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thejusticelounge2014-03-25 07:13 pm
bossymarmalade) wrote in thejusticelounge2014-03-25 07:13 pm
hearth
Kyle doesn’t go too far in the woods, just far enough that there are trees around him. He can still see the town as he lays flat on his back and looks up at the trees, their treetops swaying in the gentle breeze. Pine needles stick to his wet back, but he feels comfortable, calmed. The owls are softly hooting even at this time of day. He feels better. Better than it felt at the pool, those two. Kyle finds himself wondering if maybe he should have stayed there, in case Queen tried to…but then that thought cuts short, because even thinking like that is too horrible to contemplate. He doesn’t know. The dopplegangers that appeared out of no where threw him off. Dopplegangers, like. Really, Cachement? Really? Kyle sits up, balancing his wrists loosely on his pulled up knees as he sighs. He’ll talk to Mar’i about it. Yes. She’ll straighten him out, her assurance that he isn’t crazy. No one’s crazy. Feeling better, Kyle stands up and goes to search for her. They needed a trip up to the Raven anyway, might as well be now.
Mar’i pulls thick socks over her bare feet in the doorway of her bungalow, ignoring how they scratch over small blisters she’s worn into the back of her heels. There’s a small knapsack to her side, already packed with a few bare essentials, but mostly open space for any needed supplies. There’s a list in her pocket, but she hasn’t looked at it yet, more concerned with using the bandages she took earlier that day to bind her knuckles up tightly. It’s a slow process, but she’s methodical, each knuckle wrapped the same number of times for the same amount of thickness. There’s a noise from the side of the porch and her head spins, one hand going to the quiver sitting on her other side, fingers hooking around an arrow. But Kyle’s messy black head pops over it, like he’s just come from the woods, and she returns to putting on her boots, tightening and double-knotting the laces. “You ready to go?” she asks, looking up at the sun to see how much daylight they’ll have left.
"Sure am," Kyle stands in the doorway and shakes himself out, like a dog. Waterdroplets and pine needles drop from him as well as dirt and leaves. Feeling a little sheepish, he kicksweeps the stuff away from her bower as he waits, trying to clean off the porch of his mess. Kyle squints at her - the socks and boots, the bandages on her hands, her backpack lumpy with things (supplies, he supposes) and a quiver - Roy’s arrows? Roy’s bow?? - and Kyle furrows his brow. "Say, where’s Roy?" If he’s gone hunting, it doesn’t make sense that he’d leave behind that.
Mar’i stands up, rolling one shoulder then the other. “I was going to ask you the same thing, since you saw him last,” she answers, looking over at the water dripping from Kyle’s hair. “That’s why I’m going to the Raven with you. He didn’t come back the night that thing went into the drains. My axe is gone, too. Hopefully he has it.” She hands Kyle the bag. “Here, you want to carry this?” she asks, already moving inside to pull the longbow out from behind the doorway. She doesn’t look at it as she slings it over her shoulder. “He’ll be fine,” she says without provocation, “he’s strong, he can handle himself, he just…” she frowns, “he needs to be back with Lian. She needs him.”
Kyle takes the bag and uses his free arm to put his t-shirt back on. He’s sticky with chlorine but he doesn’t mind too much. Kyle shoulders the bag, over his makeshift sling. His water’s still in there and a small collection of mushrooms, as well as a piece of overcooked deer that he’d liberated from the kitchen. They start to walk along the yellow gravel path that leads to the Raven. “Noooo…no. No we went to Raven and couldn’t find the mons - the thing. The thing that came from Stephanie. We couldn’t find it, so we came back here, together. We said goodnight over there, in fact,” Kyle points by the air raid siren tower. He came to the bungalow, I went back to the bunkhouse. I saw him go in. I…” Kyle reaches out to Mar’i, his fingertips brushing her arm. He’s stopped speaking, though.
Mar’i's eyes narrow slightly at Kyle's words and she looks ahead at the path. The trees are already swaying against high wind, but down on their level it's eerily still. “I fell asleep right after I helped Bruce get Steph settled, and I…” a loud hoot from the trees catches her attention and she looks up at the large owl staring down at them. “I didn't wake up until morning, but Roy wasn't there. If he came back then maybe he’s not…” Her throat makes a thick, wet swallowing sound. “We can check anyway, just in case. We have to get these supplies anyway…”
"Mia told me that when she found Connor this morning, it was like he was on fire inside, like. He was expelling smoke." Kyle’s voice is low and hushed, as if he doesn’t want something in the forest to hear. The trees along the path are gnarled and burned, the ones from Clark’s forest fire. "I came back this way. I think I forgot something, but I don’t think I was…seeing things properly." Kyle swallows and this time he trails behind Mar’i, like her shadow. "I forgot what I’d forgotten."
Mar’i turns her head to look over her shoulder at the slowly disappearing camp. “‘Found,’ huh?” she says simply, turning back. The sound of her boots against the dirt and rock progressively grow louder and louder until it’s like a heartbeat in her ears. “That’s okay. It’s just Cache pressing your buttons. Making you unsure of yourself. It’s all just a ploy to break us,” she answers, and another hoot makes her turn her head again. “Now that Gra—” she stops herself, doesn’t even look at Kyle because she knows what she was just about to say and she knows he does too, “Bruce, now that Bruce knows what’s going on, we’ll be able to fight back more.”
Kyle frowns and stops when she glances back, at him and the town but then as she talks he realizes that what she is saying is…His eyes light up and he jogs to catch up with her. “Yes. YES!” He reiterates, going ahead of her and walking backwards just so he can look at her. He needs to search her face, see what she’s saying and know that it’s real. “She found, but I don’t know what that means. But Connor won’t be in any danger, I can’t see why he would. Mia and Queen, they—” Kyle stops his sentence, switching gears. “They are doing this, right? There is something OUT there and it’s trying to break us. I think that too. I think that too, it’s gotta be that. When I was in the HSR, when that rip opened up and it was like these these - these - these Things that came out —” Kyle bunches his hands up, curling them in together in front of him and then exploding them out, his busted-up fingers splaying. “And that’s what they’re doing! They want us to break. I think. No. I know. That’s what they want. they don’t want us to die, they want us to break.”
Mar’i reaches behind her to momentarily palm the edge of the bow over her shoulder. “Are you absolutely sure they don’t want us dead? Or some of us, even. Because if they want us to break, that means they either need us to do something once we do break or they think we’re disposable, which means once we’re all broken, they’ll dispose of us.” If he could see her face, he’d see the way her eyes harden even more, tightening a notch every time she thinks about whoever’s in charge and what she’d like to do to them. Rage and fire being compressed into her bound knuckles. “I won’t let either option happen.”
"We. We won’t let either option happen.” Kyle pulls out a long strip of deer and gnaws on it. He steps in line with her, looking up and around, all over. Behind them, then to the left, then up again. His feet know this path, this familiar tread to the Raven. “We’re gonna get everyone out alive. Fucked up massively in the head, sure; but alive. We’ve all dealt with the fucked-up part, all of the League and Leaguelings.” Maybe not Ramsey, but…dammit Kate, why did they take you away. “Only this time they’re fucked up because of us, right? Well, in some ways, I’m used to that. I’ve caused a lot of pain for the people I love. I’m used to it now.” His eyes finally lower to the ground and they lose their light, his gait becoming more inward, his feet drag slightly. “Are you?”
Mar’i stiffens slightly. “Yeah,” she responds without further elaboration, “but once we get home I’ll gladly bow out of all this and let them move on with their lives. Let them get over what I did. It’s the least they deserve after all this.” They begin their ascent up the shale ridge, and she grabs Kyle’s lower arm to keep him on her precise path. “I hope Poppy remembers how to open tuna cans with her tail. She was kind of rusty on it when we…got Cache’d. There’s a goldfish pond a block over though so if she gets there she’ll be fine…”
"Cache’d," Kyle says but his voice is like a rusty gate, despite the strange pleasure he gets from the word. Or maybe it’s because of her ironlike grip on his arm; christ, when did he get so skinny. So many of them had pets, he realizes grimly. It’s weird to find that he did have some care left over for these poor dumb creatures, trying to survive on their own. Kyle thought all his care had been saved up for the people here; care that’s been firmly packed away so he wouldn’t be rendered useless from terror, every time something hurt people. He thinks of Damian and the koi pond in the Arboretum - Mar’is Arboretum that she vociferously denied ownership of - the Arboretum was for everyone, she’d flatly declare. Mar’i didn’t want to keep things in their world, nothing to hold on to, nothing to hurt. Except then she turned around and did just that. He thinks about what she said to him and Bruce, over the kitchen counter. "I wish I could tell you that you don’t share in the blame. But not cause you’re like a woman and we’re dudes or anything dumb like that, it’s like, it’s like you said - you’re the variable. There’s enough motion you gotta compensate for already."
