Chapter 7: Sunset

The hotel was cheap, no-frills. The one luxury it could boast was a view of the park and Titan Tower. Still, it wasn't a horrible place to watch the sunset if you were into that sort of thing.

Cyborg wished he could say he didn't know how he had ended up sitting on the creaky bed with the floral-print comforter. The computer in his brain had tracked every moment of his journey, recording it all through a red lens just as it had for years, right down to the horrible look of relief on his father's face when he opened that door with one brass number and two outlines where the others had hung.

He wasn't supposed to look so goddamn grateful and teary-eyed, not when Victor hadn't even said or done anything yet.

The two of them had been sitting on the bed, looking out the window, not knowing what to say, for the past ten minutes.

"I have a question for you," Victor finally managed to say, wincing as the words came out far too loud for the tiny room. "There's something I still can't really understand," he continued at a more reasonable volume. "Are you willing to answer honestly?"

Silas nodded, but didn't speak. Fear and hope warred in his eyes, making them shine in the light of the sunset.

Cyborg took a deep breath and took the plunge. "Why did you make me like this? I can understand keeping me alive, but all these weapons and extra things... what reason could you possibly have had for giving a teenage kid a cannon for an arm?"

Running both hands up his face and over his head, Silas settled with his hands on the back of his neck. "I... well, it sounds absurd, but as we were in the O.R., I had a vision of the old black-and-white Frankenstein movie. Villagers with pitchforks and torches, the bit with the windmill. And it terrified me. It's not how I saw what I was doing; you're my son, and you could never be a monster in my eyes. But other people are a different story. So I added one or two mechanisms for self-defense. And then a few to make your life easier, things I wished I could have had for myself. After that, I suppose I just got carried away with it. Your mother tried to be the voice of reason, but... well... you know how I get when I'm working on a project."

Victor searched for some sort of response, some step towards establishing common ground. "Me too," he said after a three-second eternity.

His father nodded, grateful, before continuing. "Afterwards, I worried whether I had done the right thing. I almost went back and pulled out all the nonessential systems, but I thought I'd let you decide what to keep when you woke up. And... we know how that went."

With a sigh, Victor nodded again. "I guess that makes sense." Glancing back and forth between his feet and the sunset, never looking at the shorter figure beside him, he moved on to his next subject. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry for blowing up at you this morning. This was all just... so sudden."

"I have far more to apologize for than that, Victor," his father said. "I could have called and warned you I was coming. For that matter, I could have called anytime in the past several years. It's not like I didn't know where you were. When I made the decision to come, I could have thought more about what I was going to say and how it would have made you feel... but you know me." He gave an apologetic shrug. "Good with machines, not so good with people."

"Yeah, we both have a lot to make up for... which brings us to what happens now." Cyborg tried to swallow the lump of nerves that was trying to crawl out his throat. "I meant what I said about making your own decision. I don't want your life in my hands. I don't care about justice or whatever else you were trying to accomplish with that offer; trying to put that on my conscience is more unfair than anything you've ever done to me."

Swallowing, Silas managed to croak, "Victor—"

"Let me finish." Victor held up a hand, but his voice was soft. "Cybernetics or not, and to what extent, is up to you. But putting all that aside... I'd like to try and make this work between us. I want my dad back."

It took less than two seconds for Silas to wrap his arms around his son, and not much longer for Victor to free an arm and return the hug. Neither of them said anything about the tears that flowed down their faces.

In Cyborg's memory banks, a folder was opened, and a moment saved. After years of hurt and resentment, Silas Stone was finally Family.

The End

AN: Thank you all for bearing with me through this. The subject is intensely personal for many of us, and I hope my treatment of it has been satisfactory. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this piece, good or bad.