tongue without realizing, so talking was absolutely, definitely out of the question now. Brilliant.
Robert kept his mouth firmly closed, and turned and walked away.
Swallowing the blood down thick as he moved, hearing the murmurs and flashes, he knew it looked and tasted like defeat.
He had nothing to say anyway, regardless. Because the worst part was Charles Kingsley was right.
Sure, he could tell them his dad would be proud, proud that Robert was alive, that he’d sacrificed everything, that he’d done his best. They'd probably believe it - what father wouldn’t be proud his son was alive?
But it wouldn’t be true. Robert had failed. The mech suit was destroyed. The Astral Pulse was lost. Shroud was still out there. He couldn’t even control himself at a press conference. His father would be entirely, colossally, ashamed. Disgusted.
Being Mecha Man was the greatest honour Robert had, and now?
He felt it in every step he took out of the building and down the street, echoing in his ears, tasted it in the blood still lingering in his mouth.
Failure.
***