mclachland

Indestructible, by

mclachlan
QaF US (Justin, Brian, Michael, others)
Post Season 5
Sequel to Invincible and Identities.

1.

First Captain Astro. Now this.

Michael watches numbly as his best friend, the first superhero he's ever known -- even when he never had powers, lifts the lifeless body of his other hero. There are tears on Brian's cheeks as he gazes down to where Justin's head hangs off the crook of his elbow. Justin moves only when Brian does. A broken marionette.

It's a classic pose. It's never looked so wrong.

Superheroes aren't supposed to die.

Slowly, almost as if he isn't in control of his own body, Brian's head lolls back and his glowing eyes fixate on the monster. Literal waves roll off of him, melting anything that comes into contact with them. The rubber soles of Michael's shoes begin to bubble and ooze.

What is it that you've come for? Brian asks quietly, politely, like he's speaking to a client, inquiring what angle they want to work from. He is in control.

Bracing Justin against his chest with one arm, he lifts the other, the waves more concentrated, some kind of palpable emotion.

Michael can hear his mother moaning something, words incoherent, but he knows it's out of grief for the biggest loss the family has ever sustained.

What was it that YOU CAME HERE TO DO?!

The street itself rips apart, but the monster is quick, and completely outclassed. It flees, disappearing among the tops of the buildings. But, like all villains, it will return.

Michael closes his eyes against the rain.

2.

Falling. You're falling.

So cold.

There is no place warm.

Where's Brian?

Get up.

3.

It's like déjà vu. Michael shivers, remembering another time when Brian looked like this. Sitting on hard plastic and breathing sterile air, the scent of antiseptic so heavy it could be tasted on the back of his tongue. Crimson-spattered and tear-stained.

Brian…

Brian doesn't move, doesn't look away from the outside. His reflection is muddled, cloudy, and it terrifies Michael. The rain slips down the window, pelting the rooftop with a metallic impact. He stands next to Brian, while Justin lies still on his old bed, Justin's own old bed. Everyone's old bed. There is blood on the sheets, spreading, turning white into red.

Brian.

He said he would come back, Brian murmurs, eyes glassy and vacant. Each time, he said he would come back. And each time Brian speaks, his voice grows softer until it's barely a whisper, until his lips hardly move. He said he would come back. Each time he left, I thought it was the last time.

Michael shivers as the tears make an appearance once again. He can smell the death emanating from the bed. Brian.

Brian's lips begin to tremble. I knew. I knew, every time he left he might not come back. But he did. He kept his word. So I started to think… He drops his head into his hands and drags in a painful gasp of air. I was there. I was there, and I couldn't save him.

He hugs his best friend and doesn't know what he hopes the gesture will accomplish. The sun will… it'll come out soon, Brian.

Brian's shoulders shake, and Michael thinks he's crying.

Oh, Mikey, Mikey, Brian laughs, and it's all wrong. Don't you know? Don't you get it? Hasn't it sunk the fuck in yet?

He looks up, back out the window, into a reflection that isn't his. Into the rain.

There's not going to be any sun. Not for any of us. Ever again.

4.

The Monster destroys the Seventh Street Bridge.

Casualties are in the hundreds.

Brian sits in the dark, in the living room, watching the footage caught by a news station. It's devastating, and he's never known such fury.

He wishes the body on Michael's old sheets, Justin's old sheets, would stop looking so dead.

There's no way to stop this.

5.

You've hit rock bottom. Or maybe just bottom. There are no rocks. There is no anything. There's black, an endless abyss, completely devoid of any warmth, any source of light. You're not even sure if you still are. If you are. Existing.

It's cold. Which is odd, in a world full of nothing. It shouldn't feel cold. It shouldn't feel anything.

Get up.

Something tickles you, the lightest of caresses, smelling of old blood and wealth. There's the sweetest, barest tang of love. You try to recall if love ever smelled like anything to you. It did, once. It smelled of Acqua Di Gio cologne and a song by The Drifters.

Get up.

No. Not this time.

6.

The people of Pittsburgh are allowed no rest over the course of the week. Businesses shut down. Children are forbidden to go outside. In hopes of exterminating the monster, the military is called in. But the threat lives, while countless others have died. The streets run red with blood and rainwater.

Lindsay calls in a blind panic, screaming about what she and the rest of the world has seen on their televisions. No one is safe in Pittsburgh. She wants the family to go up to Toronto to stay with them until it's over. She wants to know if what she saw was true, if Justin Taylor was the world-renown superhero her son talks about constantly. The answer causes her to drop the phone. Ben tries to talk over her faint shrieking, holding the line. He looks uncharacteristically small.

Brian says nothing.

Jennifer Taylor says nothing. Just sits in a chair in Debbie's living room and stares into space. Molly is wrapped up in Emmett's arms on the couch, watching a Bette Davis movie without watching it at all. Every so often, she sniffs.

It's not true, she whispers, and Emmett buries his face into her soft hair. His shoulders hitch.

Of course it isn't, baby.

