scoured clean and raw

[bossymarmalade]

Bruce returns to camp with a large stag, dragging it in by its antlers. He is dressed in his grey-violet Raven scrubs, boots, and carries no visible weapons. He pulls the animal to the shed. Bruce exits the shed after a long while, covered up to his upper arms in blood, his shirt stained, looking very much like he murdered someone. He slips into the Longhouse kitchen, washing his hands of the excess, before securing a large pot.

Clark Kent halts for a beat when he enters the kitchen and spots the dark blood coating Bruce’s clothes, and then he’s rushing to meet him, half-turning the other man by his shoulders until they’re facing each other. “Bruce! What happened? Are you hurt?” He nudges him toward the table, trying to seat him in one of the chairs and check him over for injury. Bruce actually smiles at the other man, shaking his head. He pushes the edge of the pot against Clark’s ribcage, looking out at the exit to the Longhouse. “Fine. Brought down a stag.”

Clark Kent backs up a pace as the pot forces some distance between them, and he smiles in return when he understands. “A stag!” he exclaims, his exuberance more a result of his being relieved that no one’s been maimed today than the successful hunt. “That’ll provide meat for quite some time if we use it wisely. What’d you use to take it down? One of the bows?’ Bruce shakes his head, turning his forehead to draw some of the sweat from his brow onto his shoulder, adjusting the enormous pot in his hands. “Kitchen knife.”

Clark Kent hums, “O-ohhh,” the noise bright at first but staggering off into a note of dull dismay. He tries not to think of Bruce chasing down a buck on foot and tackling it with a slashing steak knife in hand. “Well, then.” He claps his hands together and looks around the kitchen, a bowl of potatoes stored on the counter near the stove, a few tin jars of dried spices clustered by the sink. They were faring well on food, all things considered. “You have a secret venison recipe you’ve picked up from Alfred over the years?”

Bruce looks over at Clark when the burr of noise leaves his throat, and he laughs, a noise akin to thunder, rumbling through the wide expanse of his chest. He shakes his head, reassuring him: “It was a clean death, it didn’t suffer.” Bringing his gaze to where Clark is looking, at the potatoes, the spices, and the mention of Alfred makes him shift. “No,” he states, bluntly, looking towards the Recreation room. “I’m going to dry as much of it as I can for the expeditions.”

Clark Kent inhales sharply, head bobbing in a slow nod as the breath hisses out between closed lips. “Yes— yes, that’s a good idea.” His eyes naturally shift toward the window, looking for something beyond it that he still hasn’t found. “There may be more ground to cover than we’ve anticipated.”

Oliver comes into the longhouse kitchen, wiping purple juice from his mouth with the inside of his wrist. “What ho,” he greets the other two, eyeing Bruce’s blood-spattered shirt. “Been busy, B?” Bruce replies without looking at Oliver. “Mosquitoes.” He’s in a good mood. Bruce glances to Clark, speaking to both of them. “I plan to head beyond the Persian tomorrow.”

"And I imagine you’ve already got an idea of who you wanna include in your scouting party?"

Bruce ‘s tone is flat, but somewhat amused. “Whoever wanders into the Longhouse.”



Clark Kent smiles again when Ollie joins them in the kitchen. “Hi, Ollie. No stag can outrun the Batman, it seems.” He turns back to Bruce with renewed interest. “To the northwest, like you’d mentioned at the meeting? I’ll go with you,” he says firmly. Not a request, not with Zee missing.

Oliver snorts at Clark’s comment. “I betcha he just spooked the deer into a heart attack,” he remarks, making wiggly spooky fingers in Bruce’s direction. “I’ll come on the jaunt too. I could use a leg-stretching.”

Bruce pulls his mouth down at the edges. He exhales roughly. “It’d be better if you stayed in camp.” Oliver halts in selecting a pear from the fruit basket. “Me or him,” he asks. It sounds like he already knows the answer.

Clark Kent holds his hand up in front of his chest. “I’m trying to find my wife. Otherwise, I’d be glad to let you both go on ahead.”

Bruce ignores Clark, looking to Ollie. “Him,” he states, easily.

Oliver leaves off sorting through the fruit, looking from one to the other. “It’s okay, Clark,” he says. “I know what it’s like. I understand.”

Clark Kent has the grace to look somewhat apologetic as he grips Ollie’s forearm for a moment in gratitude. “I do think it’s good for one of us to stay in the camp. I don’t doubt everyone can take care of themselves, but we do have several people who are injured. How many days do you expect we’ll be gone?” he asks Bruce, eyes cutting back toward him.

"Two at the most." He sets the pot down, looking down at his arms, before shifting back to the sink, to wash the rest of it off.

"And you’ll be taking one of the walkies," Ollie says. "With regular check-ins and a back-up plan for contacting us should you get out’ve range or something fucked-up happens."

Kyle heads over to Mar’i and Roy and Lian’s bungalow, and sees Lian around the side, peering at him and giggling into her fists. He points at the door questioningly; and she nods, then shakes her head. Kyle pulls his arm in and waves the other around like he’s doing half the Robot; Lian giggles more and shakes her head, watching him with full attention and amusement now.

So Kyle mimes out a lot of hair and licks his lips, and Lian squeaks and nods enthusiastically, looking at the front door, which is slightly open. She presses a finger to her lips and Kyle nods and does the same. He knocks first at the ajar door, then enters. “Mar’i? Are you awake? Lian said you were here…” Kyle looks behind him and Lian’s peeking in, then she squeaks again (sounding like one of Mar’i’s little hiccup-laughs) and she scampers off to the Longhouse.

Mari is dreaming of beautiful technicolored fish swimming in the clear ocean, which is a silly dream for her to have since she doesn’t particularly enjoy swimming unless she’s latched onto someone else like a buoy or a backpack. She rolls over a little, revealing the slight bloodstain on her pillow—mostly the discharge from the wound, Roy had done a good job stopping the actual bleeding, one arm/hand be damned. Lian’s little giggle drifts into her mind and converts to the sound the fish are making, then Kyle’s voice breaks through, like a wave crashing and she reaches out, eyes still closed, tapping Roy’s side of the bed to get him to talk to him so she can have five more minutes, just five. Her hand only hits the bed, though, and she opens her eyes groggily. “Yehh, here..” she mutters, leaning up on her elbows uneasily.

Roy exits the washroom, throwing a shirt over his head, when he hears Kyle’s voice. He looks over at him, nodding his head at him. Kyle peeks in at winces in apology. “Ah - lo sientoooo, I just wanted to see how you’re doing.” He stays at the door; although obviously she’s awake now. The window is open for fresh air. That’s one thing about these stupid bungalows; shut up tight and they were airless hotboxes. There’s a dab of fresh bright blood on her pillow. He can’t see her hand from here, not from this angle. He notices movement in the hall and blinks in the relative darkness, but it’s just Roy. “Hey! Hey man. You guys doing okay?”

Roy moves over to Mar’i, pulling his shirt down the rest of the way, as he shifts over to the bedroom, getting the basin he had filled with water. He lifts the cloth, sitting down beside, behind Mar’i, cleaning at her head wound. Roy says nothing to Kyle.

"Hmm doing—?" she repeats dazedly, rolling herself over with a soft oomph, rising up in the bed as best she can, oversized men’s shirt she slept in wrinkled and disheveled underneath the old orange-and-white quilt. "Fine," she begins, voice beginning to clear itself a bit. Her hand reaches up, trying to target the source of her searing headache, pausing when it hits the scab embedded in her hair. "What the—?" She looks up at Kyle, then Roy, her body sinking into the archer’s as he slips behind her. "Fine, I’m fine," she repeats, but she rears around to look at Roy, then back at Kyle. "You okay?" she asks, and it’s clear she’s asking both of them since it’s the first time she’s been awake in a day and a half.

Bruce brings his gaze to Oliver, not exhaling, inhaling, moving from his position at the sink. His gaze his hard, calculating, the blue nearly glittering with how he recedes for a moment inside his mind. There is a reason, of course, for leaving Oliver, taking Clark, and there is nearly the faint glowing beginnings of a desire to explain. But, he doesn’t.

Clark Kent nods his compliance with Ollie’s plan for keeping in contact, and he folds his arms and hesitates before he speaks again. “Kyle’s ring was on Zee’s pillow when I woke up and found her missing.” He chews on the corner of his lip. “Maybe he should come with us, too.”

Bruce looks over at Clark when he says that, his mouth turning down at the corners. “Do you think that’s for the best?”

Oliver raises his eyebrows too. “Yeah, I mean — everybody’s a little lulu in this place, but Kyle’s kinda been the ultimate wild card so far. There’s no predicting him.” Bruce looks, for a moment, like he has something else to say, but doesn’t, looking back at the pot. He doesn’t realize that his silence is tell-tale, as he dries his hands with a kitchen towel.

Clark Kent extends his hands to either side, a gesture intended to convey his own mixed feelings about the suggestion, but one that also reflects his feeling of general helplessness. “He has been, yes. But maybe that’s what we’ll end up needing— there’s no predicting this place, the things we’ll run into. His ring opened the chasm in the sky. I think it’s important he comes with us. I think it’d be important to Zee that he did,” he adds quietly.