Mar’i shrugs softly. “It’s okay, I can handle it. It’ll all get better once we get home, and everyone can be together again without worrying about people going missing in the night or shit crawling out of your throat or your child trying to sedu—” she cuts herself off, disgusted by the things that have already happened and the extent to which everyone has had to pretend the things are not as telling of the situation as they really are. “I’m sorry everyone’s just taking it out on you alone. People always look for a scapegoat, especially when their own shit is falling apart. You were just following orders, how were you supposed to know?”
Kyle laughs then, loud laughter and so hard he has to stop and hold his stomach because it’s sore and there’s still chlorine in his lungs. “Oh my god, Mar’i did you just Godwin’s Law me?!” His voice tinged with that hipster sort of ironic amusement. Laughing was better than the alternative, when Mar’i mentioned that last thing. ‘Child trying to sedu—’ she said. It is comforting, in a way, that she saw that too. That Kyle isn’t the only one who noticed it. So that made it real. Unfortunately, horribly, that was real, what he’d seen. “I wasn’t just following orders, I thought it was actually possible. I thought we were sending you back…ahhh. Y’know, you’re right. Whatever. It doesn’t matter here, all those details, and.” Kyle rubs his eyes, his laughter feeling soggy in his throat now, like a wet soda cracker. “All that matters is getting everyone out. Of.” Kyle stops again. The oval with the straight tail. The lake and the pool. Mar’i’s koi pool in the Arboretum. Damian. Kyle reaches out to Mar’i, grabbing at her skin, her quiver, her shirt. “Mar’i. The mirror. The mirror!”
Mar’i doesn’t say anything at first because the idea of being someone’s “cause,” as Kyle put it, makes her eyes burn with moisture. They wanted to send her back. They didn’t ask for her opinion because they didn’t want her opinion on it. It was agreed she had to go home, that she couldn’t stay. It’s a thing she doesn’t want to think about until later. If later ever comes. She nearly slips on the shale as his arm grabs at hers frantically, and she whips around to look at him. His eyes are wide hazel pools, the way they’ve been multiple times since they arrived here. It’s like watching his brain misfire and misfire and then in a sudden rush connect more dots. “What mirror?” she asks, trying to keep him from sending them both sliding down the ridge. “The ones in the bathhouse that Kate fucked up? Have those all seemed foggy to you, too? Like, hard to see yourself, I mean?”
"The mirror!" Kyle motions with his hand, curling it around something imaginary. His ring would have provided the image, sketched something into his hand; but right now it’s just empty. "Damian! He - he - he had a mirror! He had a mirror and it was like - christ it was like -" But he stops himself from using the Beauty and the Beast analogy. Kyle doesn’t even know if Disney is a thing from her world, never mind the movies. What were they called? There was a specific term for this type of mirror. "Mirror! You look in it when you’re sitting and - Kyle looks at his empty hand, his palm bleeding again under the wet chlorinated bandage. " - hand mirror. Damian has a hand mirror and it shows him his reflection and it’s Ibn. It’s not Damian. It’s not Ibn as a child, it’s Ibn, adult, your Ibn. He looks in it and he sees Ibn reflected back." Kyle reels back, clutching his head. "Oh god. It’s just another trick isn’t it. It’s just another thing to fuck with our brains. It’s not real, is it. It’s not. It doesn’t mean anything. Does it?!"
Mar’i sharpens her stare. “Damian has it? He shouldn’t. I don’t want him to know.” For every ounce that Kyle slips into frantic talking, she slips into cool curtness. “Everything means something here. It’s a trick, but it’s a trick that means something to one of us. It’s a button.” She twists her head slightly, tugging at his arm to get him back on-task. “They’re feeling us out, trying to find out what will confuse and destroy us the most. The mirror’s one of those things, but it’s not meaningless. If anything, it means a lot.” Her foot slips a tiny bit on shale and she adjusts to stand back up straight. “We’ll take it away from him when we get back, and you can’t tell him who that is. He can’t know.”
"A button," Kyle repeats, taking comfort in her cool demeanor. She stabilizes him figuratively and literally, on the shale as he gains his footing again and as he processes her words. They are strong and decisive and something he can follow, willingly. "Yeah. Yup. I’ll take the mirror, and you can hold on to it, or Bruce." Kyle doesn’t suggest her or Bruce looking into the mirror; that’s up to them. When he looked, he saw nothing but a glint of green and it was enough. "I like your - that - your -the whole idea of like. Things they’re just handing down, the whole. The whole…buttons. That’s a good theory. I think you’re right." Kyle reaches out to stop her so he can look at her, but drops his hand and keeps following. "Thanks, Mar’i," he says and he is sedate now. Normal pitch and volume. She is being so damn strong right now, she is being someone he desperately needs; and given the situation, he can see why she chooses to be. It’s better than being scared all the time, that’s for sure. He watches her from behind and smiles gratefully, even if she can’t see it. "Muchisimas gracias, mi amiga."
Mar’i smiles back at him, although it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Thank me when we’re all safe and home. Until then, just help me fight. Even if you don’t have your ring. X’Hal knows what they’ll do next. They tried…” she pauses, coming over the edge of the ridge, “they’re trying everything. Hopefully we aren’t buttons against each other, right?” She turns her head back, voice going a bit terrified, because while the love she has for her friends isn’t a weakness, she can’t say the same for the reverse. For what she might mean to them. Or what she might do to them if Cache manipulated her real weaknesses. “If I,” she begins as Raven comes into sight in the distance. “If they get a hold of me, especially if they do to me what they’ve done to the Steph and Kate and probably Mia, too, don’t let me hurt anyone. I don’t care how I plead for you to trust me or how much I twist your words to make you the bad guy, just lock me up and don’t let me hurt anyone. I won’t be their pawn, and you’re currently the best at figuring out who’s working for whom. X’Hal, especially…”
"Okay," Kyle agrees immediately, without any fuss. It has been his working theory all this time - action first, ask question later. But the terror instilled in this town got to the people first and soon he was with them, questioning everything, questions and questions and doubt. It was the worst situation for a Green Lantern to be in, to be completely stymied by unending fear and self-doubt. But that was what they wanted, after all. Kyle turns and looks at the forest, at the trees that swallowed up his ring. If he has to hurt Mar’i to protect her and protect the others, he would. And he’d make sure to do it as a Green Lantern. It was the least he could do, for her. Somehow, it made sense. "I know you don’t like the whole rainbow parade much, but you’d make a pretty kickass Star Sapphire. Carol would love you…" Kyle looks down at the Raven for a moment and then he looks at Mar’i, his resolve steeled by her words. "Roy’s in there. That must be what I forgot. I thought we walked down together but…maybe…" Kyle remembers his doppleganger in the pool, the dopplegangers of Mia and Queen crouched behind them. He starts to run. "They’re sending mirror versions of us now! They’re using dopplegangers!" he yells at her as he runs towards the Raven.
"I’d look good in the costume," she laughs, but the way Kyle tears off towards the Raven makes her pause again. Doppelgangers? First, they weren’t real, now they’re real but the things inside them are evil. Is the doppelganger also Kyle onto something that needs to be figured out, or is it…her mouth twists into a frown and she follows him, picking up her pace but not running. Her eyes are still peeled to the rocks around them, looking for signs of trouble. She honestly hopes Kyle was hallucinating or had his memories somehow changed, because he said…he said… “You saw him come into the bungalow,” she mutters, remembering the dark black scribble on the bed, the way it perfectly mirrored the curve of Roy’s lips and nose, the arch of his shoulder as he slept. She shudders, and then the thought occurs that Roy hasn’t come back on his own. Is he…where is he?
