Chapter Text
Robert stared at the screen, the remote laying upside-down and forgotten at his feet. He was dreaming, he knew he was dreaming. He could see his reflection in the dark areas of the newscast's image, younger by fifteen years, no eyebags in sight; but his expression was slack with horror. The feelings of disbelief and despair were still just as vivid, just as cutting, jostling and raking against his ribcage.
Not again.
Robert opened his eyes in the dark, feeling something warm and fuzzy pressing up against his face. It didn't smell great. He blinked a few times. Then, he frowned and lifted his head off the ground. Two beady eyes rose from the pillow at his right in turn and stared right back. He groaned quietly.
"Not again. You don't need to put your butt next to my face when we sleep."
Beef got up and wagged his tail excitedly, happy to hear that he was awake. He licked Robert's hand when he reached out to fondle the top of the dog's tiny head with the tips of his fingers, then squinted in bliss when his fingers moved to scratch the area under his chin. The corners of Robert's mouth hiked up in a slight smile. He could complain about the proximity of Beef's butt to his nose all day and night, but the fact was that it was often thanks to this inconvenience that he got to punch out of his nightmare shift early. Robert pulled his hand away, considering the possibility of falling back asleep on the floor of his room or in the plastic chair above his head. The mattress was too far to be worth the hassle. Beef pawed at his thigh. Robert glanced at his dog.
"Well, okay," he sighed. "Guess I'm awake now."
He dragged his legs up and rolled over slowly, his body aching from the injuries it had sustained the day before. The shitty sleep hadn't helped. He got up, ambled to the corner of the room and picked up an old T-shirt he'd thrown there a few days ago, gave it a quick sniff, and decided that the smell didn't matter since he wasn't going to be exchanging pleasantries with a neighbor at ass o'clock in the night. Not that he ever really exchanged pleasantries with a neighbor at any hour at all. He slipped on the shirt, then fetched some socks-- clean, these-- and trousers he'd haphazardly shoved beneath the closet. He wasn't especially hungry, but he knew by experience it was better to get food and water in him when he was healing, so he made a quick detour by the fridge. Beef followed him everywhere. The pitter patter of his claws against the floor was always a comforting sound. Robert tossed him a tiny strip of ham as he ate his own 3AM breakfast. When Beef looked up at him expectantly, Robert shook his head.
"You know the drill. You gotta wait till 6."
Beef understood, but he was unphased, like always. A dog's sense of hope was evergreen.
Robert grabbed his jacket and Beef's leash, and after making sure his dog's collar was secure, he opened the door and allowed Beef to walk out ahead of him. They headed down the usual path. Robert fell back in his mind as he watched Beef prance about and sniff at bushes and rocks. He couldn't help it. The urge to muse was strong and could never be beaten.
Robert Robertson was the kind of man others would probably qualify as introverted, kind-of-unpleasant, and generally uncaring. It was a well-known fact by the populace of Los Angeles that Mecha Man, on the other hand, could not have cared more. As Robert had quickly found out after his father's death, it was a lot easier to muse about Mecha Man matters than Robert Robertson matters, in particular because the former were so many and so pressing compared to the two singular options of "should I really be living like this?" and "to what degree do I want to acknowledge that I have considerable daddy issues?". Yeah. Much easier to ponder on the way Mecha Man could've better handled that last fight, or to mentally list the order of priority for repairs and restocking, or to try and come up with improvements to a decade-long plan for revenge, et cetera, et cetera.
But he couldn't always help it. He couldn't always help that sometimes the memory in his nightmare still slithered its way in the middle of the mental list, between "check need to refuel rocket boosters" and "repair the second dent in armor", waving at him with his father's hand.
"Beef," he called quietly, not needing to raise his voice.
His dog perked up and pitter-pattered back to him. Robert dropped down in a crouch in front of him and rubbed his little head with his palm, then ran his hand down his back.
"You're here with me, at least," he mumbled.
Beef turned around to lick his forearm. Robert smiled fondly.
"Good boy."
His phone pinged. Robert quickly fished it out of his pocket and read the notification. It wasn't anything terribly suspicious, but he had nothing better to do, and any potential lead to one of Shroud's lackeys was a good lead. Robert pocketed his phone and lightly tugged on the leash, as Beef had wandered off again, uninterested in the contents of Robert's phone.
"Come on. We're going home."
***
Waking up from a three-month long coma sucked. It sucked to wade through a foggy, confusing haze the first few days, and it sucked to then slowly piece together memories of what exactly had happened to him, and it sucked to realize that he'd lost enough muscle to guarantee additional months of no crime-fighting. What sucked even more was understanding that he'd fucked up big time. Big time. There was hope, obviously, that he'd be able to repair the suit and everything that came with it. But the shame was already there; shame that he'd allowed this to happen. Shame that he'd been so gullible, blind, reckless, through no one else's fault but his own. Shame that Shroud had seen through him as easily as if he'd been made of glass, and had humiliated and vanquished him in the process. And also, that hospital stay had put a considerable dent in his already fragile net worth.
