Titan: The Dark Path

Summer/Home

"I never thought it would be you."

The voice touched Tim Steele in a way he hadn't felt since he was a young man, a child even. He hadn't heard his father's voice in more than twenty years and now it was the only thing he could hear. Seven words spoken conversationally when the circumstances were anything but conversational.

Art's blood ran and the roof was red mixed with steel and iron and snow. The blood was dark and heavy and it threw off heat in white wisps. The air was cold, sharp, and bitter, especially at this height. The building wasn't tall, but it stood higher than the surrounding town. Fierce wind howled around them, whipping its way up the side of the building. Blood was still hot on Tim's hands.

Lesser men might have cried or screamed, but not Arthur Steele. No. If anything, Art was surprised. He had been a hard man like most men his age. He spoke little because words mattered little. Actions mattered most. Duty mattered most of all. So when Art did speak, it often carried weight.

Titan's mask slipped from Art's face, chrome and steel and iron threads unraveled and retreated into his skin and into his neck where godsmetal armor remained. He was an old man then with silver gray hair that retreated up his forehead and leathery dark skin that drooped on his face. But Art's eyes were steel blue and fierce. He was dying, but his eyes were alive and they held Tim within their iron gaze.

When Art drew breath, it pained him, but his eyes never wavered off his son. "I never thought it would be you."

Tim squeezed his sword handle so tight that his hand hurt. He had been a freight train barreling ahead further and further into darkness. Never stopping to see how far he had gone. Never stopping to see whom he might have run over. The blood on his silver weave hands wasn't his.

"Who else would it be?" Tim said.

Art allowed himself a brief smile. "I've seen some crazy things. Can't say I knew, just that you were never on the list." Art lifted his hand and eyed the gash in his left side under his arm that oozed the remainder of his life. He applied pressure and summoned searing hot metal to cauterize the wound, but he knew it wouldn't matter. He didn't have long.

"I should have been at the top of the list if you were going to be stupid enough to get in my way. You know what I am."

"I thought I did," Art said.

"Don't give me that shit! I do the job just like you showed me. Brutal, without mercy. 'Evil is evil. Destroy it where you find it,' remember? Well, evil found me and it showed no mercy either!" Tim couldn't stand still. He gestured wildly with the sword, red with his father's blood, and paced in front of him like a lion stalking its maimed kill.

The edge went out of Art's voice. His fight was over. "Timmy, do you know what you've done?"

It was a blur. Tim wiped his brow with the bottom of his sword handle. He fidgeted and paced. He had been so focused on beating the old man... showing him...

She screamed all of the way down...

He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his hands to his ears. "She wouldn't shut up! She kept crying and crying! If she'd... if she told me what I wanted to know..."

Art's steel gaze did crack, then. He didn't recognize the man standing over him. "I need to know that you know what you've done. I have to know you realize—"

"Realize what? Huh? That I killed them? I've killed a lot of people, Pop!" Tim jabbed him with the point of his sword. "Just like you taught me!"

"Realize that you killed a baby."