Kyle slams up against the door of the terminal because he was at a gallop and his quickly-tiring legs refused to stop when he told them too. He bounced off harmlessly and took a few steps back, catching his breath before lurching forward again to haul open the door. Mar’i is there right behind and she opens the door fully. When they face the darkness within, Kyle steps back again, closer to her with her weapons and strength. He wracks his brain, recalling the training lessons Donna and Bruce and Diana tried to impart on him. Jabs and punches and kicks - no not kicks,Donna though his kicks were funny. And Dick showing him swings with the ice creama sticks, swing from the shoulder, pull back, don’t follow through. He starts to speak - hearing his own mumbly voice was the first step to dispelling the fear. “We lost each other for a moment. It was just a moment - he went down one hall and I went down another. When we met up again…couldn’t’ve been more than a few seconds, he said he thought he heard someone calling his name. We kept hunting for another half hour or so before heading back to town. I thought it was him, it was so dark…it looked and sounded like him. Christ. I thought everyone was monsters wearing our friends skins and that wasn’t true. It’s inside them, Mar’i. Bugs falling out of Steph’s mouth and doubles of us. Madre de dios…” Kyle flicks at the light switch, but the terminal remains dark and quiet.
"You were right, then. Or rather, you’re right, now. If there are doubles, those are monsters wearing our friends’ skins. We’ll tell Bruce when we get back. He’ll know what to do.” The light switch makes a distinct click, but immediately when the electricity fails to come on, her body tightens, tenses are the sight of pitch-black in front of them. Roy is never her weakness, they’re still searching for the right trigger, she remembers thinking haughtily just hours earlier, but now, looking into the darkness of the ridge-carved building, she realizes they’ve finally figured it out. “If Roy was here,” she mutters, reaching into the backpack on Kyle’s back for a flashlight, “If he was still here after you left last night, he would’ve still come home. Unless maybe he’s…there are those patient rooms with locks, right? Maybe he’s in one of those? He has to be somewhere where he can’t get out, because he would have come back home. That’s why I’m not sure he’s here at all.” She flicks the switch on the flashlight, sending a bright light beaming into the darkness. “We stay together, and we get the supplies first,” she licks her lips, “if we can’t find Roy, it’s possible he’s not here at all. I-I want him to be here, but he’s strong, he can handle himself, and we need to get back to camp before nightfall. He might be in the woods like Kate and Steph were. If he’s in the woods, he’s safe. He knows how to survive better than both of us. We can’t let Cache trick us into a futile search, and if we stay past dark we might be walking into a trap…” She reaches behind her, finding Kyle’s hand without looking and putting it on her shoulderblade. “Here, hold the flashlight and don’t let go of me.” Her other hand pulls the bow off her shoulder, securing it in her palm, letting her fingers rest in the wider ridges left by Roy.
His fingers curl and then sprawl out against her back and he feels like he’s back in elementary school again, lined up and tottering out of their Grade One class in a long row of to the cafeteria. Little babies being guided. There’s no hand on his back though; and for a moment, Kyle wishes there was. A small, cool hand that made light motes spring from the fingertips. He looks behind him, then back forward, following the light of the flashlight. Kyle tucks the flashlight securely at the crook of his neck, his hand guiding it. He wasn’t exactly right about the monsters. The rest of the League and Leaguelings were real, whereas Kyle thought originally that they were just imitations designed to trick himself, Mar’i and Bruce. Everyone is real. To him it feels almost like…like Level 2. Like finally being able to talk and share with Mar’i and Bruce, all three of them was the Boss Level and they beat the boss and more quarters were fed into the machine and now a new Level has started. Level 2: Dopplegangers and ??? How many lives did they have left? He listens to Mar’i talk - ramble really, a voice in the darkness that makes everything seem less frightening. Although he doesn’t buy into much of what she says. They had to find Roy. Kyle doesn’t want to turn back, he wants to keep looking until forever if he had to. He imagines himself and Mar’i, crawling in the dark, calling out for Roy and for some reason the thought comforts him. “Please don’t use any more of those Cache Raven brand medicines, nena. I think they are bad.”
Mar’i moves slowly, feet dragging slowly in a straight line to keep from stepping on or off anything unexpected. “I don’t think we have much of a choice. But Bruce’s done a good job taking care of Damian and Kate without using anything besides the metal tools…” she remembers Steph hooking up the saline bag, Cache brand printed over the plastic, and shakes away the thought. “Bruce gave me that list, we need more gauze and bandages, antiseptic wash, too, we’ll get that first.” Her hand reaches out, drags across the cool painted wall, trying to remember the layout of the Raven as they continue walking. The flashlight flickers across the Operating Room’s doors, and then the Nurse’s Station, and when her hand is about to cross that doorway she pulls it away, something deep in her stomach, a honed sense in her stomach telling her not to reach into that room, not to enter that new darkness. “There’s the storage with the first-aid stuff, what we need should be there,” she murmurs, noting that as she turns her head side to side Kyle dutifully moves the flashlight as well. There are duel hallways they need to cross and she’s honestly afraid to look, but she does anyway, into the wider hallway, the flashlight illuminating half of it. Nothing. She sighs, audibly, and there’s a sound from the opposite hallway, the thinner one. She doesn’t turn her head, not an inch, because she’s seen horror movies and she’s trained on a warlord planet and she knows that if she looks that way it’ll be the opposite way. The double doors are wide open, and she can feel the light behind her, even if it does nothing for the darkness in front of her. “Let’s hurry,” she mutters, fingers tightening on the bow as she points towards the storage room doorway. More darkness. The hand on her shoulder and the flashlight are all that’s keeping her from the darkness. There is no sun under her flesh to protect her if those leave.
Kyle nods even if she can’t see him. He is complacent about harvesting any gauze and bandages, that’s all surface stuff, it doesn’t seep and blend into their bodies. Cache brand heroes. He isn’t sure about the antiseptic thing but Kyle slides his hand up to curve over her shoulder, a slow deliberate movement so she isn’t alarmed. “Your potion - ah - your poultices. They work. They fixed me up, I keep using stuff from there and it fixes me really good. Everyone should use it and learn…learn about it and.” Kyle goes quiet, hearing Things down one of the hallways. He doesn’t know if Mar’i heard it too, but he also doesn’t want to ask. Making them both aware of it meant it might be real. Kyle itches his nose against the plastic of the flashlight and looks at the storage door. “Was this always here?” he asks suddenly and then grips her, tightly. “Mar’i - I’ll open the door, you…you get that thing ready.” Kyle slid his foot over, until the side of it touched hers. He needed that contact still as he released her shoulder and opened the door. Instead of a storage room with shelves there was a yellow, sickly light from a hanging lightbulb that lazily illuminated a long stairwell headed down. The light died out before stairs do, and the continue into the darkness.
"Yeah, but there’s a reason modern medicine is a miracle-worker," she mutters as they move towards the door. "I’m no doctor and poultices don’t solve every—" she stares down the stairs. "Those definitely have never been there. We should—" her voice breaks a little, looking down into the darkness. "I don’t know what to do," she finishes, looking at Kyle in the dim stairwell light. "Should we look for Roy in the other rooms first? I don’t—those definitelyweren’t here last time I was here.” There’s another skittering noise behind them and she turns a little, swallowing heavily. “Where’s the goddamn electricity when you need it?” she mutters, the foot inside her boot slipping all the way against where Kyle’s shoe is pressed up against it, trying to touch him as much as possible as her hand pulls the bow up slightly.
"I…" Kyle looks hopelessly down the stairs and then up at the dimly lit bulb, swinging from the ceiling. It looks just like the other bulb, the one Damian had tugged at that pitched them into darkness, then into the torture room…then that goddamn incinerator. It looked like it was mocking him, mocking the both of them. And a chilling thought hit him. What if Roy was in that torture room? Mari doesn’t know about that, or… "Did you read the log book? A New Hope. About what happened to Damian and me when we were trapped here." Kyle looks back down the stairs. "If you read that, then. I think. I think we’re supposed to go down." Kyle’s hand touches her again; it rests on the small of her back, a silly instinctive habit of protection despite her being the fight-ready one. Flashlights can be used as bludgeons though he thinks, and almost snickers.
Mar’i shakes her head. “I only got to the part before you wrote. I’ve been busy with the garden from hell and disappearing bungalow-buddies and…” she trails off as she takes the first step into the stairs. “Leave the door open,” she mutters. “I remember Damian talking about you guys getting lost that night Bruce seized here.” Her breath catches. “Did you see stairs like these?” They descend slowly, and the flashlight seems to illuminate even less and less as they go down. “X’Hal, it’s like a grave,” she whispers, and there’s a loud clank behind them that she whirls around to see. The lightbulb at the top of the stairs has gone out. She swallows heavily, her hand coming up to momentarily squeeze Kyle’s. “D-do you remember that night they all got back from saving Damian and Lian? You were waiting for me at the zeta beams…” The stairs seem to go on forever.
