Running From Himself II (Patreon)

Running From Himself

Hard Stop II

He was in his messy apartment, the stale scent of day-old pizza hanging in the air, The glow of his laptop screen painting his face in shifting shades of blue and grey as the credits for the first season of The Boys rolled for the third time that week. Empty soda cans stood sentinel on his desk next to a precarious stack of comic books.

2:17 AM. A double shift finished and another one in a day or so.

The doctor let out a yawn as he reached for a glass of water, a dull throb already kicking up behind his sternum; another one he didn’t even think about. He’d been having these little pains for months, dismissing them as heartburn from a diet in his teens and twenties that would make a nutritionist weep. 

Considering his aunt was one, that wasn’t even an exaggeration.

But Aunt Bernice cried over everything.

This time, however, the throb didn't fade.

It tightened; a hot, vice-like grip squeezing the life from his chest. 

His breath hitched as the glass slipped from numb fingers, shattering on the floor. He tried to call out, to push himself away from the desk, but his limbs wouldn't obey. His vision tunneled, the bright screen of his laptop collapsing into a single, searing point of light. His last conscious thought wasn't of loved ones or regrets, but a single, absurdly clear line from the show he'd just finished: Never meet your heroes. 

What followed was not heaven or hell. 

It was an absence. A formless, timeless, thoughtless void. 

There was no pain or peace, for there was no one left to feel it. It was the profound, absolute silence between notes, the blank page before the story. Memories—his soul-killing residency as a doctor, his love for superheroes, the face of his mother—dissolved like sugar in water, losing their shape and substance until only a raw, untethered consciousness remained. It was a state of pure being, without identity or purpose, floating in an endless, quiet dark.

For the soul, there was only… nothing.

For how long, it was impossible to say. An instant? An eon?

Until there was something.

A low, persistent beeping. A dull ache that was everywhere and nowhere. The scratchy feeling of cheap sheets against skin that felt… wrong. Too big. Too powerful, even in its stillness.

Ow.

That was the first thought. Not profound, not deep, just... ow. Like someone had used his skull for batting practice and forgot to mention it.

He tried to open his eyes. The lids felt like they were glued shut with lead weights. With a monumental effort, he cracked them open. The light was a physical assault and both lids shut almost instantly Where...

Hospital. Had to be. 

That antiseptic smell that lived in your nose for days after, the sterile white glare that made him groan every day he walked in. But the ceiling was fancier than the one he knew, like too much money had been thrown at it instead of necessity.

"Mr. Franklin? Can you hear me?"

The voice was soft, professional. He turned his head, a movement that felt like shifting a mountain, and saw a nurse adjusting an IV drip. Mr? He’d spent too many years in school and making rounds to still go by Mister.

He tried to speak, but his throat was a desert. A dry, rasping sound was all that escaped. The nurse was there in an instant, a cup with a straw at his lips. He drank greedily, the cool water a balm on his raw throat.

"Easy there," she said. "You've been out for a while. Gave us all quite a scare."

He finally managed a word. "Where…?"

"Vought International Tower, Medical Wing," she said cheerfully. "Best care in the world. You're a very lucky man, Mr. Franklin. A heart attack like that, and the… impact… most people wouldn't have survived."

Heart attack? Impact? The words meant nothing. He looked down at himself, at the powerful, dark-skinned arms covered in a light sheen of sweat. These were not his arms. These were athlete arms. Sure, he worked out, but he barely had time even when he was younger in his first few years of residency and he’d only gotten busier as he got older. 

His hands looked wrong too. Too smooth, no calluses from years of gripping surgical instruments, no scar on his left thumb from when he'd been stupid with a scalpel during residency. These were athlete hands. 

Strong but soft.

Reggie tried to sit up and his body said absolutely fucking not in about seventeen different languages. Every muscle felt wrong. Too tight in some places, too loose in others, like wearing a suit tailored for someone else's shoulders.

"Whoa, easy does it, champ," the nurse said, gently pushing him back down. "You need to rest. Doctor's orders."

He turned his head—slowly, because his neck felt like it might snap if he looked around too fast—and caught sight of his reflection in the black TV screen mounted on the wall.

Oh.

Oh, shit.

That wasn't his face.

Reggie blinked hard, hoping his eyes were just fucked up from whatever had happened to him, but nope. Same face staring back. A little younger than his twenty-nine years, sharper cheekbones, skin that had never seen a day of real work. What the hell…

Reggie tried to sit up again, moving slower this time. His body cooperated, mostly. Everything felt too light, too responsive. Like his bones were hollow or some shit.

The room was definitely private. Expensive private. 

Floor-to-ceiling windows showing him a city skyline he didn't recognize, furniture that cost more than most people's cars. There were flowers everywhere—roses, lilies, shit he couldn't name—with little cards that probably said get well soon.

How long...

Time felt slippery. Could've been hours, could've been days. His mouth tasted like he'd been gargling cotton balls and regret.

A mirror hung on the far wall, and Reggie caught sight of himself fully this time. Definitely not his body. This guy was built like a track star, all lean muscle and perfect proportions. The kind of physique that came from genetics and enhancement, not from grinding through four years of medical school on instant ramen and spite.

Memory tried to surface and got stuck halfway, like a word on the tip of your tongue that wouldn't come. Something about running. Something about blue liquid and a heart that forgot how to beat and a girl who—

The door to the private room swished open, and in walked a woman who sent a jolt of ice through his veins. Madelyn Stillwell. What the hell…

The woman looked exactly as she did on his laptop screen, decades older than she was in Back to The Future—impeccably dressed, a perfectly prim smile playing on her lips, her eyes as calculating and cold as he remembered them.

"A-Train," she said, her voice smooth as silk. "Thank God. You had us worried sick."