Kyle looks at how dazed she is and wonders about those things called concussions. But Kyle’s not really sure what they’re about, beyond stuff he’d seen in movies, stuff about not sleeping and bruised brains, urban legends about not waking up, and so forth. He scratches the back of his head, but all his own injuries from Queen’s shakedown are all gone, his HP is up to 100+, thanks to…well whatever that happened the day before. Anyway, she must be fine, Kyle decides - the Goddamn Batman is her grandfather and Roy’s here - so obviously they both know what they’re doing when it comes to the care and recovery of their Mar’i. His eyes flicker to Roy for a moment, but he responds to Mar’i. “I’m okay. It’s just - after what happened, I just wanted to see, how you were. You, ah, got the brunt of it and all.”

Roy pats a seat next to Mar’i, gesturing with his head. “She’s going fine. Come help me with with something.” He shifts on the bed, opening up space so Kyle can sit next to him, on the side he is missing his arm.

"Brunt of what?" Mar’i grumbles, wincing as Roy puts pressure on a bit of her cut. Her brow furrows, and she bites her lip, trying to remember what he’s talking about, what had happened. "My ribs are better," she says with a little too much chirp, like she’s trying to prove to both men she really is fine, but her hand absently traces up to her neck, where the mirror behind Kyle is reflecting the bruises on her skin. "Oh, that’s right," she mutters, then turns a bit to look at Roy, into his eyes. Does he recognize the handprint around her neck? That worries her. "What’re you guys doing back there?" she grumbles, shifting so her knees are tucked under her chin, toes curling and uncurling on the sheet.

Oliver glances at Bruce, who’s fastidiously drying his hands. Okay, no help coming from that quarter. Ollie sighs and rubs the back of his head. “Clark,” he says bluntly, “what’s the deal with Kyle and Zee, anyhow?”

Bruce looks over at Oliver when he speaks, the warning heavy in his tone. “Oliver.”

"Look, what’s the point of pussyfooting around anything here? If people wanna ask me probing questions, I think that’s their right. Secrets are only gonna hurt us in the long run." He shrugs, giving Clark a faintly apologetic look. "Not that I think you’re keeping secrets, per se. But I am confused about it all."

Kyle approaches, not really understanding the need to sit - it seems a little toopersonal and Kyle had rooted himself by the door so it wouldn’t be awkward for anyone. Being in the room and being seated means a few extra processes when it comes time for him to let them alone again. Still - there is no hesitation in coming over and easing down where Roy made room. Roy needs help with something; so Kyle will help. He’ll just sort out the rest later, once help has been accomplished. “Youch.” He says stupidly, getting a close-view of Mar’is injuries now. He looks over at Roy. “Okay, tell me what to do.”

Roy nods over to Mar’i’s head, grabbing some hydrogen peroxide and cotton balls. “I need you to hold it open so I can get some of the gravel out..” He holds the bottle, awkwardly in his hands, dropping it into his lap as he looks over at Kyle, then, at Mar’i. “..hold still, honey.”

Clark Kent shifts his weight from one foot the other, and back again. “I’m not sure, and I don’t think they are, either. They’re still figuring it out, and I’m okay with that,” he adds, making a placating gesture toward Bruce. “They’re important to each other, I can say that much. If whatever connection they have can help us find Zee and bring her back safely, I’m grateful for it.”

Bruce exhales, running his tongue over his teeth, a soft tt noise as he nods towards the exit. “We can have this conversation while you both assist me.” He moves from the kitchen, outside, and towards the garden shed.

Dickiebird finally gets up, after laying out by the pool most of the day, and heads toward the longhouse, freezing when he sees Bruce exit.

Oliver quirks his mouth at Clark and nods in Bruce’s direction, the “can you believe this guy” sentiment unspoken but clear. He follows out to the shed, continuing the line of discussion: “Then I guess your scouting party’s gonna be plus one looney tunes. Keep a close eye on him if you don’t want the entire thing going awry.”

Clark Kent ambles along after Bruce and waves at Dick when he spots him. “We can manage him,” he assures Ollie. “Hello, Dick! Come on over here. You can help with the stag.”

Dickiebird waves tentatively and cracks a small smile. “I thought you were married.” Clark Kent doesn’t fully understand this joke, but he laughs like he does. “Ahahaha, yes! I am, I am.” He claps the boy on the shoulder a few times.

Bruce opens the door to the shed, glancing back when Clark speaks to Dick: the stag is strung up by its hind legs, and the creature is enormous. The bucket with the remnants of blood trickles from the neat wound Bruce had made in the beasts neck, draining the blood from the body. Bruce has removed the pelt, the massive sheet of it laying raw-side down in the dirt. He moves the pot over to the work station, picking up a saw.

Oliver stares at the enormous heap of pelt. “Suppose that’ll be keeping me busy while you fellas are on your ramble,” he says. Dickiebird smiles at Clark, an only slightly dulled version of his normal smile, and cocks his head. “Ramble? Where you going?”

Bruce works like he knows exactly what he’s doing, the animal’s guts already in another bucket. Bruce gestures at it with his chin. “Intestines are over there.” He moves to the animal to begin cutting the sections of flesh, where they connect with sinew, connective tissue, dissecting them from the hanging corpse, easily.

Clark Kent gathers a long, serrated knife from the tool bench and sets to work on dismantling the smaller bits of the animal: the hooves, the tail, the ears, anything that protrudes from the main trunk. Butchering animals wasn’t a pleasant part of growing up on a farm, but it was part of it indeed, and he shows little sign of distaste as he cuts through skin and muscle.

Bruce moves with the best pieces of meat to the pot, pulling them off neatly, setting them down carefully. Back and forth, until it is full and he looks at Dick when it’s full, nodding to the large soup pot. “Take that back to the kitchen.” He adds, a moment later, his back turned to them as he continues to work. “For the children.”

Roy fumbles with the bottle once more before he sets it down, in between Kyle’s thighs, soaking a few of the cotton balls. Mari makes a little half-annoyed, half-whining noise in the back of her throat, wishing he had done this before she woke up, but then it hits her that he must’ve been the one to find her, to bring her back, and clean her up. She tucks her chin into her knees tightly, ignoring the slight ache of her throat as it touches her lower thighs. “Okay,” she murmurs, fluttering her eyes closed. “I trust you, baby.”

Kyle shifts a bit but stills immediately once Roy uses his as a brace for the bottle - because that shit is precious, man; also spilling on their bed would really suck - and he reaches up to Mar’is head, his fingers finding purchase against her uninjured (but still heavily bruised; he makes a note of this) scalp and keeping the wound open. “Yeah, there’s still some - some - hunh. So…” Kyle glances down and reads the bottle. “…hydrogen peroxide. It cleans wounds? It’s like - an antiseptic? Is it like witchhazel?” Kyle thinks of Steph’s magic potion.

Mari remains perfectly still but lets out a loud screech as Kyle’s fingers grasp onto her scalp. Mari can’t maintain the note long, and ends up giggling softly, tongue slipping out from between her teeth (not that the men can see it). “Juuuust kidding, just kidding, I’m fine,” she laughs.

Kyle makes a ‘tsss’ sound between his teeth. “Jesus - are you sure you don’t want me to grab Steph? Dick? Mia? Connor? Anyone else? Wide selection of skilled people out there. I’m crap at this first aid stuff, you guys.”

Roy reaches around and pinches the side of her breast, playfully, before allowing his fingers to brush over the nipple, bringing his hand back, to where the cotton balls are in Kyle’s lap. “Sit still.” He takes a wet one, a dry one, shifting to clean at the wound. “It kills a lot of bacteria, so I’m only using it now. Once.”

"Just hold it open. Roy knows what he’s doing," she answers.

"Dammit Mar’i! You really scared me ay dios mio! Unbelievable!" Kyle looks up at the ceiling and huffs like a bull, but his hands remain steady on her head. He mutters to himself, although not angrily.

Mari snickers a bit longer, the noise briefly shifting to a purr at Roy’s fingers, then back to a laugh. “Come on, Kyle, I’m an alien warrior princess,” she teases, “it’s the not first time someone’s tried to bash my skull in. Won’t be the last.” Roy chuckles, setting the dirty cotton the nightstand, moving his fingers back to Kyle’s lap to get a new cotton ball. His long, deft fingers brush the inside of the other man’s thighs, a handspan away from the apex of where they join to his body.

Oliver scowls, moving over to the gut bucket. “I get to stay home AND I get the dirty work?” he complains, poking the toe of his sneaker against the bucket. But he fetches himself some gloves nonetheless and fills a separate bucket with water and salt and vinegar, setting down to cleaning them. “Are you taking weapons?” he asks, and because with a double handful of slithering guts he feels he’s earned the right, specifies, “Guns?”

Dickiebird nods and grabs the pot, hesitating just a moment to look between them. “Did we find that one? The missing one?”

"Yes. No." He continues to work, the heat inside the shed making the sweat bead up against his skin. He glances to Clark, as he works, nodding to himself. "We’ll make a stop at the Soldier, arm ourselves." He pauses, adding after a beat. "No guns."

Clark Kent looks over to Bruce, and though he was hesitant to arm the camp at large, he sees the need for having defense for a small party on an expedition. “We should take something with us.” He’d been thinking of Kyle, of the ring but if Ollie were right and Kyle snapped again— “You don’t have to take one of the guns, but I might. We don’t know what we’ll run into out there,” he points out once more.

