The Substitutes: Contract

For Those We Love, We'll Tear Ourselves Apart

It was long dark by the time he limped through the front door, his body demanding the type of rest that could only be satisfied by a thousand years of sleep. He hadn't trusted himself to attempt walking until it was necessary, and bits of stone still stuck in his hands from his crawl out of the trainyard. But even the humiliation of being reduced to infancy, complete with clutching at what was left of Stinger to assure himself, was nothing compared to the taunting voice that had followed him all the way home, picking at him with jabs to the ribs and buckling at the knees. They refused to let him pass out in peace, whispering at the edge of his last thoughts before he fell into dreamless oblivion. They were still reminding him when he awoke, and kept teasing as he staggered into the bathroom and collapsed under the shower.

He'd lost. He'd lost so completely that he'd had to resort to pleading for his life just to earn the chance of forfeiting it all over again. And he had the arrogance to think that he could defend the world from alien invasions, taken it all upon himself because 'anyone else would get it wrong'? When Terratsar stepped foot on Earth and proclaimed herself ruler, when the populous demanded to know which fool had bet the planet and lost, she'd point to his mangled body held aloft by Kalibrand, and everyone would laugh at the idea that some teenage upstart had tried to play hero and died, qualifying himself purely because he looked after an autistic girl in the absence of their parents, a girl who likely wouldn't even recognise that he was gone until someone pointed out his gravestone to her. If he was lucky enough to receive any sort of memorial for people to vandalise in the first place.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd cried. Maybe at a sappy conclusion to one of the animated movies that Sara loved to show him over and over again. But never for a personal reason. He'd never had a reason to cry, partly because his life was so uneventful that he'd never been denied any goal he'd truly wanted to achieve, never had success slip out from his fingers, never even lost a person or possession that was close to him. That hadn't changed since he'd seized the title of defender for himself, achieving victories no matter what the minor beasts attacked him with. Now all he was left with was sour powerlessness. He had to fight again, that was obvious. He would not put anyone else at risk for his mistakes. And he certainly wouldn't push Sara into the path of that monster in his stead. But if he went as he was, the result would be the same. He would lose, and Earth would fall, unless he got Sara to transfer the Gift to him. Having known her for the past eleven years, that wasn't going to happen. And now he didn't even have Kyu's knowledge and abilities to supplement his weakness. So what then? Did he just give up, return to the old depot and hand Earth over?

White knuckles knocked on white porcelain, a surge of wounded pride biting back at self-defeating thoughts.

No. To return empty handed and surrender after throwing his dignity aside to purchase a second chance was too distasteful. More than that, such treachery to save his own skin was disgusting. He had never lived an eventful life, but it was one in which in he owned his mistakes, few and far between as they were. He had claimed that he could fight on behalf of the planet, he had been the one frantic to prove himself, and he would bite though the mountainous task he had chosen to chew. He would stand before Kalibrand once more, and he would seek the improbable victory that he had gambled for. If it could not be found in a head-on clash and he couldn't use the Gift to open an easy path, then he would improvise as he had done before. He'd slain a bite-sized abyss with a cricket bat, lassoed a monstrous bug and single handily shut down a UFO containing impossible space within itself. The last one had been achieved without Kyu at all, and he would do so again. Poisonous 'what-ifs' and misery continued to echo over and over in his thoughts as he found his feet, but under all the misery and the quivering ache of his body was a burning core of determination. He would fight, and he would win. And if he couldn't, he would endeavour to ensure that the world was ready to endure his folly.