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thetomorrowshow · 2 years

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in a ship of glass - ch. 3

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final chapter of scott's backstory before we move on to any one-shots! this one is a bit heavy, mind the warnings

cw: depression, suicidal thoughts, character death (loss of a parent)

Scott’s twenty-three, and Aeor is dead.

It’s so sudden that he doesn’t know how to handle it. He needs to call his therapist, he knows, but he’s still so shocked that he hasn’t even begun to grieve yet.

And the fault belongs to that prick, Solidarity.

There’s a lot of heroes in Empires City, and Solidarity is not one of them. He advertises himself as such, but it’s clear to all that he has it out for the heroes. One of the new upstarts, Gem, has already been injured by Solidarity while trying to cooperate with him. The man is worse than a menace, he’s a genuinely dangerous supervillain and Scott’s not even sure what his power is, but he hit Aeor with a meteor and now Aeor’s dead.

Scott’s never hated anyone other than himself, but he hates Solidarity. Solidarity has taken everything from him, everything, and he just knows that he needs to take everything from Solidarity.

Not yet, though.

Not yet, because right now, Scott can’t get out of bed. He lies there and stares at the ceiling, aware that at least some of the sluggish feeling comes from missing medication doses and won’t be solved until he gets up, but getting up is just too much to handle without Aeor.

And then he realizes that he has started to grieve, as much as he wants to deny it. Because if he can still deny it, he can still deny that Aeor is actually gone. But he can’t get out of bed and he cries at the drop of the hat and he lies there for hours staring at nothing.

Aeor’s gone, and his emotional state registered it before his mind.

He doesn’t do much these days. He contacts Pearl and the Mad King, asks them to handle the supervillains until he has a chance to get a hold of himself. They both agree to try, but ask him to get back out there as soon as he can.

Crime rates in the city go up. It’s not their fault; it’s his.

Scott lies there for days on end, thinking back to why he came to Empires City in the first place. He’s already in a bad headspace, and that just makes it worse. He knows he needs to be taking his meds. He’s beginning to spiral. But he can’t make himself get up.

He stops answering his phone, stops checking the mail, stops doing everything. He lies in bed and binge-watches Youtube videos, or reads fanfiction, or scrolls through Reddit, or sleeps, or stares at the wall.

Notifications come through. First texts and calls from Jack, then from other friends as Jack apparently enlists help. He watches the calls pop up on his phone, stares at them until they disappear and his phone vibrates with the voicemail alert. He doesn’t even delete the steadily-increasing number of unopened voicemails in his inbox.

He’s so tired. He doesn’t want this to go on any longer, but he can’t manage to break himself out of it. It should be simple. He needs to get up, take his meds, call his therapist, take a shower, brush his teeth, change his clothes, do laundry, get the mail, go grocery shopping. . . .

That’s too many things. He can’t manage that. He can’t fathom doing that many things. He can’t.

He doesn’t feel well, either. He has a running headache that hasn’t stopped and won’t stop, the idea of food makes him nauseous, he can’t stop shaking—it’s not an excuse. It’s really not. But he just can’t get up.

So he stays in bed, stays there until his doorbell rings one morning, then rings again and again. He doesn’t get up, just covers his ears and sucks in a shuddering breath as he realizes that it will never be Aeor at his door again.

There’s a loud pounding on the door. “Scott! Open up before I break this door down!”

Shelby.

He hasn’t seen Shelby since they went out for drinks. . . three months ago? Too long ago. Back in college when he would sink into a bad place and miss classes, his friends would call for her to make him get up. Shelby’s made phone calls to his therapist several times to ask what he needs or if he can take his meds after missing two days of them or to schedule an emergency appointment for him.

He must be getting pretty bad if they called in Shelby. Her career is really taking off, she doesn’t have time to come out here and try to fix him.

He has to get up. He has to get up and let her in, then take his meds, then make them both food, then change his clothes, then brush his teeth, then talk to his therapist—

He hides his head under the blankets. Maybe she’ll just go away.

There’s a couple of minutes of silence. “Scott, I know you’re there. We’re worried about you.”

He doesn’t move. He can’t move.

“I’m going to try the windows, okay?” She sounds worried, moreso than Scott’s ever heard her. “Just—just tell me if that’s not okay.”

It’s fine, he supposes. He doesn’t really want Shelby to see him like this, but she’s seen worse. He thinks he left the windows unlocked, anyway—he shouldn’t, he knows the crime rates, but unless he always leaves them unlocked then he accidentally leaves them locked at inopportune times and then can’t get back in when he forgets his key while out patrolling.

