a man bears beliefs

[bossymarmalade]

Damian awakens to the scent of something savory wafting from the kitchen, and he nudges Rosalind’s warm, sleepy weight off of his chest. He’s still squinting and unsteady on his feet as he makes way to the dining table. “I want my omelette without eggs.”

"Maybe," Kyle says, relaxing a little when she giggles. It sounds so soothing; moreso, it sounds happy. "I don’t know." He gives up when he sees her deflty adding things to her omelette, and just waits for his to brown a bit more, before putting it on a plate. Kyle nabs the salt and pepper and gives a hearty shake of both, then puts it at the kitchen dinette. Since being here, he hasn’t ever sat down at the dining table. He looks surprised at Damian’s sudden appearance, initially blocked by the kitchen island. "Hi Damian. Omelettes are eggs. They’re just that, they’re…eggs. Like bacon is pork."

"Hello, Rayner." He folds his hands before him and watches Rayner and Mar’i at the stove, mouth pinched with disappointment. "Oh." Still, Kyle cuts a third off his omelette and puts it on a tea plate for Damian, situating him at the dining table as well. "I’ll make you some toast," he offers, putting some slices in the toaster and looking up at Mar’i. "You want some? And is it too early in the morning for abstract theories? Because that’s cool, that’s cool. It’s cool."

Connor walks along the path to the longhouse pushing the door open and looking around at everyone raising his hand in a wave. “Good morning.” He greets. Kyle’s wan face breaks out into a grin when he sees Connor. “Toast! I mean - morning!”

Mari smiles at Damian and uses Kyle’s empty skillet to load some chopped veggies onto the heat. “One omelette without eggs,” she murmurs softly to Damian, starting a little when Rosalind enters and butts against everyone’s legs in succession. She finds a piece of uncooked fish from the fridge and holds it down for the cub to eat. “Keep an eye on the skillet for me, for a second,” she says to Kyle, gathering up one of the teacups and the omelette she’s made—big enough for two people—, along with a glass of cold water, and makes her way back to the bungalow, leaving it on the nightstand for the two Harpers still sleeping curled beside each other. She kisses them both on the foreheads, gently, then jogs back to the longhouse as best as she can without making her ribs more sore. “They haven’t burned, have they?” she asks, peering down into the skillet, then up at Connor. “Good morning,” she smiles, taking her own teacup up and sipping at the bitter willow tea, squenching her nose up at the flavor.



Damian is mollified by the promise of toast enough to pick at his eggs, taking small bites and pulling faces over it. “Hawke,” he greets him gruffly when the young man appears. Connor raises his eyebrows at Kyle’s… greeting but smiles anyway shaking his head as he fills up the water bottle in his hand. He smiles at Mar’i when she greets him and glances over at Damian when he does nodding towards him, “Damian.” He looks around at everyone. “Any plans for today?”

"No, I turned the heat down," Kyle replies to Mar’i, standing complacently by the stove and watching it. He watches her drinking her brew and his eyes slide away, unfocused for a moment until Connor speaks up. He goes over to the kettle, lifting it to see if there is any water left. There isn’t and so he fills it up again. "I was gonna hit the mall and get that new pair of Pumas everyone’s talking about. Them maybe go catch an afternoon show of the Star Trek sequel. You?"

Connor gives Kyle a confused look but assumed he was joking. “I was asking to see if anyone needed help with anything…” Damian reaches the end of his tolerance for consuming a food he doesn’t like and pushes the plate with its omelette wedge away, dropping a bit of the egg on the floor for Rosalind. “There’s a mall and theater here? Rayner, I want to accompany you.”

Mari loads more vegetables into the skillet for Connor, with a dash of cooking oil, as she turns up the heat again. She sips her tea again, still not liking its disgusting flavor, but thankful that it’ll entail at least a little pain relief in a while. “I just meant,” she finally answers, pursing her lips slightly, “that I don’t care if people think I’m guilty of something I didn’t do as long as they stay out of my way. I don’t like arguing with people over things I did or didn’t do, /but/ it was a moot point since none of the doppelgangers thus far have looked like me.” She scoops some of the warm vegetables onto Damian’s plate and offers the rest to Connor. “I don’t know of anything specifically, but there are some plans for bigger groups to go exploring soon, we talked about those last night. Couldn’t tell you when it’ll actually happen, though.”

Kyle gives Damian his toast and a pat of butter, and takes the omelette back, shaking egregious amounts of ketchup onto it. He’s laughing softly now though, because dios mio - making dumb jokes to an audience of Connor and Damian, arguably two of the most literal people he knows. “Tough crowd,” he murmurs to himself and swallows hard. “No, no no there’s no mall or theatre, I’m sorry, Damicito. I was - I was just being silly. Um.” Kyle looks over at Connor. “Yeah what Mar’i said. I know Queen and Bruce and Dick were talking about expeditions, maybe if you find one of them, you can go along. Sorry, Connor, I was just…” Kyle drifts off, attending to the kettle as it starts to whistle. “Does anyone want…um…coffee? Or tea?” Kyle looks over at Connor. “Or…hot chocolate, Damian? Hot chocolate’s nice.” Kyle makes the hot chocolate for Damian anyway and a weak coffee for himself. He slowly eases himself down into the chair, quietly mulling over what Mar’i said as he eats his ketchup and omelette.

Damian is accustomed to Rayner making jokes that are nonsensical to him, and he now has toast and sautéed vegetables and hot chocolate to occupy him, so he raises no further objections as he eats. He half-listens to the adults talking. “Mar’i Grayson, did you do something bad?”

Connor smiles at Mar’i when she offers some of the vegitables, “Thank you. And I’m fine with water for now, Kyle.” He says taking some for himself and having a seat with the rest of them eating quietly, but listening of course.

Mari starts working on more eggs for the rest of the sleeping campers, nursing her tea with her free hand. “Why do you think…” she begins, frowning, “why do you think they look like some people and not others?” She smiles over at Damian. “I hope I didn’t, but what I was referring to was that some people thought Kyle did for a little bit, that’s what I’m talking about. But it’s all better now, it’s gotten better.” Her tone indicates that she’s not quite just talking about Steph and Cass’ now-gone anger towards Kyle. “Did you guys feel Deely last night?” Her eyes go a little round around the corner, bright and luminous, full of delight. “Isn’t that the greatest feeling?”

Kyle sits half-hunched over his meal, chewing but not really tasting, just sort of eating automatically. This doesn’t taste like Mia’s breakfast sandwich yesterday. It’s tasteless and bland, dulled over, and Kyle eats it mostly because he doesn’t want to waste. He’ll only eat what others cook, he decides. Maybe that makes the difference in taste. “I don’t think there’s any rhyme or reason. I think it’s all chaos. There’s no patterns. I think it’s all of our minds creating things. No - I didn’t think of that - credit to Mia, she’s the one who suggested it. I think we’re collectively making everything up.” Kyle’s gazes ahead as he chews like a cow with cud, his eyes hooded over with a terse sort of pain. He looks down and stabs at his omelette again. “No. I didn’t feel any Deely last night. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Connor thinks about the idea that the people here are the ones that are creating everything as he chews on some of his vegitables. “Then how do we get whatever this place is to create what we want it to?” He asks and turns to look at Mar’i as she speaks about Deely he shakes his head slowly.

Mari snaps out of her daze and looks at Kyle. “Or maybe they’re taking things, ideas, dreams, from us, then—” her free hand pretends to pluck something from her head, then twists and contorts at the fingers, changing the shape of her palm. “So we’re contributing, but we’re not in control. I mean, if we were, who’s the asshole who wanted to chop Roy’s arm off?” Her tone goes a little sharp at an invisible enemy she can focus all her anger at. “Kate said in her note that they knew everything about us.”

"Jesus - no one of us wanted to take Roy’s arm off. Christ, Mar’i," Kyle says sharply, looking over at her with a frown. Except maybe Roy himself, he thinks; but why say it. "But yeah - that’s what I meant. Our minds —" Kyle plucks as well, miming like Dumbledore with a Pensieve, except he spins his finger. "- mix it all up like an omelette - all the bits and pieces, egg, shell, cheese, shallots, tomato, all of it - and see what comes out. Only it comes out like this —" Kyle points at the red, ruined remains of his omelette, "—instead of that pretty one you made. I think Kate has…communicated with them. Maybe Zee’s there too. Kate tried to bargain, Zee’s trying to trick, and…and—" Kyle stands up and throws the rest of the egg away, not caring anymore. He grabs the used skillets and whatever empty dishes Damian’s used, starting to roughly wash it all. He’s turned away from them, so he doesn’t have to look at them. Or for them to look at him, whichever. "Like Queen said - who cares about the whys. We’re just spinning wheels, who cares."

Connor looks at Mar’i when she speaks about Roy’s arm and ponders that thought for a moment, then thinks about how Mia was acting when she was possessed with that evil sludge and the things she did. He shrugs, “If that is the case then perhaps we’re the ones that do it to ourselves. From guilt or something of that nature. I think this place feeds on negaitvity in the first place, and who thinks more negaitively about a person then themselves?”

Kyle stops scrubbing at a stupid skillet and braces his hands against the sink, staring out the window. Thank goodness for Connor and his ability to say the things Kyle wants to say, only a thousand times more coherently. Selfishly, Kyle is once again glad Connor washed up on their shore.

"That’s why I said we can’t be in control, because none of us would want that," she snaps at Kyle, riding the skirts of her rage at their invisible captors out to his visible sunburnt and scruffy face, but her expression falls quickly into something scared, vulnerable. She looks at Connor, paling at his words, and leans her hips against the counter, staring down into her blood-red tea. "So I’m not guilty enough..?" she murmurs to herself, softly, then lets her mind keep drifting down that thought, to Roy’s arm, to Roy’s rage, to his words at Ollie in the Raven.

"None of us are innocent," Kyle says harshly. "That’s just life; it’s just here it’s manifested." He turns his head slightly, pushing his mouth into his shoulder as he musters up the energy to look at Mar’i, then Connor, then Damian. "Lian and Ramsey, I suppose. They’re the only ones who are." He says this sadly, as he looks at Damian. "No one deserves this, but they don’t deserve it at all, at all. At all."

Connor stands up and takes his glass to the sink, “Then I wonder why they’re here. What makes them different?” Shrugs his shoulders and lets out a sigh. “I’m going to go think… meditate. Something. I’ll see you all later.” He says and pats Kyle on the shoulder as he passes him, and leaves the longhouse. Kyle smiles at Connor as he leaves, and continues washing the dishes, albeit in a much calmer fashion. That’s the second time an Arrow member has given him food for thought, in as many days. And Kyle frowns thoughtfully as he spins what Connor said. “What makes them different?”