Kyle swallows hard. It’s so hard to remember life before waking up in the pool. He was a different person then. He could hold out his hand for others, instead of frantically grabbing for reassurance. “I remember, Mar’i….” he said and he squeezed her hand back. He was sure of things, in the real world. He was sure of everything, to the point that he could afford to crack jokes at his own expense, because he knew - he always knew - he could make it matter when it really counted. “Remember…remember that time I came over to your workplace and we played Settlers of Catan with your pals? You remembered the green tea frappucino, with the ridiculous amount of whipped cream, oh man. I ate some and it looked like someone bukkake’d all over my face.” He grins as he says this, and it reaches his voice, curling it into a type of amusement he usually only felt when he was near-invincible. “And somehow your friend still thought I was hot. God it’s great to be me sometimes.” Kyle laughs. The darkness keeps swallowing their words. Kyle’s mouth goes dry as the air gets darker, colder. “Damian and I found a room, a…a…a room for experiments. On humans. A testing room for testing.” Kyle wants to keep the word ‘torture’ out of here. It feels like one small way of spiting these assholes, whatever They were. “An experiment room and and incinerator. It was the only way out, Mar’i.”
Mar’i lets out a loud laugh that reverberates down the dark stairs, immediately clapping her hand over her mouth. Her eyebrows are curled down in fear, but her cheekbones are high with a smile. It’s nervous, of course, but still a smile. “We’re about to get eaten by monsters and you’re talking about Japanese porn,” she whispers, her voice matching her expression, half-terrified, half-delighted. But that expression melts as he describes what he and Damian encountered. The sound of Damian’s little child voice pronouncing the word “incinerator,” the soft curve of an almost invisible milk tongue lingering on his vowels, that sound comes back to her, reminding her of what he had been saying before Bruce seized and she sunk down against the wall and cried. Her fingers pull away from his as something becomes visible in the distance. “He’s strong,” she repeats, more to herself, “and we’re strong too, we’re all strong and we’ll be fine and we’ll get home and I’ll feed Poppy all the fish sticks she can eat and we’ll be fine.” Something strikes her and she turns her head to face him, a cruel smile on her face. “There are weapons in a room for experiments, right? Anything they dig into any of you I’ll dig into them tenfold.”
They come upon a door, finally - FINALLY - at the end of the staircase. Mar’i turns to face him, making her promise to Kyle and he turns to look at her too, with only the flashlight to illuminate their faces. Her wicked smile is not lost on him and even in this coldness, the icy chill on each exhalation of breath, seeing Mar’i smile like that makes something along Kyle’s spine melt into liquid warmth, hot and molten as it singes upwards against his ribs and down along his hip bones. Kyle leans close to her in their shared dim light and, holding her shoulder, he kisses her. It’s a kiss like he’s trying to share the warmth she gave him, like he is returning it back into her. He pulls away and blinks at her. “Thank you, Mar’i. I’d like that,” he tells her seriously, and then turns the door handle. Of course, it opens quite easily and a humming green light spills out onto them, as well as the nauseating tang of formaldehyde, blood and rotting metal. Above them, they hear the storage room door slam shut.
Mar’i blinks as well, the mix of bloodlust and anger on her face transforming slowly back to her more neutral expression. “You taste like mushrooms,” she says simply, looking back over where the room is slowly blanketing them in a sickly green. “Don’t thank me, I’d enjoy it after all this,” she mutters, but there’s nasty smell washing over them, and her nose pulls up a little into a sneer. “This is the room?” The door above them slams shut and she looks up at it momentarily, before walking into the green room. “At least there’s light…” she mutters, and it’s obvious from the way she moves about quickly and methodically she’s already checking the room over for bodies—for a body. There are things hanging from the ceiling, obscured by the hunks of flesh and dried blood on them, and she grabs one, jerking it down hard and fast. It’s a meat-hanging hook, with some hunk of pale rotten flesh hiding the hook itself. She puts the longbow back across her body, using the now-free hand to wrench the flesh off, ignoring the squirm of maggots protesting her intrusion. “Is this where you and Damian were that night?”
Kyle trails after her, looking around the room as well. It is still as expansive as he remembers, the sluice grating on the ground clanking with every footstep, echoing against the steel walls. Mar’i is marching around, grabbing and pulling at things, things that clang and squelch in her hands. Kyle doesn’t try to stop her. The humming that was in the room before is gone. Kyle goes over to the restraining beds, which were upright when he was here with Damian. They’re all horizontal now, the whole row of them. And there is no electricity emanating from them either. “We came from over there,” Kyle points to the far wall, where there is a chute and a tall pile of slick black bodybags. “We didn’t see the door, the last time.” He turns and looks at the entrance that him and Mar’i had come from. How did they miss it, before? “This place was electrified last time too. All of these beds—” Kyle touches one and suddenly the lights come on and there is a grinding sound coming from a large hatch on the wall. Kyle can’t cry out because his teeth clench from carrying eletricity through his system. He is being electrocuted and all he can do is stand there, until it’s over. He collapses to the grated floor, near-unconsciousness.
Roy is dying.
..or at least, it feels that way. He is seated in the center of the room, right on the highest pile of bone and ash, and he is still sweating. He doesn’t know exactly how that’s possible, because doesn’t the human body stop sweating at some point? But the temperature is soaring into the hundreds now, no doubt, and Roy knows it because.. Well. Hello, Arizona and practical knowledge. He licks his chapped lips, eyelids heavy, drooping over his eyes as he looks around the room. The dim light, inlaid into the wall—it’s almost red, now, in Roy’s eyes, and he glares up at it when it flickers. He groans and rubs his face, coughing dryly. He looks over at the light, shouting at it: “..so, what, are you REALLY gonna start now?”
Roy had given up an hour ago on shouting for help.
"It was probably wasn’t here last time," Mar’i notes, remembering what he’s said in the past about everything—the woods, the roads—everything changing. She starts to clean the hook off on her shirt, but the room goes white-hot and she turns to see Kyle rigid as electricity courses through his body. "KYLE!" she screams, moving towards him, tossing the hook onto the ground as she runs at him, but the survival instinct in her mind tells her to stop short, to let his body naturally release the bed instead of electrocuting herself too. "KYLE?! KYLE? FUCK KYLE," she screams in near-hysterics, while her body goes on auto-pilot, lifts him into her lap, checks his pulse, his pupils. Her screams are echoing around her, and she can’t focus on that because she’s too busy trying to examine the damage to Kyle’s hand. The room is brightly lit now, and the blood everywhere—oh X’Hal it’s everywhere—is more apparent than ever. “Stay awake, Kyle,” she mutters, drawing her eyes to the hatch making the loud noises. Kyle makes a noise and coughs, and she stands up, looks at the door they came in from—closed too, when the fuck did that happen, fuck—and moves over to it, taking the hook back up from the door. She pries it open, peering down into the hot darkness, disgustingly warm air floating into her face, sending her dark hair floating around her face. “Incinerator?” she mutters, trying to remember what order Kyle and Damian’s adventure took place in. Torture before or after incinerator? Does it matter anymore? She turns her head to look back at Kyle, breathing slowly but steadily on the floor, and looks back in. The darkness looks like it’s peering back at her.
Roy doesn’t look up when the hatch opens, not right away, because he’s not sure if he’s hallucinating. But, the air suddenly seems cooler and he looks up at the gaping hole, the hatch. Without warning, and without Roy’s go ahead, his hands and arms move, getting him up, sliding on the pile of bone and ash. He swallows, dryly, and croaks: “M-Mar’i?”
Mar’i can only see the dull light at the end of the hatch—something over it, she can tell it’s something, but not what exactly—and she’s staring into the darkness between her and the dull light hesitantly, not sure if it’s an exit or not when she hears his voice. Instantly, she’s pulling herself into the hatch, on all fours at the soft incline of the warm metal inside. “Roy?” she calls out, making a soft ‘oomph’ as she hits a hip against on side of the hatch. The dull light grows stronger and stronger, until she reaches a grate over the hatch. Kyle didn’t mention a grate. “Fuck,” she curses, and readjusts herself, sliding back so she can kick at the metal with all her strength. It takes several blows, but the metal eventually pops on the side she’s focusing, swinging open like a door. The incline increases sharply here, like things are meant to slide into the incinerator, and she cautiously moves to the edge, peering over into the grease and ash. He’s standing there, looking up. He’s okay. “Hey, baby,” she nearly whispers, her voice cracking hard. “I missed you.”
