Have you ever had a crisis after a mission or something like that?
anxiety attack
I have the headcanon that when Simon started as a Superhero, exactly 6 months after starting his career as a super, an accident occurred, a building fire during the night, while Gazerbeam, Gamma Jack, Frozone, Mister Incredible and Dynaguy were patrolling the city at night, they were informed of a fire near where they were patrolling, they went as quickly as possible to the scene of what happened and the building was on fire.
Gazerbeam, Gamma Jack, Mister Incredible and Dynaguy along with other supers who arrived at the scene, began to get the civilians out of the burning building, while Frozone tried to put out the fire with his ice (although it was in vain since the smoke from the fire caused Frozone to dehydrate quickly, inhibiting his powers).
While they were getting all the civilians they could out. Inside the burning building, Gazerbeam was carrying a small boy of about 12 years old in one arm and an unconscious adult woman with the other arm over his shoulder. When Gazerbeam ran out of the building with both of them in his arms, he managed to see a scared little girl coughing from the smoke from the fire, hiding under a table; Gazerbeam, noticing the girl, rushed out and left the boy and the woman he was carrying to safety in order to return as quickly as possible for the girl. When Gazerbeam left and left the boy and the woman with the paramedics, he ran as fast as he could inside the building again and went to the place where he had seen the girl hiding under the table to save her.
When he arrived at the place where the girl was, in fact, the girl was still there, but now lifeless (probably because she breathed too much smoke from the fire). When Gazerbeam saw the girl showing no signs of life, he picked her up in his arms and ran out of the building before it collapsed due to the fire, while running, he had faith that the girl was fine and that she was just unconscious, unfortunately that was not the case. When he went out with the girl in his arms, he quickly left her with the paramedics who tried to revive her for 10 minutes without success, when they saw that there was nothing that could be done for the girl, the paramedics proceeded to cover her body with a white sheet to continue caring for the other injured civilians.
Gazerbean just stared at the scene, paralyzed, stunned, and in shock. He loved his job as a super, helping people, protecting the weak, saving the defenseless. That's what Gazerbean had been doing for the past six months since he began his career as a super. He did it with love, passion, and determination. There was nothing Simon enjoyed more than helping people. And that's what he'd been doing for the past few months, successfully completing each of his missions. Even though it had been six months since Simon started as Gazerbeam, this was his... first reality check.
Here Simon realized that the hardest part of being a super is that you can't always save everyone.
He had never stopped to think that something like this could happen, he just thought that as long as he gave his best, everything would be fine. Besides, the other supers had been guiding him on how to be a super, on how to act under pressure (by Mister Incredible), on how to prioritize mid-fight (by Frozone), on how to deal with his fans (by Gamma Jack), etc, etc. But no one ever told him what to do in these situations, no one ever told him that these situations could happen and he hadn't stopped to think about it before either.
The fire was already out, only smoke and fire alarms remained. When Gazerbeam reacted and came out of shock, he looked around, at the civilians both injured and healthy, paramedics and firefighters running from one side to the other, supers helping injured civilians, a few other supers just staring perplexed at the destroyed building, he returned his gaze to the lifeless body of the girl already covered with a sheet. Gazerbeam began to feel a very strong pressure in his chest, a heaviness in his shoulders, he was short of air, breathing was difficult, he couldn't hear all the background noise, he only heard echoes, an overwhelming despair consumed him in a matter of seconds. He didn't know what to do and he didn't want anyone to see him like that, so he ran away from the crowd without anyone seeing him, he got away from the disaster, he stopped running and started walking, he went into an alley that was across the sidewalk he was walking on, his knees gave way as the darkness of the alley covered him, he collapsed to his knees on the ground, he still couldn't breathe, his head was spinning and there were only two images in his head, when the little girl was scared under the table and when the paramedics covered her with that white sheet.
In his head, the only thoughts bouncing around were: Could I have saved her if I'd hurried? Could I have carried all three of them? She was just a kid. Is it my fault? Did I really do my best? Could I have done more?!.
Gamma Jack looked through the crowd for his friends. He saw Frozone, Mister Incredible, and Dynaguy talking together near a fire truck. He approached them and asked where Gazerbeam was. They thought Gazerbeam and Gamma Jack were together. When they saw that they weren't, the four of them began to worry, wondering if something had happened to him, or if he was still inside the building. They asked a paramedic if they had seen Gazerbeam, to which he replied that he had seen him quickly leave the place a couple of minutes ago.
This calmed them down a bit, but they were still worried about where their friend had gone. They didn't hear from him again that night or the next day. The next time they saw each other, it was because Lucio and Bob had come looking for him at his office a couple of days after not hearing from him. To which Simon only excused himself by saying he had been very busy with work.
He didn't discuss the matter with anyone except Dicker.