Mari drains her tea to the grainy dregs left over from the teabag, nodding her head at Connor as he leaves. “How the hell is that man related to Ollie?” she laughs, despite herself and despite the gravity of everything going on, leaning over, ignoring the sharp pain in her bound ribs as she chortles, hand moving up to clasp over her mouth. The muffled sounds sound like sobs, but her eyes are pulled into happy crescent moons high on her cheekbones.

Kyle turns slowly, looking over with an incredulous yet amused grin. Everything is so fucking grim here and it’s easy to get bogged down in the misery and self-loathing and horrible, aching loneliness, but. It’s moments like watching Mar’i laugh, or nuzzling into Damian’s dark curls, or holding Zee’s hand — no. No - Kyle firmly shuts that memory out, and things taste like strawberry jam for a moment. He makes a sort of noise at the back of his throat, like something is being forcibly pulled out from the inside. “It hurts, Mar’i,” he says, shaking his head as he looks up at the ceiling, trying to drown out that cry inside him. “It really hurts. I’m trying - I’m trying.”

Mari freezes, the pain stopped up in Kyle’s throat so audible she can hear it across the room. “What hurts?” she asks, hand slipping away from her mouth. “Did you get hurt at the Raven? What hurts?”K yle shakes his head roughly, and his hand slides up along his sternum to just below his neck, the V of his palm between thumb and index coming up to almost strangle and then back down, as he rubs hard at his chest. His wet hand pushes his GL ring up over his collar, but he doesn’t heed it. He’s pressing against his chest, pushing his fingers against his heart.”No, no, it hurts here - it hurts here, like - like - everything that’s happened, everyone who’s been hurt and - and - even the bits of happiness people are finding in this nightmare, oh god. It hurts, Mar’i. It’s painful, it hurts so much. Don’t you feel it too? I know you must’ve. I’ve seen it - I’ve seen it in your eyes.” Kyle grits his teeth and smacks the sink window, looking up into the sky, at the fissure. “God - Dios - Oa - why don’t you love us -“

Mari rushes forward, pulling Kyle into her arms, tucking his head against her sternum, ignoring his sud-soaked hands and digging one of her own into the skin on his head just where his hair ended, the other on his lower back. “I know, I know what you mean,” she soothes, staring up at the fissure as well. “Why us? Why after all the good we’ve done for the world, why us, why here, why so long?” They are the same questions she asked herself when she first ended up here, when days stretched to months, when it became more and more apparent she’d never get to go home, when she realized she had to recreate her life from less than nothing. She had hoped she wouldn’t have to keep asking herself them. “I don’t know, but..” she pauses, feeling the fresh skin on the back of his scalp, where the flashlight had collided with his head weeks before, “X’Hal is a living goddess because she was just a regular Okaaran. She was just a woman, and she was just…alive and the Psions took her, like they took everyone else, like they took my mother and her aunt, they ripped her away from her home and they made her a goddess. They tortured greatness into her bones. The gods suffer too, Kyle, that’s why their love is the same as ours. Sometimes so powerful. Sometimes useless. They’re us, we’re them, the difference isn’t so great in the end.” Her words are nearly nonsensical now, but the image that has kept her going is one she’s trying to pass on to Kyle—“Love, love, all of it comes down to loving and being loved and not letting anything stop you from doing that, no matter if they take your love or a piece of your love or they take your heart itself, you can’t stop loving because love is suffering and love and suffering are the two universal constants—” she’s oozing now, spilling out English words for Tamaranean concepts, the differences in translation and intensity blocking, distorting her original meaning. She squeezes him more, cursing that broken ring, cursing her broken powers.

Kyle curls into her immediately. Even though they’re about the same height, frame-wise - even thinned down - his bones are still bigger than hers. But he curls in against her, the feel of gentle contact - physical comfort freely given by her - making his knees almost buckle. He gives in, just for a moment. He doesn’t want to be strong; and so Kyle burrows against her, his ear pressed just by her collarbone. It blurs the edges of her voice as he listens to the combination of her heartbeat and her words, flowing together. He puts his arms around her, hooking his hands around the back of her shoulders - so thin, themselves - because at this point he is literally, shamelessly leaning most of his weight against her as he listens, enraptured by her flow of words - the connections she weaves between gods and mortals and life - the feel of her hands against him. Everything about her is soothing and he frantically tries to imprint it all into his mind, absorb all of it that he can. “Love and suffering. Yeah…” Kyle finally echoes after her. “It’s true. That’s - that’s true. I forgot that, I forgot that they go all hand-in-hand, don’t they. We’ve all suffered…so…much.” Their hubris. And everyone paid the price for it. And everyone is still awesome, despite it. Kyle unhooks from her eventually, his hands cradling her elbows now as he leans them back to look at each other. Compulsively, Kyle pushes a strand of hair from her face, remembering them sitting on the swings, how she hadn’t noticed because she was so close to the breaking point herself. “I’m so glad you found balance with him…with Roy. I don’t know why it’s so important to me,” Kyle looks down at their shoes. Her quirky shoes. “It just…it’s important. It makes me feel good. Aha…because I’m selfish like that.” Kyle smiles a bit and looks at her hopefully. “You know what I mean.”

In the morning sunlight, Mar’i’s warm brown eyes look almost golden, cat-like. It’s not hard to keep him up, because where Kyle has a slight size advantage overall, Mar’i’s body is grounded more thickly, spread less thin like his, weight focused on her breasts and wide hips and thighs, stretching a line of gravity-based power from her core to her feet. Earth-based power. She holds the majority of his weight effortlessly, despite her injuries, and it’s not the first time a man’s leaned on her in the last few days and it won’t be the last. “We’ve suffered and we’ve loved, don’t forget. We’re suffering and we’re loving.” As he pulls a bit back, her hand hooks his chin, drawing his face to look straight at hers. “You’ve loved, yeah? You’re not talking about it, but I know. You see my suffering. I see your loving.” She doesn’t know who, but she has suspicions, a line-up in her head. Her lips part and she sighs softly, flutters her eyelashes because even the mention of Roy makes everything else seem less horrible. Even Roy’s injuries seem less horrible when Roy himself is there in other’s words. “I’m selfish too,” she admits, releasing his chin so he can move more freely. “It makes me feel good too. I felt bad at first, when we came here, like I was doing something wrong. But…” she frowns, “selfish is a thing I don’t care to be called as long as it helps all three of us. If I can give them love and make them feel loved in this shithole of a place, I’ll pay any price.” She smiles. “Do you want to talk about her?” She doesn’t know it’s even a ‘her,’ but it’s a shot in the dark with a dim glow in the distance. “You should.”

Kyle laughs, and it’s a real laugh, with all those positive things like affection and gratitude and enjoyment. “I was about to say the same thing to you - now that everything’s - now that it’s all sorted out, you two should talk about each other more. I know /I/ like hearing it, I like seeing and hearing about people who love each other like that. All romantic and shit, it’s…” He presses his lips together hard, shaking his head as he looks past her shoulder. His hands make unconscious circles along her underarms, soothing for himself as much as trying to convey gratitude to her. He doesn’t want to let go of Mar’i yet, this much is obvious. “She’s…not here. She gave herself up for this.” Kyle ducks his head and looks down at the GL ring, now dangling between them. “I can’t keep letting my loved ones do that for me. Everything they give up for me, Mar’i - all the women I’ve loved. They die because I love…” Kyle blinks, hard and then settles on shutting his eyes tightly. “I told her I loved her and…she said she loved me back. And then she disappeared. She exchanged herself for this stupid piece of space-jewelry. I shouldn’t have pushed her to tell me. Her and Clark were so happy. And I was so happy for Zee and Clark, I just…how many more times do I have to learn this same damn lesson at the risk of another woman’s life?”

Mari smiles and wraps her arms around the middle of his waist to keep him close enough that what they’re discussing doesn’t become cold and impersonal. Because she knows it’s hard for him to cut through the excuses and diversions when it comes to these things. “It’s not completely sorted, though, and it’s still fresh. Right now, it’s still hard for me to put it into words. English words, at that. We understand it, though, and when the words arrange themselves and get right, then I promise I’ll talk about it more. But for right now…” her lips curve up sweetly, a warm smile curling on the edges, “for right now, it’s enough. We’re in this horrible place and horrible things keep happening, but having them beside me, even if it’s only for a while, even if it might be over when we get home, it’s enough.” She listens to him speak about Zee, confirming her suspicions, but elaborating more and more on things—emotions—she didn’t know were so tightly dealt with. “She won’t die,” Mar’i responds resolutely, nodding her head firmly. “And if she did actively choose to give herself up for this, if they didn’t make the exchange of their own volition, then she’s already helped us all, not just you. She chose to fight for you, for Clark, for us all. I know it feels like it’s all your fault, believe me, I know how it feels to feel like you’ve betrayed the ones you love most just by existing when the smoke clears, but…” She brushes his overgrown dark hair over to one side, fixing his disheveled part. “She’ll come back. She’ll come back and she’ll be worse for the wear, but she’ll have Clark, and she’ll have you. Maybe in the way you both want. Maybe not. But she’s not sacrificing herself for you. She’s fighting for you. For all of us. She’s the hero, not the victim, even if it doesn’t feel like to the people left behind.” She looks at the ring, at the smooth emerald surface. “You put it on and it cracked the sky. Now something else is helping us, destroying the Raven, giving us butterfly hugs. What happens when you put it on again.” She thinks about it for a moment. “Bruce’s hands that day…he was glowing green, the same color as your constructs. What happens if other people put it on? Do you think something else might happen?”

Kyle can’t help smiling when he listens to Mar’i as she talks about - or rather, around - Roy. Roy and Lian, he has to remember that. Package deal, those two. Even her explaining this difficulty of talking - it’s incredibly beautiful to him. He’s never had much use for words anyway. Just feelings, and putting feelings down in charcoals and paint. If he had paint, he’d make a mural on the side of the Longhouse for them. For all of them. He looks at her, but really just stops his focus on her mouth moving - her eyes are too powerful right now, too gorgeous and sunlit - so he just looks at her lips forming words. Her love-swollen, bite-kissed mouth. Kyle notices these lovely details and his eyes flare, alive with a certain passion that doesn’t have to do with Mar’i specifically, as just the remembrance of doing that on someone. He finally looks up at her, straight-up eye contact. So she knows he understands what she’s telling him about Zee. “You’re right. It’s what I tell myself too, of course. When Kate was gone, when Zee disappeared. She’s there as much to work her magic up there, as I am to make slices in the sky, down here. However it works right now with me and Zatanna right now, doesn’t mean it’ll be the same in the real world, and…so be it. Like you said - It’s enough.” Kyle murmurs it couple times, approving of the words. He’s pulled back from his reverie by her question and he raises his brows and blinks, considering. “I don’t know. Technically my ring is coded genetically to me; I recrafted it that way when I was Ion the first time. Just in case, y’know.” Kyle finally releases her, since their conversation was waning on the personal and waxing on the business. He does lean in first though, and he presses a long, affectionate, somewhat needy kiss on her cheek. She smells like strawberries, he realizes. Sun and strawberries and peaches. But as he is close to her, distracted by a French curve of her wavy hair, Kyle sees a flash of green. He pulls back, staring at her. “Maybe you should try it.” Kyle realizes he doesn’t want to release her completely and takes a hold of her hands. “What if you put my ring on?”

