Chapter Text
The week dragged. Not in the usual way where hours blurred into each other and shifts came and went in a steady rhythm but in something slower. Every day felt noticed. Every silence felt louder than it should’ve.
Chad checked his phone more than he cared to admit. At first, it was just habit. A glance between tasks. A quick swipe during lunch. Then it became deliberate. Waiting. Expecting.
Nothing ever came. No texts. No missed calls. No stupid, half-teasing “you alive?” messages that Robert would’ve sent just to get under his skin.
Chad kept replaying it in his head.
“I can’t.”
Not I don’t want to. Not this isn’t going to work. I can’t.
What the hell did that even mean?
Chad didn’t get it. And the more he tried to make sense of it, the more it slipped through his fingers like something he wasn’t meant to hold onto in the first place. It left him restless, like an itch under his skin he couldn’t scratch or a thought that kept circling back no matter how hard he tried to shove it away.
At home, Zahir was in the middle of getting ready for his night shift, half-buttoning his white polo as he stepped into the living room. His jacket was slung over the back of the couch, his sneakers by the door, everything laid out in the easy, practiced rhythm he’d built for himself over the months when the front door clicked open.
“Hey,” Laleh called softly as she stepped inside, already kicking off her shoes with a tired exhale.
There was flour dusted faintly along her sleeve, her hair a little messier than usual, like the day had dragged on longer than she’d planned. Zahir glanced up automatically, a small smile starting to form until he realized something. “…Where’s Parisa?”
Laleh waved a hand loosely, already moving toward the kitchen like it was nothing. “She’s fine,” she said, her voice a little worn at the edges. “Zoey’s mom called, said the girls wanted an after-school playdate. I told her she could stay. I’ll pick her up around eight.”
Zahir paused, his fingers stilling on the last button of his shirt. His brows pulled together slightly.
“Zoey?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Laleh replied, glancing back at him briefly. “Her best friend. They’ve been inseparable since first grade, remember?”
Zahir’s mind flicked through the name, the face, the scattered stories Parisa had told him over the years: sleepovers, shared snacks, the way she always said Zoey was her person. He relaxed, the tension easing from his shoulders as he nodded. “Yeah, I remember.”
Laleh gave him a small, tired smile before turning back to rinse her hands in the sink. Zahir stepped forward, giving her shoulder a gentle pat as he passed. “Don’t work too hard, okay?” he said softly.
She huffed a quiet laugh. “No promises.”
He smiled faintly at that, grabbing his jacket and keys. “I’ll see you later.”
“Drive safe,” she called after him.
Zahir lingered for just a second at the door, glancing back at the quiet apartment, the absence of Parisa’s usual chatter noticeable, but not alarming.
By the time night shift rolled around again, Chad had buried his worries under routine. The SDN hummed with its usual energy but something felt… off. It didn’t take long to figure out why. Shadow Mech was blatantly avoiding him. He gave no snide comments, dry jabs over comms, pushing, or prodding. Every time Chad’s voice came through dispatch, Shadow Mech responded short and professional, almost distant. And then he’d move on like Chad wasn’t even there.
It was jarring. Chad found himself watching the man’s icon more than he should, noticing the way Shadow Mech rerouted himself through different corridors, how he timed his returns to avoid crossing paths in person. It wasn’t just in his head. The office noticed too.
“Yo,” Prism’s voice cut in from behind him, casual but laced with curiosity. “What the hell happened to you and your work husband?”
Chad didn’t even turn around. “He’s not my work husband.”
Prism leaned against the edge of his cubicle anyway, peering down at him with a grin that was way too entertained. “Oh, so you guys got a divorce then?”
Chad finally shot her a glare, sharp enough to cut. “I will actually set you on fire.”
She held her hands up, laughing. “Relax, I’m just saying, it’s weird. You two went from constant bickering to whatever this is.” She gestured vaguely toward the monitors. “It’s like watching a toxic couple go silent. I don’t like it.”
“Good,” Chad muttered, turning back to his screen. “Then stop watching.”