He listens, hears the stilted slide of his front living room window. Tears build in his eyes. Shelby’s coming in, and he’ll have to get better. She’ll make him do all those things that he just can’t do, and he’ll do them, and it’ll be so hard.

A fumbling sound and a loud thump! followed by a groan reach Scott’s ears. He bites his lip, waits for his bedroom door to open.

Within about three minutes, it does.

“Scott? Is that you?”

He sighs, burrows a bit deeper. Shelby clicks her tongue.

“So you’re right here. And you couldn’t get up and answer the door? I stepped on your dying flowers.”

Scott waits. Part of him wants to get out of bed, greet her. Part of him doesn’t want her to see him like this. Part of him is so very exhausted and can’t move, even if he wanted to.

His bed dips a bit with her weight, and then there’s a hand on his shoulder, rubbing gently.

“Scott? Can you look at me please?”

Scott shivers, starts shivering and can’t stop. He’s not crying—he doesn’t think he’s crying—but he doesn’t know what to do. Eventually, he pulls the blanket down a little, blinks up at Shelby.

Her brow is creased with concern, a frown twisting her mouth. Her clothes are wrinkled, like they’ve come from a suitcase or she’s been sitting in a car all day. Her eyeliner is smudged, just the way it always looked after hours in the library—like she’s been rubbing her eyes repeatedly.

“Hey, Shelby,” he croaks. He waves vaguely at himself and the room. “Sorry you have to see all this.”

“Have you been taking your meds?”

Scott shrugs. She’ll know it means no.

“When was the last time you took them?”

He doesn’t know. He legitimately doesn’t know. All he knows is that he hasn’t showered in at least a week and he always takes them after he showers so he doesn’t think he’s had any in the past week but he isn’t sure, and it could even be longer.

Shelby leaves, returns with a glass of water and his bottle of pills. She steps around the mess on his floor and hands the water to him, twisting the cap open once her hands are free.

“I haven’t showered yet,” he protests weakly. She fixes him with a raised eyebrow, shakes a pill into his free hand. Scott stares for a moment at the little pink pill in his palm, looks back up at Shelby. She glares at him.

Scott swallows the pill.

With her there, he finds the strength to sit up, blanket-wrapped legs hanging over the side of the bed. He bites back tears. Everything seems like so much.

“Do you need to eat with that?”

Scott takes a minute to process, glances up at the prescription in her hand. “No.”

With a slight sigh, Shelby drops onto the bed beside him, shoulder to shoulder. “So. You know you need to take your meds. Why haven’t you been doing that?”

“Couldn’t get out of bed.”

“Why?”

Scott picks at the blanket on his lap. “Too much.”

“What happened?”

There’s tears in his eyes again, and he spares himself a few minutes to think about how much he can say. Only three people in the world know he’s a superhero—no, two people. Outside of his therapist, only Jack knows, and Scott hasn’t seen Jack in maybe longer than he’s seen Shelby.

His voice breaks; he clears his throat and tries again. “My—my dad died?” he says, voice quivering. Shelby sucks in a breath.

“Oh, Scott,” she says, wrapping an arm around him. Scott falls into her chest, trying and failing to hold back tears as his shoulders shake. After a few moments of holding him, she adds, “I . . . well, you always said guardian at school, so. . . .”

Scott sniffles, nods against her. “Yeah, he—he was—yeah, he was pretty much my dad.”

Shelby makes a noise of understanding, then just holds him as he cries. Once he feels like he can breathe a little, his face sticky and Shelby’s shirt damp, he draws back.

“I can’t—I can’t break out of this,” he manages, wiping his nose on the sleeve of his shirt like he has countless times this week, leaving it crusty and gross. “I’m just—he saved me, Shelby, he—he showed me how to survive and be happy, he found me—” and suddenly he’s spilling everything— “I-I overdosed, years ago, I just wanted to die, and he found me and took me to a hospital and helped me. He gave me a home, he found me someone to talk to, he helped me apply for school—he gave me life.” He pauses for a breath, a breath during which Shelby speaks.

“I . . . Scott, I didn’t know.”

Scott’s not sure what she’s talking about: the death of Aeor, his attempt, all that Aeor had done for him. . . . He chooses to believe she means the attempt, and shrugs.

“I didn’t really advertise it,” he says. “What am I meant to say? ‘Hi, my name’s Scott, I was raised in a cult and because of it I tried to kill myself’? Really, Shelby.”

He means it as a joke, but she doesn’t laugh. Her eyes flash wide, her face horrified. “Don’t—don’t joke about that!”

“What? It’s my trauma.”

“Yeah, but—” Shelby rubs her eyes, smearing the eyeliner further. “Scott, you’re really self-destructive right now! And you have episodes like this! I never knew you were—you know!”