Mari blinks and stares at the ring. “I’m not really that into joining the Corps,” she begins, laughing a little nervously because the what ifs are so much scarier than the realities. It’s hard enough being a living star when her powers are functional; the idea of somehow getting all Kyle’s cosmic powers is even more daunting. Her head is starting to shake a ‘no,’ but a voice wafts into her head, soft and beckoning. It sounds sort of like Ollie, sort of like darkness, sort of like the sound of an arrow hitting flesh. “If you had been stronger you could have saved them. If you were stronger, you could save them now.” She blinks dazedly, then reaches forward, slipping her pointer finger into the ring (far too large, her finger can enter without even touching the sides) still around his neck.

"Before any of this happened - I saw you in green. Your powers but in green," Kyle says insistently, because he’d never figured out /why/ that happened. He’s about to suggest talking it over with Bruce or something, when a voice pierces into his head - it’s in the back of his mind, the voice that sounds like Kate, except it’s doubled over on itself: "….you can save them" and Kyle suddenly clutches Mar’is elbows tightly, watching her slide his ring onto her finger. Because he’s like Them, and she’s like him - and they’re all gods, all of them. Just like Mar’i said, except not really - and Kyle thinks he hears himself hiss a ‘yesssss’. Mar’i’s eyes flare green and Kyle stares at her in wonder. Green covers her over entirely, and she looks like her mother, god the righteous loving fury of Starfire - Kyle’s old dormroom poster and then some - and he won’t let her go because it feels like the power is coursing from him, not the ring…but it’s too much. Just like last time, it’s too much and Kyle tries to pull it off her slender finger before it damages her like it did him. "NO, NO—" The ground starts to tremble and shift violently under their feet; and somehow still standing (are they floating?) Kyle drags them both out the back of the Longhouse, trying to get away from the buildings. "Mar’i - Mar’i!" Green lights up every fibre of her now, burning her up from the inside, her hair billowing out as if she’s being electrocuted.

Mari opens her mouth to scream, but the sound that comes out doesn’t sound like her voice, doesn’t sound like anything human or humanoid at all. It sounds like a screaming chorus of owls, or ravens, or monsters underwater, and it shifts and alters as it comes out, like no breath is needed to perpetuate the god-awful sound. Her broken ribs crack again, correcting the damage, but the pain of the process is excruciating, and the energy surging through her goes from targeting her injury to targeting her entire body, like a white blood cell attacking a germ, like a body rejecting a limb—oh X’Hal, a limb—and sets every cell aflame. It feels like burning out, like her powers are back and she’s burning through them all over again. That’s the thing she doesn’t discuss. It hurts when her powers come completely out like this. Durability does not mean insensitivity. It’s why she holds back in situations she could easily solve by burning herself out, why she doesn’t want to risk exploding like a star if another solution can be found. If the ground is shaking, she can’t feel it, she can only feel every cell in her body trying to rip away from the rest, trying to escape the fire. Kyle gets them outside and she feels the sun, even if she can’t see it, and the light around her body start flickering, changing colors to a violet, then back to green, then back to violet. She’s still making the noise.

A snaking, insidious voice booms through the camp:

OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. you’re going to kill them OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. she’s going to die OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. he’s going to kill her OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. he’s going to die OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE.

Kyle is waiting, horribly enough, to see her nose bust open with blood or her eyes roll up in her head - except that never happens, and it’s only when they’re out in the sunlight and her colors start to change does he realize that the Oan power isn’t making her overload, she’s actually ABSORBING it. A part of him wants to release her and let it just…happen. He’d never encountered a Tamaranean Green Lantern before. Maybe this was just her way of WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU RAYNER, YOU ARE THE LANTERN, NOT HER, SAVE HER IDIOTA, SAVE HER. If she’s a Lantern then he has to be a living star - and that’s when it hits him - the Starheart. No ring required for that. Kyle’s fist closes around her index finger, and a surge of black-green envelopes the both of them, forcing the mounting layers of thick green energy deep into the ground. It’s painful to use - there’s a reason why Kyle doesn’t often access Jenny’s dying gift to him, because it feels like all of that mourning has returned and it completely envelops him as he finally - finally - pulls the ring off Mar’i’s finger. She won’t stop making that noise though; and it is combined with a sudden, repetitive screaming howl that echoes through the entire town, nonsense words that makes Kyle’s ears bleed out.

Oliver comes towards them at a dead run. It almost seems as though he’s sprung up from the loose soil behind the garden shed, he appears so suddenly and is moving so fast. His face is dark, terrible, purple on his mouth and staining his beard, green eyes burning. He says nothing, although a rattling growl is coming from his mouth. He runs full-tilt into Mar’i, and the force of his tall, heavy body hitting hers drives them both some distance, dragging Kyle with them before they all three fall hard to the ground.

The earthquake abruptly stops.

Oliver manages to get them both by the throats, shaking them, squeezing down, knocking their heads against the ground. “I FOUND YOU,” he screams, his voice splitting and edged as an axe-blade, an arrowhead. “ARE YOU ALIVE? ARE YOU FUCKING ALIVE?” Kyle is shaken like a ragdoll, completely unconscious and unresponsive.

Mari goes from feeling like she’s burning to feeling like she’s growing, like she’s swelling to the point of bursting—what will come out, what will burst forth—and the greenvioletgreenviole​t in her vision suddenly goes a bit black, and there’s a woman standing behind Kyle in all green, holding his shoulders, steadying him. She can’t quite even see Kyle, but she can tell the woman is holding him, is urging him on. But the light sucks back into the ring, all of it, even the black-green, and it all goes black, even with her mouth slack and the sound still leaking out. She feels herself move again, like some out of body experience, and there’s someone over her, choking the sound down, crushing her windpipe against her spine. Her head hits the ground again and again, the sound waning with every hit, blood appearing on the ground behind her head as she comes down again and again. But she’s only aware of this in her peripheral—like trees swaying in the corner of her eyes on a summer day. Her pupils have eaten her irises whole, and the sound dies as her eyelids close up point of bursting—what will come out, what will burst forth—and the greenvioletgreenviole​t in her vision suddenly goes a bit black, and there’s a woman standing behind Kyle in all green, holding his shoulders, steadying him. She can’t quite even see Kyle, but she can tell the woman is holding him, is urging him on. But the light sucks back into the ring, all of it, even the black-green, and it all goes black, even with her mouth slack and the sound still leaking out. She feels herself move again, like some out of body experience, and there’s someone over her, choking the sound down, crushing her windpipe against her spine. Her head hits the ground again and again, the sound waning with every hit, blood appearing on the ground behind her head as she comes down again and again. But she’s only aware of this in her peripheral—like trees swaying in the corner of her eyes on a summer day. Her pupils have eaten her irises whole, and the sound dies as her eyelids close up into their half-moon shape.

Mia is from California, so earthquakes aren’t strange to her. So, when one starts while she’s hanging out with the goats (who are honestly the only ones she wants to be around at the moment) she just figures someone is doing something stupid and just ushers the goats to safety away from their rickety little house. That’s when she hears a voice that practically pushes all the air from her lungs, “..don’t you like the feeling of their eyes on you, baby girl?” And the voice is soft and light and sounds like it’s coming from around her, not from someone specifically. She straightens up as the earthquake stops and casts a suspicious look around herding the goats back to their pin hoping another earthquake doesn’t start again. She pulls her over-sized bright yellow sweater jacket tighter around herself, though it’s not cold enough for that and casts a look back at the goats before walking along the pathway back to the camp.

"No, no no nononononoooo…" The refusal of this comes out of Ollie in jagged gasps as he crouches over their two inert bodies, letting go of their throats. The marks of his fingers are already coming up purple-green in their skin and he gags slightly as he takes off the button-up shirt he’s wearing over his t-shirt, movements fast but clumsy. "You’re all right," Ollie croons as he scoops behind Mar’i’s neck, lifting her head so he can push the bundled-up shirt beneath her. When he lowers her back down, her frizzled hair brittle in some places and damp in others, blood starts to thread bright crimson through the cream-coloured fabric and he moans, putting his face in his hands.

The soft, tentatively healed skin on the back of his head where Zatanna hit him with a flashlight, has split open again, creating another circle of blood under Kyle’s head. It partially soaks into the grass and dirt. Oliver gnaws his lip in an unconscious imitation of Kate when he sees the dark patch soaking underneath Kyle’s hair. He lifts Kyle’s head, too, nestling him against Mar’i’s shoulder hopefully. “There,” Ollie tells them, his voice shredded down to wisps and snatches of sound. “That’s okay. It’s okay now. I found you and you’re both alive and everything will be all right and nobody has to die and nobody has to be left alone.” His ramblings are cut off by the voice rising in his head again. Not so much in his head, even; up along his spine, through his brain stem, encircling his brain. OLIVER. OLIIIIVEEERRRRRRRR. He doesn’t startle. The voice doesn’t startle him, now. “It’s fine. They’re not dead,” he says dully. “I wasn’t weak this time. I’m not like that anymore. You shut the fuck up.”

Kyle “Kyle…Kyle…” His mother calls to him, trying to tug him out of blissful dreaming; but Kyle frowns and ignores her, pushing his face back into his girlfriend’s soft, accommodating hair. He doesn’t want to wake up today. It’s a Saturday. But the voice is rudely cut off, overlaid by another one - gruffer, hoarse like the sound of an arrow being pried from bone: “…nobody has to die…nobody has to be left alone…” Kyle’s fingers twitch, and curl tighter around the ring. He gurgles bloodily. “Lemme ‘lone’…”

Dickiebird wakes up during the earthquake, still in the bed in the medical bungalow. It stops as suddenly as it hit, leaving a strange ringing in his head the way blood rushes in to fill too much silence. Because it is silent, too silent, the kind of silence that screams at you— “His cock would taste so good in your mouth. Full and thick, pulsing down your throat.” It’s whispered in his head like a promise, a low, rumbling voice, one he knows— two you know, sunlight and darkness —and it’s enough to make his eyes close, his mouth open wide, his body to arch in pleasure as he almost feels it pulsing and shoving and choking and— He falls back on the bed, panting hard, his eyes wide open, and curls up on himself, trying to ignore the dull rush of pleasure pulsing in his stomach and the mad heat that encloses him.

