Chapter Twenty-Eight: Escaping Fate

Despicable—grandson

Fucking fantastic.

That's how this is going, to put it in less than professional terms, and Chip's not having it. Gideon is tied up on the floor, immobile, sickeningly still. For the most part, Chip hardly remembers that Gideon's even here at all, and it makes his stomach churn, how much this man is suddenly just a prop in a game. The stranger, tied up with him, back to back. This one talks more.

"Jesus Christ, all I wanted was to lose my stupid powers. All I wanted was to be normal. Do you know what it's like, to have cool super friends and have them always be rescuing you, just a non-stop thing. All the time, like I'm not a normal guy, like I'm just something that they have to rescue."

Max clenches his jaw. "Shut up! Shut up! What do I need to do to shut you up?"

The stranger makes a mrrrrooow, his eyebrows quirked. "So that's what you're into—"

Gideon slaps his hand on to the stranger's, and finally, he stops talking. Just closes his eyes and sighs against the boy. Chip takes a deep breath. He isn't tied. He had to watch, helplessly, as Max strung the other boys together with the red humming rope that he, unfortuntely,  helped provide him. And it sucks. Standing there, watching. He wants Finn and Kai as much as he hates to admit it. He wants those calming eyes, he wants someone to grab him by the shoulder again and yank him back into common-sense land like they did last night.

But they're not here. So Chip sits down on the couch, Max hovering in the air, seething. "Why are you here?"

"To stop you." Chip laces his hands behind his head to keep himself from punching Max's mouth in. It had felt so good to do that, more than good. It felt like relief, like all the parts that Max had twisted up and broken had now easily slipped back into place. That one punch. That one slash of motion, resulting in the blood flowing up to the surface of the water.

But that hadn't stopped him. The revenge hadn't stopped him.

"I'm just trying to start over." Max sits down beside him on the couch, their knees only inches apart, and in another life, they could've just been two friends, plopping down to talk about sports or politics or school or work. Max, running his fingers through his hair, his dark tee shirt straining against his muscles, big chocolate eyes cold. Chip, stiff, his twitching hands laced in this fake casual way.

"Yeah, start over. If that's all it is, I don't think that fucking explains why there are two boys tied up on the ground?" His voice trembles. He wanted to beat him at his own game, all cool and impassive, just like Max. Turns out that's almost impossible, considering Chip has a heart, unlike his like his old friend.

Max draws in a deep breath. "That wouldn't have happened if you hadn't come here."

Chip has to maneuver carefully, he knows this the moment he looks into the eyes of the guy he was once best friends with, the guy who he couldn't help crushing on. He knows this when he sees the cold and glassiness of those eyes. When he offers up a counter, he has to see it like he's moving a game piece. Playing chess, that's how he has to see it. "Really, because I think I saw you choking that kid out the window, you know, before I became a part of your life here."

Max shrugs and gives him a bared-teeth smile. "Maybe you put a wrench in my plans? Because, if you hadn't dragged me back here, you screaming, Gideon wouldn't be tied up right now."

Chip grabs a fist full of his own hair, because lacing his hands to keep them off Max doesn't feel like it'll last as long as he'd like it to. All the memories of Max dancing goofily to vinyls and proudly showing off his best friend, they finally feel like smoke. The grip of 'maybe it's my fault' subsides when he looks at Gideon. This isn't Gideon's fault, Gideon never deserved this, whoever he might be. No one deserves what Max says he has to do to them.

Not even Chip. "You don't think it would've happened eventually? Every one of the people you say you loved, Percy, Monet, me, you do this to?"

"Why did you go to Monet?" Max stands up, floating just an inch above the ground this time.

"Because—" Because of Max's fingers on Chip's throat. Because of how Max would pinch his elbow and step on his shoe when they were with Percy, how his hot breath fell against his skin. Because of the whispers, 'You're nothing without me,' because of how when something in his plan went wrong, his cool demeanor got thrown down to the floor of his bedroom like his mask, and Chip is the one who had to listen to the shouts of rage, had to watch glass shatter and slice Max's fist, had to watch and wonder if those shards would be his own jaw next. "Because you put me through hell, Max. Absolute fucking hell."