"I can handle one. I’ll take one." Dick glances at Bruce and scurries out to the longhouse to take in the meat.

Bruce points at the door as Dick leaves. “He’s not getting one.”

Satisfied for the time being, Ollie concentrates on his unpleasant task, occasionally leaving the shed to throw out the manure-laden water and fill up with fresh water. It doesn’t take long before he’s sweating too, the beads of it rolling off the tip of his long nose. “There’s flare guns. In case the walkies break down. Anybody else you might take, apart from our resident Green Loontern?” Clark Kent says nothing to Bruce and Dick’s disagreement, grinding down the hard plate of one of the hooves to break them apart and store them in a small aluminum tin as a means of occupying himself otherwise. “I think the three of us will be plenty.”

"How does that work, anyhow?" Ollie muses to the air. "You having the fatwa against handguns and Officer Grayson having to carry a sidearm."

"It doesn’t." He looks over at Ollie, actually making contact with his gaze, the heaviness of it a warning in and of itself, there. He looks over at Clark, and up to the deer. "The freezer should be large enough for us to store some of the meat without dehydrating it."

"Shyeahhhhh," he drawls, without any smartass retort; her giggles are making him smile, despite himself. "Say when you got your powers, d’you also have accelerated healing too? I noticed here that injuries sometimes heal fast or slow or - or - or, uh. Hm." Kyle stammers, subsides, and frowns, his face turning red although he’s not quite sure why. It’s Mar’i’s head injury, Kyle decides. It looks decidedly pink under all her dark purple-brown hair. "Man the bungalows are hot. The bunkhouse is cooler, for some reason."

Roy smirks: “Small windows.” He swipes at Mar’i’s head, a bit too roughly, bringing his fingers to pull a small stone from inside the wound. He exhales, low and rough, a warm sound: “Ah.. there.. hold still..” He shifts, pushing Kyle the tiniest bit closer to Mar’i as he moves his finger nails against the stone.

"Faster healing AND more durable. Which is why…" she pauses, biting her bottom lip and not quite swallowing a wince as Roy digs at the gravel. "Was that…those weren’t my powers, were they? They didn’t feel right, not like—."

Kyle watches closely; Roy’s hands are huge but his fingers are deft, definitely. And this level of field operating is one that Kyle finds strangely more palatable than hospital procedures. “Careful…” Kyle says needlessly. “Nearly got it…” His voice blows tufts of air against her air, as he leans in closer in anticipation. “They weren’t really my powers either, no. It was - it was the Starheart. Jade - ah - Jenny,” Kyle corrects himself quickly; since he knows ‘Jade’ holds different meanings for the other man in the room.

"Jen—ahh," Mar’i bites her lip harder, then breathes out through her nostrils. "What’d she look like?"

Dickiebird returns, nibbling on a slice of bread. “I covered the pot to keep any bugs out, but I thought someone else should prep the meat. I’m not exactly the best at food, especially when it’s raw.”

"You’re not getting a gun."

Oliver returns Bruce’s heavy look with a flat one of his own, but leaves it alone. For now. “Venison chili for all, then,” he says instead, then straight-out laughs when Bruce denies Dick a gun out of nowhere.

Clark Kent nods and fishes around in the supply bin until he finds some dry, clean wax paper. “I’ll wrap it first, try to keep the freezer burn from it as best we can with what we have.” He glances at Ollie, frowning at his laughter, then at Bruce and his son before continuing to separate sheets of parchment paper to use for the meat.

Roy makes another soft noise, and it’s lower, pleasurable as Kyle leans forward, closer to Mar’i. It’s a petty exhalation, not quite a full noise, the mention of Jade flying out of the window. Not when Kyle is this close, Roy notes. He continues to pull at the small stone, noting how firmly it is lodged in there. Roy murmurs, voice dropping, heated: “..Jenny was beautiful.”

”She didn’t look like Alan, that’s for sure,” Kyle joked, but it was clearly an old joke, one shared with others, from his past. “Mmm. She was green, green all over - hair, skin, eyes. Damn straight she was beautiful. Gorgeous smile. She was a model. Like you Mar’i. But she didn’t like the industry from the modeling side of things, ahaha. Jen always had A Lot of Opinions.” The way he says it capitalizes the words; but he sounds adoring, not wry. “Anyway. Why d’you wanna know?”

"Think I saw her," Mar’i answers, steeling herself against Kyle’s grip as Roy tugs at the stone again and again. "I couldn’t really see anything, but then I saw a woman with sort of," Mar’i’s arm comes up to indicate hair length, "green hair and intense eyes. I couldn’t see you, but I could see her behind you. Then the head-bashing and the…" She blinks, remembering something else. "Child…" she finishes.

Roy moves his hand back down to Kyle’s thighs, finds skating along the length of one, looking for the cotton balls as he pulls the rock out of Mar’i’s head with a soft noise of exultation, low in this throat. “..sounds like her..” His eyes, blue-green bright, flick to Kyle, at the side of him, a smile curling his mouth, handsomely. “Doesn’t it?” He brings his gaze to the other man’s mouth for a brief moment, looking for the signs of a smile.

"Oh, c’mon, Bruce," Ollie says, grinning, but it’s a touch feral. "Don’t punish the lad when he’s already stated his intent. He gets to make the decision for himself, dontcha think? Ollie ollie oxen free."

Dickiebird opens his mouth to protest, but nothing comes immediately. “Well… OK then… I just thought someone who knows how to use one should handle it….” He chews on his bread, quirking an eyebrow at Ollie in a ‘what’s his problem?’ way.

Clark Kent looks up at Dick, eyes softened with sympathy. “You do have much more experience with it than I do. Maybe you can give me a few pointers?” Dickiebird nods at Clark, a small smile flickering at a corner of his mouth. “Sure, Clark.”

Bruce brings his gaze to Ollie, his voice hardening to a diamond-edge: “If I want your opinion, Queen, I’ll ask you.”

Oliver laughs again, dropping the last of the cleaned intestines in their bucket with a splash and shaking his gloved hands, spraying droplets of salted water everywhere. “Nobody ever has to ask for my opinion! That’s one of the best things about living in a free country. Everybody’s entitled to my opinion.”

”We aren’t in a free country.”

"Then make me shut up."

Clark Kent binds a chunk of rib meat in the slick paper, folding it at the ends. “I’m always glad to hear your opinions, Ollie,” he says without looking up, and it’s very difficult to discern whether he’s sincere or half-kidding. Dickiebird looks between them, then back at Clark. After the last couple of days, any tension felt wrong. “So…where’re you guys planning to head off to?”

"Up north, beyond the Persian terminal. We haven’t scouted far past it yet."

Dickiebird nods. “Oh, I’ll come with you, then. The more the safer, right?”

Bruce stares at Oliver for a moment, before he goes back to taking the stag apart. He listens, falls silent as Clark and Dick speak. Clark Kent presses his lips and glances toward Bruce before he meets Dick’s eyes again. “I think it’d be better if you stay here at camp, Dick,” he says gently.

"Yeah, stay at camp with Uncle Ollie, Dickiebird." Ollie strips off his gloves, looking up at the laundry shelf, then takes down a bottle of bleach.

Dickiebird stares at Clark with wide, sad eyes, the kind of look more familiar on him when he was a young Robin and told to wait behind, a sort of lost hurt in his eyes. “But I want to—” He breaks off when Ollie speaks and glances at Bruce steadfastly working, the look shifting to a small pout. “Yeah, sure, I’ll… You’re probably right….” He looks away from them, fidgeting with the end of a coil of rope on a shelf.

Bruce pulls off a section of meat with his hands, bringing it over to the work table, glancing at Dick. “It’s proximity, Dick,” is all he says, any traces of mirth from before evaporated, gone.

"It looked like the Jenny I knew, at least. Which I know means shit-all since I’m from…" she trails off, the sudden release of pressure from her scalp making her precariously dizzy.

Kyle looks over at Roy, wondering if he knew; if he knew how Mar’i got her head bashed so badly, the bruises around her neck - if Mar’i had been able to tell him yet. If she would tell him. Kyle saw who’d hurt her, but he didn’t know if it was something…he should—- The thoughts drop suddenly from his mind, eclipsed by the physical sensation of fingers sliding against his thigh. He’s suddenly hyper-conscious of his own hands, buried in Mar’is thick hair, Roy’s arm twined between his own as he soothes her wound. Kyle envisions Jenny as he looks over at Roy and he’s borderline scandalized that Roy is looking right back at him with that certain smile. A knowing smile that usually meant — “Eyes front, soldier,” Kyle says sternly, half-joking, half-not. He releases Mar’is head and grabs up the bottle before it topples.

Roy keeps his eyes on Kyle for a moment longer, before looking up at Mar’i, nodding as he takes the bottle—again from between Kyle’s thighs—setting it on the nightstand. He gestures to the bandages there, indicating that Kyle should get them. “..Jenny was gorgeous,” Roy concedes, softly. “Just like this girl here, eh?” He looks over at Kyle. He moves his fingers against her hair, holding the strands away from her head wound.

Clark Kent winces against a pang of guilt, having been melted by that look many times in years past when Dick was knee-high, still finding it cuts right to his heart even now. “Aw, springbird. If you hadn’t been ill just a couple of days ago, I wouldn’t worry over it so much. But it might be a pretty rough trip. Besides, we need people here to look after the kids and those who are still not doing so well.” What Bruce says is much more simple and direct, so Clark echoes it too. “Proximity.”

