Warning, short and angsty.
Gone, Man.
Today I sat up from my slab. I suppose it was cold. I can't tell anymore. I haven't for many years. The reactions to heat/cold/etc. are just to keep up the show. Brother Blood was right. I have a mechanical heart. The human 'half' is almost no longer there. I long for the old days. When I was just Victor Stone. The dashing high school sports hero.
Instead I fight crime. With a mechanical body. Starfire gave me her opinion the day I returned from my infiltration of Hive. She likes who I am, because it's all she knows. It's all the people I interact with know. I'm so tired of it. So tired of losing my ability to feeling.
She was the closest thing I came to feeling. And she's a bad guy. Girl. Whatever.
God. Sometimes I think that working for Brother Blood was a bad idea. We had to get inside, find out their plans, and sabotage them. Sounds like the things we are supposed stop the bad guys from doing. And I had to befriend them. The ones that kicked us out of our own tower. Mammoth, Gizmo, and her. Jynx. She was pretty. Her hair was a little weird, but then again, I have a plate on one half of mine.
Man, they thrashed us hard. We even thought we lost Robin. Swallowed up in a chasm. As I'm sitting here remembering how I came to this point; I realize of all of us, Robin is the best. And the most careless. I could joke about humans and their silly emotional connections. Somewhere deep inside me though, the human half wants to live peacefully with the mechanical half.
So where was I? Right, Robin. Man, how does he get all the girls? First there was Starfire. Then Raven. And that's not even counting girls in his life before the Titans. Actually I understand how he does it. It's his mysterious persona, combined with his easygoing affable care. No matter how brooding dark obsessed he gets; he can still care. And mean it.
Who I don't understand being good with the ladies is BB. He's a clown. Immature doesn't even begin to describe him. Yet there was Terra, then Raven, then Bumblebee, then Terra again. BUMBLEBEE! He dated Bumblebee. I spend hours talking to her, and then I get 'the talk.' I love you but I'm not in love with you. I think of you as my brother. That rejection was about the time I stopped really feeling.
When I infiltrated HIVE I got a shot with Jynx. After my betrayal to them, I didn't hear anything from her for months. In combat she would avoid me. When I circled on her, she hexed me out of her sight.
So I started talking to Bumblebee.
And that rejection started the whole process. I began obsessing over Brother Blood's words. Between him and Fixit I had a veritable self esteem support group. Then the battles with Atlas and Adonis showed me that I was still lacking. The human half of me was holding me back. Sure I had that epiphany at the end of each personal battle. You know, that I am both man and machine. And together, working in harmony, I can do anything. Even whine about not getting either girl I want. Sometimes I feel just like the teenager I should have been. Most of the time I'm constantly reminded of my limitations. My human half is never as strong as my mechanical half. My mechanical half is only as strong as the latest tech.
My heart lies somewhere in-between. So, again, where was I? Jynx. A month ago I get a signal on my communicator. It's a frequency not used by the Titans. I answer it. It's her. We agree to meet somewhere private and talk about what has happened between us. She call us 'us.' I didn't know there was an us.
At first I was happy. Until it became apparent that we can't be together in public. So here we are; sorta happy, lotta miserable. If I just felt something, I would be ok. But lying to my friends, and her hers; it's just tearing us apart. I repeatedly ask her why can't she leave, start over, become one of us? The danger and excitement is one of her thrills. I can't take that away from her. So I put up with it. That's when I noticed that I was starting to lose emotional contact with everything. And somehow I think that's ok.
No it's not. It can never to ok to lose my humanity. So here I am at the fork in the road. And my decision? Flip the coin. Heads you win, tails I lose. Let's gamble.
flip