Max lifts his head, poised like a king, his shoulders arched and his back ramrod-straight. Cocky son of a bitch. "I knew you were going to tell, that's why I did it."

"No." Chip has to stand up too. He can't contain it. "You could stop doing this, you didn't ever have to do it in the first place. You don't fucking need to hurt anyone, but that's what you tell yourself so you can justify being a monster."

Max's fist trembles. "That's not true, you—"

"No!" Chip has a voice now, and it's going to be heard. "No, you philosophize about how much of a bad person you are, and how it must be fate and shit, but you don't care about that. You don't care about being a bad person. You're a fucking monster and it's not because you have superpowers, it's because of you. And you don't want to fix it. You say you're a bad person because you don't want to fix it."

Max's mouth falls open, just for a second. He shakes his head. "Supers are freaks, they should be made into normal people. That's it. I'm doing a good thing. I'm-I'm not blaming anything on anyone, that's just the way it is."

It's the most ridiculous thing he's ever heard. Chip breathes in deeply, letting his hands fall limply against his sides. He thought he could talk around him, pin him down with the truth, but hearing him talk, he's starting to lose hope in that— and patience. There's only so much a guy can take, listening to a psychopath blame everything but himself for the horrible things he's done is definitely a lot. "That doesn't make sense," he says, but this time he walks over to the boys. The stranger is close-eyed, hardly breathing. And Gideon is just staring at them, his mouth pressed into a tight line, his eyes saucers. Watching, reading the room.

"The hell do you think you're doing?" asks Max.

"I'm untying them. Are you going to stop me? Are you going to hit me?"

Max steps in front of him, putting his hand on Chip's chest. His masquerade is gone; the smirk, the sunny or empty eyes, they're replaced with a frown and knitted brow. And his eyes; Chip has never seen his eyes like that. There's emotion there, in the glints of light and glowing whites. There's rage and sadness in the face.

He's cracking.

"Chip, I'm sorry."

But sorry just isn't enough anymore. Chip needs something more. "Really? Are you? Or are you just pretending, like always?"

Max stands there for a second, still, and Chip knows. Knows that he's shocked to hear him talk this much, to hear real rage. "I am, my powers just got to my head."

Chip steps toward the hostages, shoves past Max's hand. He kneels down to grab the rope and Max snatches his wrists, so tightly he can feel the tendons and muscle strain against Maxes' fingers wrapped around his skin. Chip's breath spirals up and out of him, hot hot hot. "Don't touch me!"

"Chip, I don't want to hurt you," Max starts, the way he always does before he makes some ultimatum Chip can't accept, one that will inevitably end with Chip getting hurt no matter what Max says he "wants" to do. It's written in his face, the same expression, the same too-soft voice. That softness, how he justifies the violence he deals.

Chip lunges past Max. With his strong hand, Chip yanks the end of a string looped in the knot so tightly that the stranger awakens, gasping and making an inhuman noise of horror as the ropes pull tighter for half a second. But Gideon pulls against them, a flex of his strong shoulders that loosens the ropes.

Max snaps Chip's wrist.

***

I didn't fucking mean to. I forget my strength sometimes, that's all. But the sound of it, like wood being halved, it's sudden and it cuts the air. For a a moment, it's just me holding the crushed bones, that sound hanging in the air like a ghost. I stare at what I've done, and is it the worse thing I've done, what with the kidnapping and the hero-threatening and the taking powers?

No, but this is the thing that stops my heart.

Chip makes the most unmusical sound I've ever heard from him. Something between a scream and a gasp. Just, pain, out loud. It's only a couple moments where I'm trapped in the sounds, in the papery feeling of his skin and the softness where the bone should be.

And then the others are free. Shit.

Gatsby scampers to the kitchen. I turn to catch him but Gideon's got me by the collar of my shirt. He hauls me into the air and then slams me back down to earth with one hard drop. I scramble to my feet, but I'm not fast enough. The cat-person-freak has Gideon's gun in his hand, training the barrel on my shoulder.

I hate it, hate the gun, feel the sweat trickling down my neck. Hate them. Gideon's got the ropes in his hands, the humming red glinting off his tattoos, off his eyes. I float up, levitating. And in this moment, I'm aware of the skeleton lady watching me, his saint, the gun trained on the back of my neck, and Chip broken on the floor. I hurt him again. And it's playing over and over in my head, the way my fist clenched. Did I mean to? I don't know. It happened quickly, just the stab of rage, that he was here, that he was fucking up everything.