Oliver uncaps the bottle of bleach with a jerky motion, then goes over to the hanging carcass. He raises the bottle and starts pouring it on the meat, the bones, whatever’s left, a slight frown puckering his eyebrows.

Bruce moves over in a flash, grabbing the bottle of bleach and slamming it down on the table as he knuckles his hand into the front of Ollie’s shirt, dragging him from the animal—all that work—and slamming him up against the side of shed, rattling the walls with the force of it. He says nothing, his gaze smoldering, looking at the archer without flinching.

Dickiebird looks up at Bruce, a hard, hurt darkness clouding his eyes. “Yeah, I get that. Proximity.” He glances at Clark, his expression not softening for him the way it might over a normal fight with Bruce in front of company. “I’ll just stay here with the one of you who I can’t disappoint…”

Oliver doesn’t look at Bruce, still looking at the hanging carcass. “All that work,” he says, as if Bruce had said it aloud. When he does look at Bruce, it’s with perfect placid sureness. “Bleach cleans things, Wayne. You should know that.”

Bruce turns his head to snarl at Dick: “It’s not a question of disappointing anyone, Dick, it’s—” Bruce looks back to Oliver, and his eyes widen, his expression going outright pallid, his hand going slack for a moment. His eyes dart across Oliver’s face, the snarl disappearing, blue eyes softening before he gnashes his teeth and pushes his hand in deeper, against Oliver’s throat. Bruce barks: “Clark, rope.”

Dickiebird stares dumbly, holding the end of a rope coil in his hand across the shed. “Bruce, don’t! You’re hurting him.”

Clark Kent shakes his head. “Dick, you’ve never disappoint— hey now!” He moves in toward Bruce and Oliver, grabbing at Bruce’s shoulder. He stops tugging, though, and stares at Oliver beyond Bruce’s frame when the latter issues his demand.

Bruce growls at Dick: “Shut up and hand me the damned rope, Dick.” Oliver doesn’t try to break free of Bruce’s grasp, but makes a pained, foxish huff as he tries to swallow past the pressure on his throat.

Dickiebird jumps, but grabs the rest of the rope, bringing it over to them. He holds it out for Clark, staring at Ollie and Bruce with wide eyes. Clark Kent hisses between his teeth in realization and hovers close in case Ollie makes an attempt to resist Bruce’s restraints. “It’s okay Dick,” he says as he takes the rope from him and pulls Oliver’s hands behind him, winding it thick around his wrists while Bruce holds him secure. His actions are hard, punishing, holding Ollie still as Clark binds his wrists. Oliver will bruise. He stares at Oliver, jerking his chin at the deer, looking to Dick: there is something swimming in the ocean of that blue, sharp with teeth, black eyes. “See if he got all of it, if we can save any of it.” Bruce kneels in front of Ollie, taking the rest of the rope to wrap his ankles.

Oliver flexes his fingers as Clark and Bruce truss him up, making no resistance otherwise. “But I know how to get out of rope knots,” he reminds them gently.

"Not mine," Bruce tells him. Oliver hums in response.

Clark Kent pulls his end of rope taut as they hogtie him with the length of it— and he’s tied a few hogs in his day. It’s not a gentle means of restricting his movements, but he rubs Ollie’s shoulders and the nape of his neck here and there by way of apology. He feels certain they aren’t mistaken, on one hand, and yet— it looks like Ollie, it sounds and smells like him and the muscles are familiar under his fingers. “Sorry,” he murmurs as he wrenches his arms tight against his sides, the sandpaper-like fibers of the rope making red tendrils in his skin.

Dickiebird inspects the deer carcass, poking at places and separating some pieces from the far side. “There’s some salvageable, but not much. I think just what I took in. We’re gonna be lucky if what’s here will be any good. Can we cook it out?”

" I have a couple pieces wrapped up over there too, but not many." Clark adds.

Bruce shakes his head at Dick, before he looks over at Oliver, his voice hard. “I was making sure they’d have enough to go on.” He pauses. “Your step-son. Your granddaughter.”

Oliver scoffs, his snort of derision hard. “Don’t be ridiculous. You think any of them are counting on YOU?”

Clark Kent shakes his head at Bruce from behind Ollie’s shoulder. Don’t. He jerks his chin toward the door. “The isolation room?” Dickiebird shudders at the mention of the room and edges slowly toward the door.

Mari glances over her shoulder at Kyle’s comment. “Hmm..?” Her shoulders seem to sink minutely as Roy lifts and moves her hair, the ends brittle against his rough hands, but something else inside her tightens, goes on alert at the tone of both men’s voices.

"Of course," Kyle responds so automatically that it’s almost brusque. It takes a while for him to amend and soften, though. He’s looking at Roy. He knew that once they broke up, Jenny joined up with the Outsiders. Roy’s Outsiders (was Roy still with them? Kyle can’t remember), and…well - it’s Roy. Jenny and Kyle never talked much after their break-up, not about personal things; it was too painful. But Roy’s question here and now makes all those memories flare up and Kyle’s brow furrow in alarm and confusion, present feelings overlapping with the past. He scoops up the bandages and shifts back on the bed, apart from them but also so he can look at them both. "What I mean is - Jenny was one of a kind. And of course you are too, Mar’i. Both two very unique, very lovely ladies." He smiles for Mar’i, holding out the bandages for her to take from him. "As if you didn’t already know that, hah."

Roy looks up at Kyle, his brow knitting when Kyle responds the way he does. He holds up his hand, palm out: “Hey. Just commenting on your impeccable taste, hermano.” He looks down at the bandages, pressing forward to press his mouth against Mar’i’s ear: “The big one.” He moves his single hand out, to grab at the hem of Kyle’s shirt.

Bruce stares down at Ollie, unmoving, not able to meet Clark’s eyes. The man’s normally impassive face is.. Well. Still quiet unimpressed, no emotion visible, save for his eyes. They are bright in his face, for a moment, looking at the archer. He doesn’t respond to Clark.

Clark Kent calls out sternly, “Dick, stay. Open the door for us and stay with us while we take him to the bungalow. Bruce, come on,” he implores in a softer tone. “Let’s get him out of here, and we’ll decide what to do from there.” Away from the mutilated carcass, from the mingled scent of bleach and blood.

"He’s in slow motion, now," Ollie observes, tilting his head as he looks at Bruce. "It’s all right, Clark. He’ll come around. We all come around in the end."

Bruce looks over at Clark, suddenly, as if realizing that Clark was speaking to him. He nods, and moves to grip the arm’s man, roughly pulling him towards the door of the shed. Clark Kent echoes back. “It’s all right, Ollie,” and marches him out into the night, holding tight to him on the opposite side. Dickiebird stays still and nods, what defiance that lingered vanishing when it’s Clark ordering him. He holds the door open and away, giving Bruce a clear opening to move Ollie.

"I don’t have impeccable taste. I’m just a very lucky…" Kyle doesn’t even bother with finishing that absolutely ridiculous sentence. And he’s suddenly feeling boneless, settling back close beside the pair when Roy takes a hold of his shirt hem. "Maybe I’m just a hot commodity, Harper," he smirks a bit, reaching up to roll his knuckles against the side of Roy’s head.

Mari is already reaching out for the bandages in Kyle’s hand when Roy’s lips brush her ear, and instantly a different sort of tightness mingles in her belly, a flesh-memory from before his father was bashing her head into the ground. But she sees his hand go out for Kyle’s shirt, and her eyes lock onto Kyle’s as he leans back in, towards Roy. It doesn’t feel…

Oliver goes with them, half-stumbling but mostly with his toes trailing the ground — the rope around the ankles makes it hard to keep the pace — and doesn’t say or do anything until they approach the isolation bungalow. Then he starts twisting, trying to get away, a raw whine in the back of his throat.

Roy ‘s fingers curl into Kyle’s shirt, pulling him towards Mar’i, towards him, his grin slow and quiet. He kisses Mar’i’s ear, softly, his shoulder leaning towards her, to ground her to the moment, even as he pulls Kyle in close. His focus blurs again and his eyes shift over to look at Mar’i, his loose fist against Roy’s head sprawling out down, against Roy’s shoulder. Kyle holds him steady, as Roy nuzzles against Mar’i’s ear. Kyle is just looking at her. “You…”

Dickiebird runs ahead and holds open the door, trying to not look down the hall, into that dark room.

Bruce nods to Clark, handing Oliver over. “Hold him.” He steps into the room, pulling the mattress out, the shirt, the sheets, leaving absolutely nothing in the room, dragging them into the corridor.

"No, no no no please, don’t put me there, I didn’t DO anything that bad—" Ollie’s voice raises in a panicked plea as he wrenches around in Clark’s grasp. He holds still for a moment and then slams the back of his skull into Clark’s face, smashing his nose with a yowl. Dickiebird lets go of the door and rushes forward to grab Ollie, bending him over and wrapping his arms around Ollie’s middle. "Clark! You OK?"