Mia was at the path when she heard the voice again turning her head quickly to try and catch where it was coming from as it spoke, “Such a good girl, stay still.” she couldn’t help but freeze where she was almost in mid step the gravel crunching beneath her foot as she set it down. “…Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look.” And she takes a deep breath furrowing her eyebrows. “Shut up!” She shouts at nothing turning her head and tilting it downwards almost demurely like she’s trying to shield it without actually covering her face. “What the hell do you want?!”

Mari can smell the dirt of her garden-grave, can smell the rot creeping into her body, can feel the worms chewing through her flesh. She’s standing in the snow, holding a little girl’s hand, and when she looks down the little girl looks up, and the moment their eyes meet it’s an infinity tunnel and they’re both trapped; child and adult, adult and child. “He’s going to kill you,” somebody says over her shoulder, but she can’t turn away, locked like this, locked in place of death and destruction. “He lost his arm because you weren’t there.” She opens her mouth and sobs loudly, and the little girl looking up at her does the same, their sobs echoing off one another for eternity because she’s dying and death is so final and you dirty liar, Mar’i Grayson, you’re leaving all of them again you liar you filthy liar lieslieslieslieslieslies​lieslies.

Candy is sitting on her bed, head quirked to the side as she thinks, hearing the words in her head. They always leave you in the end. True words. Her mother. Beth. Renee. Maggie. Diana would, soon enough. She was ready to give in, give up. She just wanted to sleep, sleep and sleep and not wake up, not ever wake up. She was tired of fighting, so very tired. Nothing was real here. Nothing. It shouldn’t be. She’d wake up, one day, and there’d be a note by her pillow and the closet space she’d made for Diana would be empty again. No point to anything, not any more. Maybe she should just let go. Let Beth have what was left. Maybe that would be for the best. Sleep. And let them go.

"They died because you were weak," the voice had said, when Ollie was lying in the dirt over the hole, his special hiding place for needles and apple bits and rats and mud, and there had been more purple truffula fruit in the box that he’d stuffed himself with, and then the voice. And he’d answered it, told it, "That’s not how it works. Everybody has their time. Everybody," and he’d been so sure of that answer. Until the voice came prowling back, hot and shimmering like heat over the savannah, purring, "Thirty years of repeating that and it doesn’t sound any better does it? Playing hide and seek with the truth," before Ollie had finally gotten it. He’d convulsed in the dirt, sucking in air with his eyes wide wide open and seeing shining teeth, claws, his mother’s screaming mouth dying on his name, his own thin little fingers trembling on the bowstring, his father’s head hitting the ground BANG and the spray of blood. And then, in a roar multiplied a thousand times, OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE. OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE and the earth opening up because of Mar’i and Kyle and that ring and — "She’s going to die because of you."

Oliver doesn’t know which one the voice means, Kate or Mia or Mar’i Lian Zee Stephanie any of them all of them. He staggers to his feet, staring down at the two of them in purple and green, and digs his fingertips against his forehead, stretching and disfiguring the skin, mumbling to himself in a cascade of words that make no sense.

Candy hums softly, curling onto the bed. A voice, whispering in her ear, the words that should, really, give her reason to fight and live and be, but here… Now… They’re nothing but reassuring. ‘Sleep, baby, sleep. When you wake they’ll have all forgotten you.”

Dickiebird groans to make sure his voice still works, and it’s a pained sound that scrapes up through him like a strained muscle, pulling too far too fast. It’s coated and tainted with a strange lust and so hot he can’t even breathe. He strips his clothes and rolls himself off the bed, landing in a hard and graceless pile on the floor. He needs air and something to shock his system and to stop— “…lay you down, face in the mat like he used to pin you, but his hand is curling into your inner thigh and he’s touching it, sweet hole…” —and he’s already in position as the ghostly fingers run over his naked skin and the heat flushes through him, a thousand fiery tongues lapping at him, making him buck and whine and close his eyes against it, but the longer his eyes are closed, the greater it grows and grows and grows

"Kyle!!" And Kyle’s eyes flare open wide, but everything is washed in green and violet and black, and Alex is there in front of him - not Alex the Lantern from his mind or Alex the sprite from Mogo - but Alex: fridge shaped. Feet twined in her hair, hands curled and protruding from behind her back, neck twisted upside-down, cool, cold, freezing green oozing everywhere—— but the smell. It’s the one thing Kyle had completely forgotten, until now. When he opened the fridge and there was the smell of shampoo and burned oil and open entrails and freezerburn. He smells it now, and that is even more painful than seeing her, all compact. "KYLE!!!!!!…….]" she screams suddenly at him and Kyle just wants to get to her, redraw her and reshape her - goddammit he’s always hated the cubist period, fuck Picasso - and he speaks, his voice at the same pace and timbre as hers, harmonizing almost. Dual voices in his bleeding ears - "Baby. Ba— by..?"

Mia digs her nails into the palms of her hands hard, “..attagirl, attagirl, fight, I like ’em feisty.. Face down, spread it open for me.” Her breath hitches in her chest and a chill runs along her spine. But there is nothing there, and she knows there isn’t going to be. She bites down on her bottom lip and swallows hard as she continues to shiver. “Leave me alone.” She means to say it confidently but it comes out breathlessly her stance shifting wider and her shoes scrape along the gravel sliding before she falls forward onto her knees almost like she’s pushed over. She lets out a small whine when the gravel digs into her knees and she sits back on her heels looking around wildly as she presses her legs together tightly wrapping her arms around her knees. “Go away!” She shouts but there isn’t anyone there.

"When he gives up and kicks the stool out from under him, he’ll leave the letter addressed to you," the voice purrs against Mar’i’s ear, a slick, cold tongue snaking across the cartilage of her ear, against the tiny bump from a teenage piercing, past the small lovebite Roy left underneath her ear last night, against the hard bone at the base of her skull her father would rub when she cried. The little girl in front of her is sobbing, hot tears flowing from her glowing green eyes, the dark purple curls shifting and floating against her bright skin, and Mar’i knows she must look the same, a wet, sobbing mess of a stupid girl. "No," she whimpers, and the little girl whimpers it too, and the image of his rough handwriting on a piece of paper in some cheap highway-side motel floats into her head, and she feels the noose tighten against her throat as it tightens around his. She’s standing in the doorway and the desert heat is stifling and she’s holding the note and sobbing and the little girl is holding the note and sobbing and they’re both sobbing and—"You never believed them, but you should have. Now they’re all going to die. They’re all going to die. They’re all going to die. They’re all going to die. They’re all going to die. They’re all going to die. They’re all going to die. They’re all going to die. They’re all going to die. They’re all going to die. They’re all going to die. They’re all going to die. They’re all going to die."

Dickiebird and grows and grows and fills him and tugs and oh god he can’t stop it won’t stop make it— “…fucking you open like you dreamed, guilty every time you looked at him, every time he said your name, because you fed him your come while he was sleeping, spurted it into his mouth…” Dick’s forehead thunks against the ground hard enough to shake him out of it, but not enough shake it all away. All the times in his room, in another room, hidden away from any security when he could be alone and give in, pretending his hands were larger on his skin, his toys were flesh, it’s not himself he’s tasting, but he’d never… he’d never have done that, and that thought alone pulls his eyes open. He crawls toward the door, trying to ignore his aching cock and the moans erupting from him. He needs water, needs air, needs his skin to stop boiling and his blood to stop racing and if he can just make it outside—

Candy closes her eyes, hearing the voice again. Katydid. Katydid. Go to sleep, Katydid. And she did. Sleep came fast and deep, the darkness finally curling around her. Kate Kane was gone, deep, locked away.

Candy disappears in the woods and out comes : Beth.

Beth stretches, happy to finally, finally be in control without that pesky little voice in her head, holding her back. She remembered that voice, sometimes, like it was a long lost memory she didn’t care to recall. Beth stands, wandering out of her bungalow to hear faint moans coming from one nearby, tipping her head to one side. “Let’s pretend we’re kings and queens.” She murmurs to herself, following the noises.

The tongue moves to her shoulder and both girls are sobbing, and the stool is overturned and her own skull is busted in a dark alleyway and her father and mother are laying in a dark alleyway in Gotham and grampa’s back is twisted all wrong and Kyle’s being eaten alive by his own lamprey mouth and Lian’s little curls are blood-soaked and the stool is overturned and there are graves and more graves and gravesgravesgraves. The tongue sharpens, feels like an arrowhead pressing against the soft flesh of her shoulder, and it starts piercing, starts carving the flesh away from the bone. “Stupid worthless girl.” The grave opens up in front of the girls, and the pressure on the arrowhead in her skin pushes her forward, to fall into the dark, cool earth. And the stool is overturned and her name is written in his handwriting and she’s never seen that before, that’s something she wants to see, she wants to live for that. She falls forward, and a hand slips into hers. “No,” a calm voice says, “not quite yet.”

Oliver backs away from Mar’i and Kyle, mind still racing with names. Cass and Rose and Diana and Moira and Dinah and Shado and — “Idiot.” That word hits him like a fist to the throat and he gasps, choking, before the green and purple clears from his vision and red starts to fill his vision in thick, heavy paint blots of rage. “Oh, no,” Ollie growls, letting his hands drop from his face. “Oh no you fucking don’t, whatever you are, whoever you are. You’re not getting in that way.” He turns on his heel and runs into the longhouse, tearing open one of the medkits and taking out hunks of cotton. Ollie finds the container of lake mud that Kyle keeps looking at as if it’s manna and dunks the pieces of cotton wool in there; when they’re firmly saturated, he screws them into his ears and shakes his head hard, wolflike, to make sure they won’t dislodge. “Idiot,” he says out loud, the way Bruce says it and not the voice, the way it’s curled up and warm at the edges for only Ollie to feel. “Idiot, idiot.” His own iteration reverberates muffled in his head and it’s enough to make it sound like Bruce, and Ollie’s lip curls in vicious satisfaction. “I dunno what you are,” he mutters, “but I’m through listening, motherfucker.”