Kyle crawls to the incinerator, feeling better now. He hears Mar’is voice and knows Roy is in there and he is alive and Kyle is so relieved that Mar’i found a Roy and a single perfect crystalline man-tear slides down his very stoic cheek.
Mar’i pulls thick socks over her bare feet in the doorway of her bungalow, ignoring how they scratch over small blisters she’s worn into the back of her heels. There’s a small knapsack to her side, already packed with a few bare essentials, but mostly open space for any needed supplies. There’s a list in her pocket, but she hasn’t looked at it yet, more concerned with using the bandages she took earlier that day to bind her knuckles up tightly. It’s a slow process, but she’s methodical, each knuckle wrapped the same number of times for the same amount of thickness. There’s a noise from the side of the porch and her head spins, one hand going to the quiver sitting on her other side, fingers hooking around an arrow. But Kyle’s messy black head pops over it, like he’s just come from the woods, and she returns to putting on her boots, tightening and double-knotting the laces. “You ready to go?” she asks, looking up at the sun to see how much daylight they’ll have left.
"Sure am," Kyle stands in the doorway and shakes himself out, like a dog. Waterdroplets and pine needles drop from him as well as dirt and leaves. Feeling a little sheepish, he kicksweeps the stuff away from her bower as he waits, trying to clean off the porch of his mess. Kyle squints at her - the socks and boots, the bandages on her hands, her backpack lumpy with things (supplies, he supposes) and a quiver - Roy’s arrows? Roy’s bow?? - and Kyle furrows his brow. "Say, where’s Roy?" If he’s gone hunting, it doesn’t make sense that he’d leave behind that.
Mar’i stands up, rolling one shoulder then the other. “I was going to ask you the same thing, since you saw him last,” she answers, looking over at the water dripping from Kyle’s hair. “That’s why I’m going to the Raven with you. He didn’t come back the night that thing went into the drains. My axe is gone, too. Hopefully he has it.” She hands Kyle the bag. “Here, you want to carry this?” she asks, already moving inside to pull the longbow out from behind the doorway. She doesn’t look at it as she slings it over her shoulder. “He’ll be fine,” she says without provocation, “he’s strong, he can handle himself, he just…” she frowns, “he needs to be back with Lian. She needs him.”
Kyle takes the bag and uses his free arm to put his t-shirt back on. He’s sticky with chlorine but he doesn’t mind too much. Kyle shoulders the bag, over his makeshift sling. His water’s still in there and a small collection of mushrooms, as well as a piece of overcooked deer that he’d liberated from the kitchen. They start to walk along the yellow gravel path that leads to the Raven. “Noooo…no. No we went to Raven and couldn’t find the mons - the thing. The thing that came from Stephanie. We couldn’t find it, so we came back here, together. We said goodnight over there, in fact,” Kyle points by the air raid siren tower. He came to the bungalow, I went back to the bunkhouse. I saw him go in. I…” Kyle reaches out to Mar’i, his fingertips brushing her arm. He’s stopped speaking, though.
Mar’i's eyes narrow slightly at Kyle's words and she looks ahead at the path. The trees are already swaying against high wind, but down on their level it's eerily still. “I fell asleep right after I helped Bruce get Steph settled, and I…” a loud hoot from the trees catches her attention and she looks up at the large owl staring down at them. “I didn't wake up until morning, but Roy wasn't there. If he came back then maybe he’s not…” Her throat makes a thick, wet swallowing sound. “We can check anyway, just in case. We have to get these supplies anyway…”
"Mia told me that when she found Connor this morning, it was like he was on fire inside, like. He was expelling smoke." Kyle’s voice is low and hushed, as if he doesn’t want something in the forest to hear. The trees along the path are gnarled and burned, the ones from Clark’s forest fire. "I came back this way. I think I forgot something, but I don’t think I was…seeing things properly." Kyle swallows and this time he trails behind Mar’i, like her shadow. "I forgot what I’d forgotten."
Mar’i turns her head to look over her shoulder at the slowly disappearing camp. “‘Found,’ huh?” she says simply, turning back. The sound of her boots against the dirt and rock progressively grow louder and louder until it’s like a heartbeat in her ears. “That’s okay. It’s just Cache pressing your buttons. Making you unsure of yourself. It’s all just a ploy to break us,” she answers, and another hoot makes her turn her head again. “Now that Gra—” she stops herself, doesn’t even look at Kyle because she knows what she was just about to say and she knows he does too, “Bruce, now that Bruce knows what’s going on, we’ll be able to fight back more.”
Kyle frowns and stops when she glances back, at him and the town but then as she talks he realizes that what she is saying is…His eyes light up and he jogs to catch up with her. “Yes. YES!” He reiterates, going ahead of her and walking backwards just so he can look at her. He needs to search her face, see what she’s saying and know that it’s real. “She found, but I don’t know what that means. But Connor won’t be in any danger, I can’t see why he would. Mia and Queen, they—” Kyle stops his sentence, switching gears. “They are doing this, right? There is something OUT there and it’s trying to break us. I think that too. I think that too, it’s gotta be that. When I was in the HSR, when that rip opened up and it was like these these - these - these Things that came out —” Kyle bunches his hands up, curling them in together in front of him and then exploding them out, his busted-up fingers splaying. “And that’s what they’re doing! They want us to break. I think. No. I know. That’s what they want. they don’t want us to die, they want us to break.”
Mar’i reaches behind her to momentarily palm the edge of the bow over her shoulder. “Are you absolutely sure they don’t want us dead? Or some of us, even. Because if they want us to break, that means they either need us to do something once we do break or they think we’re disposable, which means once we’re all broken, they’ll dispose of us.” If he could see her face, he’d see the way her eyes harden even more, tightening a notch every time she thinks about whoever’s in charge and what she’d like to do to them. Rage and fire being compressed into her bound knuckles. “I won’t let either option happen.”
"We. We won’t let either option happen.” Kyle pulls out a long strip of deer and gnaws on it. He steps in line with her, looking up and around, all over. Behind them, then to the left, then up again. His feet know this path, this familiar tread to the Raven. “We’re gonna get everyone out alive. Fucked up massively in the head, sure; but alive. We’ve all dealt with the fucked-up part, all of the League and Leaguelings.” Maybe not Ramsey, but…dammit Kate, why did they take you away. “Only this time they’re fucked up because of us, right? Well, in some ways, I’m used to that. I’ve caused a lot of pain for the people I love. I’m used to it now.” His eyes finally lower to the ground and they lose their light, his gait becoming more inward, his feet drag slightly. “Are you?”
Mar’i stiffens slightly. “Yeah,” she responds without further elaboration, “but once we get home I’ll gladly bow out of all this and let them move on with their lives. Let them get over what I did. It’s the least they deserve after all this.” They begin their ascent up the shale ridge, and she grabs Kyle’s lower arm to keep him on her precise path. “I hope Poppy remembers how to open tuna cans with her tail. She was kind of rusty on it when we…got Cache’d. There’s a goldfish pond a block over though so if she gets there she’ll be fine…”
"Cache’d," Kyle says but his voice is like a rusty gate, despite the strange pleasure he gets from the word. Or maybe it’s because of her ironlike grip on his arm; christ, when did he get so skinny. So many of them had pets, he realizes grimly. It’s weird to find that he did have some care left over for these poor dumb creatures, trying to survive on their own. Kyle thought all his care had been saved up for the people here; care that’s been firmly packed away so he wouldn’t be rendered useless from terror, every time something hurt people. He thinks of Damian and the koi pond in the Arboretum - Mar’is Arboretum that she vociferously denied ownership of - the Arboretum was for everyone, she’d flatly declare. Mar’i didn’t want to keep things in their world, nothing to hold on to, nothing to hurt. Except then she turned around and did just that. He thinks about what she said to him and Bruce, over the kitchen counter. "I wish I could tell you that you don’t share in the blame. But not cause you’re like a woman and we’re dudes or anything dumb like that, it’s like, it’s like you said - you’re the variable. There’s enough motion you gotta compensate for already."
