Choice of the Deathless: Kieran stays fleshy, though he has lightning scars for a while (they last longer than they normally would though because instead of being struck by lightning, they were from fighting a wannabe god) and gets the promotion. A few months after the end of the game, he finds a stray kitten which he names Lily. Wakefield isn’t a fan at first (especially since she’d a long haired black cat and mixing that with a pale colored aesthetic is just disastrous) but warms up to her eventually. Lily becomes the most spoiled cat in Shikaw
Maybe a year or so later, Kieran’s step-sister gets married and he brings Wakefield as his plus-one to the wedding. One of them ends up catching the bouquet without even trying/meaning to
(I have this entire fanfiction though up but honestly I’ll probably never actually write it)
Heroes Rise (I’m ignoring Redemption Season entirely because this headcanon just got way out of hand:
Under a cut because it's a bit depressing, plus (undetailed) mentions of risky behavior/self harm but I promise my mc gets better
Once the adrenaline of saving his parents wore out, Riley finds that his powers didn’t quite come back the way he’d like. It starts gradually, but it becomes harder and harder for him to keep his powers under control, especially in moments of intense emotion and he becomes really afraid of losing it again or losing control of it and getting people hurt. Alongside the pressure of being a hero and a public figure, he puts a lot of pressure on himself to be perfect and keep his power issues under wraps and doesn’t tell anyone about his problems
Eventually, he slips up and accidentally loses control in front of someone else and insists that that was the only time and begs them not to tell anyone else. I’m thinking BM, though at that point they’re at the weird stage where they don’t know whether they’re friends again or just colleagues still. Things get tense and awkward just in general but especially between them because now BM notices the small little moments where Riley’s power doesn’t work how it should
Riley had always pushed himself really hard, but even more so as he struggles to keep his power in control. On one mission, he makes a choice that he knows is really risky and gets hurt, in part because of his powers (and maybe there was a small part of himself that wanted to get hurt)
He ends up out of commission for a while and he gets increasingly depressed because there’s nothing to distract himself from the entire situation. Then, BM visits him and suggests seeing a therapist he’d found who deals specifically with people having problems dealing with their powers (who he had actually been seeing himself since not long after the end of the trilogy) Riley is reluctant but agrees to try it out.
Eventually, he figures out that his problem isn’t that the power itself, but it’s that the combination of the way that he constantly pushes himself past his limits and the intense anxiety he gets about knowing that millions of people as well as his team are watching basically his every move and relying on him to save the day and how he does intentionally put himself in unnecessarily risky situations because he doesn’t expect himself to be able to get through a mission smoothly (which is convoluted as hell but that’s what the brain does when it hates itself sometimes tbh)
He also digs up a lot of emotional baggage that he’d repressed at least since his parents were first imprisoned because it plays a big part in the way he interacts with the world and how he sees his power
After a long hiatus, he goes back to being a hero, but despite working on better coping mechanisms and how to manage his power properly, he finds that he’s still not happy doing what he does. After many talks with his therapist, he comes to terms with the fact that being a hero isn’t what he’d hoped it would feel like and that the constant exposure to violence and other high-pressure situations is bad for him and he chooses to take an early retirement
Immediately after doing so, he feels very lost and like he hadn’t achieved anything. Eventually though, he does start to find his way in the world again and starts making music again like he did when he was younger but quit after high school because he started working full time and just didn’t have the time for it anymore, and he starts taking classes at the local community college
Also, he maybe gets a dog
