Not sure how I started writing this. I just did. It's a drabble, I suppose, and it takes place during the movie, sometime before the fight in the cafeteria. Just my thoughts on Warren's home life. Pretty angsty. This is my first Sky High fic, so no flames please!

Disclaimer: As much as I want to, I don't own Warren Peace or any other characters from Sky High. Yet.

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"You're looking more like your father every day."

It's never meant as a compliment, and he knows it. It's never said without hesitation. They always stop to say a silent prayer that there will be no other resemblance. He nods to cover up the shame in his eyes. Shame at the path his father chose. Shame at his mother's pitiful situation since… then. Shame at his resemblance to the man that had ruined and made his life, all at once.

As a child he had proudly declared that he would be just like his father. Now fate seems to be playing a cruel joke by giving him his father's face and temper. There is nothing of his mother in him. Nothing of goodness.

His mother. She had fallen apart the day that his father was busted by that idiot Stronghold. "The Commander."

Didn't he know that Warren and his mother and needed a father and a husband? It didn't matter that he was violent and easily angered, or that he was the cause of the scars that Warren never wanted to talk about. It didn't matter that his father was Baron Battle. They could pretend to be happy, and the normal world could see them that way. They could play at being normal, and sometimes Warren even allowed himself to think that they were. Not for long, but for just long enough that he could tolerate being a super.

Hero or villain, he wasn't sure.

But now his father is gone, and there is no pretending. Warren's job at the Paper Lantern pays all the bills. His mother doesn't work. She can't. When she melds into her secret identity, she stops living a lie. She cries. She screams. Sometimes Warren comes home from work to find her still in bed, saying that she doesn't feel well. No one brings up the razor on the bedside table or the blood on her hands and scarred arms. They keep trying to pretend. They both want so badly to pretend.

On good days she will meet him at the door to take his jacket, sometimes complaining about the ashy smell that clings to it and to him. She laughs and jokes, but Warren sees the tears behind her smile. Just like his own.

Yes, he cries. He cries at night for all the things that he has lost. But mostly for his father.

His father, who he looks more and more like every day. His father, who he is destined to become like, no matter what he wants or needs.

Sometimes he stands in front of a mirror and whispers "Baron Battle" to his own reflection. He shakes his head frantically and corrects himself. "Warren. Warren Peace." But in his heart he knows that he won't be Warren Peace much longer.

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Well, there you have it! As stated before, this is my first Sky High fic, so go easy on me. I hope you enjoyed it. Please review!