Clark Kent wraps his arms tight around Oliver’s, but Ollie is all honed muscle and Clark, while not a small man by any means, hasn’t strengthened his bulk with years of wielding a bow. He can’t stand firm against the thrashing that eventually renders him with a bloody nose, though he doesn’t relinquish his grasp even as he yelps. “I’m okay,” he coughs, spitting blood to the ground as Dick joins him in the effort to keep Ollie in place. “Ollie, no one’s going to hurt you,” he insists as he pets at his hair, still not certain it’s him at all.

Bruce pushes the mattress towards the washroom, before he moves over to where Clark is petting Oliver’s hair. He moves the Kryptonian’s hand off of Oliver’s hair, grabbing the archer’s arms at where they are bound, hauling them up at a painful angle. “..you’ll be pretty useless with both shoulders dislocated, won’t you?”

Oliver is panting, eyes wide, too much whites around the green and he bares his teeth at Bruce when the other man applies pressure to his arms. “Don’t,” he rasps, breath breaking up the word. “Don’t put me there, don’t, I can’t STAND it please—!”

Dickiebird looks up at Bruce. “What if someone went in with him? Just for a few moments.”

Bruce pushes Oliver into the room, into the corner, shoving him the short distance to the wall so he can use his shoulders to stop himself fro falling, outright. Granite rolls around in his mouth as he bends down, picking up his shirt and tossing it to Clark, to stop his bleeding nose. He doesn’t look back at Dick. “Get out of the room.”

Dickiebird lingers in the doorway. “Bruce…” Clark Kent presses the warm cotton to his nose, voice thick from the swelling when he promises, “Everything is fine, Dick.”

Oliver staggers, hobbled, and comes up hard against the wall; he shakes his head, dizzily, and slopes heavily into a corner, feet scrabbling, panting like he can hardly breathe. He’s fighting against the rope now and it’s tearing into his skin. Ollie presses the side of his face against the wall and starts begging them, voice pleading and plaintive and shattered: “Don’t leave me here, please. I’ll be good, I promise, don’t make me stay here, I won’t do it again, please, please please please oh god please…”

Mari feels a gloop of thick blood slip down her neck, down past the bone where her father rubbed when she cried, down past the place where a much older Bruce fixed her first dislocated shoulder. Roy is kissing her ear and staring at Kyle. Kyle is staring at her. The blood is rolling down her back. Roy took the scab off, took the rock out, and left her to bleed. She sees him in her mind, crawling through daggers of stone towards her, calling for her, telling her to stay. Binding her ribs in the dark before he’d even touch her. “Since when?” she says, more than asks, and her voice is ice-cold.

Roy drags his tongue against the cartilage of Mar’i’s ear, his fingers sliding up, against the younger man’s stomach; no hard muscles here, no. Kyle is almost soft to the touch, his obliques hard, but not from purposeful exercise. Roy runs his calloused fingers along the trail of hair, smoothing his touch through it. His lips part against her ear, laying another soft kiss, tongue flattening behind it. “..since when what, baby?” Roy looks up at Kyle, pressing his nose into the dark strands of her hair, fingers tugging into the front of the other man’s waistband, tugging. Easing.

Clark Kent moves closer to Dick and instructs him a low tone to retrieve a sedative from the medical bungalow. Dickiebird nods and hurries out to the medical bungalow, fetching supplies like a good— errand boy —son. He shakes his head and goes back to the isolation bungalow, slipping back next to Clark silently as the older man stoops back down where Ollie is huddled against the wall. “Why did you do it?”

Bruce does not look to Dick, to Clark, looking to Oliver. The pebbles of roughness make his words scrape against the inside of his mouth. “The meat was for them. So they would have enough. You destroyed it all.” He lets the accusation stand there. “You took food from their mouths, the children’s mouths.” It sounds like a crime akin to murder on Bruce’s tongue.

Oliver looks at Clark, eyes wild but lacking any understanding. He looks at Bruce, looks back at Clark, and repeats, “…bleach cleans things.” He swallows. “There was so much blood. You have to use bleach to get the stains out so nobody knows. Otherwise you get in trouble. Even if it wasn’t your fault.” His face slackens from the pained, tight expression then, going cold and withdrawn. “That’s all I’m gonna say. I’m no tattletale.”

Kyle keeps looking at Mar’i when she asks, tilting his head. “Since when what? I was gonna ask if you’d told him yet…if you’ve told him yet abo— jesus!” Kyle jerks and falls back - no, he slides off the bed onto his feet, staggering a couple steps back. He stares at Roy in shock. “What the hell?” Roy looks affronted when Kyle jumps back, his hand still gesturing in the air, attempting to draw the younger man close. Roy blinks, staring down at himself, then back up to Kyle. “..it’s the arm, isn’t it?”

"Since when has it been in control?" Mar’i answers coolly, not moving her head, feeling every centimeter of Roy’s tongue against her ear. "How much of it has been a lie?" She looks her eyes onto Kyle, and there’s something there, a spark of violet light turning red. "How long has it been using your body to do what it wants?"

Kyle frantically smooths down his tuxedo shirt front, looking down and adjusting his slightly askew trousers. When he looks back up, he’s squinting, pained and incredulous. “What?” He looks at Mar’i. “What??!”

Roy looks over at Kyle as well, his eyebrows lifting, eyes widening. His hand drops, to possessively, protectively around Mar’i’s hip. “What are you talking about?!” Kyle says and looks behind him to locate the door. He side-steps towards it. “What’s it? Who’s lying?” He doesn’t know who to look at now, but his distress is mounting rapidly as he reaches out to grasp for the door handle. He pauses though, a thought creeping into the back of his mind, and he straightens up. His hand falls from the door as a new, horrific thought comes over him. “Did I do something wrong? Did I do something terrible? Tell me please - I - I don’t remember.” Kyle searches is recent memories quickly - but everything seems accounted for. He hasn’t had any blackouts, not since before meeting The Child. But they both know something, that much is obvious. He begs them again, “Tell me what I did.”

Bruce snarls: “Shut up.” He backs up, not giving the archer his back and glances, sidelong, at Clark and Dick. “Out of the room. Both of you.” Dickiebird looks to Clark and slowly backs out, not really wanting to leave them alone.

Clark Kent releases his breath slow, measured, like he’s deliberating each one. “Oh,” he says as Ollie answers, the bloodied shirt still pinched over his nose, muffling his voice. He stands straight again and shakes his head at Bruce. “You’re going to interrogate him? Bruce, he’s— if it’s him, something’s happened to him. You need to calm down.” Bruce speaks over his shoulder: “And when I want your advice, I’ll ask you for it, Kent.”

Dickiebird speaks in Romanes, “I brought a sedative.”

Bruce responds, in English: “He won’t need it.” He looks back over to Oliver, his gaze heavy and hard. Dickiebird nods and touches Clark’s arm, nodding toward the hallway. Clark Kent looks down at Ollie again before crossing the room. “We’ll be right on the other side of the door,” he says, to both of them, before he and Dick exit. Bruce shuts the door, behind them, when they leave, making sure it’s a heavy enough push that it slams. He turns, and looks at Oliver, saying nothing.

Mari ‘s hand drifts down, catching Roy’s, tightening around it momentarily, rubbing the knuckles gently. Then suddenly, in a moment that’s faster than the blink of an eye, she slams her fingers into the pressure point, her entire body spinning and throwing Roy over and down onto the bed, thighs sliding up to pin his remaining arm down as her fingers dig into the artery on his collarbone. “Your father choked me and bashed my head in and you don’t even ask what happened? You invite another man into this bed while I’m bleeding, without consulting me, without consulting your own obvious Issues with that?” She presses harder, her other hand holding his jaw in place. “I love you, papa, but I won’t be your victim. I’ll fight for you if you won’t fight for yourself. And whatever’s in charge right now is doing a shitty job of being you, anyway,” Her voice changes now, clearly directing towards Kyle, as the blood seeps down the front of her neck, dripping onto Roy’s chin. “Yell for Bruce, Kyle.”

Roy opens his mouth to catch the droplets of crimson as they fall, pattering against his tongue. He swallows, mouth smacking, and looks up at her, eyelids drifting low. “..but you can’t really blame me,” he smiles, up at her, rolling his hips. “..The tux shirt is a preeeeetty obvious indicator.” He looks over to Kyle. “Do you think it was the Jenny-talk?”

Dickiebird jumps slightly as the door slams and leans back against the wall, looking over at Clark. “I know what I did. I remember now. I’m sorry, Clark.” Clark Kent reaches out and pulls Dick in toward his shoulder, pecking a kiss near his temple before releasing him. “It’s okay. You weren’t in control of yourself.”

Oliver is staring at the door. “Let me out,” he says to it, although his voice doesn’t raise enough to be heard on the other side, just a hoarse bark. He shuffles forward and loses his balance, pitching hard against the wall. Bruce stares at a patch of wall, ignoring Oliver, his jaw drawn tight. A vein throbs in his temple, and at his sides, his hands turn up, clench into fists. “..you keep trying.”

His head swings to look at Bruce. “To break you?” he says incredulously. “Are you really that fucking narcissistic, that you think all of this is happening just to break YOU?”

Bruce draws his eyes over to Oliver. “Why did you pour the bleach on it?”

"The blood. To clean up the blood. I didn’t want us to get in trouble."

"In trouble.. For what?"

