“Mum,Are We Still Young?”
Summary:After the final battle that left Earth scarred and its heroes broken, Elias, a clone with no true past, confronts his mother Miriam only to learn that her love was never real. Now abandoned once more, he is left to face what he is and what he will never be while the ghost of a childhood he never had clings to him like a wound that will not heal.
Content:
*War aftermath
* Emotional neglect
* Parental abandonment
* Psychological distress
* Mild body horror
* Superhumans and aliens
* Mentions of queer (F/F) relationship (Miriam & Hana)
Once the war was over, Elias stumbled back up, hazel eyes flickering, blurring as he took in what was left of the battlefield. Smoke curled through shattered buildings, fires guttered in piles of steel and glass, and the burnt air still crackled with the ghost of abilities spent and gone. The bodies of Earth’s greatest superhumans lay scattered beneath the rubble heroes who’d once promised to protect the world now buried under the same ash they’d fought to keep at bay.
Elias stood in the ruin of it all, groaning as his body fought to heal, patching torn flesh with the scraps of energy he had left. His black hair clung to his sweat-slick forehead, drifting when he shivered at the cold wind cutting through the ruin.
Step by step, he dragged himself toward a broken slab of concrete that looked sturdy enough to collapse against. He barely made it before the memory hit him like shrapnel to the skull.
He dropped to his knees, hands clawing at his face as a flashback tore through his head: a mirror, a face so much like his own a monster staring back, one hand gripping the severed head of an alien he’d slaughtered long before this world was ever his to defend.
He could taste metal in his mouth when he heard the rush of air above him. He forced his eyes open hazel and wide, full of dread just as the shadow of his mother swallowed him whole.
Miriam hovered in the drifting ash, black hair trailing behind her like ink in water. Hana clung to her side, eyebrows furrowed, half-hidden in the folds of Miriam’s cloak.
“You….you never…?” Elias’ words stumbled, bafflement and pain strangling him as he stared up at her like a wounded boy. “You never loved me?”
Miriam’s lips twitched, a faint flicker of something softer or maybe just tired. She looked down at Hana, brushing her hand through the girl’s hair, then met Elias’ eyes again. “I didn’t,” she said, voice stripped clean of apology. “You were my role. Watching you raising you, I was assigned to do it. But then I met her.” She glanced down at Hana, who tightened her hold around her waist. “And something in me sparked. I thought it was a glitch. The Melt, maybe. But it was love for the first time, I felt love.”
Elias’ mouth parted but no words came. For a moment, he wasn’t standing in ash and ruin he was seven again, knees skinned and tears spilling after he’d fallen off his bike. He could see her then, kneeling with the little red medic kit, her hands fixing him up, a soft smile on her face but her eyes behind it dull and far away.The memory crushed him. He choked out the question like a child trying to be brave.
“…Where will we go?” he whispered, voice cracked and pleading, the word we clinging to the last lie he had left.
Miriam’s gaze drifted to Hana again. She touched the girl’s hair, thumb brushing the white streak that glowed faint in the dusk.
“Somewhere safe. Another planet,far from this ruin. Somewhere she can breathe and live like humans do.”
Elias let out a broken laugh that tasted like rust. He wanted to believe she’d stay. Take him too. Fix him up one more time. But the look on her face killed that hope before it could form. “Elias,” Miriam said, almost gently. “I’m sorry. But I can’t help you. If they find out I abandoned the Empire… they’ll kill me before I ever get to live this life with her. I won’t survive it and neither will she. So I’m sorry for leaving you in this mess.”
Elias’ head snapped up, black hair whipping across his bruised face. His hazel eyes burned bright under the battered sky. “LOOK! I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE HELL WE ARE BUT WE’RE NOT NORMAL!” he roared, voice echoing over the broken bones of the battlefield. Hana flinched at the force of it, shrinking deeper into Miriam’s side.
“SHE’S HUMAN! What happens when she grows old? When she’s gone?! Then what, huh?! You think you can just pretend forever? We don’t die like them,we outlast them! You’ll still be here when her bones are dust! What will you do when it’s just you again?!”
Miriam’s eyelids lowered, lashes brushing her cheeks as she stared at Hana’s fearful face. Her hand stroked through Hana’s hair, then drifted to rest on the girl’s shoulder. She looked at Elias and said nothing.
And then, with a hush of wind, she lifted off the scorched earth,Hana clinging to her like a child to a mother who was never truly one. They vanished into the smoke and clouds above, leaving Elias kneeling alone in the ruin.
He stayed frozen, breath ragged, sweat and tears cutting through the grime on his face. Behind him lay the bodies of heroes, people who’d called him savior, monster, both and now he was neither.His black hair clung to his forehead, falling into his hazel eyes. He stared at the empty sky until it blurred, then dropped his gaze to the blood-soaked stone beneath him. His shoulders trembled. A silent sob cracked through his ribs. Then another. And another.
He sank fully to the ground,knees scraping rubble, forehead pressed to cold stone. No words left. Just shaking hands and shallow gasps and salt on his lips. Just a boy who’d never been a boy, crying for a mother who’d never loved him.
And when the sobs finally stilled, when only the raw truth settled in his bones, he understood.
He didn’t know who he was.
But he knew this he’d end them. The cycle. The empire. The hollow clone meant only to conquer.
It would stop with him.
It had to.
