Opening excerpt of soon to be completed DIspatch fic:
Fifteen years.
Depending on context, fifteen years could be an entire lifetime or it could seem as short as a second. It was long for a relationship but below average for a marriage. Too short to let a child grow into an adult but too long for a teenager to stay a child. Fifteen years was long enough to start a new life but not long enough to grieve a life lost.
A lot could happen in fifteen years. A lot could never change.
It had been fifteen years since Robert Robertson II had been killed, and it had been fifteen years since Robert Robertson III dropped out of high-school to pick up his father’s legacy. Fifteen years later, and Robert the third was pushing thirty with scars painting his body for every year he had spent in the Mecha Man suit.
The years slipped past like oobleck in Robert’s hands that were always too distracted to hold tightly. Half of his life, and he wasn’t certain what he had to show for it besides a suit that was more welds than metal and an apartment that was filled with three pieces of furniture and a bag of dog food.
Even today, fifteen years past the day he had to grow from a boy to man before his father was even buried, Robert was still working the same job that made fifteen years feel like a breath and an eternity at the same time.
For the rest of Torrance, CA, the day was the same as any other. It was the middle of September, and the weather was hot and just muggy enough to make everything sticky and put everyone in a bad mood. Robert responded to a jewelry store robbery as Mecha Man and found the store owner more upset about the broken front window letting out the AC than the fact that she had been held at gunpoint minutes prior.
Mecha Man was on his way back to his regular patrol route when one of his scanners caught what appeared to be a mugging in progress in an alley down below. Robert immediately descended in the suit and he landed with the solid sound of a thousand pounds of metal settling onto concrete. It was a sound that generally made idiots looking for trouble rethink their choices, and now was no exception.
Five teenagers wearing wannabe-gangster jackets and mulish expressions turned away from the grandpa they had been trying to shake down and about half of them looked like they pissed their pants on the spot. Grandpa snarled like he wasn’t eight-five and shook off the loosened grip of his distracted accosters.
Robert made no attempt to hide the boredom in his tone when he said, “Are you kids going to run off and rethink your choices, or do I need to let you rethink your choices in a prison cell?”
The delinquents shot each other a set of frantic glances before turning nearly in perfect sync and sprinting out the other end of the alley. Robert decided to let them go and hope that coming face to face with MechaMan would scare them straight. Probably not, but he could hope.
“Are you alright, sir?”
The attempted-mugging victim paused brushing off the sleeves of his sleek red and blue jacket and somehow managed to meet Robert’s eyes even through the Mech’s visor. His brown eyes were overcast by bushy white eyebrows and his dark brown skin was deeply lined by years– but somehow familiar past the white hair and shoulders bowed with age. “What the shit do you mean, “sir”? I ain’t that old yet, you fucker.”
Robert half-raised the hands of the mech in a pacifying gesture while the hind-part of his brain tried to place the voice that he vaguely recognized. “Sorry, man. Just wanted to make sure you were ok.”
The old man’s brows furrowed further and that same part of Robert’s brain that was itching with familiarity felt the urge to shrink back in chastisement. “That’s all? It’s been fifteen years you fucker. You can’t think of anything better to say after all this time?”
Something in Robert’s brain finally clicked into place despite the man’s apparent age and he gasped. “Wait. Chase?”
Chase (which still didn’t really make sense because Chase was barely forty to Robert’s thirty and definitely shouldn’t be white-haired and hunched) stopped muttering and looked back up at the sound of his name. His furrowed brows abruptly loosened into something a bit sadder but resigned. “You didn’t recognize me, did you?”
Robert searched the face of the man that used to be like his older brother and tried to read in between the lines the years had carved into his skin. “What happened to you?”
Chase sighed and a bit more weariness seeped into his frame. “Life. Do you have time to catch up?”
“I’ve never been able to keep up before,” Robert replied, falling into a shadow of their old banter almost unconsciously.
Chase’s smile was sad. “Well, neither of us are running now, are we?”