It all sucked, but it probably didn't suck as much as it would have if he'd been alone. Two weeks after Robert had emerged from his coma, he was discharged from the hospital. He was greeted by a very happy Beef as soon as he got home. The last time he'd seen his dog, Beef had been licking his nosebleed clean after Robert had gotten kicked in the face in his own damn home and been laid flat out on the ground. It was a relief to see his dog unchanged, compared to the change Robert's own body had gone through in the hospital. He'd already known that Beef was in good health, because the social worker who'd ensured that he was looked after had shown him pictures, but it was just different to see his dog in the (slightly overweight) flesh. Robert threw the papers that had been given to him at the hospital to the side, not caring that half of it scattered on the floor, and promptly scooped up his one and only friend. In that moment, it hit him that the whole ordeal with the hospital had been kind of a lonely experience. Maybe it was the exhaustion of having had to stay confined in the hospital for two weeks, or the three-months-worth of coma catching up to him all at once, or the fact that he was back home; when Robert felt that familiar, flailing ball of warmth and fur weighing in his arms, the back of his eyes began to ache. He quickly blinked and forced the oncoming tears back in his eye sockets through sheer will. He wasn't the type to cry, even if it was just in front of his dog. Still, Beef could probably smell the salt, because he twisted around in Robert's arms and licked the side of his face. Robert smiled at him.
"You know, everything's pretty bad right now. But hey, at least I'm not alone. I've got you."
Beef panted, his mouth splitting on an innocent grin. Beef didn't know that Robert Robertson had failed Mecha Man.
Beef didn't know that Robert was a failure.
Beef was just happy to see that Robert was back.
"Why do you even like me so much, huh?" muttered Robert, scratching Beef behind the ear.
It didn't really matter why Beef liked him so much. It was just a simple fact of life. His dog loved him. That was all Robert needed, and it was enough. It was enough. It had to be enough.
*
Things remained pretty bad.
As soon as Robert was able to go about on foot for an amount of time that was longer than ten minutes, he was back in the streets, suitless, scouring the city for the remains of what had made him Mecha Man.
The broken segments of his mecha he’d already found early on. It had been blocking the road, so municipal authorities had taken it upon themselves to relocate its remains to the local landfill. Robert had been making the trip back and forth repeatedly between his home and the dump. It wasn’t like he could ask for the hunks of metal to be delivered straight to his doorstep. Anonymity required finer solutions. So, he’d been spending his nights breaking into the landfill with his tools and his bag, painstakingly disassembling each part into manageable pieces, and carrying it all back to his flat where he slapped them back together.
It wasn’t exactly easy. His body hadn’t recovered and his physical abilities were considerably limited. He didn't have the time to sleep much, but he didn't have a mattress anymore anyway, so it didn't really matter. Some help would’ve been nice, though. He found himself thinking of Track Star several times, even at times when his phone wasn't ringing, but he never called the man back. Robert didn’t want to see him after the huge, humiliating, irredeemable error he’d made. Didn’t want to talk about what had happened, about what he’d do, about their past, about his father or grandfather.
It took days to haul every single last part of the Mecha suit he could find back to his place, and after that, Robert continued to roam Los Angeles in the hopes of finding the last missing piece. He pushed himself even more when it became obvious that he would be unable to repair his suit as it was. Unfortunately, the Astral Pulse was trickier to find. Trickier, as in impossible. It was simply gone. Robert knew that it had very likely been taken by Shroud. With things the way they were– he was unhealthy, he was broke, he couldn’t even fight– he didn’t see a possibility of getting it back.
This grim reality came crashing down on him one night as he was climbing the stairs to his flat. It was nothing, just a second of inattention due to the exhaustion of having stayed out looking for the Pulse all day. But Robert slipped, and he didn’t manage to catch himself in time because his left hand was trapped in a thick fucking sling, and he took a tumble. It wasn’t a particularly nasty one. He barely felt any pain when his knee and hip slammed into the edge of the stairs. But after that, he laid where he’d landed, staring at the lint and dust lining the stairs, at the chewing gum stuck under the handrail.
He kind of felt like that old wad of chewing gum. There, but forgotten and useless. Not even worth scraping off and throwing away for good. Shroud hadn’t come after him. Toxic hadn’t come after him, and that asshole knew where Robert lived. They hadn’t even tried to prevent him from getting his suit back together. He wasn’t a threat to them anymore. They knew that he was nothing, now. Mecha Man was gone, and Robert Robertson was not even a blip on their radar.
Robert lifted an arm and let it rest against his face, over his eyes, blocking out the world. He didn’t matter. He’d never mattered. It had always only been Mecha Man and the Astral Pulse in the forefront, and the rest trailing behind as an afterthought. Now, he was a pilot without a craft, a man without a purpose, a son without a family. What was left? What had there ever been?
From further up the stairs, coming from somewhere on the left, a scratching sound could be heard. Robert smiled despite himself. The timing was so good it was almost comical. He brought his arm away from his face and rolled over on his good side to get back up. He was being pathetic, and he didn’t even have the justification of booze on his side. Enough melodramatic moping around in the stairs. Beef was waiting on him, and taking care of his dog was enough a purpose for now.