This is All We Got Now 1/2 (The Big Bang Theory fanfic)
Title from Lostprophets "Rooftops."
./.
...This is All We Got Now...
./.
He showed up one day almost a year ago. She doesn’t know where he came from, or why he has three scars that trace from his left eye to dip below his shirt. Everyone has origin stories these days, but something about the way he speaks-clipped and never hurried, more disdainful than hateful, but always with a level of bitterness that he can never hide from her-makes her think that maybe his story has more meaning than vengeance or bloodlust, that what he’s seeking is neither anarchy nor power.
He wears black. Black leather pants, a snug black shirt that goes to his forearms, and a black mask that doesn’t hide his blueblue eyes or the ways his lips purse when he gets irritated.
The others have always gone for style and flash, they’ve burnt the sky with rockets strapped to their backs, they’ve yelled out their presence in the crowd with oranges and reds and greens, they’ve shouted their demands and spewed their hatred, they’ve toppled buildings and killed people because they thought they should. And she caught them. She’s always caught them.
They call her Maverick to her face, although she’s seen the newspapers with Annie Oakley Returns and The Last Cowgirl Fights Back. Maverick. An unbranded range animal. She thinks it fitting, and lets the writer who coined it know she approves when she drops by to save the Pasadena Gazette from going up in flames. She likes the freedom of the word, as well as the danger, and she’s never been a fan of the slutty superheroes. They can stay away from her range, she’s got it covered.
She wasn’t always a superhero, of course. She was going to be an actress, she was going to take Hollywood by storm. Except four years ago, on her way to Pasadena, her boyfriend Kurt ran a red light and crashed the car into a truck, and two gallons of chemicals spilled into their car as she laid there, unconscious.
They said it was a miracle she lived (he didn’t), so she didn’t mention the fact that her reflexes were sharpened past-human, that she was stronger, faster, and had developed the sudden knack for controlling water molecules. Her hair’s grown back and her arm has healed and she’s gotten past that wreck just like she’s gotten past everything in her life. And she’s never looked back.
Superheroes used to be comic books and bad television, books and big production movies, but now they’re passé, old news, they’re crawling out of the woodwork in droves, as the world falls to shambles, as science works against nature. Six years ago Jeffrey Dunner proved that he could fly. Eight months later he was shot dead.
No man can live forever.
So the disguises make sense, because no matter what side of the line you walk, hero or villain, everyone else is a danger to you. Special is always feared.
She ties her hair into pigtails and dons her cowboy hat and boots, and she wears cutoffs and a white tank top and a pink mask, because she’s always known she’d have to be something, even if it’s here in Pasadena, and if she could hogtie a pig before she can do a lot more with a lasso and a criminal now.
Except nine months ago he walked into her town.
They call him Darwin, because the first time he walked into a bank and brought it down around his ears a security guard heard him say, “Survival of the fittest.” It fits. It’s a full-on war cry. And this, Maverick think, this could be bad, this could be very fucking bad.
He hits banks every once and awhile, but the need for money seems almost an afterthought. He goes after scientific buildings, targeting specific research, specific pharmacies, stores, symbols, devices. He recites equations like doctrine, as if his word is his law. He’s crafting academia as he believes it should be, and he doesn’t care who gets hurt in his path.
And he can’t die.
They all have powers, nowadays, but bullets don’t pierce his skin, and knives don’t cut his flesh, and even words don’t seem to touch him. He’s silent except when he’s explaining why he has to tear down a building, his voice low.
“Leonard,” he says, “Leonard, I’m fixing it, it’ll never happen again.”
And sometimes, she thinks, sometimes he does things because he can, because he hurts and he wants someone else to hurt, too.
It’s not until he rigs the chemical plant on the outside of town to self-destruct, again without the mass-massacre he had to work to avoid, but still without any care for those who happened to be in the vicinity, that she gets even an inkling. Four hundred people lost their jobs, the air filled with smoke miles around, six dead, seventeen wounded, but she has an idea about what makes him tick.
It’s the Texan drawl he slips into when they’re fighting and he’s trying to get away but she won’t let him, when his irritation overwhelms him and his emotions interfere with his calculating, the accent and the factory and she can’t help but wonder.
A year and a half ago, in September, a plant exploded outside Galveston, Texas. Between the first explosion and the fire and the way the explosion had cracked foundations and water lines, almost eleven hundred people had died, and half that injured. Protocols had been overlooked, systems had not been kept up-to-date, and after two months of investigation it was revealed that a group of scientists had been conducting unapproved experiments that led unsafe chemicals being mixed in an already precarious environment.
Eleven hundred people. And he couldn’t die.
