[ ❌ ] is there something your muse struggles with that they might never overcome? what is it? why do they have so much trouble with it?
TW DEATH / PARENTAL DEATH
For Johnny it’s controlling his powers. For as much as he loves them, they’re dangerous, destructive, and staying in control is something he always has to think about. His greatest fear is hurting someone - or rather, hurting someone again. In high school, the worst thing he’s ever done was to lose control during a fight. The rival of his school days, Mike Snow hated Johnny and Johnny hated him right back, but then he ruined Mike’s life in a furious moment of lapsed control, burning him and leaving him scarred forever. They’re on good terms now, but that’s stayed with Johnny. It’s something that only Ben really understands - what it’s like to be afraid of yourself, of what you can do, of who you might hurt, without even meaning it.
He’s always dreamed about people burning, long before he got his powers, going back all the way to when he was eight years old and Sue woke him in the middle of the night and told him their mother was dead. Car crash, Sue said, and didn’t go into more details, but Johnny found out later anyway, that Mary Storm was really paralyzed in the crash, and couldn’t move as she suffocated and burned alive when the car caught fire. Years later, in space, when Johnny flamed on for the first time, he thought he was going to die the same way. Part of it felt right, like he’d always expected to burn out fast.
But then he didn’t, and then he loved his powers, and then they made his life into something that actually mattered, so it became so much easier to compress the memory of his mother down until he barely remembered her face, let alone the agonizing way she must have died. It’s selfish to forget, he knows, but that’s Johnny to the core. Textbook selfish asshole, so he thinks. Except he can only forget so much, and never what his powers can do, what he can do, if he isn’t careful, every minute, every second. In those first weeks of getting his powers, he was afraid to even be near other people, and it’s a fear that has never truly gone away. It’s just part of him, like breathing is: he will always be dangerous to anyone who gets too close. Maybe it’s better for them if he doesn’t.