But even as he said it, his jaw tightened. She wasn’t wrong. It was weird. It felt like something had been ripped out of his routine, leaving behind this awkward, empty space he didn’t know how to fill. He hated that he noticed, hated that part of him still waited for Shadow Mech to say something.
Every monitor in the room suddenly flickered then lit up red.
ALERT: HIGH-LEVEL THREAT DETECTED
The room snapped into motion instantly. Voices rose, chairs scraped, and systems rerouted. Chad straightened in his seat, the shift into dispatcher mode immediate, instinctive, like flipping a switch in his brain.
“Alright, eyes up!” he called, voice cutting cleanly through the noise as he pulled up the incoming data. “What’ve we got?”
Feeds poured in of surveillance footage, heat signatures, and structural scans. Chad froze. He recognized the tech and the design. It wasn’t exact, but it was close enough to a certain someone’s work.
“No way,” Malevola muttered under her breath.
Prism leaned in slightly, her tone losing its humor. “Is that—?”
Chad’s jaw tightened as he zoomed in on the schematics, his voice dropping. “Yeah,” he said quietly.
The room fell into a different kind of silence. This wasn’t just another mission. Chad’s gaze flicked, almost involuntarily, to the comms channel, to the one voice that hadn’t spoken yet: Shadow Mech.
The silence doesn’t last long. Another feed flickers onto the monitors, glitching for a moment before sharpening into a live transmission. The room, already tense, seems to hold its breath. A figure steps into frame, composed, almost casual, like this is nothing more than a routine broadcast. Chad’s stomach drops before his mind can fully catch up.
He knows that posture, that voice… that man.
He stands with an unsettling stillness, the kind that doesn’t come from calm, but from something far more deliberate, like every movement has been stripped down to only what’s necessary. He’s dressed simply, almost forgettably at first glance: dark slacks, a long coat that falls cleanly past his knees, gloves that never quite flex even when his hands shift. But the longer you look, the more wrong it feels. Nothing about him is careless. Not the way the fabric sits, not the way the light seems to avoid settling fully on his face.
His features are sharp but not dramatic. There’s no exaggerated scars, no theatrical disfigurement. Just a face that feels worn in a way that isn’t age. There’s a faint, pale line tracing along his jaw, another barely visible at the edge of his temple, like remnants of something violent that never quite claimed him. His skin holds a slight sallow undertone, and his lips rest in a neutral line that never quite turns into a smile, but threatens to.
It’s his eyes that make it hard to breathe.
They’re steady. Focused. They look present, completely aware of everything in front of him, like he’s taking in every reaction, every flicker of fear, and storing it away. There’s no rush in them, no urgency. Just patience. The kind that waits, that knows it doesn’t need to chase because eventually, everything comes back to it.
When he blinks, it’s slow. When he looks into the camera, it doesn’t feel like he’s addressing an audience. It feels like he’s looking directly at one person.
Like he already knows exactly who’s watching.
There’s no raised voice, no dramatic flair when he speaks, just a low, even tone that settles into the room and refuses to leave. The kind of voice that doesn’t need to demand attention because it already has it.
“Good evening,” the man says smoothly, as if he isn’t about to tear someone’s life apart. “I figured this would get your attention.”
He tilts his head slightly, not quite a gesture of curiosity. More like quiet amusement, like he’s already seeing exactly what he expected to see.
“It’s funny,” he continues, voice soft, almost conversational. “For someone who used to burn so brightly, you’ve gotten very comfortable in the dark.” His gaze lingers on the camera, unblinking. “Behind screens. Behind voices. Behind other people doing the work you used to pretend came so naturally.”
A pause. “I was starting to wonder if I imagined you,” he murmurs. “Flambae, the fire boy. The one people cheered for. The one who thought he could stand in front of anything and come out untouched.” His lips twitch—not quite a smile, but close enough to feel wrong. “And now?”
His eyes sharpen, something colder settling behind them. “You hide.”
The word lands quietly, but it hits harder than if he’d shouted it.
