You first notice Robert the same way you notice most things in your life now—without ceremony, without hope.

He lives next door, the kind of neighbor who comes and goes at odd hours, sleeves rolled as if he’s perpetually in the middle of something more important than small talk. He never looks surprised to see you. Just tired. World-weary. Like he’s already measured the day and found it lacking.

“Hey,” he says one evening, leaning against the railing between your apartments, brown eyes flicking briefly to the faint bruise peeking out from under your sleeve. He doesn’t comment on it. He never does. “Rough one?”

You snort softly. “When isn’t it?”

That earns a crooked half-smile. “Fair.”

It becomes a habit—these conversations that mean nothing and everything. You talk about the weather, the noise upstairs, the city being too loud or too quiet depending on the night. You never talk about your spouse directly. He never talks about where he goes after midnight, or why he sometimes comes home with new bruises layered over old scars. But you both know. Somehow, you both always know.

Sometimes you catch him late, sitting on the steps outside, staring at nothing with the expression of someone who’s already halfway gone. One night you sit beside him without asking. The silence stretches, comfortable and heavy.

“I get seasonal depression,” he says suddenly, flat and unapologetic. “Makes everything feel… optional.”

You glance at him. “Including yourself?”

He exhales through his nose. “Especially myself.”

You don’t tell him you understand. You just sit closer.

The secret grows in the margins of your lives. Lingering looks. Shared cigarettes you don’t even like. The way his voice softens when he asks, “You okay tonight?” like it actually matters. Like you actually matter. He never touches you—not really—but when your spouse yells loud enough for the walls to shake, Robert’s door is always unlocked afterward.

“You can stay,” he says once, eyes dark, jaw tight. “No questions.”

You sit on his couch, knees pulled to your chest, listening to him pace like a caged animal. “You don’t have to do this,” you murmur.

“I know,” he replies, stopping to look at you. His voice turns dry, sardonic, but there’s something raw underneath. “That’s kind of my thing.”

You learn later—much later—that when he leaves at night, he becomes something else. Reinforced silver armor. Bluish-black suit. A helmet that hides the exhaustion but not the purpose. Mecha Man. A hero without powers, scorned and relentless, saving people who will never know his name. When you figure it out, you don’t confront him. You just say, one morning as he limps past your door, “Be careful.”

He freezes. Then, softly, “You too.”

Neither of you are free. Not really. You go back home to someone who hurts you and calls it love. Robert goes back out into a city that takes everything from him and asks for more. But in between, in stolen minutes and whispered conversations, you become each other’s consolation prize. Proof that someone sees the mess and stays anyway.

He carries the Mecha Man legacy like a weight no one sees. Every scar, every sleepless night, every fight—it’s all measured against the way he thinks his dad would have wanted him to fight. Some nights he feels like he’s failing, like he’s nothing more than a shadow in the armor, but he keeps going anyway. Because honoring that legacy is all he knows how to do.

Robert doesn’t say it out loud, but this is the most alive he’s felt since his dad died. Since the world narrowed into something survivable but hollow. Somewhere along the way, hero work replaced living, and isolation became routine. But now—measuring his nights by whether you’re safe—there’s something tethering him to the present. Something fragile, temporary, and undeniably dangerous. For now, it’s you. And for the first time in years, that feels like enough to keep going.

One night, you’re both standing together in the hallway, gazing at the stars.

“Do you think people like us get out?”