I don't know. I don't know if I didn't mean to. The skeleton saint is watching me, she knows. Is this fate? It's happening all over again. Me hurting another innocent person. And I'm going to run away, jump out the window and escape. I'm going to go to another city, someone will be kind to me. They'll find out, and I'll hurt them, break them.

But Chip's voice is in my head. I'm always thinking about him, but it's usually his expressions. The anger on his face, written in his curled lip or red cheeks. The fear in wild glowing eyes. But I've never heard that pain said out loud.

"...Philosophize about fate and shit...."

But it's true, I want to scream, it's true. I didn't chose to have my dad, I didn't chose to have my powers, I didn't chose to have friends who would eventually turn on me, friends I'd have to silence. It's a cycle I'm locked in, I'm trapped. Every story has its good guy, and fate cast me as a bad guy. It's the authorial intent of God. It has to be.

But he won't shut up, even whimpering on the ground, the words are rolling in my head, over and over. The gun is on my back and I think of Monet, think of the shotgun slugs she took for him.

"Max," says Gideon, and he's all hard angles and sharp sounds, like he was the night he thought Finn, Kai, and Chip were trying to hurt me. It's not the soft way he says my name, or the questioning way, all big eyes and a gentle voice. He says it like it's venom, something he has to spit.

"You're a fucking monster and it's not because you have superpowers, it's because of you."

Haven't I mused this to myself before? Why does it hurt so much coming from Chip? Because it's real, because it's right? Because I've caused so many people so much harm all out of my own self-loathing. I'm a bad guy, it's fate, it's not my fault.

My hand clutches at my heart, reflexively. It's really fucking hurting now. Not in a figurative way, not an implacable ache. There's a sharp, stabbing pain in my left breast. But that feels distant, everything is distant.

The saint of death is laughing at me.

"Don't fight back," Gideon says. He's holding the rope taut between both fists. "It's okay, it's going to be okay," he adds, his voice shifting to one you'd use to calm a wounded animal. Gideon used to work on a ranch, I don't know why that image comes to me now, but it does; Gideon patting a broken-legged horse before putting a bullet into it. "Gatsby has a gun trained on you. There's no point in making him fire."

Gideon's gushing reduced to a couple of sentences.

The stabbing pain is spreading, it feels like someone has my heart clenched in their fist. My breath eeks out of me in gasps.

It's fate, it has to be fate. I didn't choose this life, it was given to me.

But the saint is laughing, and I look down at Chip, twitching. No. When he found out that I was a supervillian, I could've just made him swore not tell. He loved me. He loved me and I hurt him and I took satisfaction from it. I preached to Monet about 'there being lines you can't cross,' I could've stuck to that. Putting my hand on his throat could've been my line that I woudn't cross. But it wasn't.

There wasn't a line.

When he found out I was a supervillain, I could've stopped.

When Monet found out I was a supervillain, I could've stopped.

When I came to Starlight, I could've become an entirely different person. Gideon loved me, he let me live with him. I could've been a bodyguard. I met Galaxy; I could've been a sidekick, or a superhero.

But I'm a bad guy; I chose to be a bad guy.

The fist around my heart squeezes. And I'm aware, vaguely, that there's something breaking in my chest. I look down at Chip's broken wrist, the way its bent, the way his long lashes brush his cheek. He's defenseless. Bullets are meaningless to me. I could crush him. I could drag him with me, into the new cycle. I could crush them all.

The saint is watching me, my heart in her hands, literally. I might die; I don't know any teenage supervillains having heart attacks and having them hurt this way. If I wasn't a super, hell, I might already be dead.

I chose this, I chose this, I chose this. I have to fix this.

I can crush them.

I don't.

"Just, just." A wheeze fills up my heaving chest as I press my wrists together. The cycle, my fate, is me escaping out the window, and doing this again, hurting more people. But my choice is to stay here and fix this. I can't go on, pretending I'm some evil force that has to exist when I'm just hurting people for no good reason, for nothing. "Just, I'm sorry, can you heal them? My friends?"

Gideon nods, his smile small and sad.