A-Train… he blinked, breath coming a bit faster. Wh… where?

The nurse discreetly exited, leaving him alone with the Senior VP of Hero Management. 

The second the door shut behind her, the mask fell off, the smile fell away and Madelyn Stillwell was out in full form. Without warning, he found himself alone with the woman who held the leash of the world’s strongest weapon.

"The doctors tell me you're going to make a full recovery," Stillwell continued, pulling a chair close to his bed. "In fact, they say you're in perfect health. All the V you've been pumping into your system? Not a trace. No lingering damage. It's a miracle." She leaned in, her smile tightening. "A miracle you don't deserve, but one we'll take. Because right now, your stock is in the toilet."

He just stared, his mind a frantic, screaming mess. A-Train. It was impossible. A dream. A coma-induced hallucination.

He was…

He was…

Reggie Franklin.

No, that was wrong. Reggie Franklin had died in a shitty apartment in D.C., clutching his chest while his heart decided to quit without notice. Twenty-nine years old and gone before the paramedics could do anything but call time of death.

That’s not my name! It wasn’t his name. It wasn’t what he’d seen on his ID’s, not what his girlfriend had moaned in his ear, not what any of his friends called him, but it was all he could remember.

His heart fluttered again, so fast he worried he was having another heart attack. What’s my name??!!!

“A-Train!”

His head snapped up back to Stillwell, the woman glaring at him.

"Get your head together or we’ll have you packing your things up. You've been on bed rest for a week, and in that time, Shockwave has been dead-set on breaking your old records," Stillwell said, her voice hardening. "The board is talking. They're saying maybe it's time for some new blood in The Seven. Younger, more reliable blood."

She stood up, pacing the room. "You crashed, Reggie. Apparently, you had a heart attack, your tox screen came back loaded with Compound V, not that we didn’t know that before you crashed into a brick wall covered with broken vials of it. But before that…" She paused, turning to face him. "Before that, you ran through a civilian. A young woman. Obliterated her."

The new man felt a wave of nausea.

A-Train. Reginald Franklin.

Different Reggie. Different life. Different everything.

He remembered it in bits and pieces, flashes and flares; racing through the streets, Homelander's voice giving orders, a red duffel bag full of blue promises, a girl in the wrong place at the wrong time and—

 Robin. He killed Robin. No, not him. 

A-Train. 

But he was A-Train now. The thought was a paradox that made his head spin.

"The public doesn't know the details yet," Stillwell said. "We've been managing the narrative. But we need you out there. Tomorrow, you're giving a press conference. You're going to apologize. You're going to look sad. And you are going to be the hero who is so dedicated to saving people that he pushed himself too far. Are we clear?"

He couldn't form words. He just nodded, a tiny, jerky movement.

"Good." Stillwell's smile returned, but it didn't reach her eyes. "Get your act together, Reggie. Or you're out. And you know what happens to members of The Seven who get kicked out." The threat hung in the air, unspoken and absolute.

With a final, lingering look, she turned and left.

He lay there for what felt like an eternity, the beeping of the heart monitor the only sound. Slowly, shakily, he swung his legs over the side of the bed. His body felt… good.

Too good.

There was no ache from the heart attack, no lingering V-jitters like he knew A-Train to have. 

He felt strong. Healthy.

He stumbled into the attached bathroom and flipped on the light. And there, in the mirror, still staring back was the face of Reginald "A-Train" Franklin. The handsome features, the confident smirk he'd seen on a thousand posters of the show, now just looked tired and terrified.

It was real. 

All of it.

He was trapped. 

Trapped in the body of a murderer, a drug addict, a pawn in a corporate game run by psychopaths. He gripped the sink, knuckles turning white as panic clawed at his throat. He was going to have to lie, to pretend, to be this person he despised.

As he stared into his own—no, A-Train's—eyes, something flickered. For a split second, the reflection's eyes seemed to spark with a tiny, almost imperceptible thread of blue. 

A-Train blinked.

The fuck is going on?

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

The next evening, he stood on a podium outside Vought Tower, a hundred cameras flashing in his face. Stillwell stood right next to him, still speaking as her words went in one ear and right out through the other, “That does not begin to convey the terrible regret-”. 

He held the prepared statement in his trembling hands. He was supposed to talk about grief and tragedies and ‘condolences’. He was supposed to be a hero.

He looked out at the sea of reporters, his thoughts stuck on the man — Hughie — from the show that was no longer a show. He’s not an actor. He’s real. A real person. 

And Robin was a real life that he destroyed. Reggie’s breath hitched as he thought of the lie he was supposed to tell. And he thought of the person he used to be, the one who just watched this unfold on a screen; the man who spent his life saving others.

I… I can’t do this.

He dropped the prepared statement onto the podium. The reporters went quiet, cameras still running and flashing.

"My name is Reginald Franklin," he began, his voice surprisingly steady even as his heart pounded in his chest. "You know me as A-Train. Yesterday, I was told to come here and read a statement about the tragic death of Robin Ward. I was supposed to tell you it was a terrible accident."

He took a deep breath. "It wasn't an accident. It was negligence. It was arrogance. It was my fault. I cost an innocent girl her life and harmed someone I was supposed to protect."

A wave of murmurs swept through the reporters and he could see Stillwell's face contort in a mask of pure fury out of the corner of his eye.

Still, he wasn't going to stop now.

"There are no excuses for what I did," he continued, his voice cracking. "An apology is meaningless. It won't bring her back. It won't heal the wound I inflicted on her family and loved ones."

He looked directly into the main camera, speaking not to the press, but to the world.

To Hughie.

"So, I won't be asking for your forgiveness. I don't deserve it. What I will do is face the consequences because you all deserve better heroes. That is why as of now, I am retiring from The Seven and from all hero duties, effective immediately."

The press exploded.