”..because you came that once, that twice, that three times, baby girl and you miss it, you miss his hands, delicious sweet, go find him, go find him, he’s waiting for you.” a flush rises high on Mia’s face as she shivers, wobbling on her feet slightly like she can’t get her balance. Mia squints and looks around, “No. I don’t even know who you’re talking about.” She says in a whisper not exactly sounding very certain with that statement as she says it. She leans down farther resting her chin on her knees like she’s trying to make herself even smaller. Her eyes continuing to flicker around suspiciously.

It’s like being in the HSR again. He’s in a womb and he feels confident and cool. He looks over at Bruce and Mar’i - Bruce is full of confidence like him, but it’s grim and severe. Serious and full of knowledge, full of secrets. Kyle doesn’t need any of that, he doesn’t need to know details, he just needs to know that he can and he will and he does. Simple-dimple. He looks at Mar’i - she is hesitant but trusting, she trusts both of them to carry her through safely beyond the shock and emotion, what it means to get to see her people again, her loved ones. Love, so much love in her. Kyle can almost feel it, it’s mesmerizing and he’s half in love with her himself sometimes. Knowing he can do this for her, that he can —“She made the trade.” — Kyle frowns, his world turning upsidedown, the HSR womb responding and holding him aloft, kissing and caressing him. Mar’i made a trade? She traded herself - she traded Ibn for Roy, she traded - “She made the trade. She traded for him. She traded for you. She left because—” - No. “She left because of—” NO. “She left because of you” — NO — Kyle stands up, and says it again, “No, no. She left to save us. Because that’s what she does.” He looks down at the ring and puts it in his pocket, because he doesn’t need it. He glows dark green and he smiles. “You just wait, amigo. You just wait.”

Mari turns her head—can turn her head, isn’t locked anymore—and her fingers are gripped tightly against pale white ones. The arrowhead in her shoulder presses more urgently, but the hand holding hers is already propelling her backwards, back onto her feet, back away from the grave. “Not quite yet,” the woman says with a smile, the most beautiful smile, like an old friend Mar’i missed so desperately, and whatever is behind Mar’i hisses and shows her the stool again, the dangling feet, the single arm gone stiff and blue by the time they find him. The woman shakes her head again. Mar’i stops sobbing and stares at her necklace, not quite seeing it but not able to un-see it. “Fly,” the woman smiles, and presses her lips against Mar’i’s forehead. Mar’i falls back, back onto the arrowhead, back onto the thing putting the arrowhead inside her shoulder, falls back with a smile as the woman waves like it will be a long time before they see each other again. On the dirt of Cachement, Mar’i doesn’t awaken, but her chest arches up, dragging her head and arms limply with it, blood soaked on the back of Ollie’s button-up, and a pulse of bright violet light shoots from her, like a ghost being exorcised from her body. It’s violet, then pink, then the multi-faceted shades of an Arizona sunset, and Mar’i’s eyes are closed half-moons pulled back to their gravity as she sinks back down onto the dirt, still unconscious.

”..and what you didn’t know is that he wanted to fuck you, too, because you weren’t his son, you never were, and his cock would have pushed clean into your belly, into your chest, fucking you.” Dick rears back from the door—so close, so close—with a high open-mouthed whine as the words reverberate in every part of him, knocking him backwards to the floor. His eyes slip closed but he can see everything, he can see Bruce holding him, his hand around his throat, pinning him to a wall, fucking the life out of him and god isn’t that a beautiful thing to be fucked to death by him when it’s all you’ve ever dreamed of, and he sobs and he screams and when he comes he can feel a part of his soul being ripped from his body as his mind fractures and breaks. When he can breathe again, he’s spread out on the floor covered in semen and sweat, and there’s a taste in his mouth that he knows instinctively is Bruce’s, down his throat, in his nostrils, and the wave of pleasure that rolls over him from it just makes him sick to his stomach. He rolls onto his side, muscles burning and a deep throbbing down— Dick sobs, his eyes open again and seeing all too much. His throat is parched but his mouth keeps working, desperate to call out. “…u… …uce… B..ce…. Bruce….”

The Child moves over to the group, baptismal dress weighed down with fruit and skips, despite its feet being dirty. Curls are tight with youth, springy. Holds the apple out, looking around, smiling a gap toothed smile. The apple has a ribbon tied around the stem, skin bright red, the script flowing and perfect: Maura.

Oliver hastily swipes more pieces of cotton through the magic lake mud, just in case, clenching them all in his fist like treasure as he runs back out of the longhouse to where he’s left the two in purple and green except only now they’re up and moving, and there’s something there with them, and Ollie frowns and can almost hear the gentle beating of mighty wings—

Beth pushes open the door, looking down at Dick and laughing, high and haunting. “Do let’s pretend that I’m a hungry hyaena, and you’re a bone,” she mutters darkly. “It seems very pretty. It’s a very bad one, but it seems very pretty.”

Kyle looks down where Mar’i is and crouches down. He sees a violet aura all around her and he tries to urge it, help her. Help her help herself. Help her. The violet moves and shifts around her body, willing her into consciousness. He looks over to where Queen is standing, poised and confused. “It’s okay. I’m okay,” Kyle says. “But there’re others. Mia —” Kyle points down the way, to the path leading to the Persian. “You should —”

The Child fishes in its pockets as it continues to approach Kyle and Mar’i and finds another one, honeycrisp and pink and yellow sunsets of color, dew still clinging, the ribbon tied hastily here, in a man’s in-eloquent print, like all he could find to write with was a pencil: Duk-Ga. There is a funny face drawn at the edge, its tongue sticking out and over the edge. Holds it out, the gap-toothed smile bigger.

Kyle spots The Child and frowns. “Who—?” He takes the red apple automatically, before even seeing the name on the ribbon. His eyes widen when he holds it aloft and notices “My…she’s…” Kyle looks down at The Child again, and takes Mar’i’s hand, clasping it around the honeycrisp apple and letting it rest on her chest where she lays.

Dickiebird turns his head to look up at the woman shadowed by the light—or is she the darkness swallowing it up—and lets out a rattling cry because she’s here, she’s always here, even when he thought she was gone forever and he could escape, she’s here waiting to suck him back in and tear him apart and claim him all for herself. He pushes against the floor, stutteringly scooting away. “No, no, nononono….”

Beth smirks darkly at him, crouching to reach out for him. “You might as well try to stop a Bandersnatch.’” She growls, fingers curling round his wrist painfully tight.

Mari burbles, the aura oozing off her dissipating into the camp’s dry heat. Her eyes flicker open, the pupils mismatched in size, and she burbles again, like she’s saying something, staring up at the blue sky, at the fissure cracked way up there. Her fingers tighten around the apple and she looks down, slowly, sitting up even more slowly as she looks down at the label. She can’t read it, she can’t think, but the handwriting and the letter in her hand and— She looks up at the child, at it’s curls, like she might recognize it, dropping the apple into her lap as she reaches out towards it with both arms. “B’by,” she burbles again, the blood now oozing down the back of her neck.

Oliver edges closer, eyeing Kyle and Mar’i and the child like they might all be figments of his imagination. “What is this,” he says, voice echoing hollow and strange inside his skull.

That slithering, insinuating voice booms louder: EEUK IBOLD DRAMAK EEEST / AUBD DEL SOMIO.

The Child laughs, the noise soundless, and turns its face to the sun, frowning for a moment and brushing at the sky, shaking its head. The curls spin, bounce and it laughs, silently, until the darkness leaves.

Kyle ignores the voice thrumming above them, his eyes on The Child and Mar’i. More Mar’i than The Child, really. She is bleeding everywhere and Kyle looks over at Queen’s hands. Her blood is on them. “There are others. We need to —” Kyle looks frustrated and takes off running. He doesn’t realize he’s in half-Green Lantern uniform right now; his old one, with the heavy belted boots and white stripes. He tromps up the path, not getting winded or hurting at all really as he heads up towards the Persian and sees — “Mia! Mia, Mia—” Kyle slides to his knees in front of her, but doesn’t try to touch her. He leans in though. “Hey. It’s just me.”

The Child reaches into its pocket for another apple, the ribbon on this gilded silver, the name slanted and perfect in poise and pitch, Moira. Dirty, tiny feet slap the ground and it runs, apples bouncing against its knees, baptismal white fluttering.

Oliver opens his knotted fist and the pieces of saturated cotton fall to the ground, landing soft and heavy atop each other like berries. “I want that!” he says, loudly, lunging towards The Child, the flash of the silver ribbon enticing him onwards. The Child turns around, feet springing and its smile wordless and holds the apple up, high in the air: the Child is tiny, barely over two feet, but it doesn’t seem to mind. The gap tooth smile grows. Oliver pulls up to a stop and reaches out his muddy, blood-stained hand for the apple, eagerly, eyes devouring the name written on the ribbon as the fruit curves into his palm. He brings the apple to his mouth so fast that it smashes into his teeth and Ollie scrapes them open on the skin, bruising out its perfume, before biting down into it.

Oliver crunches down into his apple’s delicate, crisp, jade-green skin, bites on top of bites, chewing the fragrant flesh of it only as much as he needs to before swallowing and filling his mouth with it again. He cradles it in both hands, sticky with bright thin juice, and consumes everything, the papery sepals, the peppery stings of the seeds, the sharp core, and finally, finally, the twist of stem and that flutter of silver ribbon and elegant light-hearted script, Moira.

Mari drops her arms, watching the Child move, watching the curls bounce, change color the more she stares, the entire face changing to someone different as it runs towards Ollie; is that her or is that it? She wavers where she’s sat up, looking back down at the apple and the script on the ribbon. It hurts to focus, it hurts to look, and she doesn’t remember what the name is, only that its her 아빠 and it’s not his handwriting. She stares at the funny face and mimics it druggedly, tongue sticking out between her teeth as she stares down at it. She can’t control her jaw much, though, and when blood starts dripping onto the front of her button-up too, her head wobbles again and she pulls the apple up to her mouth. Her tongue, flat and wide and bloodied, meets it first, licking along its sunset flesh, the prickles of dark pores on its surface, and she pulls it into her mouth slowly, trying to take a bite but not remembering how her jaw works.

Dickiebird whines and shoves at her arm, but he can’t move, can’t stand, can only try and crawl away and claw at her hand on his wrist. “No, no no no, please. Catalina, no—” Beth glares at him. “My name is Alice,” she says, fingernails digging into his wrist as her other hand moves to his throat. ” My name is Alice. “

Mia clenches her eyes shut tightly as she buries her face in her knees holding her breath though not consciously when she hears someone approaching her. Her she stiffens and can taste blood from her lip. Just get it over with. Just get it over with. Justgetitoverwith. She thinks repeatedly in her head like a mantra. Her head pounds and she hardly hears Kyle over the noise in her own head, “JUST GET IT OVER WITH ALREADY!” She shouts not looking up to see who is even in front of her, and not wanting to look to see who it is.

