So you just leave them out doing their drug lord thing, but make sure they follow a rule or two. Yeah, that won't ever bite any innocent people in the ass!
[He throws up his hands.]
But you're right, we need to end this. Just...get re-partnered to go fight the end of the world and never talk to each other again. Fair deal.
["The end of the world." They're the wrong words to say because it's too easy a jump to a moment. A specific one.]
[A memory flashes again.]
[Robbie - no helmet, no goggles, the guy Jason bantered with at the book store the other day! - sitting in what looks very obviously like a personal office in a charity. There are bulletin boards on the walls with volunteer pictures and framed news clippings.]
[Robbie, an older woman, and an older bald man are watching a crisis on the news looking horrified. The woman is Miriam Sharpe, the founder of the charity Damian's Gift. Leonard, the man, is one of the volunteer managers. Robbie has just been rescued from a bad situation, taken back into the office to hide until everyone goes home. He was attacked by other volunteers.]
[There are villains being given magic hammers all around the world, attacking places at many times their usual power levels, causing widespread terror.]
["My God," Robbie says.]
["You didn't know?" asks Leonard.]
["Leonard, I had no idea," says Robbie. "I was with the volunteers all day."]
["I guess with everything people here have lost," says Miriam, "not just in the explosion, but with the recession... Their retirement, their homes, a lot of them...something like this happens and it's easy to start acting like it's the end of the world."]
["Why aren't you?" Robbie asks, wondering at the source of her obvious calm, forgetting what he should know.]
[The look she gives him is the most cutting someone can direct at another person because it is fueled by a mother's love and a mother's loss. Her words are a knife slipped between his ribs, and it's what he deserves, it's what he deserves, he'll never stop deserving it. She could pull out his still beating heart and crush it in her fist and with his last breath he'd apologize for getting his blood on her pumps.]
["My world ended the day my son died," she says to Robbie and his face crumples and he doesn't bother wishing for the ground to swallow him up because it's too easy and painless compared to what she has to live with, compared to what he's done to her.]
[Compared to what he's done to her son.]
[What he's done, what he's done, it surges out in a rush just from being touched like a pricked abscess spilling out nastiness from an infected wound.]
[The memory flashes to something else, to Robbie on a prison transport with his green giantess of a lawyer. He is wearing his old superhero costume but is in handcuffs and his head is shaved. There's a sea of angry people outside. His face is bruised like he's been beaten. It happened in prison. Most inmates aren't overly fond of people that kill little kids.]
[He's young but with his shaved head and exhausted expression, he looks older.]
[She-Hulk says: "You're not exactly in a position where you should make people angry."]
[Robbie bows his head in his hand. "I seem to have done pretty good so far. According to them, I murdered sixty innocent kids."]
[He's led off the transport through a sea of people towards the steps of the Capitol building, towards a special hearing waiting for him inside. The event he caused is large enough to warrant testimony in front of Congress. There is no one in the crowd on his side, they hold signs that read things like "Burn, Baldwin, burn!" Faces filled with pure hate reflect back at him, endless voices scream, "Monster!" "Murderer!" "You deserve to fry, Baldwin!"]
[A women gets close to being right in his face, and she's shoved aside by security as she screams shrilly, "Babykiller! Babykiller! The blood of those babies is on your hands!" (He's been called some variation of "baby" or "kiddie" killer so many times by so many people it doesn't sound like language anymore.)].
[The press are there in droves. "- Reporting live at the Capitol building, where Robert Baldwin, the vigilante known as Speedball, is about to give testimony about his role in the massacre at Stamford, Connecticut. Baldwin is being held responsible for 612 civilian deaths, 60 of them innocent schoolchildren -"]
[A flash forward again to Stamford, the same night as the magic hammers being strewn around, to a crowd of random innocent civilians, holding him where he kneels on the ground. One of them is suffocating him to death with a plastic bag, bypassing his kinetic powers. They hate him that much, that normal people are willing to lynch him.]
[He doesn't fight it.]
[Jason hears his thoughts as he fades: Maybe it's better... Just let them do it... S'what I deserve. ]
[When the memories retreat in a wave he's still kneeling there, unmoving, staring into the blackness of his own mind, his face wet with tears. He doesn't bother arguing anymore about anything Jason's done.]
cw: child death, suicidal ideation
[He throws up his hands.]