She’s crafting an origin story for him, out of guesses and half-truths. They trade barbs as they battle across rooftops, but he’s not after her, and she can’t hurt him, so he always slips away. He ranges farther out to find what he’s looking for, but always comes home to Pasadena, and the newspaper headlines flood the streets, but he’s on more than a vendetta, he’s on a crusade.
He’s an enemy of the people, and she’s been chosen as their savior. They’re playing out a charade, they’re affecting the steps to the dance, but he’s not after her, and she’s still a step behind, still grasping at the pieces that don’t quite fit together, because there’s more than sorrow and bitterness in his blueblue eyes as he shoves her backwards, and when she twists her palm to collect enough water in the air to freeze his black boot to the ground he looks at her with something almost like pride.
“Perhaps there’s hope for you yet, Maverick,” he says, smile awkward with disuse, but when she reaches for him he’s gone.
She knows that she’s too curious, that she has too many questions she’ll never know the answer to.
And when she runs into a burning building to try to save a child, giving herself a nosebleed from trying to pull enough water to help smother the fire, and the ceiling collapses in as she gets near, the girl screaming for help, the smoke thick, and she drops to her knees, grabbing the girl in her arms, there’s a man in black, his clothing burning away, who grabs her around the waist, and when she pulls away to grab the girl tighter, eyes watering, he grabs her again and drags them both out and away.
She wakes up in an alleyway two streets away, the girl unconscious in her arms, but still breathing, still breathing, and what the fuck. What. The. Fuck.
But the next time they meet she hits him and he hits her back just as hard and they dance away, and sometimes she stops him, but sometimes she doesn’t.
And when it comes down to it, this is her adopted home, and she’s not going to let someone fuck it over. So she does the one thing she hates. She takes off her mask, changes her clothes, and goes to the library. Research time.
It’s more than depressing, going through fourteen hundred names, checking careers and vocations, but she has her clues.
Darwin is smart. Genius smart. And he was attached to Galveston. And is attached to Pasadena. And he lost someone named Leonard.
Two weeks and over four hundred phone calls later, she has a drink for the first time in two years.
He hadn’t just lost Leonard. He’d lost his family, and two other friends. He’d lost everyone.
But then they’d all lost someone in the last five years, hadn’t they? The world’s going to hell, and he’s just hurrying it on its way.
And she has to stop him.
Part Two
./.
...This is All We Got Now...
./.
He showed up one day almost a year ago. She doesn’t know where he came from, or why he has three scars that trace from his left eye to dip below his shirt. Everyone has origin stories these days, but something about the way he speaks-clipped and never hurried, more disdainful than hateful, but always with a level of bitterness that he can never hide from her-makes her think that maybe his story has more meaning than vengeance or bloodlust, that what he’s seeking is neither anarchy nor power.
He wears black. Black leather pants, a snug black shirt that goes to his forearms, and a black mask that doesn’t hide his blueblue eyes or the ways his lips purse when he gets irritated.
The others have always gone for style and flash, they’ve burnt the sky with rockets strapped to their backs, they’ve yelled out their presence in the crowd with oranges and reds and greens, they’ve shouted their demands and spewed their hatred, they’ve toppled buildings and killed people because they thought they should. And she caught them. She’s always caught them.
They call her Maverick to her face, although she’s seen the newspapers with Annie Oakley Returns and The Last Cowgirl Fights Back. Maverick. An unbranded range animal. She thinks it fitting, and lets the writer who coined it know she approves when she drops by to save the Pasadena Gazette from going up in flames. She likes the freedom of the word, as well as the danger, and she’s never been a fan of the slutty superheroes. They can stay away from her range, she’s got it covered.
She wasn’t always a superhero, of course. She was going to be an actress, she was going to take Hollywood by storm. Except four years ago, on her way to Pasadena, her boyfriend Kurt ran a red light and crashed the car into a truck, and two gallons of chemicals spilled into their car as she laid there, unconscious.
They said it was a miracle she lived (he didn’t), so she didn’t mention the fact that her reflexes were sharpened past-human, that she was stronger, faster, and had developed the sudden knack for controlling water molecules. Her hair’s grown back and her arm has healed and she’s gotten past that wreck just like she’s gotten past everything in her life. And she’s never looked back.
Superheroes used to be comic books and bad television, books and big production movies, but now they’re passé, old news, they’re crawling out of the woodwork in droves, as the world falls to shambles, as science works against nature. Six years ago Jeffrey Dunner proved that he could fly. Eight months later he was shot dead.
No man can live forever.
