Chapter Text
People seemed to have this expectation that life should be good and so they chased their own happiness as though it was owed to them.
Michael didn’t have that in him, he didn’t expect things to be good, he didn’t chase the
things that made him happy. He had made an art of just getting by… getting through one moment with the sole purpose of moving onto the next and repeating the process.
When Alex walked away Michael wasn’t even surprised. In truth he had been expecting it, nothing good lasted forever, that’s not the way the world worked.
He knew he sounded sorry for himself but he wasn’t really. It was a simple truth that he had learned long ago and that had been reinforced many times throughout his life. So many times that it now formed a core belief he had about himself – that he was, in fact, unlovable.
Michael caught a glimpse of himself in the wing mirror as he slammed the car door shut, and saw the degenerate no-hoper the rest of the world saw when they looked at him.
He looked every bit like a man who had given up and maybe he had. Maybe he’d worked out a long time ago that personal betterment wasn’t really in his best interest, in fact it was a fucking waste of time.
Even on his best days … those last days of high school when he’d been named dux of the class, been madly in love (even if he wasn’t ready to call it that) and so full of potential that the sky wasn’t even the limit, there hadn’t been anyone there to claim him. No proud parents in the audience at graduation no beaming boyfriend taking his hand. Instead there had been a drunk foster father passed out on the couch when he got home, no doubt celebrating the fact that he would soon be rid of Michael and a text message from Alex apologising for the fact he wouldn’t be able to see him that night because his dad had invited some friends around for an impromptu get together that apparently Michael wasn’t welcome at.
In the beginning Michael hadn’t understood why the world treated him so differently to his pseudo siblings. Max and Isobel were smart and they were praised for it, the people around them listened to what they had to say, trusted their decisions and allowed them their choices. But it didn’t work that way for Michael, his brain was often seen as a fault by his foster parents, his desire to learn was inconvenient and when he tried to use his brain to solve a problem he was a smart arse or a trouble maker.
He used to be confused but he wasn’t any more. The problem wasn’t what he did or said it was him. There was something fundamentally wrong with him. Mr and Mrs Evans had seen it in the group home when they’d left him behind, every person he’d been passed around since had seen it and he had always known that it was only a matter of time before Alex saw it too.
Michael sat in the car, a feeling of profound loss weighing heavily upon him. Previous experience had taught him that it would lessen in time, that he’d find some way to survive it just as he had done every other time the universe had dropped him on his arse. He was the proverbial cockroach, well adapted to survive unbelievable punishment and just as detested by the rest of society. It would suck and it would leave a mark but that was the world as he knew it and expected it to be.
No, Michael wasn’t stupid enough to get out of the car and go after Alex, he didn’t believe in chasing happiness because he truly believed that it wasn’t meant for him.
But Michael hadn’t always been this way, he’d been a dumb kid once. A dumb kid who, ten years ago, had tried to chase his happiness all the way to Baghdad.
Of course Max hadn’t been on-board with the whole, ‘Michael joins the air force’ plan and it was difficult for Michael to put together a solid argument when he couldn’t tell Max why it was suddenly so important to him.
When Michael had told him about his plans to join up, Max had been his usual self, which is to say a forty-year-old man stuck in a teenager’s body.
“Michael you can’t take your powers into a war zone …you can’t control them”
“Michael how would you even pass the medical exam?”
“Michael you can’t stand taking orders, why the hell would you want to join the military?”
All annoyingly valid points but still, Michael was a genius and he was fairly certain he could figure it out. He just knew, with a ferocious kind of certainty, that his place was with Alex and everything else was just details.
He’d tried to explain that it was about access to technology and military satellites and just generally a way to advance their understanding of their own existence but none of it really rang true because it wasn’t. He wanted to go with Alex plain and simple. And since Alex had been brainwashed by his father into following in the family footsteps, Michael was determined to stand beside him, confident that they could survive anything if they were together.
Max and Michael had fought about it but at the end of the day the decision had been Michael’s and he had made it.
Max went quiet but he never stopped worrying.
Michael was resolute in his decision and even though he was not looking forward to the training and certainly not to actual combat he enjoyed the power he had to make a decision.
For so much of his life he had had to go where people had put him and survive whatever he found there. He had been constantly dealing with the consequences of decisions that he had no power to make. Even if his misadventure into the military proved to be the worst mistake of his life at least he’d made it, he would accept those consequences because they were his.
But… as so often was the case for Michael, his best laid plans had come undone at the hands of another.
It had been a bad argument, the worst he had experienced, at least in that home. He couldn’t even remember how it started, just the same old crap as usual.
“Lazy freeloading good for nothing…”
“I’m out of here in a week, I’m leaving your sorry arse behind and I am gonna’ make something of my self, you wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“Where are you gonna go, huh? Who’d want you – you’re damaged goods, boy.”
Michael didn’t much believe in regrets or playing do-over but if he had his time again he’d have walked out right then. He’d have ignored the anger that built inside him at the word ‘boy’ dripping with disdain coming from his foster father’s lips, he’d have walked away, gone somewhere and destroyed something that wasn’t his future.
Instead he stood there and told the man in front of him exactly where he was going and what he was going to do.
Michael still to this day, doesn’t know why. Was he expecting the other man to be proud or disparaging? Was he so screwed up that he picked one last fight just to make the prospect of walking away from this monster easier? Was he so broken that he needed to be kicked out because he couldn’t leave on his own?
Whatever the reason he couldn’t have been prepared for the response.
…
Michael had known it was bad, had known that the pain he felt was infinitely greater than any he had felt before… and he had felt plenty.
Michael had refused to look at the damaged hand, wrapped unceremoniously in an old t-shirt that he’d managed to grab as he fled the trailer. He didn’t need to see it. He knew it was bad.
He’d grabbed his phone from his back pocket with his uninjured hand and called the one person he knew would help him, could help him.
Max had answered the phone after a couple of rings.
“I need you,” was all Michael could say, shock stopping him from elaborating further. He didn’t need to, it wasn’t the first time Max had got a call like that.
“I’ll come get you,” Max had said and Michael had been grateful that he’d understood. “Where are you?”
“Just around the corner from the park, that old gas station.”
“I’m on my way.”
Michael had wanted to say ‘hurry’ but pride had stopped him.
Michael was snapped out of his thoughts and brought back to the present by the sound of his phone ringing. Looking at the screen, he cringed as the name Max appeared on the screen the fingers of his good hand instinctively moving across their misshapen counterparts.
Speak of the devil, he thought.
Michael let the phone go to voicemail, there was no way he was in the mood to sit through another Max Evans lecture tonight. He did want to ask him some questions though.
Michael had never quite believed Max, when he’d said he couldn’t heal his hand completely. He had taken away the pain and prevented infection but had left behind deformed fingers and flame-puckered skin. Michael found it a little too coincidental that the injury Max couldn’t heal was the injury that prevented him from joining the air force against Max’s wishes.
Michael hadn’t wanted these doubts but they had settled in him and never left and when Max had resurrected Liz it had all but confirmed it.
Michael had been holding onto the anger for a long time and he had learned to live with it as he had done all the other disappointments in his life. Even his most trusted friend hadn’t had enough faith in him to allow him to make a decision for himself, too afraid that Michael would stuff it up like he always did because at the end of the day Max saw in Michael the same thing everyone else did – the reason he was so unlovable.