Weakness
Everyone has a weakness.
A hole in their armour or a glitch in their system, everyone has someone they hate. Someone or most likely a group of people they distrust without being able to explain. For some it's Blacks, for some its whites. It might be Asians, transsexual, homosexuals, Jews, Muslims, Foreigners, Immigrants, or even teenagers.
For Robert Hawkins it was Bang Babies.
In hindsight, its clear to see why. The first Bang babies to appear were mostly criminals or Gangers – after all it was a gang war that sparked the whole thing. Robert's wife was killed in the last big gang war and he had never really forgiven them for it. It's possible that Mr Hawkins never saw a connection between the scared vulnerable kids he helped every day and the dangerous criminals that were Bang Babies.
Maybe it was because he never saw the other side of things, the way Static Shock did. That most Bang Babies were criminals because it was the only way they could survive. The only way to eat and clothe themselves was to steal because one would look at them for jobs. Maybe it was because they were only children under all their powers – children who had to run and hide from a world who wanted them dead. He never saw the dead eight year old girl who was forgotten and unwanted because she was different. That Bang Babies lived in fear of themselves and those around them. That not all Bang Babies were criminals, not at first anyhow, that many Bang Babies where just in the wrong place or at the wrong time or were contaminated later on. Most are just innocent kids with no one to turn too.
Kids who should be able turn to adult to understand and not fear them.
Virgil Hawkins understood them. He knew their fear, their terror at their own unexplainable changes, and fear of their family's reaction. Fear of everyone. Why should children live in fear? Why should they have to hide themselves from the world – whose who were lucky to be able to hide from the world? He understood – he wished his dad did too. After all his father, who had always preached understanding and acceptance, who has suffered discrimination too, should understand.
Sometimes he wondered if his father would understand if he knew the true. If his son could open his eyes to the true of the reality of being a Bang Babies, of the fear - that his own son lived in fear of his reaction.
How would his father react?
Would he hate him?
Be revolted?
Be heart broke? Worried?
Would he understand or would Virgil become another unknown child throw out in the cold for existing?
In his case he knew it was his own fault for being there when is happen, but he knew others – like Richie – who weren't at fault. Those who weren't lucky enough to be able hide what they are, who – with one look – were marked with fear and disgust.
Something Virgil wondered what he feared more – his father discovering his son was a vigilante or a Bang Babies? He supposed his father was wrong when he thought Virgil wouldn't have to lives his life with people hating him for different, for being Black – instead it would be for being a Meta.
He didn't want to lose his father.
He loved him so much and he didn't want to lose another parent in his life.
But how could he live his life in fear of what he was, even if it meant losing his father?
Would his father change because of him? For him? Would he be able to accept his son for what he really was? He didn't know but he hoped so.
Everyone has a weakness but Virgil was the sort to let it rule his life.
I. OWN. NOTHING. - catch that? I. OWN. NOTHING!