But you're right, we need to end this. Just...get re-partnered to go fight the end of the world and never talk to each other again. Fair deal.
["The end of the world." They're the wrong words to say because it's too easy a jump to a moment. A specific one.]
[A memory flashes again.]
[Robbie - no helmet, no goggles, the guy Jason bantered with at the book store the other day! - sitting in what looks very obviously like a personal office in a charity. There are bulletin boards on the walls with volunteer pictures and framed news clippings.]
[Robbie, an older woman, and an older bald man are watching a crisis on the news looking horrified. The woman is Miriam Sharpe, the founder of the charity Damian's Gift. Leonard, the man, is one of the volunteer managers. Robbie has just been rescued from a bad situation, taken back into the office to hide until everyone goes home. He was attacked by other volunteers.]
[There are villains being given magic hammers all around the world, attacking places at many times their usual power levels, causing widespread terror.]
["My God," Robbie says.]
["You didn't know?" asks Leonard.]
["Leonard, I had no idea," says Robbie. "I was with the volunteers all day."]
["I guess with everything people here have lost," says Miriam, "not just in the explosion, but with the recession... Their retirement, their homes, a lot of them...something like this happens and it's easy to start acting like it's the end of the world."]
["Why aren't you?" Robbie asks, wondering at the source of her obvious calm, forgetting what he should know.]
[The look she gives him is the most cutting someone can direct at another person because it is fueled by a mother's love and a mother's loss. Her words are a knife slipped between his ribs, and it's what he deserves, it's what he deserves, he'll never stop deserving it. She could pull out his still beating heart and crush it in her fist and with his last breath he'd apologize for getting his blood on her pumps.]
["My world ended the day my son died," she says to Robbie and his face crumples and he doesn't bother wishing for the ground to swallow him up because it's too easy and painless compared to what she has to live with, compared to what he's done to her.]
[Compared to what he's done to her son.]
[What he's done, what he's done, it surges out in a rush just from being touched like a pricked abscess spilling out nastiness from an infected wound.]
[The memory flashes to something else, to Robbie on a prison transport with his green giantess of a lawyer. He is wearing his old superhero costume but is in handcuffs and his head is shaved. There's a sea of angry people outside. His face is bruised like he's been beaten. It happened in prison. Most inmates aren't overly fond of people that kill little kids.]
[He's young but with his shaved head and exhausted expression, he looks older.]
[She-Hulk says: "You're not exactly in a position where you should make people angry."]
[Robbie bows his head in his hand. "I seem to have done pretty good so far. According to them, I murdered sixty innocent kids."]
[He's led off the transport through a sea of people towards the steps of the Capitol building, towards a special hearing waiting for him inside. The event he caused is large enough to warrant testimony in front of Congress. There is no one in the crowd on his side, they hold signs that read things like "Burn, Baldwin, burn!" Faces filled with pure hate reflect back at him, endless voices scream, "Monster!" "Murderer!" "You deserve to fry, Baldwin!"]
[A women gets close to being right in his face, and she's shoved aside by security as she screams shrilly, "Babykiller! Babykiller! The blood of those babies is on your hands!" (He's been called some variation of "baby" or "kiddie" killer so many times by so many people it doesn't sound like language anymore.)].
[The press are there in droves. "- Reporting live at the Capitol building, where Robert Baldwin, the vigilante known as Speedball, is about to give testimony about his role in the massacre at Stamford, Connecticut. Baldwin is being held responsible for 612 civilian deaths, 60 of them innocent schoolchildren -"]
[A flash forward again to Stamford, the same night as the magic hammers being strewn around, to a crowd of random innocent civilians, holding him where he kneels on the ground. One of them is suffocating him to death with a plastic bag, bypassing his kinetic powers. They hate him that much, that normal people are willing to lynch him.]
[He doesn't fight it.]
[Jason hears his thoughts as he fades: Maybe it's better... Just let them do it... S'what I deserve. ]
[When the memories retreat in a wave he's still kneeling there, unmoving, staring into the blackness of his own mind, his face wet with tears. He doesn't bother arguing anymore about anything Jason's done.]