“You sit behind a desk and tell yourself it’s enough. That you’re still helping. Still saving people.” He exhales softly, almost like a disappointed sigh. “But we both know what it really is, don’t we?”
Another beat. “Fear. I broke you once,” he goes on, tone never rising, never slipping. “I watched you learn what it feels like to lose control. To realize that no matter how strong you are, there’s always something—someone—you can’t protect.” His gaze dips briefly, almost thoughtfully, before lifting again. “And instead of rising from it…”
A faint tilt of his head. “You ran.”
The word lingers, heavier this time.
“And the most disappointing part?” he adds quietly. “It worked. You convinced everyone. Your little team. The people who still look at you like you’re something worth believing in.” His eyes narrow just slightly. “But you didn’t convince me.”
He leans in just a fraction. “Because I know exactly how easy you are to move,” he says, voice dropping, something almost intimate threading through it now. “All it takes is the right pressure. The right piece on the board.”
The camera shifts slightly, just enough to remind everyone what he’s holding over Chad.
“And suddenly,” he finishes softly, “you’re not so hard to find anymore.”
Chad’s world stops.
Parisa.
She’s tied to a chair, her small frame trembling, her face streaked with tears she’s trying so hard to hold back. Her pink backpack lies discarded on the floor beside her, like something stolen out of an ordinary day and thrown into something cruel.
“Uncle Zahir…” she whispers, her voice breaking in a way that cuts straight through him.
Something inside Chad snaps. Didn’t Laleh say she was at a friend’s house?
The man continues speaking, unbothered, almost amused. “Shocked? It wasn’t hard to hack into that woman’s phone and pretend to be her. Your poor sister was so tired that she didn’t think about double checking with anyone. Not that calling the school was anything difficult.”
The words don’t land all at once. They sink in. Chad feels it before he fully processes it. His stomach dropping so hard it’s almost nauseating, his chest tightening until it’s hard to draw a full breath. His eyes stay locked on the screen, on Parisa, like if he looks away for even a second something worse will happen.
She looks too small for the ropes digging into her wrists, too small for the way her shoulders shake with quiet, restrained sobs she’s trying so hard to hold in. Her hair is a little messy, her face blotchy from crying, and that pink backpack is just sitting there on the ground like this is some kind of normal pickup gone wrong.
His throat goes dry. For a split second, all he can think is she’s scared. Parisa is scared, and he’s not there.
Then the rest of it hits. Laleh, tired, overworked, trusting the wrong moment because she didn’t have the energy to question it. Because why would she? It was a normal day. A normal call. A normal request from a familiar name. And this man—
Chad’s jaw tightens so hard it aches. He planned every detail and every step. The phone, the voice, the timing. He slipped into their lives like it was nothing, like it was easy, like it was nothing to take something so important from them.
The moment his eyes flick to the schematics still pulled up on the surrounding screens, something cold settles in his chest. It’s all Shadow Mech’s old work: refined, repurposed, and weaponized in a way that strips away any guesswork.
This wasn’t luck. This wasn’t some desperate grab. This was calculated by someone who knew exactly what tools to use and exactly how to use them. Someone who had taken what already existed and turned it into something cleaner.
Child’s play.
That’s what it must have been to him. Getting to Parisa, past every layer of protection Chad thought existed, into their lives like there was never anything stopping him in the first place.
Chad’s hands start to shake. His flames flicker faintly along his arms, betraying the surge of emotion he’s trying to contain. Horror claws up his throat, sharp and suffocating, mixing with something hotter, something angrier, until he can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
He can’t breathe. He can’t think. All he can see is her. All he can hear is that man’s voice.
“I’ve been waiting a long time for this. For him.” A faint smile curls at his lips. “Flambae.”
The room seems to close in, the air suddenly too tight to breathe.
“Come out and play,” the man adds lightly. “Or I start taking things from you again.”
The feed cuts.
Sound rushes back in. Voices overlap, systems alert, and someone swears under their breath, but Chad doesn’t hear any of it. His hands are shaking, his breathing uneven, sharp, like something is clawing its way up his chest and refusing to let go.