Oliver looks perplexed for a moment, as if trying to recall his own reasoning. “For … fighting. Making a mess. You know it’s against the rules.” That seems to sound right to him, and he nods, surely. Bruce looks over at the other man when he speaks. His eyes shift across his face, expression cementing as he nods, once. “You’re staying here for the night.” He exhales, moving towards the door. “I’ll tell Kate.”

Dickiebird grabs Clark’s arm, resting his forehead on Clark’s collarbone. “I went after Bruce, too. He locked me in there.” He glances toward the room they were just ordered out of. “Yesterday, I… I heard it again. But I remembered it this time, and I remembered what I’d done before. That’s why Bruce doesn’t want me near him. He can’t trust me.”

Dickiebird takes a deep breath and looks up at Clark’s face. “Do you trust me?”

Clark Kent turns his full focus on Dick and shakes his head, eyes perplexed above the shirt wadded near his nose. He pulls it away, the bleeding having ebbed now. “Of course I trust you. It’s this place, it’s whatever affected you in the first place, that I don’t trust. I trust Ollie too— and Kyle, and Stephanie, and everyone else who has had their minds twisted in some way since we’ve arrived here. It’s not your fault or theirs. But we’re all human—” something he says earnestly without even thinking about his Kryptonian DNA— “and we’re all susceptible to whatever it is that’s attacking us. You seem okay to me now, but Ollie seemed okay to me just a few minutes ago, too. I’m sorry, Dick. It’s just difficult to know right now.”

Kyle falls back heavily against the door, scrabbling in terror as she turns on Roy. “What? What? What?” Kyle repeats over and over again, but he can’t yell for anyone, not with the way his throat’s tightened up. “What is he? Oh god! OH GOD!! What is he?!” But the way Roy talks to Mar’i makes him realize - get up - get up Rayner, you stupid, stupid man - DO SOMETHING - and he comes over to the bed, where Mar’is pinned Roy down. “No. Bruce can’t do everything, dammit. We’ll do it. It - it needs to get out of him, we need to get it out of him.”

Roy looks up at Kyle. “I’ve thought about your mouth,” he murmurs. He doesn’t budge, looking up at the other man, even as Mar’i increases her pressure. “..how you’d know how to blow me, having a dick and all. Thought about it everytime you fell asleep at my place, mouth wide open.” He smiles. “You could try to suck ‘it’—” his hand makes the quotation marks, pinned on the bed. “—out of me.”

"I don’t know," she snarls, digging her fingers harder into the artery, cutting more and more blood flow off to Roy’s upper body. If he’s himself, he won’t stay awake much longer, if he’s a monster, well…monsters don’t have arteries. "But he looks like the man I fucking love, and the man whose been fucking touching me this entire time, and I swear to X’Hal—CALL. FOR. BRUCE."

Roy snickers, still looking at Kyle, before glancing at Mar’i. Back to Kyle. “Or.. what, is it only the married ones that get you going nowadays, hermano?” He bites the tip of his tongue, pinching it white. “Or is the whole.. ‘being alive’ thing?”

Oliver flings himself bodily at Bruce, propelling himself as far as he can; it’s not enough to do more than stagger the other man, and Ollie falls to the ground heavily, awkwardly, his shoulder doing what Bruce had threatened to do earlier. He makes a soundless gasp, the air driven out of him, and then lies still, staring glassily at the door.

Bruce hears the pop, and turns around, his hands unclenching. He moves on autopilot, going to Ollie, turning him over and onto his stomach. Kneeling, Bruce eases his hands over the man’s sides. “..Going to pop it back in,” he explains, quietly.

Mari makes a heavy sound between her teeth, and sucks in a long, hard breath. Healed ribs. Full lung capacity. She opens her mouth and it’s like Dinah’s sonic scream, like an echolocation off the walls of the bungalow, sending a signal to the man she needs—the grandfather she needs. “BRUCE—”

Oliver breathes shallowly as Bruce turns him over, and even over the rush of ringing sound in his ears from the pain he can hear Mar’i calling. “Don’t leave me,” he begs, pressing his forehead against the floor. Then banging it, once, twice. “DON’T LEAVE ME, BRUCE—”

What Roy says kind of….helps, actually; now that Mar’i’s taken control, Kyle feeds off that and his mouth skews to the side. He addresses Mar’i, angrily now, but his anger is at himself. “No, Mar’i! Not everything can be solved by Bruce fucking Wayne, for christ’s sake hold him steady —” Kyle leans in and clamps Roy’s jaw with his hand and squeezes, forcing his mouth open. “It’s in there - this is Roy, but it’s in there like you said - it’s controlling him and we can get it out of him, dammit—” The sonic scream blocks out all other sound though, and Kyle falls back again, covering his ears. “I don’t need Bruce to save him,” she growls, staring straight down into Roy’s eyes. “I just need him to hold him still.”

Dickiebird nods, strangely calmed by the earnest look in Clark’s eyes, the comforting words that he hasn’t lost everything, that’s it’s just here, just…. He opens his mouth to thank Clark when someone shouts for Bruce. “Should we—?” Clark Kent wrenches open the door when the scream pierces the bungalow. “Go, I’ve got him,” he assures Bruce, moving in toward Ollie.

Bruce pops Ollie’s shoulder back into place, grunting as he rises, trusting Clark implicitly with his partner’s well being. He rises and moves from the bungalow, following the sound of that scream. All the way on the other end of the camp. Setting off into a run, he doesn’t stop until the door is in his hands, flinging open the door. He looks over at the three of them, Roy on the bed, shifting forward immediately. “What’s going on?”

Kyle points at Mar’i, and Roy roiling underneath her. “Something - there’s something in Roy -” he rasps, and staggers to his feet, giving Bruce room to get close.

Roy looks up at Bruce, the entirely of his pupil going black. It eclipses, like the light is disappearing and Roy’s face contorts, all angles and twisted flesh. It lasts a moment, a good ol’ fashioned demonic possession, before Roy is back, laughing up at Bruce. “The Queer Knight, to the rescue.” Mari doesn’t look up at Bruce, doesn’t start when he slams the door open. “Help me move him,” she says coolly, “Kyle said you have to provoke emotion to make it come out right?” Her lips curve down into a frown. “He’ll hate me forever but if it gets it out—” She looks up at Bruce and says in Korean: +We take him to Ollie.+

Dickiebird follows Clark into the isolation room, watching Ollie from his position guarding the doorway. Oliver tries to kick but can’t manage with his ankles tied; he pushes his face against the floor in frustration, a hoarse dry sob tearing from his throat as he twists and twists his hands and arms against the ropes. “Let me out, let me out,” he mumbles and demands, over and over.

Dickiebird coos. “We can’t, Ollie. You have to stay.” Something flashes in Dick’s eyes for only an instant, something of the memories of waking up in this room. “If you’re good, we’ll let you out. But you have to be good.” Clark Kent looks up at Dick, weary and saddened, as he settles cross-legged on the floor beside Ollie and kneads circles into his shoulders, his scalp. Something in Dick’s voice catches Clark’s attention before he speaks himself, and he’s quiet, waiting.

Bruce looks over at Mar’i, answering in Korean. +He’s in the solitary room.+​ He looks to Kyle, nodding at him. “Kyle, we need something to bind his legs.” Kyle shakes his head and says hollowly. “I don’t - I don’t know what you want. Use the sheets. Tear the sheets up.” Kyle backs up to a wall and leans against it, pointing at the sheets on the bed.

Roy snickers. “..he’s taken him to the box, the bad boy box—” Roy looks over at Kyle. “..oh, yeah, bitch boy. Stay there. Stay out of the way.” He coughs. “Useless piece of shit.” He looks up at Mar’i, his hand flexing, attempting to shift against her knee.”Hey, princess..” He drawls. “You into bondage?”

Mari almost smirks at the perfection of Ollie’s being in the solitary room already, despite the way her heart is breaking deep inside, shattering over what she’s going to have to do to the man who kissed her in the light of a Star City sunset, who sent her pictures and song lyrics and spent hours on end with her without ever demanding a thing in return, the man who crawled through daggers for her. “Kyle,” she barks, “get the fucking sheets.” She does smirk now, smiling down at Roy, her head tilting slightly as she drives her thigh and shin harder into his arm to halt its movement. “Oh sweetie, you don’t even know.”

"I am good," Ollie says, but he sounds defeated. He doesn’t believe it himself, and he doesn’t try to say it again. He stops fighting and breathes slow, damp circles against the floor. Dickiebird smiles gently. "Yes, you are. And you’ll be better, soon. And then you come out again." Clark Kent looks down at the side of Ollie’s face that’s visible to him, his own half-veiled with bangs that have grown out too long, draping near his eyes as he tilts his head parallel with the floor. "Why are you scared of this room?"

Oliver breathes out long before he answers. “I’ve been in rooms like this before,” he says, the words seeping out from his mouth and puddling on the floor. “At school. It’s where they’d put you, if.” He stops there, as if it’s a natural place to end the sentence, an obvious end to the thought. After a while he adds, “Bleach cleans things. It gets the blood out so you don’t get in trouble.”Kyle moves woodenly now and jerks the sheets off the bed, since they’re half-off anyway. He tears at them, long strips which he wordlessly hands to Bruce.