Mar’i shrugs softly. “It’s okay, I can handle it. It’ll all get better once we get home, and everyone can be together again without worrying about people going missing in the night or shit crawling out of your throat or your child trying to sedu—” she cuts herself off, disgusted by the things that have already happened and the extent to which everyone has had to pretend the things are not as telling of the situation as they really are. “I’m sorry everyone’s just taking it out on you alone. People always look for a scapegoat, especially when their own shit is falling apart. You were just following orders, how were you supposed to know?”
Kyle laughs then, loud laughter and so hard he has to stop and hold his stomach because it’s sore and there’s still chlorine in his lungs. “Oh my god, Mar’i did you just Godwin’s Law me?!” His voice tinged with that hipster sort of ironic amusement. Laughing was better than the alternative, when Mar’i mentioned that last thing. ‘Child trying to sedu—’ she said. It is comforting, in a way, that she saw that too. That Kyle isn’t the only one who noticed it. So that made it real. Unfortunately, horribly, that was real, what he’d seen. “I wasn’t just following orders, I thought it was actually possible. I thought we were sending you back…ahhh. Y’know, you’re right. Whatever. It doesn’t matter here, all those details, and.” Kyle rubs his eyes, his laughter feeling soggy in his throat now, like a wet soda cracker. “All that matters is getting everyone out. Of.” Kyle stops again. The oval with the straight tail. The lake and the pool. Mar’i’s koi pool in the Arboretum. Damian. Kyle reaches out to Mar’i, grabbing at her skin, her quiver, her shirt. “Mar’i. The mirror. The mirror!”
Mar’i doesn’t say anything at first because the idea of being someone’s “cause,” as Kyle put it, makes her eyes burn with moisture. They wanted to send her back. They didn’t ask for her opinion because they didn’t want her opinion on it. It was agreed she had to go home, that she couldn’t stay. It’s a thing she doesn’t want to think about until later. If later ever comes. She nearly slips on the shale as his arm grabs at hers frantically, and she whips around to look at him. His eyes are wide hazel pools, the way they’ve been multiple times since they arrived here. It’s like watching his brain misfire and misfire and then in a sudden rush connect more dots. “What mirror?” she asks, trying to keep him from sending them both sliding down the ridge. “The ones in the bathhouse that Kate fucked up? Have those all seemed foggy to you, too? Like, hard to see yourself, I mean?”
"The mirror!" Kyle motions with his hand, curling it around something imaginary. His ring would have provided the image, sketched something into his hand; but right now it’s just empty. "Damian! He - he - he had a mirror! He had a mirror and it was like - christ it was like -" But he stops himself from using the Beauty and the Beast analogy. Kyle doesn’t even know if Disney is a thing from her world, never mind the movies. What were they called? There was a specific term for this type of mirror. "Mirror! You look in it when you’re sitting and - Kyle looks at his empty hand, his palm bleeding again under the wet chlorinated bandage. " - hand mirror. Damian has a hand mirror and it shows him his reflection and it’s Ibn. It’s not Damian. It’s not Ibn as a child, it’s Ibn, adult, your Ibn. He looks in it and he sees Ibn reflected back." Kyle reels back, clutching his head. "Oh god. It’s just another trick isn’t it. It’s just another thing to fuck with our brains. It’s not real, is it. It’s not. It doesn’t mean anything. Does it?!"
Mar’i sharpens her stare. “Damian has it? He shouldn’t. I don’t want him to know.” For every ounce that Kyle slips into frantic talking, she slips into cool curtness. “Everything means something here. It’s a trick, but it’s a trick that means something to one of us. It’s a button.” She twists her head slightly, tugging at his arm to get him back on-task. “They’re feeling us out, trying to find out what will confuse and destroy us the most. The mirror’s one of those things, but it’s not meaningless. If anything, it means a lot.” Her foot slips a tiny bit on shale and she adjusts to stand back up straight. “We’ll take it away from him when we get back, and you can’t tell him who that is. He can’t know.”
"A button," Kyle repeats, taking comfort in her cool demeanor. She stabilizes him figuratively and literally, on the shale as he gains his footing again and as he processes her words. They are strong and decisive and something he can follow, willingly. "Yeah. Yup. I’ll take the mirror, and you can hold on to it, or Bruce." Kyle doesn’t suggest her or Bruce looking into the mirror; that’s up to them. When he looked, he saw nothing but a glint of green and it was enough. "I like your - that - your -the whole idea of like. Things they’re just handing down, the whole. The whole…buttons. That’s a good theory. I think you’re right." Kyle reaches out to stop her so he can look at her, but drops his hand and keeps following. "Thanks, Mar’i," he says and he is sedate now. Normal pitch and volume. She is being so damn strong right now, she is being someone he desperately needs; and given the situation, he can see why she chooses to be. It’s better than being scared all the time, that’s for sure. He watches her from behind and smiles gratefully, even if she can’t see it. "Muchisimas gracias, mi amiga."
Mar’i smiles back at him, although it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Thank me when we’re all safe and home. Until then, just help me fight. Even if you don’t have your ring. X’Hal knows what they’ll do next. They tried…” she pauses, coming over the edge of the ridge, “they’re trying everything. Hopefully we aren’t buttons against each other, right?” She turns her head back, voice going a bit terrified, because while the love she has for her friends isn’t a weakness, she can’t say the same for the reverse. For what she might mean to them. Or what she might do to them if Cache manipulated her real weaknesses. “If I,” she begins as Raven comes into sight in the distance. “If they get a hold of me, especially if they do to me what they’ve done to the Steph and Kate and probably Mia, too, don’t let me hurt anyone. I don’t care how I plead for you to trust me or how much I twist your words to make you the bad guy, just lock me up and don’t let me hurt anyone. I won’t be their pawn, and you’re currently the best at figuring out who’s working for whom. X’Hal, especially…”
"Okay," Kyle agrees immediately, without any fuss. It has been his working theory all this time - action first, ask question later. But the terror instilled in this town got to the people first and soon he was with them, questioning everything, questions and questions and doubt. It was the worst situation for a Green Lantern to be in, to be completely stymied by unending fear and self-doubt. But that was what they wanted, after all. Kyle turns and looks at the forest, at the trees that swallowed up his ring. If he has to hurt Mar’i to protect her and protect the others, he would. And he’d make sure to do it as a Green Lantern. It was the least he could do, for her. Somehow, it made sense. "I know you don’t like the whole rainbow parade much, but you’d make a pretty kickass Star Sapphire. Carol would love you…" Kyle looks down at the Raven for a moment and then he looks at Mar’i, his resolve steeled by her words. "Roy’s in there. That must be what I forgot. I thought we walked down together but…maybe…" Kyle remembers his doppleganger in the pool, the dopplegangers of Mia and Queen crouched behind them. He starts to run. "They’re sending mirror versions of us now! They’re using dopplegangers!" he yells at her as he runs towards the Raven.
"I’d look good in the costume," she laughs, but the way Kyle tears off towards the Raven makes her pause again. Doppelgangers? First, they weren’t real, now they’re real but the things inside them are evil. Is the doppelganger also Kyle onto something that needs to be figured out, or is it…her mouth twists into a frown and she follows him, picking up her pace but not running. Her eyes are still peeled to the rocks around them, looking for signs of trouble. She honestly hopes Kyle was hallucinating or had his memories somehow changed, because he said…he said… “You saw him come into the bungalow,” she mutters, remembering the dark black scribble on the bed, the way it perfectly mirrored the curve of Roy’s lips and nose, the arch of his shoulder as he slept. She shudders, and then the thought occurs that Roy hasn’t come back on his own. Is he…where is he?
Kyle slams up against the door of the terminal because he was at a gallop and his quickly-tiring legs refused to stop when he told them too. He bounced off harmlessly and took a few steps back, catching his breath before lurching forward again to haul open the door. Mar’i is there right behind and she opens the door fully. When they face the darkness within, Kyle steps back again, closer to her with her weapons and strength. He wracks his brain, recalling the training lessons Donna and Bruce and Diana tried to impart on him. Jabs and punches and kicks - no not kicks,Donna though his kicks were funny. And Dick showing him swings with the ice creama sticks, swing from the shoulder, pull back, don’t follow through. He starts to speak - hearing his own mumbly voice was the first step to dispelling the fear. “We lost each other for a moment. It was just a moment - he went down one hall and I went down another. When we met up again…couldn’t’ve been more than a few seconds, he said he thought he heard someone calling his name. We kept hunting for another half hour or so before heading back to town. I thought it was him, it was so dark…it looked and sounded like him. Christ. I thought everyone was monsters wearing our friends skins and that wasn’t true. It’s inside them, Mar’i. Bugs falling out of Steph’s mouth and doubles of us. Madre de dios…” Kyle flicks at the light switch, but the terminal remains dark and quiet.