The Child bounds down the path, towards Kyle again, already looking in its pocket and chirps, a mockingbird note of morning dew before launching itself at Kyle’s back: tiny feet strike his spine, feather-light and it lands, sitting on top of his shoulders, head hanging over his. It holds the next apple out: smooth orange-honey, dry and small: Caroline.

Kyle looks at her and scrambles up, running up the hill, and it feels like he’s flying - that’s impossible, people can’t fly, silly Kyle, silly Rayner - and he goes up to the Persian, collecting Bill. It doesn’t even feel like he’s stopped to collect the kid, he just picks her up and loops back down towards where Mia is firmly grounded. Kyle comes back to her front, and kneels down, releasing Bill. The little kid knows Mia and nuzzles into her arm at the same time Kyle feels The Child on his back. Kyle reaches up, holding The Child steady, seeing the apple for Mia held out to her. “Here’s Bill. Billy the Kid,” Kyle says and the goat ‘bleats’ at Mia and nuzzles more.

The Child kisses the top of Kyle’s head, lips dry and perfect and smooth, a funny peach-fuzzy warmth where its mouth was and it drops down to Mia, crouching. Its knees bunch up the dress—but the apples don’t fall—and its hand reaches out, touching the top of Mia’s head. Patting a child’s open handed pat, even as it looks up at the goat and laughs again, soundlessly.

Mia furrows her eyebrows as tears fall and scrunches her face but she opens her eyes and lifts her head just slightly looking up from behind her knees and gazes first at the goat then at… the little kid, the child-kid not the goat-kid and holds her hand up taking the apple from her blinking a few times in confusion to try to stop the tears from stinging her eyes.

The Child seizes up like its being tickled, delighted when Mia looks up and spasms, legs and legs twitching as it runs, away—far enough to wave at Kyle and Mia—before it runs back down, arms and legs akimbo, half flying, tow-head flashing, golden, strawberry gold, spun romance and summer mornings, tongue stuck out from between its lips as it arrives to the porch.

Dickiebird writhes and pushes at the hand on his throat. Every movement of his away brings her closer, holding onto him, and she’s almost straddling him and oh god no, not again! But it’s always again and again and again and again and he told her no and again and a marriage license and again and again and he should let her, it’s not like he ever stopped her and he could have stopped her, but he never did because you wanted it, silly boy, you always have, but he doesn’t, he doesn’t, he doesn’t… “I don’t, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t want your tea!” He rears up and shoves against her chest, trying to dislodge her hand from his throat. Beth laughs again, pushing back and squeezing tighter. “Your jaws are too weak,” she spits at him, eyes narrow. “Poor little creature.”

Dickiebird grits his teeth and growls, a hand coming up to claw at her throat, at her face, at her eyes, eyes, I’ll tear out your eyes! Beth bites at his fingers, grin wide. “Claws that catch, jaws that bite. Oh, I shall be late,” she says, hand tightening on his neck as she catches a finger between her teeth, biting down hard and letting go.

Mar’i falls backwards again, the apple falling from her mouth, the skin unbruised, her teeth and jaw failing in their task. It rolls down to the crook of her neck, where a man’s thick hands have bruised the skin, fingerprints beside kissmarks. She closes her eyes again, sighing softly.

Kyle stares after The Child for a moment, his eyes wide. He murmurs to its skipping back: “È il tuo nome Zatara?” Kyle doesn’t expect a response, but he’s wondrous anyway when he turns to look back at Mia. “Does the apple have a name on the ribbon?” Kyle asks her, still kneeling about an arm’s length away. Mia holds the apple up out of Bill’s reach when she tries to nip at it then looks at it blinking. It takes her a while to collect herself enough to actually see what she’s looking at, the apple and ribbon holding it out for Kyle to read. “Caroline…” She says slowly then realizes Kyle doesn’t know who that is and amends “My moms name…” She says still out of breath and her hand still shaking. Kyle smiles, relaxing his shoulders a bit. He looks over to the far bungalow, the one that he feels Dick and Kate Kane are in. But The Child is out of his sight, and so Kyle assumes it is there, with them. Safe. He looks back at Mia, reaching out to scratch Bill on her little hinds. “It’s safe to eat, I think. I think…I think they’re gifts. Queen got one too, and Mar’i.”

The Child stops dead at the stairs and looks at them, folding its arms and concentrating before it gets to hands and knees and climbs up the stairs, scrambling up and into the room where Beth—no, Kate!—and Dick are. It stops in front of them, panting, and smiling, the sun cutting in through the bungalow window. Dickiebird snarls and flails, both hands over her face, scratching and clawing, scraping into the soft skin, and suddenly there’s a child—a child —next to them and it’s watching them kill each other and somehow that’s more wrong than anything else. He hooks a heel into the floor and brings up his leg, shoving Beth off of him hard. Beth lands hard on her back, everything slipping out of focus for a second before she sees the little girl. “There’s another little girl in the garden somewhere.”

The Child sits on the ground with a parachuting of white material—under the dress, a pair of white frilled bottoms—and the thunking of more fruit: it pulls the next apple out and holds it out to Dick, McIntosh red and huge, the twine around the stem holding a small flag and a effervescent script, the y looping and ending in a heart: Mary.

The Child looks up at Beth and then down in its pockets, reaching in and pulling out, two identical apples. It looks at both before placing one in its lap. It turns its eyes up, to Beth, shaking its head, holding up the apple so she sees: Gabrielle. Neat and printed, the child holds it out, but does not give it to Beth.

Beth peers at the apple, leaning back. “What’s your name, child?”

Dickiebird flops away from Kate and whines, edging closer to the child. He doesn’t recognize it, but he knows, he knows her and even though he knows he takes the apple anyway, because that’s his mom’s name and his mom’s face speaking to him from a machine would have wanted him to. He holds it to his chest, close to his heart, and staggers to his feet, stumbling toward the door.

The Child grins up at Beth, a gap-toothed smile, before rising to its feet. It takes the other apple and tucks it behind its back, holding the other out and up, towards Beth, eyebrows rising high. It shakes his head, curls bouncing and rises on dirty tip-toe, holding it out and up. Beth narrows her eyes a little, snatching at the apple.

Mia pulls the apple back in towards herself and leans backward until she over balances and her butt lands on the gravel shifting into a pretzel position but she holds the apple to her chest and looks at Kyle. “Did you get one? Did you eat it?” She asks eyeing him for a moment letting bill chew on the edges of her jacket again.

Kyle is about to answer in the affirmative when he frowns. “No…” He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls it out, looking at it. Kyle matter-of-factly shows her the ribbon, which says ‘Maura’ on it. “That’s my mom, I —oops.” Kyle sits cross-legged too, distracted by the skin of the apple. It was originally perfect and round and shiny red, but there is a bruise on one side and a split on the other, where it must have been hit or kicked by Bill or crushed by Kyle inadvertently. The ribbon itself is all folded up as well, crumpled as it was jostled in his pocket and forgotten until now. Kyle runs his fingers along the beaten-up fruit and smiles crookedly up at Mia. “On three, we bite? Then on the third, we ride for Gondor?” Mia thinks about this looking at her apple not sure if she wants to eat it. Not because she’s worried but because… it’s her moms. Or well… something like that. But she nods her head once holding her apple out like she’s doing a ‘cheers’ “And war.” She adds and tilts her head towards Kyle. “You want to count this time?”

The Child ‘s eyes flash and when it speaks, Jacob’s voice is firm, the child’s chubby fingers closing around the apple, pulling it back: “..that isn’t yours, and you know that.” Beth snarls, pushing at the child. “They were mine before.”

Dickiebird staggers out of the bungalow, unaware of his surroundings or his nakedness. He’s just walking somewhere, anywhere, somewhere he can get clean, where he can wash away what he’s done, what’s been done to him, the apple still clutched tight against his chest. The pool looms shiny and promising ahead of him. To where he was born shall he return and be clean in spirit and body. Yes, he must be clean. Bruce will never take him back like this. He must be clean.

"Uno…dos…tres—" Kyle partially finishes the word when he blows the ribbon aside and takes a bite from the top, crunching deep into it and tearing off a large chunk. It’s gritty and warm, sandy and dry under his teeth. He scrapes the flesh off the skin and swallows it down hard, chewing on the bitter tangy skin, because it’s the nicer part. Kyle’s half-on GL uniform slides off him as he chews, and he stares at Mia in consternation. Kyle doesn’t notices the shift in his clothes, as it’s replaced once more by the trousers and shoes of his black tuxedo suit. "How is it?"

Mia bites into her small hard apple chewing it. It takes her a while to do so and it scratches her throat a bit as she swallows and continues eating. It’s not juicy like most apples people eat plane are and she’s pretty sure it’s the type that people usually cook with, but she doesn’t really mind much. She swallows her mouth full and shrugs her shoulders, “It’s nice. How is yours?”

"It’s okay," Kyle says, but he continues to eat it, scraping the flesh off and eating it down to the core, even the bruised parts. What else can he do? Maura would expect him to finish it. He grins wryly at Mia. "Don’t you hate apples, by the way? That little kid…" Kyle looks over his shoulder the way The Child ran off. "What a little smartass." Mia holds her hand up to her mouth when Kyle mentions her hating apples, "I forgot about that." She says looking at the apple which doesn’t seem to have any worms in it or anything. She doesn’t have her bag with her, which she has a arrow in there she could have used to cut the apple. But she finishes it, albiet extremely carefully.

Kyle watches her fondly and he finishes his apple. He’s not sure what to do with the core, so he puts it in his pocket, along with the ribbon. Tossing it into the tall grass seems like it’d be wrong. “How do you feel?” Mia holds her finished apple in her hands in her lap looking down at it her eyes staying on the ribbon tied around the stem and shrugging her shoulders. “I feel okay, I guess.” She says her mouth quirking unsurely. She lifts her head looking up at Kyle, “What was with your clothes?”

Dickiebird rocks slowly at the edge of the pool, staring down at the clear water as it ripples in the light breeze. His hand with the apple lowers, falling to his side so he can see himself. The image of the apple is distorted, but his body is not, reflecting perfectly all the hideous things he is. Scarred and bruised and soaking, disgraceful, disgracing his mentor, his father, his Bruce. “Hnnn….” The mere thought of the name is enough for that sickening rush of pleasure, for that taste at the back of his throat to rise up and fill his senses. He sobs, biting his lip in anguish as his reflection mirrors him, biting back a moan of pleasure as it remembers and its erection slowly grows. And grows and grows and grows and with a strangled groan, Dick closes his eyes and falls into the pool. The apple bobs up to the surface, ribbon waving in the breeze.