Bruce moves away from Kyle, those sheets, scanning the bathroom, the contents of the medicine cabinet; his hand slams into Lian’s bedroom, nothing. Nothing. But what was he even looking for? He moves to the bedroom, grabbing the sheets from Kyle, his voice strangely warm as he moves to Roy’s side. “..do like I do.” He shows the younger man what he needs to do, how he needs to knot and tie. Kyle follows along automatically, binding him as securely as he watches Bruce to the same. “There.”

Roy looks up at Mar’i, licking his lips, as she speaks, tasting her blood still coppery on his tongue. He is about to speak, when Kyle and Bruce begin to bind him. He kicks his legs, snarling: “GET THE FUCK OFF ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!​!!!!”

Dickiebird keeps smiling. “What are we in trouble for, Ollie?” Clark Kent shakes his head firmly. “The blood wasn’t your fault, Oliver.” It’s evident that Ollie is talking about something else, something beyond the slaughter of a deer for food. But whatever it is, it’s clear he needs absolution. Oliver seems thrown by Dick’s question, Clark’s clarification; like earlier with Bruce, it’s as if he’s trying to reconcile the actions and truths of right now with whatever recollections of the past are getting mixed up in them. “I … you get in trouble for fighting. Doesn’t matter the reason why you were fighting, as long as it happened then you get in trouble. Better to clean up the blood so nobody finds out and I don’t get put in rooms and left alone.”

Roy kicks at Kyle’s face, at Bruce’s hands. “MURDERER. PEDOPHILE.” Bruce dodges Roy’s kicks, exhaling as he attempts to bind the man’s ankles, growling at Mar’i. “Keep him down.” He grits his teeth hard enough to crackle them, pulling Roy down roughly by his ankles. Roy looks up at the woman, tilting his head back as Bruce jerks him down. “..you know why he goes through so many kids?” He licks his lips again, copper-and-rust lining his teeth. “..why none of them stay?” His eyes narrow. “..oh, but you know.” He leans up, snapping his teeth at Mar’i’s face. “Grampa Bruce. Did he make you sit on his lap, sunburst?”

Mari tries to hold Roy down as best she can, but there’s only so much she can do with the back of her head gushing hot blood all down her shirt—Roy’s shirt, she remembers, one of the button-ups he’d picked out the first day, joking about the massive collar and how he should grow his hair out just to wear it. He’s going to get free, even in his state, she can feel her grip slipping on him little by little and she can’t give up, not on him, not now, not after all this. The stump where his arm once was slams violently into the nightstand by the bed, and something rolls towards her. She turns her head and stares, at the perfect sunset apple, with her father’s name on it. Untouched. Her lips had kissed it, her tongue had melted on it, but her teeth never broke the skin. She looks down again at Roy, and suddenly reaches for it, pulls it off the table, and the bottle of peroxide he’d been using.

Dickiebird shakes his head and coos. “It’s better if you tell, Ollie. You won’t be in trouble for telling. But hiding it is very bad.” Clark Kent adds gently as rubs a hand along the length of Ollie’s bound arm, “Dick and I aren’t going to leave you alone. We’re right here with you.”

Bruce stills when Roy speaks, looking down at what he is doing, his fingers still binding the man’s ankles tightly. When Mar’i shifts, the table jarring, Bruce looks up, alarmed. “What are you—” He sees the apple in her hand, looking to Kyle. He jerks his head at the door. “Out.” Kyle licks his lips and looks at Roy, at Mar’i and her apple, and Bruce. “No. He’s my friend.” Bruce exhales, and looks back at Mar’i, at Roy. He does nothing to intercede. Roughly, he intones: “..then get over here and grab a leg.”

Roy looks up at Mar’i, puzzled for a moment as he sees the apple. He laughs. “It doesn’t work that way, sweetheart.” He snickers. “Dumb cunt, those are for you, not him..” Almost proudly, he states: “..he didn’t get one.”

In the back of her mind, a little voice, genderless (or maybe two children talking at once, two genders speaking at the same time) and sweet, repeats what Roy said earlier. It kills a lot of bacteria, so I’m only using it now. Once. Mar’i’s teeth sink into the apple, tearing off a chunk, juice flowing down her chin onto Roy’s, mingling with the blood. She spits the bite into the peroxide, then another, then another. She can see the Child in her head, now. It has Roy’s curls. “What’s mine is ours, right baby? Besides, his apple is playing on the swingsets right now, you piece of shit,” she hisses, then shoves the bottle into Roy’s mouth, upturned, so the contents spill out. Her hand clamps down, shoves his jaw shut around the opening, forces him to swallow.

Oliver ‘s head jerks up at Dick’s words and he half-rolls onto his side, as much as he can, biceps straining under Clark’s steady hand. “Of course you get in trouble for telling! You think I don’t know that? I’m no fucking tattletale!” Dickiebird bends at the waist, resting his hands on his knees. “I know that, Ollie, but telling isn’t being a tattletale. Sometimes it’s good to let others know. Then they can share it with you and you’re not keeping it all locked up alone anymore.”

Oliver turns his head resolutely away from Dick. “What would /you/ know. He never sent you away to school like he got sent. Like I got sent. You have no idea.” Dickiebird darkens slightly. “No. But he did send me away again and again. You were family. I’m nothing. Just charity. You can still go home.”

The rest of the sunset apple hits the ground and rolls towards Bruce’s feet.

Kyle lurches over to put half his weight on Roy’s leg, eyes widening as he watches the antiseptic or whatever it is upended into Roy’s mouth. Kyle looks at Bruce, but he doesn’t really want to know if that is good. Bruce is doing nothing to stop her, so Kyle keeps his grip steady, holding Roy down and bracing himself.

Roy thrashes on the bed, tongue rolling to push the content of the bottle out, his eyes bugging in his skull. The blue-green goes black, the sclera darkening in an instant, and Roy’s teeth distort, elongating in his mouth as he gnashes at the bottle. The peroxide hits his tongue, his throat, and the eruption that happens gorges Roy’s throat. He kicks at Kyle, at Bruce, as she pours the contents down, the bottle glug-glug-glugging.B ruce grits his teeth and moves his hands around Roy’s legs, trying to keep them steady, even as the bed.. bucks. The motion is more powerful than Roy could have made on his own and Bruce looks over at Kyle, alarmed.

For a reason Mar’i will never understand, she looks down into Roy’s shifting eyes, watching the darkness eat them whole, watching his teeth go monstrous, and she begins humming the Diné lullaby Roy sang to Lian the night before, the song she wasn’t quite supposed to hear and didn’t quite hear and couldn’t quite drown out with her fish-and-jungle dreams. She doesn’t know the words, and she doesn’t know the entire beat, so her voice comes out, strong and clear, and sings the part of the refrain where Lian had momentarily chimed in.

His feet dig into the ground, since he’d been preparing for the bucking. He’d seen the Exorcist and every other possession movie out there. He hears Mar’i start to —-sing? Of all things? —- as he grips onto Roy tightly to steady him, let him purge the Thing inside him. And after a couple refrains, her voice pitch-perfect even in all the movement, Kyle joins her in the song. He hums along with Mar’i, because the tune is oddly familiar; but more importantly also it just seemed, for once, right.

Roy thrashes, head rocking back and forth and attempts to vomit back the fluid, but it doesn’t work, because some of it still gets in, and Roy’s body contorts, his spine snapping as he jerks up, as if a string had been woven through his chest, knotted at the back and yanked. The bed jerks, rattles on the frame, the glass in the window of the bungalow distending, going convex.

Kyle looks at Bruce expectantly, since what they needed was a good baritone. Bruce exhales, and almost begrudgingly, weaves his own voice into the tapestry of the song. He knows it. Of course. Glancing at the distorted windows, down at the bed as it begins to lift, off the ground. He frowns.

"That was my father’s apple," Mar’i murmurs, but her throat is still somehow singing, like there are two Mar’i’s in the room and both them are trying to save Roy. "That was my father’s apple and now it’s yours. I’m giving it to you. You saved my life that first night in Arizona, and you didn’t even know it. You gave me a home when I lost mine. So you deserve that apple, Roy," her voice says overtop her singing, cool and calm. "It all works out in the end. I’ll trade that apple from my father, for you. I’ll trade it all for you. That’ll be my trade."

Without warning, Roy’s eyes explode. The blackness erupts from his sockets, blue-and-green gone, Roy’s mouth opening wide and the blackness shoots from there, too. The bed rises up, off the ground, two, three feet, convulsing as the archer does, the blackness oozing from the insides of his ears, his pores, sneaking out of every orifice in his body. It all rises up to the ceiling, dripping as if it the room had been turned around, gravity reversed; it sneaks across the ceiling, splattered and shimmering.

Oliver brings his gaze back to Dick, and it’s glacially cold, the green glittering and hard. “Spoiled fucking brat,” he says, enunciating every syllable. “Entitled and ungrateful. He sent you away? You’re just charity?” Ollie laughs, although it’s an ugly sound, as though his throat is constricted with rope as well as his arms and wrists and ankles. “Try getting sent away from home two weeks after watching your parents die, and nobody will talk to you about it and you think it’s your fault. Try being alone year after year and not being allowed to go back home even for holidays, getting sent off to other people’s houses, people you don’t even know. Try that for ten years, knowing that there’s nobody left in the world who gives a fuck about you even the tiniest bit. Try that before you tell me I could still go home, and that you, with Bruce and Alfred and Wayne Manor waiting for you, /you/ had it rough.” He coughs, exhausted. “You’re nothing. Sure, Dick. Adored princeling of Bruce’s and Alfred’s eyes. Sure.”