Scott frowns. “It doesn’t change anything.”

“Maybe not to you,” Shelby shoots back. “But you weren’t answering calls or texts or even the door, and I was scared but now I know it’s possible that when you aren’t answering you could be dead!”

Scott looks away. It’s always been possible, really. Especially lately. He hasn’t been doing well. He hadn’t noticed until now, but he hasn’t been doing well at all in those regards.

“I think . . . I think I need you to stay. For a while,” Scott mumbles. “I don’t—I don’t think I’m going to try again. But. I don’t think I can do this.”

Shelby takes his hand in both of hers, rubs it between them. “I’ve got clothes packed for a week. When Jack said you hadn’t answered any messages in a long time, I knew what I was in for.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, silly,” she says affectionately. “I offered to come up here, and you’re going through it. You don’t have to be alone.”

And he’s not alone. That first day, all they do is lie in Scott’s bed and mess around on their phones. Shelby makes pasta for dinner and Scott does his best to eat, but his stomach turns and he barely manages to keep down the few bites he takes. Shelby doesn’t like that, he can tell by the wrinkle of her nose.

She doesn’t like it the next morning when his breakfast comes back up, either. She checks his temperature, frowns, and calls his prescribing doctor.

“You’re still feeling the effects of withdrawal,” she says when she hangs up. “It should start getting better soon, but you shouldn’t have stopped taking them for so long. How long do you think it was?”

Scott thinks back, tries to remember the last time he’d taken them. Tries to remember the last time he’d had motivation to take them. Tries to remember the last time he’d wanted to take them.

“Um. Shelby?”

“Yeah?”

Scott takes a deep breath. His head already feels clearer, just by having her around. He knows now what his intentions had been, as awful a realization as that is. “I didn’t want to take them.”

“What do you mean?”

“I stopped taking them,” he says slowly, pressing his hands to his temples as if that will quell the incessant headache, “because I felt like I wasn’t sad enough, and I wanted to feel worse. He was worth feeling worse. And I felt like—my head’s messed up—like I didn’t care because I wasn’t like,” he gestures around at himself, “like this, and I couldn’t bear thinking that I didn’t care. So I stopped. At least a week ago, maybe longer. I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

“Oh, Scott. . . .”

“I’m so tired,” he sighs, resting his head on the kitchen table. “The thing is, I still don’t want to take them. Because then—in some twisted way—if I, erm, do something, something bad, it won’t be my fault? Because I’m not sound of mind? I just—”

Shelby holds her hand out. Scott blinks at it. “I—what?”

“Your phone. I’m calling your therapist. You’re getting an appointment today.”

Scott blinks again. He unlocks his phone and places it in her hand before his brain catches up to the implications. “But—I can’t go out like this—I haven’t showered in at least a week—”

“A virtual appointment, then,” she amends, scrolling through his contacts. “You need to put on a different shirt, okay? That one’s gross.”

He talks to his therapist that afternoon. It ends up being an extended session, two hours instead of one, and Scott comes out of it shaking and teary-eyed. Nora gave him some instructions since his thoughts have been fluctuating from passive to active, and for the first time in nearly three years he has to enact the plan that was put in place when he first began therapy.

“Shelby?” he calls once the appointment is done, and after several shouts and eventually a text, she emerges from his bedroom, where she’d been cleaning with music playing.

“How’d it go?” she asks, plopping down on the couch beside him. Scott takes in a shuddering breath, steels himself. This is going to upset her.

“I need you,” he says, words measured, eyes on his lap, “to take my meds and hold onto them. And not tell me where they are. Is that okay?”

He doesn’t look up. Shelby doesn’t answer, so he continues.

“I-I also need you to lock away the cleaning supplies, just—just in case. There’s a lock on the cupboard under the sink, I-I can give you the key. And—well, the knives in the kitchen should be fine. Just don’t—don’t let me cook alone, okay?”

More silence. Scott hadn’t quite stopped crying after his appointment, and his tears are back in full force, dripping down his cheeks and onto his lap.

After many long moments, Shelby speaks. “I—Scott, do you think—?”

“No, no, I don’t,” he hurriedly assures her, solidly ignoring the sudden stuffiness in her voice. “I don’t think I’m going to. But—my head—I don’t think I’ll do anything, but—look, I set up a plan years ago, just in case I was ever . . . in this headspace again. I’ve had to start the first step several times, just ask—” He’s about to say Aeor, but then he remembers. And then he’s fully breaking down.

Shelby, crying herself, comforts him. As she does for the next week.