"You were right, then. Or rather, you’re right, now. If there are doubles, those are monsters wearing our friends’ skins. We’ll tell Bruce when we get back. He’ll know what to do.” The light switch makes a distinct click, but immediately when the electricity fails to come on, her body tightens, tenses are the sight of pitch-black in front of them. Roy is never her weakness, they’re still searching for the right trigger, she remembers thinking haughtily just hours earlier, but now, looking into the darkness of the ridge-carved building, she realizes they’ve finally figured it out. “If Roy was here,” she mutters, reaching into the backpack on Kyle’s back for a flashlight, “If he was still here after you left last night, he would’ve still come home. Unless maybe he’s…there are those patient rooms with locks, right? Maybe he’s in one of those? He has to be somewhere where he can’t get out, because he would have come back home. That’s why I’m not sure he’s here at all.” She flicks the switch on the flashlight, sending a bright light beaming into the darkness. “We stay together, and we get the supplies first,” she licks her lips, “if we can’t find Roy, it’s possible he’s not here at all. I-I want him to be here, but he’s strong, he can handle himself, and we need to get back to camp before nightfall. He might be in the woods like Kate and Steph were. If he’s in the woods, he’s safe. He knows how to survive better than both of us. We can’t let Cache trick us into a futile search, and if we stay past dark we might be walking into a trap…” She reaches behind her, finding Kyle’s hand without looking and putting it on her shoulderblade. “Here, hold the flashlight and don’t let go of me.” Her other hand pulls the bow off her shoulder, securing it in her palm, letting her fingers rest in the wider ridges left by Roy.
His fingers curl and then sprawl out against her back and he feels like he’s back in elementary school again, lined up and tottering out of their Grade One class in a long row of to the cafeteria. Little babies being guided. There’s no hand on his back though; and for a moment, Kyle wishes there was. A small, cool hand that made light motes spring from the fingertips. He looks behind him, then back forward, following the light of the flashlight. Kyle tucks the flashlight securely at the crook of his neck, his hand guiding it. He wasn’t exactly right about the monsters. The rest of the League and Leaguelings were real, whereas Kyle thought originally that they were just imitations designed to trick himself, Mar’i and Bruce. Everyone is real. To him it feels almost like…like Level 2. Like finally being able to talk and share with Mar’i and Bruce, all three of them was the Boss Level and they beat the boss and more quarters were fed into the machine and now a new Level has started. Level 2: Dopplegangers and ??? How many lives did they have left? He listens to Mar’i talk - ramble really, a voice in the darkness that makes everything seem less frightening. Although he doesn’t buy into much of what she says. They had to find Roy. Kyle doesn’t want to turn back, he wants to keep looking until forever if he had to. He imagines himself and Mar’i, crawling in the dark, calling out for Roy and for some reason the thought comforts him. “Please don’t use any more of those Cache Raven brand medicines, nena. I think they are bad.”
Mar’i moves slowly, feet dragging slowly in a straight line to keep from stepping on or off anything unexpected. “I don’t think we have much of a choice. But Bruce’s done a good job taking care of Damian and Kate without using anything besides the metal tools…” she remembers Steph hooking up the saline bag, Cache brand printed over the plastic, and shakes away the thought. “Bruce gave me that list, we need more gauze and bandages, antiseptic wash, too, we’ll get that first.” Her hand reaches out, drags across the cool painted wall, trying to remember the layout of the Raven as they continue walking. The flashlight flickers across the Operating Room’s doors, and then the Nurse’s Station, and when her hand is about to cross that doorway she pulls it away, something deep in her stomach, a honed sense in her stomach telling her not to reach into that room, not to enter that new darkness. “There’s the storage with the first-aid stuff, what we need should be there,” she murmurs, noting that as she turns her head side to side Kyle dutifully moves the flashlight as well. There are duel hallways they need to cross and she’s honestly afraid to look, but she does anyway, into the wider hallway, the flashlight illuminating half of it. Nothing. She sighs, audibly, and there’s a sound from the opposite hallway, the thinner one. She doesn’t turn her head, not an inch, because she’s seen horror movies and she’s trained on a warlord planet and she knows that if she looks that way it’ll be the opposite way. The double doors are wide open, and she can feel the light behind her, even if it does nothing for the darkness in front of her. “Let’s hurry,” she mutters, fingers tightening on the bow as she points towards the storage room doorway. More darkness. The hand on her shoulder and the flashlight are all that’s keeping her from the darkness. There is no sun under her flesh to protect her if those leave.
Kyle nods even if she can’t see him. He is complacent about harvesting any gauze and bandages, that’s all surface stuff, it doesn’t seep and blend into their bodies. Cache brand heroes. He isn’t sure about the antiseptic thing but Kyle slides his hand up to curve over her shoulder, a slow deliberate movement so she isn’t alarmed. “Your potion - ah - your poultices. They work. They fixed me up, I keep using stuff from there and it fixes me really good. Everyone should use it and learn…learn about it and.” Kyle goes quiet, hearing Things down one of the hallways. He doesn’t know if Mar’i heard it too, but he also doesn’t want to ask. Making them both aware of it meant it might be real. Kyle itches his nose against the plastic of the flashlight and looks at the storage door. “Was this always here?” he asks suddenly and then grips her, tightly. “Mar’i - I’ll open the door, you…you get that thing ready.” Kyle slid his foot over, until the side of it touched hers. He needed that contact still as he released her shoulder and opened the door. Instead of a storage room with shelves there was a yellow, sickly light from a hanging lightbulb that lazily illuminated a long stairwell headed down. The light died out before stairs do, and the continue into the darkness.
"Yeah, but there’s a reason modern medicine is a miracle-worker," she mutters as they move towards the door. "I’m no doctor and poultices don’t solve every—" she stares down the stairs. "Those definitely have never been there. We should—" her voice breaks a little, looking down into the darkness. "I don’t know what to do," she finishes, looking at Kyle in the dim stairwell light. "Should we look for Roy in the other rooms first? I don’t—those definitelyweren’t here last time I was here.” There’s another skittering noise behind them and she turns a little, swallowing heavily. “Where’s the goddamn electricity when you need it?” she mutters, the foot inside her boot slipping all the way against where Kyle’s shoe is pressed up against it, trying to touch him as much as possible as her hand pulls the bow up slightly.
"I…" Kyle looks hopelessly down the stairs and then up at the dimly lit bulb, swinging from the ceiling. It looks just like the other bulb, the one Damian had tugged at that pitched them into darkness, then into the torture room…then that goddamn incinerator. It looked like it was mocking him, mocking the both of them. And a chilling thought hit him. What if Roy was in that torture room? Mari doesn’t know about that, or… "Did you read the log book? A New Hope. About what happened to Damian and me when we were trapped here." Kyle looks back down the stairs. "If you read that, then. I think. I think we’re supposed to go down." Kyle’s hand touches her again; it rests on the small of her back, a silly instinctive habit of protection despite her being the fight-ready one. Flashlights can be used as bludgeons though he thinks, and almost snickers.
Mar’i shakes her head. “I only got to the part before you wrote. I’ve been busy with the garden from hell and disappearing bungalow-buddies and…” she trails off as she takes the first step into the stairs. “Leave the door open,” she mutters. “I remember Damian talking about you guys getting lost that night Bruce seized here.” Her breath catches. “Did you see stairs like these?” They descend slowly, and the flashlight seems to illuminate even less and less as they go down. “X’Hal, it’s like a grave,” she whispers, and there’s a loud clank behind them that she whirls around to see. The lightbulb at the top of the stairs has gone out. She swallows heavily, her hand coming up to momentarily squeeze Kyle’s. “D-do you remember that night they all got back from saving Damian and Lian? You were waiting for me at the zeta beams…” The stairs seem to go on forever.