No. Not again. Not him.
Not her.
His chair screeches backward as he stands too fast, nearly knocking it over. Someone says his name—Alice, maybe—but he’s already moving, already pushing past the noise before it can reach him. If he speaks, he knows it won’t come out right. It won’t be controlled. The flames start before he even reaches the door. They flicker low along his arms at first, slipping through the seams of his sleeves, then climb higher, hotter, betraying everything he’s trying to keep buried.
“Chad!” someone calls after him.
He doesn’t stop. He can’t.
The night air hits him the second he bursts into the parking lot, cool and sharp against his overheated skin, but it isn’t enough. His steps falter, then stagger, until his body simply gives out beneath him. He drops hard onto his hands and knees, palms scraping against the pavement as his breath breaks into uneven gasps. The fire surges wildly around him, licking up his shoulders, crawling down his arms, completely out of sync with anything resembling control.
Parisa.
The image won’t leave him. Her tears, her voice—Uncle Zahir…—echoing over and over in his head until it drowns everything else out.
“No—”
The word comes out broken, barely there, but it opens the floodgates anyway. The memory slams into him without warning.
His father.
The first time Chad saw him after they found him barely alive, his body wrecked, hooked up to machines that kept him breathing but couldn’t bring him back. Months of waiting, of sitting beside him, of clinging to hope that felt thinner every day.
And then the day he woke up screaming, crying, begging for something no one could understand, thrashing against the hands trying to keep him from hurting himself. Chad can still hear and see the way his father’s voice tore itself apart, the way his body fought like it was trying to escape something that wasn’t even there anymore.
A week of that. A week of watching him unravel in real time until, suddenly, he didn’t fight anymore. He just went quiet
The memory shifts again to the sterile white of the mental ward, the hollow stillness in his father’s eyes. The man who had once been loud, warm, alive, reduced to something unrecognizable. A body sitting there, breathing, but empty in a way Chad had never known how to fix, like he’d already left, and no one had told the rest of him.
“Please…”
Chad’s voice breaks completely now. His hands curl against the pavement, trembling as his head dips lower, his forehead nearly touching the ground. Tears spill freely, hot and relentless, cutting through the heat of his flames as they surge uncontrollably around him.
“Please, not again…”
His shoulders shake with it, his breath hitching as the weight of everything presses down on him all at once.
“I can’t do that again,” he chokes out, shaking his head like he can force reality to change. “I can’t watch that again—please—”
His voice softens into something smaller, more fragile, stripped of everything except desperation. “God, please…”
The words barely make it out, but they carry everything he has left to give. “Don’t let this be a repeat… please don’t take her like that too…”
The flames flicker and surge with every breath, unstable, reflecting the storm tearing through him: fear, grief, anger, all tangled together into something too overwhelming to hold back.
And in that moment, crouched in the dark with fire spilling from his skin and tears he can’t stop, Chad doesn’t feel like Flambae. He doesn’t feel like a hero, or someone capable of fixing what’s coming. He just feels like a son, a brother, an uncle, standing on the edge of losing everything all over again.
Shadow Mech finds him a few minutes later. Chad doesn't hear him approach. The roaring in his ears is too loud. The memories are too loud. He barely registers the footsteps coming across the parking lot until a familiar voice cuts through the haze.
"Hey."
Chad doesn't look up.
His hands are planted against the asphalt, flames bleeding from his arms in violent waves. Smoke curls from his shoulders. Every few seconds another ember drifts upward into the night. Shadow Mech stops several feet away, far enough that Chad won't feel crowded but close enough that he won't feel alone.
Chad hears the ex-villain exhale slowly. "I know that look."
Chad laughs bitterly through his tears. "No, you don't."
"Yeah," Shadow Mech says softly. "I do."
The answer is so immediate that Chad finally looks up. Shadow Mech isn't looking at him. His eyes are fixed on the pavement.
"When my mom died," he says quietly, "I kept thinking there had to be something I missed."
