"Ah, so we're onto to the awkward hero bonding portion of the hour now, huh?"
But the cynicism wasn't quite as cynical as it could've been.
"Space kind of gets cooler and simultaneously loses its appeal when you've been up to it," he said. "Though to be fair, the one time I was up there, it was to help the Justice League take down a creepy alien death satellite. Annnd I wound up falling between dimensions for a few seconds and a whole year passed back home."
No Brother Eye in this universe, but there had still been hostile aliens using Reach technology.
"I've always thought about, like, maybe seeing how far I could go with the scarab, because I'm pretty sure he can make portals or something but I was always afraid to go too far from home, in case something bad happened and I couldn't come back."
Lots of hostile aliens out there. Like the Reach.
"Still, I hoped I'd get to maybe poke around the solar system a little bit, you know?. I wanted to do a lot of things." He went quiet for a moment. "But I couldn't risk being seen in the suit."
He'd had to deny a part of himself all this time. The scarab had to deny a part of itself, the part that had become something more than a weapon. There had been so much good they could have done, so much that Jaime could've explored and taken joy in. After figuring the suit out, after the scarab had become his friend and he'd no longer been terrified by the strange creature inside his body, being in the suit and having the powers had made him happy. Helping people had made him happy.
"I think that's what I hated the most," he admitted, and whether it was that Danny felt approachable or that finally talking about all this made it easier to keep talking about it - or both - he kept talking. "The scarab and I, we're -"
It was hard to put into words and he didn't know if it'd sound creepy when he did.
"We're both separate people. But when we're the Blue Beetle, we're both someone different together. When we're in the suit - when he is the suit - we're something else that isn't just Jaime and isn't just Khaji Da." He was his friend now, always in his ear, but when they were the Blue Beetle, they flowed in and out of each other and were something different. Better. "I don't care that much about my legs. The chair's a pain in the butt but the suit can make me legs if I want to fight, even if it hurts. But all this time, thanks to them, we haven't been able to...to be."
He paused his careful gathering of notebooks and notes - and what looked like a journal - and just looked at the surface of his desk, his expression almost haunted.
"They took who we are away."
He sounded a little shaken over that, as if he hadn't realized how deep and terrible a wound it was until now, until realizing what he'd lost by taking it back again.
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But the cynicism wasn't quite as cynical as it could've been.
"Space kind of gets cooler and simultaneously loses its appeal when you've been up to it," he said. "Though to be fair, the one time I was up there, it was to help the Justice League take down a creepy alien death satellite. Annnd I wound up falling between dimensions for a few seconds and a whole year passed back home."
No Brother Eye in this universe, but there had still been hostile aliens using Reach technology.
"I've always thought about, like, maybe seeing how far I could go with the scarab, because I'm pretty sure he can make portals or something but I was always afraid to go too far from home, in case something bad happened and I couldn't come back."
Lots of hostile aliens out there. Like the Reach.
"Still, I hoped I'd get to maybe poke around the solar system a little bit, you know?. I wanted to do a lot of things." He went quiet for a moment. "But I couldn't risk being seen in the suit."
He'd had to deny a part of himself all this time. The scarab had to deny a part of itself, the part that had become something more than a weapon. There had been so much good they could have done, so much that Jaime could've explored and taken joy in. After figuring the suit out, after the scarab had become his friend and he'd no longer been terrified by the strange creature inside his body, being in the suit and having the powers had made him happy. Helping people had made him happy.
"I think that's what I hated the most," he admitted, and whether it was that Danny felt approachable or that finally talking about all this made it easier to keep talking about it - or both - he kept talking. "The scarab and I, we're -"
It was hard to put into words and he didn't know if it'd sound creepy when he did.
"We're both separate people. But when we're the Blue Beetle, we're both someone different together. When we're in the suit - when he is the suit - we're something else that isn't just Jaime and isn't just Khaji Da." He was his friend now, always in his ear, but when they were the Blue Beetle, they flowed in and out of each other and were something different. Better. "I don't care that much about my legs. The chair's a pain in the butt but the suit can make me legs if I want to fight, even if it hurts. But all this time, thanks to them, we haven't been able to...to be."
He paused his careful gathering of notebooks and notes - and what looked like a journal - and just looked at the surface of his desk, his expression almost haunted.
"They took who we are away."
He sounded a little shaken over that, as if he hadn't realized how deep and terrible a wound it was until now, until realizing what he'd lost by taking it back again.