Of course it isn't.

Ted enters the room from the kitchen, Blake at his side. They're saying that these things are starting to pop up all over the globe. One in Boston, six in California. Two in England, one in France. Three in China. No one knows why.

Fuck, Debbie says inadequately. Brian, you need to do something.

He spares her a blank look. Me.

Yes, you! Now that Sunshine's… Now that he's…

His chair topples over when he stands. The air around his eyes begins to spark. Do you like reminding me? You'd better not finish that fucking sentence, Deb.

Jennifer glances over for a moment, but her eyes unfocus and she's gone again.

Debbie storms over to him, hand raised to deliver a blow most familiar, but her wrist is caught in a tight grip, and she stares, mesmerized, into Brian's smoldering eyes.

Don't, he snarls, venomous and lethal, throwing her wrist away and stalking up the stairs.

They watch him leave, and Debbie crumbles soon after.

7.

You have to get up.

But you would much rather stay here, wherever you are, whatever you are, and just drift. It's easy, and quiet. But cold. And you don't like the cold.

There's that curious tickle again, and you shift, or you think you do. You're not sure what you are at this point. If you're still you, or a mere outline of the man you once were, or just the last remnants of a distant memory that belongs to a time long since passed, when the sun was the center of the universe and everything revolved around it.

Unease chokes you.

You want Brian.

You have to get up.

You shiver. No, not yet. You're tired and you want to do the wrong thing and just not for once in your life.

Get up.

He's familiar, although you don't know why. He's beautiful, ethereal, clad in night and snow, old blood and wealth and that minute tang of love hanging around his neck.

He smiles.

He's you.

8.

Brian lies next to Justin, stares at the boy's upturned jaw, lies on his side so he can rest his temple against an unmoving chest. There is no heartbeat. No inhalation. But there is silence, the one thing Brian would never have attributed to him.

Wake up, he wills the body. Wake up and give him back to me.

The monster, His Monster, is attacking the city again. He knows he has to do something, if only to stop it here. But what of the other cities that have monsters of their own? What of them?

What of himself, lost now that he no longer has something of his own to fight for?

He holds that thought, digs down deep and plants it, letting it grow until its branches push at his insides, demanding sunlight. But there is none to give, so he feeds it a different fuel.

Rage.

He rises out of bed and bursts through the closed window.

Pittsburgh will never be so grateful for a fag.

9.

Please get up.

You stay curled up, not out of obstinacy but out of necessity. You're so cold, and any body warmth you can garner from yourself, for yourself, you'll take.

Brian used to give you his. Wrap himself around you, sinking into every crevice in your skin, completely envelop you until you melded and meshed, endless and so very safe. There were nights when he would whisper into your ear, barely coherent visitations to the 1590's at 3am. You always thought yourself to be eloquent, but nothing quite matched Brian Kinney rumbling words like "sun-soaked serenity" and verses you would vaguely remember reading in high school. "War with Time for love of you", he would croon into your skin, licking away the salt from your naked body, stirring the sleepy desires up to simmer in your gut.

Please get up.

You close your eyes. If you could only sleep, capture those moments with Brian, those words, and color your dreams with them…

But suddenly, without warning, there's heat, unbearable, and it's enormous and burning you away.

GET UP.

10.

You can't go around being angry all the time, Justin used to say, laughing to take the sting out of his words. It won't do you any good.

And it's not doing him any good. The anger is not enough.

He sees red. There is blood in his eyes.

Brian stares into the face of every nightmare he's ever had and knows he is going to die. In the rain. At the hands of the creature that murdered the only man he ever loved.

How sickeningly cliché.

11.

What are they? You ask him, yourself, and he looks like every science fiction movie Michael has made you sit through, liquid flame yet human in every aspect.

They're your father.

Your heart, if it's there, stops.

And Chris Hobbes. And Cody Bell.

What?

They're racism. And religious intolerance. And homophobia. Bigotry. War. Fear. Hate manifests itself in odd ways. It always has. Most times, it's just emotional, and it's released by mouth, or through action. And sometimes, Hate takes on a more physical form.

You understand. You understand completely. But it's been such a big part of my life. It's killed me. Twice. What do you do against that?

He smiles, and you know now why they call you "Sunshine".

You rise above.

12.

Something's changing.

Brian looks to the sky.

13.

Six billion lives are depending on you. But only one of them truly matters.

For them, for him, you rise above.

14.

The clouds part, and then there is sun. He smiles.

Justin.

15.

It's not as if you asked for this. It definitely isn't the career opportunity you had in mind when you moved to New York, the center of all that is happening and breeding grounds for the worst kinds of evil.

But you have it. And it's yours.

The sun pours through the open window, over your eyes, and you stir. Another day, another fight.

Go back to sleep, Brian mutters, shoving his head under his pillow.

The mask of the Solar Flare lies in a heap on your dresser. The mask of Rage is lain carefully against the mirror on top of the bureau, like a relic from a former era.

There's a muffled groan from under the pillow as the alarm goes off.

You smile.

/end