Kyle nods. He isn’t in the mood to talk about his mother either. Mothers and fathers - always hot topics among their entire crew in all sorts of weird, wonderful and horrible ways. He looks down at his suit. “What? It’s still the—” And then the sun drops from the sky, and Kyle scrambles up to his knees. He can hear Bill bleating plaintively and reaches out, touching Mia’s knee. “Mia?” Kyle crawls closer to her on his knees, staring up at the sky, using the swirls of light from the fissure to focus and see her dim outline. “Christ, who the hell is holding us all up? Get on it, Zatara bambino!” Mia shifts away from Kyle when he touches her knee but she doesn’t move when he moves closer to her, because she’s looking up at the sky as well. Then she turns back to Kyle blinking when he speaks. “What are you talking about?”

Oliver licks mud and blood and the last lingering lily taste of the apple from his deft fingers, half in a daze when he hears the splash from the pool. “The rats are back,” he says before his mind clears from its pleasure haze, and he realizes it was a /big/ splash, a PERSON-sized splash. He’s moving towards the pool before he finishes thinking it, the last bits of apple dopamine sweeping from his mind as he runs, long-legged, and dives clean into the water without stopping.

The water turns him over onto his back as he sinks to the bottom of the pool and lays him out like a corpse or a sleeping prince. The apple bobs over his chest on the disturbed surface, floating over his heart. His eyes are shut. Everything is silent to him.

Oliver swims to the bottom of the pool, to Dick spread out there, naked and unmoving except for his his fingertips, his cock, his wild mess of blue-black hair. Ollie moves over him, his body blotting out the shadow of the apple marking out the space of Dick’s heart, and wrangles the limp arms over his own. His toes scrape the bottom of the pool and he pushes up, his wet clothes and the weight of Dick dragging, and it seems like the bright shimmer of the water’s surface is too far and his lungs are starting to pound and then — then they break into air with a splash that sounds like triumph. Ollie leans onto his back in the water, legs moving to keep them aloft, and with Dick’s too-still face nestled against his chest he kicks slowly to the edge of the pool. Breath returns to Dick’s body when they hit the surface, but not life, and he rests heavily on Ollie as they swim for the shore. The apple follows them, moving against the water being shoved at it as Ollie swims, following them to the edge where it waits.

Kyle looks down at her, his focus pinging onto the glint from the fissure lights onto her eyes. It’s a green tint, and it’s somewhat beautiful. Everything is muted purples and blues - Mia, the little goat, the ground. It’s all beautiful. He smiles warmly at her, settling close for the sake of proximity in the darkness. “That child with the apples. I think Zatanna sent him.” He’s speculating wildly, he knows he knows that - but he just likes thinking it. Especially with the world awash in dark cool hues. Kyle hears a scream from the bungalow he supposes Kate Kane is still in, the shattering of glass; but he doesn’t move from his spot on the path, beside Mia. “She’s playing tricks on them.”

Mia stares at Kyle like he’s crazy, but then this whole place is crazy so she isn’t sure that crazy equals wrong. Instead she looks around at the sounds coming from the camp and turns back to Kyle frowning a little bit. “I honestly have no idea what to say to that.” She says shaking her head. “Should we go back to the camp… Or… I don’t know. I want to stay here. You can go though if you want. See what is going on with the weird kid…”

Oliver hauls Dick out and he’s silent, grim, workmanlike about it. No yelling or dramatics, just one palm to Dick’s forehead to tip his head back, blow air into his mouth, check his pulse, repeat. Ollie notices the apple and scoops it out of the water, setting it in the slight concave dip below Dick’s ribcage. Dickiebird coughs the instant the apple touches his skin, his eyes snapping open. He turns his head to the side and cough deeply, coughing up a thin, milky fluid, but no water. He takes a rattling breath and looks up at Ollie, eyes bleary. “I… I let him….” His hand comes up to the apple as his eyes flutter shut again, his breathing evening out.

Oliver frowns at the milky substance that Dick coughs up, lowering his mouth to Dick’s slack one as he subsides, puffing one more experimental breath to see if he can get any of the pool water that Dick’s surely got in his lungs to come up. But instead, Ollie pulls away from Dick’s lips like they’ve seared his, a string of the pearly liquid stretching and snapping. He scrubs his mouth with the back of his hand, over and over, but the taste of Bruce just gets stronger.

The Child moves towards Ollie and Dick, little feet barely touching the ground as it skips, and stops near them both. It looks at Ollie, then down at the apple on Dick’s chest. It reaches for it, and holds it out to Ollie, smile fluttering across its mouth. It looks back down at Dick. Oliver blinks at the child and takes the apple, biting off a small piece of it. He lays the piece out in his palm and looks back at the child. Something about her (it’s a “her” to Ollie, he doesn’t even question it) calms the burr of alarm in his belly, and he places the chip of red apple between Dick’s lips. Ollie’s gaze darts between the two, Dick and the child, as he licks around his own mouth; he doesn’t taste apple at all, just Bruce, filling every crevice between teeth and tongue and cheek.

Damian Wayne moves behind Queen with rapid steps, his pace jarring him as he focuses on what’s visible of Grayson around the archer’s back: his loose, dark hair, one limp arm sprawled aside. “Was he drowning?” he asks as Queen seems to perform CPR, but his eyes narrow in thought as he studies the fluid leaking from Grayson’s mouth. Not water, and Damian has witnessed enough atrocities in his life to construct a hypothesis as to its composition, though he can’t develop any regarding the source. He lowers near Grayson’s side when the child approaches, when Queen inexplicably feeds Grayson an apple. “State your business,” Damian growls as he springs from his crouch and closes in on the child, certain it’s connected somehow to Grayson’s current state.

"He was drowning," Ollie repeats in confirmation, then as Damian approaches the Child, he snaps, "Get me one of those pool towels to cover him with." He points at the small stack of towels on one of the lounge chairs. If there’s anything that might distract Damian from interrogation, it’s the desire to cover Dick’s nakedness. The Child crouches over, and gently gripping Dick’s jaw with both chubby child hands, moves it, so he chews, the juice trickling down his throat. The milkiness of the man’s mouth disappears from his lips, out of his lungs, spider-silk fluid that The Child draws up, fingers fluttering, and with an exultant hop, casts up and into the sky, burning it with the sun that returns, over a cloud. It turns to cloud, dark and low.

Steph balances a laundry basket stacked high with clean clothes on her hip and begins dropping off everybody’s things at each bungalow, leaving them on the porch. She buries her nose in a clean shirt and inhales deeply, taking in the scent of lavender and night air, feeling a surreal calmness wash over her. And then she’s not smelling a random t-shirt anymore, but golden almond skin, still sticky with sweat from gleeful exertion and an undertone of acidic sea salt from racing over oceans. She can almost make out a crisp picture of her laughing in her head and it makes her heart swell with affection. Hearing some commotion she recognizes as Damian’s voice, however, she comes back to the here and now.

Damian Wayne ignores the order from Queen, watching the child attend Grayson instead with rapt attention, with barely contained fury bright like lightning in his storm-cloud eyes, heralding an inevitable tempest. The Child blows at the cloud, childishly, and claps its hands over its mouth before looking to Damian, and reaching into a pocket. It retrieves an apple, stout and short, green and red, browned over by sun, a crab-apple, no doubt, and there is no note; a length of twine, tied around the base. Oliver watches this new transaction, poised to intercede should Damian attack the Child. Who no doubt can take care of itself, but still.

Steph brings the basket with her and speed walks over to Damian by the pool. And Ollie. Making out with Dick-? Oh, no, just CPR, that’s cool, too. And some strange new kid. “Uhhh, you guys okay?” she asks, not sure what to do with the group before her. Oliver unfurls up from his crouch over Dick and goes to wind his arm around Steph, kissing the top of her head. “Just hang back for a bit, sunshine,” he murmurs to her, still keeping an eye on the children. “There might be an apple in it for you, too.” Steph inclines her head towards Ollie, lowering her voice to match his. “What are you talking about? We’ve got apples now?” she asked, suddenly having a craving for one of Ma Kent’s apple pies. “Who’s the child of the corn of there?”

Damian Wayne ‘s gaze flickers to the apple for only a moment. He prefers grapes, and this fruit holds no sway over him. He cuts his hand across the air and shakes his head to indicate his intention to decline. “You mean to just let some unknown mute child walk freely among the camp when people are missing and have been maimed?” He shoots an accusatory look at Queen, then Brown in turn.

"I, uh … that’s open for debate right at the moment," Ollie tells Steph, then looks at Damian. "Damian. Are you SURE there’s not anything about that apple that seems familiar? Maybe like … a symbol, or a secret sign meant just for you?" Damian makes a derisive sound and turns, striding purposefully away from the apple, the Child, and anything else so clearly meant to tempt him.

Steph gives a small wave to the weird little cute kid and hands Ollie the t-shirt she’d just been a heartbeat away from making out with. “Uh, laundry’s done,” she says, if only for something to say. Something was making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. The Child turns to look at Stephanie, and when it does, its eyes grow wide, a grin splitting its face and it runs to her, hands in its pockets, and stops, holding out apples, little ones, fresh and bright and redder than a sunset, glistening with dew, and they spill out of its hands, over the ground, until it gets to one, one enormous, large apple, a wide swath of pastel ribbon tied around the width of it, and over, the bow perfect at the stem.

Oliver quietly takes the laundry basket from Steph so she can deal with her apple. He goes to Dick, in fact, and bundles him up in a sheet from the basket, carrying him to one of the lounge chairs to lie him down. The Child looks up at Stephanie with a wide, wide eyed smile, hands clasped under its chin, watching her.

Steph flinches when the child suddenly runs to her, but sees it probably doesn’t mean any harm. Probably. She squats down and stares at the apple for a beat and takes it gingerly. She meet’s the child’s eyes and gives it a polite smile. “Is this for me?” she asks dumbly. “Thank you. It’s very pretty, honey.” Steph marvels at how true a red the apple is and runs her pinkie over the pastel ribbon. She smiles for real at the child and takes a bite of it, juicy and sweet with a satisfyingly crisp /crunching/ sound. “Mmm. You’ve got good taste. Thank you.”

Oliver trots back, curious. “Was there a name on yours?” he inquires, pointing at the ribbon. “On your apple ribbon. A name.”