It’s slow going, recovery. He’s knocked out—almost literally—by the reintroduction of his antidepressants. He spends that time dozing, either in bed or on the couch, while Shelby turns on whatever show she likes. He manages a shower one evening, a full meal the next day. In a surge of energy, he sweeps the kitchen and vacuums the living room, then naps on the couch for three hours. He laughs at a joke Shelby tells, texts back a few of his friends who had reached out.

He mourns, and he grows. He gets permission from his therapist to have his meds returned to his control, once he no longer feels unsafe with them in his hand. It helps, somewhat, to be able to feel more like an adult. It helps to have this, if not much else.

Gem messages him the first day he opens his own prescription bottle again, asks if he’s ever going to return to defending the city because Xornoth is growing beyond the minor nuisance he’s been for so long and Solidarity collapsed a building on her, putting her out of commission for the next six weeks at least.

Right. Solidarity. The one who put him in this position in the first place.

Now that he’s back on his meds and more stable and emotionally sound, he finds that he still hates Solidarity.

At first, he obsessively plans, going as far as to make a stringboard of Solidarity sightings and connections. He’s going to find where Solidarity lives, he’s going to find that man’s family, he’s going to find everything he holds dear and tear him away from it. He’s going to lock Solidarity in solitary confinement and make sure he has no visiting rights and no chance at a trial until long past his death.

He makes the unfortunate mistake, however, of sharing these plans with his therapist.

Nora recommends that he not deliberately seek him out. Not let it go, necessarily, but to not make it his mission to end Solidarity’s life or obsess over seeking him out. Scott’s upset about that answer at first, and he leaves the appointment in a heated manner, but when he returns for his next appointment three days later he can see the sense in the recommendation. He agrees—the city needs him for more than tracking down Solidarity. He can’t let this become an obsession.

He doesn’t have to forgive, nor forget. But intentions, he learns, are very important—Solidarity may be the only villain to succeed, but there are many out there who would do anything for a chance to kill the primary protector of Empires City. He’s better spending his time defending the people from all threats rather than hounding down one.

He’s still not ready to go back into the world, though, so once Shelby leaves with a tight hug and a promise to call every night (she’d stayed a week longer than planned, until she was certain that Scott had his feet back under him), he sets to work on redesigning his costume.

Gone is the gold—he loves the gold, but he needs a change. The gold is replaced with a light, ice-like blue, both lining his white mask and filling out the ‘M’ on his chest. He adds ice blue boots and adjusts the color of the main body, making it white. The biggest change, perhaps, is his cloak: that becomes ice blue as well, but it also loses the hood, turning it into a cape.

He’s been wearing the hood to further obscure his identity, particularly to cover his hair—red is a fairly distinctive hair color, but he doesn’t really think it matters anymore, because in the parts where he can see the dye growing out, his hair is no longer blond.

His hair is growing in blue.

Once he’s sent his new design ideas to a popular superhero tailor (who sends back a message wishing him well), he sits on his bathroom floor and shaves his head. The red locks fall softly to the tiles, and it feels somehow so cathartic that he can’t help but breathe easier.

His hair grows fast, it’ll be a normal length again in no time. And he sort of likes the blue buzzcut.

He’ll have to get a wig, or always wear a hat, or something. Blue hair is even more unique than red. But he feels better. He feels almost happy.

The next day, he pulls on a beanie (his head feels weird and pokey under it) and visits Aeor’s memorial. There are other people there, but he manages to push through to lay down the flowers he’d picked from his front garden. It’s a pitiful offering compared to the many others, but one he knows that Aeor would have appreciated more than anything.

He’s not better yet. That’s okay. He knows it’s going to be a while. But he can function again, and he’s got an email from the mayor offering him Aeor’s old house in the government-funded superhero district and he responds to accept.

He starts volunteering at an animal shelter with the intent of finding a dog to adopt, as suggested by his therapist. Instead he finds a cat—adorable, grumpy Elle, whom he falls in love with after she’s too lazy to leave his lap one evening.

He gets back into life. There’s bad days, but he’s able to function. He can be who the city needs him to be. They grow to love him more and more, and he can’t help but feel proud of how much he’s grown just over the past few months. He becomes the city’s primary protector, taking over for Aeor with natural ease.

Everything’s not okay, but he knows how to handle it. He’s making it, one day at a time.

Scott’s twenty-five, and he hears a noise at the door. He wonders, for the briefest of moments, how Elle managed to get out this late at night. It must be that broken window in the guest bathroom, he thinks to himself. He’s trying to train Elle to be an indoor cat; he’ll have to fix that.

He opens the front door, only for a half-dressed, bleeding-out Solidarity to fall onto him.

It’s going to be a long night.

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