So the disguises make sense, because no matter what side of the line you walk, hero or villain, everyone else is a danger to you. Special is always feared.
She ties her hair into pigtails and dons her cowboy hat and boots, and she wears cutoffs and a white tank top and a pink mask, because she’s always known she’d have to be something, even if it’s here in Pasadena, and if she could hogtie a pig before she can do a lot more with a lasso and a criminal now.
Except nine months ago he walked into her town.
They call him Darwin, because the first time he walked into a bank and brought it down around his ears a security guard heard him say, “Survival of the fittest.” It fits. It’s a full-on war cry. And this, Maverick think, this could be bad, this could be very fucking bad.
He hits banks every once and awhile, but the need for money seems almost an afterthought. He goes after scientific buildings, targeting specific research, specific pharmacies, stores, symbols, devices. He recites equations like doctrine, as if his word is his law. He’s crafting academia as he believes it should be, and he doesn’t care who gets hurt in his path.
And he can’t die.
They all have powers, nowadays, but bullets don’t pierce his skin, and knives don’t cut his flesh, and even words don’t seem to touch him. He’s silent except when he’s explaining why he has to tear down a building, his voice low.
“Leonard,” he says, “Leonard, I’m fixing it, it’ll never happen again.”
And sometimes, she thinks, sometimes he does things because he can, because he hurts and he wants someone else to hurt, too.
It’s not until he rigs the chemical plant on the outside of town to self-destruct, again without the mass-massacre he had to work to avoid, but still without any care for those who happened to be in the vicinity, that she gets even an inkling. Four hundred people lost their jobs, the air filled with smoke miles around, six dead, seventeen wounded, but she has an idea about what makes him tick.
It’s the Texan drawl he slips into when they’re fighting and he’s trying to get away but she won’t let him, when his irritation overwhelms him and his emotions interfere with his calculating, the accent and the factory and she can’t help but wonder.
A year and a half ago, in September, a plant exploded outside Galveston, Texas. Between the first explosion and the fire and the way the explosion had cracked foundations and water lines, almost eleven hundred people had died, and half that injured. Protocols had been overlooked, systems had not been kept up-to-date, and after two months of investigation it was revealed that a group of scientists had been conducting unapproved experiments that led unsafe chemicals being mixed in an already precarious environment.
Eleven hundred people. And he couldn’t die.
She’s crafting an origin story for him, out of guesses and half-truths. They trade barbs as they battle across rooftops, but he’s not after her, and she can’t hurt him, so he always slips away. He ranges farther out to find what he’s looking for, but always comes home to Pasadena, and the newspaper headlines flood the streets, but he’s on more than a vendetta, he’s on a crusade.
He’s an enemy of the people, and she’s been chosen as their savior. They’re playing out a charade, they’re affecting the steps to the dance, but he’s not after her, and she’s still a step behind, still grasping at the pieces that don’t quite fit together, because there’s more than sorrow and bitterness in his blueblue eyes as he shoves her backwards, and when she twists her palm to collect enough water in the air to freeze his black boot to the ground he looks at her with something almost like pride.
“Perhaps there’s hope for you yet, Maverick,” he says, smile awkward with disuse, but when she reaches for him he’s gone.
She knows that she’s too curious, that she has too many questions she’ll never know the answer to.
And when she runs into a burning building to try to save a child, giving herself a nosebleed from trying to pull enough water to help smother the fire, and the ceiling collapses in as she gets near, the girl screaming for help, the smoke thick, and she drops to her knees, grabbing the girl in her arms, there’s a man in black, his clothing burning away, who grabs her around the waist, and when she pulls away to grab the girl tighter, eyes watering, he grabs her again and drags them both out and away.
She wakes up in an alleyway two streets away, the girl unconscious in her arms, but still breathing, still breathing, and what the fuck. What. The. Fuck.
But the next time they meet she hits him and he hits her back just as hard and they dance away, and sometimes she stops him, but sometimes she doesn’t.
And when it comes down to it, this is her adopted home, and she’s not going to let someone fuck it over. So she does the one thing she hates. She takes off her mask, changes her clothes, and goes to the library. Research time.
It’s more than depressing, going through fourteen hundred names, checking careers and vocations, but she has her clues.
Darwin is smart. Genius smart. And he was attached to Galveston. And is attached to Pasadena. And he lost someone named Leonard.
Two weeks and over four hundred phone calls later, she has a drink for the first time in two years.
He hadn’t just lost Leonard. He’d lost his family, and two other friends. He’d lost everyone.
But then they’d all lost someone in the last five years, hadn’t they? The world’s going to hell, and he’s just hurrying it on its way.
And she has to stop him.
Part Two