Chad's breathing hitches. Shadow Mech continues. "A sign. A warning. A way I could've stopped it."
His jaw tightens. "I spent years replaying every conversation we ever had." The night feels still around them. "I kept thinking that if I was smarter... faster... better..."
His voice grows rough. "...then maybe she'd still be here."
Chad swallows hard. Shadow Mech laughs once. It's humorless. "Turns out grief doesn't really care about logic."
Neither of them speaks for a few moments. The only sound is Chad's uneven breathing and the crackling fire rolling off his skin. Shadow Mech finally glances toward him. “I felt helpless."
The word hangs heavily between them.
"I could hack government servers before I was old enough to drive." A faint smile touches his mouth. "I could build weapons in my garage." Another pause. "I could take apart half the city's infrastructure if I wanted."
The smile disappears. "But I couldn't save her."
Something in Chad's chest twists painfully.
Shadow Mech runs a hand through his hair. "I hated heroes after that. But if I'm being honest..."
He shrugs. "I think it was easier to hate them than admit I was jealous."
Chad blinks. "Jealous?"
"Yeah." Shadow Mech looks toward the glowing SDN building. "The idea that someone could actually save people. I thought it was bullshit."
A small laugh leaves him. "Then I got stuck working with all of you."
Despite everything, Chad lets out a weak snort. Shadow Mech points toward the building. "Waterboy cries when pigeons get hurt."
A shaky laugh escapes Chad. "True."
"Prism's incapable of minding her own business."
"Very true."
"Phenomeman could probably talk a supervillain into therapy."
"Definitely true."
The corner of Shadow Mech's mouth lifts. "And Flambae."
Chad looks away. Shadow Mech continues anyway. "The idiot who retired because he loves his family too much."
Chad's throat tightens. "That wasn't—"
"That was heroic."
The interruption is gentle but firm. Shadow Mech looks directly at him.
"You know what changed my mind about heroes?"
Chad shakes his head. Shadow Mech's smile is small. "You people."
The words hit Chad harder than he expects.
"I spent years thinking heroes were arrogant celebrities, but then I met people who kept showing up." A pause. "People who cared."
His eyes return to Chad. "And one guy who gave up everything because he couldn't bear losing the people he loved."
The tears start again. Chad laughs through them. A wet, broken sound. "You have really shitty timing for compliments."
"I know."
"You couldn't have done this later?"
"Nope."
Chad covers his face. Another laugh escapes him. This one sounds a little more genuine. Shadow Mech watches the flames slowly begin to settle. The inferno around Chad's body shrinking into embers, smoke replacing fire. The panic is loosening its grip.
Finally, Shadow Mech steps forward and offers a hand. For a second Chad just stares at it. Then he takes it. Shadow Mech hauls him back onto his feet.
Chad wipes furiously at his eyes. "Don't tell anyone I cried."
"Already texting the office."
Despite himself, Chad lets out another breathless laugh.
Reality settled back in.
Parisa.
The thought hits him immediately. His smile disappears. Shadow Mech notices.
"We're getting her back."
Chad swallows. The fear is still there. The memories are still there. The image of his father barely alive.
The screaming.
The hospital.
The asylum.
The dead look in his eyes.
It's all still sitting inside him, but now there is a tiny sliver of hope.
"I know how he operates," Chad says quietly. "He likes games."
Shadow Mech nods. "Figures."
"He always has backup plans."
"Also figures."
"He'll have traps."
"Definitely."
Chad rubs his face. "He'll have contingencies for everything."
Shadow Mech folds his arms. "Maybe."
Chad frowns. "Maybe?"
A sharp grin appears. The familiar one. The one that reminds people why he was once considered one of the most feared villains in the country. "Chad."
The grin widens. "If anyone knows the underground..." His eyes glint in the darkness. "It would be Shadow Mech."
For the first time since the transmission started, Chad feels something besides fear. Beside him, the former villain looks toward the city. And for the first time all night, Chad starts to believe that maybe the bastard picked the wrong people to mess with.