thinking about Flambae sometimes overdoing his flames and pushing himself too hard and he can’t come down from it.
it’s a mission and he’s pushing himself to the brink and his entire body is wildly aflame.
but even when all of the assailants are burned to unrecognizable crisps and his team is calling him in, he can’t extinguish himself.
he just keeps getting brighter and hotter and he’s nearly blinding against the sky. even Prism can’t look at him without shielding her eyes, and that scares her the most because she hasn’t had to manage this level of loss of control from him. she hates that she can’t help him, only hear her own voice get more shrill as he glows with the intensity of a second sun.
the team keeps trying to call him, their worry spiking as Flambae just keeps rising and his fire’s nearly blue with its heat. even Waterboy’s abilities evaporate nearly a foot from him.
Flambae knows he’s losing it. he’s terrified of his lack of control, that he’s finally feeling the fire and feeling it hurt. and it finally fucking burns.
and no, no, no he wants to live. after all this time he finally learned that he wants to live and now he’s getting that taken away from him by his own powers.
but most of all, he’s terrified that he’ll hurt someone else. that he’ll take from someone else.
he flies up. he doesn’t have a destination, just a goal to get away. to calm himself down forcibly with the freezing air before he burns himself up or lights the very air around him on fire. he ascends so far, so fast, that most of them who can fly can’t even follow him.
Robert immediately launches after him, tailing the comet that streaks straight up into the stratosphere. he ignores the warnings that start incrementally popping up, temperature and shields and altitude. he pushes himself equally in turn, determined to not let Flambae out of his sight.
there’s a solid coat of frost that threatens to freeze through the mech’s booster rockets before Flambae’s shape in the sky finally blinks out, and he’s hurtling towards the earth.
Robert dives for him, as his mech protests the sudden movement. he catches Flambae in his arms, still smoldering, his heat radiating so high that Robert can feel it through the mech’s armor.
despite the new warnings screaming at him, he holds Flambae as close as he can, cradling his burning form gently, as gently as the mech will allow him. he takes his time descending, monitoring every single twitch and shaky breath from the unconscious man.
he doesn’t realize how fast his heart is beating—that one of the warnings was coming from his own life monitoring system—until he’s touched down and paramedics are prying Flambae from his hands. he doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath Flambae is shut into the back of an emergency vehicle, out of his sight. he gasps for air inside the cockpit and slams the hatch open, Malevola and Punch Up having to shake him into breathing normally.
there are deep scorch marks—now long cooled—left on the mech’s hands, grooves indenting the shape of Flambae’s limp body into the metal.
it takes him a while to repair those. because every time he touches those, he remembers and his chest tightens unbearably.
when Flambae is finally cleared for visitors, Robert is one of the first ones at his door. he doesn’t know why he’s afraid to touch him, but he is.
not because he thinks Flambae might burn him if he did.
but rather because he thinks Flambae might burn up, burn so bright he disappears right in front of him.
Robert realizes in that moment just how afraid he is of losing him.
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