The Child moves forward when she squats, and wraps its arms around her neck, tightly, burying its small face in her hair. Its voice is a soothing sea-whisper of comfort, joy, and hope and it whispers, into the curved shell of Stephanie’s ear, in a wordless voice: ..she’s happy because you gave her hope. The Child pulls back, bringing its soft, chubby fingers to Stephanie’s face, tracing the curve of her cheeks, looking into her eyes, so she knows. So she knows.

Steph hugs the sweet little child back, rubbing a hand up and down her back in a soothing manner the way her own mother used to do to her. She freezes as it speaks to her, though, voice ethereal and surreal. She pulls back in confusion, letting the child touch her face as she looks down to examine the ribbon. ” Jellybean, ” she reads aloud and stops breathing as she meets the child’s eyes again. It knows. It knows what she knows and knows that it knows she knows. It knows that she knows that it knows about her nickname for her unborn baby. Everything stops and she’s clutching the apple so hard juice is spilling over her fingers. She squeezes her eyes shut, never letting herself cry over this one thing. “Thank you,” she whispers earnestly in a raw voice and starts to walk off mechanically, limbs shaking.

Oliver watches Steph leave, her knees locked, giving her almost a Tin Man gait that would be sweet if Steph didn’t seem so overcome. He holds out his arms to the Child, reaching down to pick it up. “I feel like I know you,” Ollie murmurs. That silver ribbon with his mother’s name on it is unfurling inside him, warm, protective.

Bruce emerges from the bungalow he had converted into a containment unit, sweat staining his shirt at his sternum, the length of his spine. He looks around the nearly-empty camp, then at the sun and its position. He spots Stephanie, walking away, and then Oliver, holding— Bruce stops still where he is.

Oliver jiggles the Child a bit, then looks over at Bruce as if he’d known the other man would be there. He smiles, hoisting the Child more securely in his arm, and tips his chin to beckon Bruce over. The Child goes into Ollie’s arms, easily, legs extended down and dirty feet pushing against the man’s hips, fitting into his arms with familiarity, ease. It presses a tiny hand against the archer’s sternum, where the ribbon has gone, looking up into his face. It turns its head when it feels Bruce’s eyes, curls sprinkling across Oliver’s face. “I hope you have an apple for him, little chestnut,” Ollie tells the child. “He needs one too. A lot.”

Bruce doesn’t move. His expression remains curiously, impossibly.. impassive. Unmoving. He stares at the Child in Oliver’s arms. He does not move. Oliver continues talking to himself. “I suppose we’re gonna have to go see him ourselves, hmm?” He walks over to Bruce, the Child still comfortably nestled in his arms. “Bruce. What’s wrong?” The Child pushes its hands against Oliver’s cheeks, planting a kiss against his mouth—butterfly wings and the sweetness of fruit—- before turning in his grasp, universally child-like request: I would like to go down, please. Oliver obeys, stooping to set the Child down. His fingers linger in its tousled, sunny curls, though, as he protests, “…but Bruce needs an apple, he really does.”

The Child looks up at the dark man, its hand pushing into the pockets of its dress, baptismal white, but the edges of the skirt are no longer heavy, no longer weighed down by fruit. Its hands come up empty, tiny face turning up, more than four feet shorter. Heart-shaped, moon-faced, its eyes turn down and then up.

Oliver starts to get somewhat anxious over this, heart thrumming. “There should be one,” he tells Bruce, haplessly, looking the Child over. “There should be one for you, too, honey. Why isn’t there one?” Bruce sinks, slowly, to his knees, in front of the child, his face wrinkling at the brow. His knees hit the dirt, barely aware of the rocks that jam into the hardened scars over them, under his pants. He slides his hands against the material, palms sliding up, and Bruce swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. His brow knits, dark and heavy.

The Child looks up at Ollie, and then back at Bruce, down at his hands. It reaches down, and sits, mirroring the man’s stance, crouching, the edges of the dress dirtying, nearly instant. Chubby fingers curl around the man’s thumb. Oliver just about holds his breath. His fingers twitch, wanting to stroke Bruce’s hair, but he doesn’t. Bruce swallows, and rasps, his voice just barely above a whisper: “You took me to her.” Bruce looks down at the Child’s hand, wrapped around his thumb, back up to its face, genderless, gap-toothed.

Oliver remembers to breathe, because Bruce can only be talking about one thing, one her, right now. “To Kate…” The Child looks up at the standing man and laughs, silently, but it is a delighted expression as it leans forward, the dirt spreading across the whiteness of the petticoat, the skirt. It looks up at Bruce’s face, peering at it carefully. Bruce loses his breath as Ollie remembers his, his face twisted and pressed into discomfort, uncomprehending, disoriented. Confused.

The Child rises, still holding the man’s hand, and leans over, kissing the knots and wrinkles, the pain etched into skin and flesh, peach-fuzz and butterfly wings, sea-foam and the warmth of sun on hardwood floors. It brushes over, and under, unaware of the fear it should have of him. Oliver does stroke Bruce’s hair then, fingers sinking into the slightly damp dark thickness of it. “The Child helped you find Kate. It’s a good creature, Bruce. There’s the bad ones and there’s the good ones. Balance and slow motion.” Ollie smiles down at the Child as it fusses and kisses at Bruce’s hand.

Bruce shuts his eyes, clenches them, and nearly flinches at what it does, hands tightening, over its hand, his index finger curling against the Child’s forearm, checking for a pulse before it merely smoothes against its skin, callouses scraping against the softness of its wrist. His eyes remain shut. The Child pulls back, extricating its fingers from Bruce’s hold, and turns to flee, tiny feet pounding the dirt. It doesn’t stop until it reaches a patch of high grass, and turns to look back at them, grinning its gap-toothed smile.

Oliver raises his other hand to wave good-bye at it, a juvenile sort of closed-fist opened-fist wave, starfishing his fingers. “An apple would have been nice,” he decides, “but Kate is way better.” Bruce opens his eyes slowly, the rim of the lids damp, and looks up at Ollie, then down, following the sound her footfalls had made to the place she stands. She. She.

Oliver frowns. “She reminds me of somebody, but I don’t know who.”

The Child chirps its birdlike chirp at them, and shifts away, the sound of laughter finally drifting once its presence is gone: joyous. Happy. Hopeful. Bruce rubs at his face, at his eyes in particular, before he inhales, noisily, and rises. He dusts his knees, almost aggravated, as if he didn’t understand how it had come to be his pants had gotten dirty. Oliver licks his lips and still tastes Bruce there. He decides this isn’t anything they need to talk about just yet, and instead suggests, “Why don’t we move Dick inside to somewhere less exposed.”

Bruce frowns and opens his mouth to speak. When the words don’t come, he swallows, clearing his throat and pushing the thickness of speech away, and.. decides not to ask. He nods, and follows Ollie to the poolside where Dick lays. He gathers the boy up in his arms, and moves him, back to the medical bungalow. Once there, he finally speaks: “..what happened?”

Oliver makes sure the bed is clear for Bruce to lay Dick down and shakes his head. “Not sure. I found him in the pool. There was the earthquake and … some stuff happened with Mar’i and Kyle and then we were all getting our apples and then I found Dick in the pool. He seems better, though. He had an apple too.” Ollie looks down at Dick, his untainted mouth, and compulsively licks his own lips again. Bruce moves to the other side of the bed and places her down, pulling the sheet over both of them. “..I didn’t hear anything.”

Oliver waits until Bruce has ascertained that Kane is all right and gotten her settled before he confesses in a blurt, “When I gave Dick mouth-to-mouth, he didn’t have any water inside him, Bruce. His mouth tasted like you. Like your come. That’s what he coughed up.”

Bruce goes absolutely, positively rigid. Oliver hastily adds, “I know you didn’t do anything! There was that other voice, that demon voice … that’s what was making everything crazy before the Child and her apples.”

Bruce looks down at Kate, unable to bring himself to look anywhere else. He breathes, evenly, his expression smooth. Oliver continues, quietly. “I know. It’s an ugly, horrible thought. But you’re not at fault, even if it used your guise, or conjured up some kind of demonic issue to mimic you. I don’t know what exactly happened with Dick, but I figured I should tell you before he regains consciousness.”

Bruce exhales: “It keeps trying, Oliver.”

"It keeps trying to … to what? Sexualize our relationships with our kids? Or fuck with us any way that it can?"

Bruce looks over at the other man, and his voice contains no edge of fury, of malice. It is almost quiet in its resignation. “To break me.” Oliver moves over to Bruce, embracing him tightly. “It won’t, though,” he murmurs, against the shell of Bruce’s ear, tight against his skull and slightly winged back at the tip. Ollie kisses him there. “Nothing can break you, Bruce. Or the Batman for that matter. Bigger badder things than this place have tried and failed, haven’t they.”

Bruce exhales, roughly, at the feeling of Ollie’s arms around his waist, and he pulls him deeper into his body, until they are near-blending into each other. He does not speak on the matter, chewing the issue to shreds, swallowing the Darkness. Because He can. Because He will. He turns and presses his face into Ollie’s cheek, speaking out loud: “..she took me to Kate that night. I followed her to the shore.”

"Yes." He lets that hang in the air for a while without embellishment, then says, "It’s good that there’s entities like her here. It’s good that we have hope, once in a while. In-between the things trying to break us." Ollie realizes, belatedly, that his lake-mud earplugs must have worked themselves free in the pool; a warm trickle of thinly muddy water breaks in his ear and he slaps at it, wiping it away. "Christ, everything here is so fucking messed up. I feel like I’m in some kind of Arkham-style petrie dish."

"You stay with me." Bruce looks down at Oliver, his gaze hard, leaving no room for argument. Oliver looks back at him, mouth quirked. "I still don’t know why you think I’d argue about this," he says dryly. "Am I really that ornery?"

"Yes."

"Hrmph. Fair enough." He kisses Bruce’s mouth. "I’ll stay with you. Now, a week from now, a forever from now. Whenever you ask and even when you don’t." Bruce regards him for a moment more before being satisfied and releasing him. He looks outside, where the sun is setting. "I’m taking early patrol."

Oliver snorts. “So this ‘stay with me’ edict, that’s a one-way thing, then,” he notes. “Unless you think I’ve suddenly gained the ability to become pocket-sized.” Ollie waves his hand, grinning. “Yes, fine. Take early patrol. But if you have time before that, come sit with me somewhere quiet and let me re-learn what your face feels like under my fingertips, honey.”

Bruce turns and kisses his mouth, before shifting around him, and out of the door, to the other bedroom to secure his weapons. Oliver presses his lips together, sealing the kiss into his mouth, and leaves the medical bungalow to go back to #2. He curls in bed with Kate, and she shifts against his body, and they both leave room for when Bruce comes back from early patrol.