Title: Radiation
Author: kenzimone
Disclaimer: Don't own.
Rating: PG
Word count: 1,300
Summary: Zach would never trade his power for anything in the world.
Note: Wow, it's been awhile. In the same vein as Blueprints, this is a look at Zach and his power, with a lot of artistic license taken. Utterly unbeta'd. For the LJ community fanfic100's 40th prompt: 'Sight'.
...
Zach would never trade his power for anything in the world. Not for super strength or the ability to fly, not to be able to form fire with his bare hands or the gift of making things live and grow out of dirt and ashes.
Not for anything, not in a million years.
...
Zach's father is a supernova; he burns so brightly that you have to avert your eyes. He stuns and blinds and makes people fall to their knees in frantic attempts to escape his light, just like his father before him and his father before him.
Zach pales in comparison; projects no more light than an ordinary light bulb. And his father, tall and blond and brilliant light no matter what, runs his hands down the back of Zach's head and says Don't worry, Zachary. Things like this take time. You'll see.
Zach knows better, but that's alright. He's got all the power he'll ever need.
...
Zach's mother has large, frizzy red hair. It falls down her back like a rippling stream and frames her freckled face perfectly; it's thick and heavy and covers her ears just so, just enough to hide the swirls in the shells of her ears and the way their tips taper to a point like those of mythical creatures in books and movies.
She's blind as a bat, Zach's mother. It's always been like that. She's always been like that, and probably will always be like that, and it's such a big part of their lives that Zach cannot ever fathom having a mother whose eyes seek out and meet his, bright and alert, on the first try – who doesn't simply look in his general direction but actually sees him.
The blindness is who and what she is, and the very first thing that anyone ever learn about her; hello, I'm Mary and I'm blind as a bat.
...
One of Zach's earliest memories is of being carried through the dark, cluttered downstairs living room by his mom.
He's three years old and cradled this close to her, with his head nestled against her neck, he can faintly sense the almost imperceptible vibrations in the back of her throat. She makes strange and primitive noises, clicks and chirps and whines, and it's unlike anything he's ever heard or ever will hear.
She moves with confidence, steps over and around the toys littering the floor, never stumbling, and even though he clings tightly to the cloth of her sweater, there is no doubt in his mind that she'll never ever fall or trip or let him drop.
...
Even though she's never said as much, Zach knows that, to his mother, he is veiled in shadows and mist.
Her echolocation allows her to know where he is, can paint an outline of his silhouette, but that's all it does. Sometimes she reaches out a hand and lets her fingertips trace down the slope of his nose and the curve of his jaw, says Such a handsome boy, but her eyes are always not quite focused – looking in his direction, but not really at him.
Things will be different soon, he thinks (hopes). There's a buzzing in the back of his head – it tickles and makes him want to laugh.
...
Zach's dad was an early bloomer. He likes to tell Zach all about it, how he woke up one morning just shy of his twelfth birthday and almost blinded his older sister with his glow.
Zach's fifteen and still powerless. It's early August, and he's set to start Sky High in less than a month – he doesn't know what he'll do if he hasn't manifested before then. Since both of his parents have powers he knows the odds are with him, but there's still a tiny voice of doubt in the back of his head.
He wonders sometimes if he should ask for Will's take on the issue, but then brushes the thought aside; his best friend has yet to power up in front of anyone, and Zach can only assume that it's because Will doesn't want to make his friends feel inferior.
Will's a good guy, like that.
...
Zach's father has a study on the second floor. The walls are covered in bookcases, and the bookcases are overflowing with books and pamphlets and the odd knick-knack (an old terrestrial globe, a dusty bust of someone long since dead, a box of smelly cigars).
A lot of the books are about animals – bats, mostly – and when he was younger Zach would spend a lot of rainy days flipping through thick compendiums and looking at pictures of bats in flight, at the delicate drawings of their anatomy.
He learns a lot about ultrasonic sounds and calcium-less cartilage that will bend far without breaking, about poor visual acuity (but not blindness) and how some species can detect and see ultraviolet light.
There are books about that too – about light – and these his father will sometimes read to him. They're not as interesting as the ones about bats; there are few pictures (only diagrams) and a lot of words that are hard to understand – waves and radiation and rays and different kinds of light, some of which humans can't even see and some which actually kills stuff.
He remembers a bit though, more than he would have thought. That's why, years later, when he goes to bed powerless, worried and knowing that there are only a few days left until the first day of school, and wakes up the next morning to find his head buzzing and that all the plants in his room have turned brown and crumbled and died, that he knows what he's dealing with.
...
It's a fizzling beneath his skin, not like what his dad has described, but something different. It makes him think of boiling water, and that maybe he's being cooked alive from the inside – disintegrated, crumbled into dust just like the Cyclamen his mother had put on his windowsill last week, with no body left to show or bury.
There's no pain though, simply the buzzing sound in the back of his head, and Zach rethinks his predicament and decides that he'll probably live.
Atoms, his father had said when he'd first tried to explain his power. Atoms that rub against each other, fast and hard, that create heat and light and make your skin glow.
And Zach is glowing, but not a lot. Definitely not as much as his dad, even though his skin's still fizzling and he knows he's giving off something, some kind of thing that his eyes can't physically see.
And then he looks at the pot with the Cyclamen, at the thin layer of ash that covers the pot and the windowsill and a bit of the carpet beneath the window. Oh, he thinks. Oh.
...
He pads down the stairs in his pajamas, trying hard not to trip over his own feet, the fizzling almost under control and the buzzing a faint annoyance in the back of his head just waiting to be released again. By the time he reaches the kitchen he's trembling.
His mother is setting the table for breakfast and looks up when he pauses by the threshold.
"Zachary," she breathes, straightening and taking a step towards him, hand reaching out. "There you are."
And she's looking at him – not towards him or in his general direction, but directly at him.
The buzzing grows stronger in sync with his mother's smile.
...
Zach doesn't burn or shine. He glows; he emits. There's a difference.