Kyle swallows hard. It’s so hard to remember life before waking up in the pool. He was a different person then. He could hold out his hand for others, instead of frantically grabbing for reassurance. “I remember, Mar’i….” he said and he squeezed her hand back. He was sure of things, in the real world. He was sure of everything, to the point that he could afford to crack jokes at his own expense, because he knew - he always knew - he could make it matter when it really counted. “Remember…remember that time I came over to your workplace and we played Settlers of Catan with your pals? You remembered the green tea frappucino, with the ridiculous amount of whipped cream, oh man. I ate some and it looked like someone bukkake’d all over my face.” He grins as he says this, and it reaches his voice, curling it into a type of amusement he usually only felt when he was near-invincible. “And somehow your friend still thought I was hot. God it’s great to be me sometimes.” Kyle laughs. The darkness keeps swallowing their words. Kyle’s mouth goes dry as the air gets darker, colder. “Damian and I found a room, a…a…a room for experiments. On humans. A testing room for testing.” Kyle wants to keep the word ‘torture’ out of here. It feels like one small way of spiting these assholes, whatever They were. “An experiment room and and incinerator. It was the only way out, Mar’i.”
Mar’i lets out a loud laugh that reverberates down the dark stairs, immediately clapping her hand over her mouth. Her eyebrows are curled down in fear, but her cheekbones are high with a smile. It’s nervous, of course, but still a smile. “We’re about to get eaten by monsters and you’re talking about Japanese porn,” she whispers, her voice matching her expression, half-terrified, half-delighted. But that expression melts as he describes what he and Damian encountered. The sound of Damian’s little child voice pronouncing the word “incinerator,” the soft curve of an almost invisible milk tongue lingering on his vowels, that sound comes back to her, reminding her of what he had been saying before Bruce seized and she sunk down against the wall and cried. Her fingers pull away from his as something becomes visible in the distance. “He’s strong,” she repeats, more to herself, “and we’re strong too, we’re all strong and we’ll be fine and we’ll get home and I’ll feed Poppy all the fish sticks she can eat and we’ll be fine.” Something strikes her and she turns her head to face him, a cruel smile on her face. “There are weapons in a room for experiments, right? Anything they dig into any of you I’ll dig into them tenfold.”
They come upon a door, finally - FINALLY - at the end of the staircase. Mar’i turns to face him, making her promise to Kyle and he turns to look at her too, with only the flashlight to illuminate their faces. Her wicked smile is not lost on him and even in this coldness, the icy chill on each exhalation of breath, seeing Mar’i smile like that makes something along Kyle’s spine melt into liquid warmth, hot and molten as it singes upwards against his ribs and down along his hip bones. Kyle leans close to her in their shared dim light and, holding her shoulder, he kisses her. It’s a kiss like he’s trying to share the warmth she gave him, like he is returning it back into her. He pulls away and blinks at her. “Thank you, Mar’i. I’d like that,” he tells her seriously, and then turns the door handle. Of course, it opens quite easily and a humming green light spills out onto them, as well as the nauseating tang of formaldehyde, blood and rotting metal. Above them, they hear the storage room door slam shut.
Mar’i blinks as well, the mix of bloodlust and anger on her face transforming slowly back to her more neutral expression. “You taste like mushrooms,” she says simply, looking back over where the room is slowly blanketing them in a sickly green. “Don’t thank me, I’d enjoy it after all this,” she mutters, but there’s nasty smell washing over them, and her nose pulls up a little into a sneer. “This is the room?” The door above them slams shut and she looks up at it momentarily, before walking into the green room. “At least there’s light…” she mutters, and it’s obvious from the way she moves about quickly and methodically she’s already checking the room over for bodies—for a body. There are things hanging from the ceiling, obscured by the hunks of flesh and dried blood on them, and she grabs one, jerking it down hard and fast. It’s a meat-hanging hook, with some hunk of pale rotten flesh hiding the hook itself. She puts the longbow back across her body, using the now-free hand to wrench the flesh off, ignoring the squirm of maggots protesting her intrusion. “Is this where you and Damian were that night?”
Kyle trails after her, looking around the room as well. It is still as expansive as he remembers, the sluice grating on the ground clanking with every footstep, echoing against the steel walls. Mar’i is marching around, grabbing and pulling at things, things that clang and squelch in her hands. Kyle doesn’t try to stop her. The humming that was in the room before is gone. Kyle goes over to the restraining beds, which were upright when he was here with Damian. They’re all horizontal now, the whole row of them. And there is no electricity emanating from them either. “We came from over there,” Kyle points to the far wall, where there is a chute and a tall pile of slick black bodybags. “We didn’t see the door, the last time.” He turns and looks at the entrance that him and Mar’i had come from. How did they miss it, before? “This place was electrified last time too. All of these beds—” Kyle touches one and suddenly the lights come on and there is a grinding sound coming from a large hatch on the wall. Kyle can’t cry out because his teeth clench from carrying eletricity through his system. He is being electrocuted and all he can do is stand there, until it’s over. He collapses to the grated floor, near-unconsciousness.
Roy is dying.
..or at least, it feels that way. He is seated in the center of the room, right on the highest pile of bone and ash, and he is still sweating. He doesn’t know exactly how that’s possible, because doesn’t the human body stop sweating at some point? But the temperature is soaring into the hundreds now, no doubt, and Roy knows it because.. Well. Hello, Arizona and practical knowledge. He licks his chapped lips, eyelids heavy, drooping over his eyes as he looks around the room. The dim light, inlaid into the wall—it’s almost red, now, in Roy’s eyes, and he glares up at it when it flickers. He groans and rubs his face, coughing dryly. He looks over at the light, shouting at it: “..so, what, are you REALLY gonna start now?”
Roy had given up an hour ago on shouting for help.
"It was probably wasn’t here last time," Mar’i notes, remembering what he’s said in the past about everything—the woods, the roads—everything changing. She starts to clean the hook off on her shirt, but the room goes white-hot and she turns to see Kyle rigid as electricity courses through his body. "KYLE!" she screams, moving towards him, tossing the hook onto the ground as she runs at him, but the survival instinct in her mind tells her to stop short, to let his body naturally release the bed instead of electrocuting herself too. "KYLE?! KYLE? FUCK KYLE," she screams in near-hysterics, while her body goes on auto-pilot, lifts him into her lap, checks his pulse, his pupils. Her screams are echoing around her, and she can’t focus on that because she’s too busy trying to examine the damage to Kyle’s hand. The room is brightly lit now, and the blood everywhere—oh X’Hal it’s everywhere—is more apparent than ever. “Stay awake, Kyle,” she mutters, drawing her eyes to the hatch making the loud noises. Kyle makes a noise and coughs, and she stands up, looks at the door they came in from—closed too, when the fuck did that happen, fuck—and moves over to it, taking the hook back up from the door. She pries it open, peering down into the hot darkness, disgustingly warm air floating into her face, sending her dark hair floating around her face. “Incinerator?” she mutters, trying to remember what order Kyle and Damian’s adventure took place in. Torture before or after incinerator? Does it matter anymore? She turns her head to look back at Kyle, breathing slowly but steadily on the floor, and looks back in. The darkness looks like it’s peering back at her.
Roy doesn’t look up when the hatch opens, not right away, because he’s not sure if he’s hallucinating. But, the air suddenly seems cooler and he looks up at the gaping hole, the hatch. Without warning, and without Roy’s go ahead, his hands and arms move, getting him up, sliding on the pile of bone and ash. He swallows, dryly, and croaks: “M-Mar’i?”
Mar’i can only see the dull light at the end of the hatch—something over it, she can tell it’s something, but not what exactly—and she’s staring into the darkness between her and the dull light hesitantly, not sure if it’s an exit or not when she hears his voice. Instantly, she’s pulling herself into the hatch, on all fours at the soft incline of the warm metal inside. “Roy?” she calls out, making a soft ‘oomph’ as she hits a hip against on side of the hatch. The dull light grows stronger and stronger, until she reaches a grate over the hatch. Kyle didn’t mention a grate. “Fuck,” she curses, and readjusts herself, sliding back so she can kick at the metal with all her strength. It takes several blows, but the metal eventually pops on the side she’s focusing, swinging open like a door. The incline increases sharply here, like things are meant to slide into the incinerator, and she cautiously moves to the edge, peering over into the grease and ash. He’s standing there, looking up. He’s okay. “Hey, baby,” she nearly whispers, her voice cracking hard. “I missed you.”
Kyle crawls to the incinerator, feeling better now. He hears Mar’is voice and knows Roy is in there and he is alive and Kyle is so relieved that Mar’i found a Roy and a single perfect crystalline man-tear slides down his very stoic cheek.