Dickiebird crouches down closer to Ollie’s level, meeting his eyes. “I couldn’t have. I would’ve died. But you didn’t. You survived and kept going and grew up into someone great. You built your own family and gave them everything you never had. It wasn’t your fault.”

Oliver says nothing. It’s just his raspy breathing and Dick’s level inhalations, exhalations, in the room, now that Clark’s been called away. Just the two of them and dust motes, and their breaths, stirring the sun-illuminated specks in the air. And then Ollie lunges up at Dick, grunting loud and open-mouthed at the exertion of using his body as a dead weight, the heaviness and force of his shoulders slamming awkwardly into Dick’s chin, his throat.

Kyle looks around and then back at Roy - and for some reason, the insanity of the room itself isn’t as frightening as it should be. Or maybe it’s because of the singing, or Mar’i’s sureness as she whispers to Roy. Or maybe - dammit, maybe it’s Bruce fucking Wayne. He hears Mar’i - she trades, she trades for him, she trades for him - the voice told him yesterday. His feel dangle off the risen bed, his weight completely holding Roy’s leg down as he looks up at the ceiling. “It needs to go underground! It can’t stay there!” he shouts.

Roy continues to vomit the blackness, his eyes pillars of oozing darkness, his mouth open and streaming; he bucks and writhes, his bandaged arm bleeding again, gushing across the bedsheets. Bruce nods, looking up at the ceiling as they are lifted, off the ground. Bruce narrows his eyes, growling a barked order at the young woman: “Mar’i, use the rest, splash it on the ceiling!”

"WHAT?" Kyle responds, wanting to climb up there himself, just climb up onto the bed and gather all the blackness up, cast it back into the innards of this hell. He doesn’t know who called him but he can feel a sense of energy, mounting within.

Mari doesn’t look up at the darkness slithering up and into the ceiling, even as her hair turns upside-down and floats above her head, even as the wound in the back of her skull drips upward and the blood drifts up to intermingle with it. None of that matters. She leans down, cups Roy’s jaw, kisses his Adam’s apple. Then she clamps her hands over his bandages, trying to stop the bleeding. She looks back hazily at Bruce, then nods, and her fingers move away again—soaked in Roy’s blood—and she grabs the bottle from where it’s fallen onto the bed. She doesn’t splash it, she doesn’t throw it. Instead, she pours it onto her bloody hands, and watches as it circles down over her palms and knuckles and then floats back up to mix with the darkness.

"NO WAIT—" It’s like gravity’s reversed, which means - "MAR’I DON’T TOUCH IT!!"

Roy howls a long, roaring note of agony, anguish, as the blackness moves down, towards Mar’i’s hands, snaking around her elegant fingers, her wrists. Like thousands of worms, snakes, maggots, the blackness swarms down, like bees, humming and buzzing as it winds into her hair, drilling into that open wound in her skull.

Mari opens her mouth to scream and a deep, ravenous buzz comes out instead. Her hair whips wildly about her head and her eyes are eaten whole by the darkness seeping in, pupils, irises, cornea, all of it going blacker than the grave, blacker than the dark. She rises up onto her knees, and reaches behind herself, clawing at the wound, ripping it open, revealing white skull underneath, and she screams again as she rolls off Roy, hits the floor. Her skin is sizzling and her hair is fluctuating between pitch-black and bright, bright glowing purple. The cool breeze in the room is sucked out by the heat pouring off her body.

Bruce nearly abandons Roy the instant Mar’i rolls, almost shifting off the bed, expression pulling into a grimace as he looks at Kyle, teeth grit, “..go to her!”

Dickiebird gags as Ollie hits him, falling back with the weight of him, Ollie collapsing on top of him. He scratches and claws at Ollie’s shoulders, trying to hold him down. “How far do you think you can make it, archer?” His eyes shine unnaturally blue in the dim light, his voice hoarse from the blow. “How far before I take you down?”

Oliver hears that voice, sees those eyes, and he’s galvanized into action, the despair and terror at being left alone in confinement suddenly all too requited. “Just fucking try me,” he snarls, and smashes his forehead against Dick’s, angling down. When their skulls connect it leaves Ollie dazed, struggling for breath, but it gives him a couple of valuable seconds where even bound and restrained as he is, he can twist himself to drive his shoulder up under Dick’s chin hard. It pops again, out of the socket, but Ollie grits his teeth and rolls himself off of Dick, kicking his hobbled feet into the young man’s side.

Dickiebird grunts as his teeth clunk together hard and he gives into the pain for a few seconds. But it all subsides too quickly and he rolls over, scrabbling to regain ground. He throws himself on the other man, shoving his face down on the hard floor. He pulls up on Ollie’s injured shoulder and leans close to hiss in his ear, “Not far enough, Ollie. Never far enough.” He bites down on the shell of Ollie’s ear, a vicious lover’s caress.

Mari roars again as the swirling darkness sinks further and further into her head, a network of black, inky veins etching across her skin, punctuated by bursts of bright light underneath as well, like something’s fighting the darkness at her very core. Her very core. She rolls over onto her stomach and dry-heaves, but only bile and spittle emerge, spitting onto the carpet then floating up like everything else in this damn topsy-turvy house. She looks up like she’s heard a voice, then towards Kyle, and her head twists, twists impossibly around as she hisses: “Someone’s calling you, puto.” And she cackles, and in her throat she cries out, too, and the darkness in her head emerges back, like something pressing back out of her skull, like a kitten in an umbilical sack trying to break free.

Roy shuts his eyes, finally, the last of the darkness being leeched from his body, no fight remaining in the muscles, bones that make him up. His eyes shut, his breathing slackens, and he remains pale, still.

The blackness as taken Mar’i over completely - not just taken her over, it has consumed her. She is giving off heat like the sun itself and Kyle can only think of one thing. He doesn’t hear Bruce, as he is already moving to her, his mind moving faster - idon’t think, just DO and Kyle becomes his own version of black, deep and black-green, like the Penrose Forest at midnight. This is what he’s built for. He picks her up - no - he picks the entire contents of the room up: Mar’i and Roy and Bruce too - and they skim outside, across the land, out of the town and towards the lake. It’s a nighttime lake by now - moon reflection to Mar’i’s black sun. Kyle plunges them all into the water, submerges everyone including himself. The lake’s depth is endless and Kyle thinks to himself. I’m here. With you. He takes a hold of Mar’is head, her hair floating magically like a mermaid’s, and Kyle keeps her submerged, even as the other two surface for air. He will not let her up until the Thing is OUT.

Bruce doesn’t hesitate in pulling his arm around Roy’s body, hauling him up, kicking his legs, powerfully strong. He gets them to the surface, Bruce sucking in a steady breath, before he begins to swim, towards the shore, knowing he needs to get the unconscious Roy to safety before he can even think of returning to help. He swims. His muscles scream. He swims, and looks up at the moon, the same one that had led him to Kate, the same color as The Child’s white dress, the same color as— Bruce grits his teeth, spitting out lake water: “..fucking do something,” he commands, a barking general’s order.

Mari watches Bruce and Roy drift up and away as she sinks downward, and she reaches out towards them, even in her burning. The sickness within her wants them too, wants to hurt them as much as she wants to help them. She roars, spins, the heat off her body making the water around them shift and bubble, and she tries to claw Kyle off, tries to break free so she can burn all those motherfuckers to ashes, burn them like the bodies of her people floating in space, burn them. And in the back of her mind there’s also a scene playing out, at Dropaway Beach in Coast City, not two weeks before they were pulled into this living hell: Kyle and Roy, tossing her back and forth in the warm waves, laughing and keeping her afloat with their own bodies. She clung to them, to Kyle for his laughter, to Roy for his warmth, she clung to them as they waded deeper and deeper and when she started to get scared—so stupid because she could just fly out of the water, they all knew it—Kyle made her a construct float and Roy used its little string to pull her around. Now, deep in the dark waters of Moon Lake, Mar’i just wants to burn.

Oliver howls when Dick yanks on his shoulder; pain radiates out like spokes, jabbing through his chest and throat and arm. The boy’s voice doesn’t sound anything like itself, the breath hot and prickling when Dick sinks his teeth into Ollie’s ear, and the archer throws his weight into his throbbing shoulder, the one Dick’s hauling back on, using that bit of leverage to roll them over so he’s on his back on top of Dick. Those sharp teeth rip through his ear as they roll and once Ollie’s got Dick pinned beneath him, he shoves upwards with his torso, up until one of his shoulderblades is weighing across Dick’s face. It’s not the most effective way to try and suffocate Dick, but Ollie knows his options are limited.

It’s completely blackness, all around them; but they can both breathe here, because she is filled with black fire and he is filled with Starheart and there is only a dim glow from the moon. Kyle looks up at the moon and then back down at her. He could reach in there and pull it out, he could do that right now - but the cost will be too great. Instead, Kyle uses Jenny’s love, her dying gift to him and he thinks of the moon. His moon - a moon him and Mar’i talked about once, their love for that silly rock in Earth’s sky. The Empress and her Jade Rabbit. Small lights illuminate the blackness around them. Kyle uses the Starheart and fills in, bit by bit, constellations, all of them. He knows them all by heart, and he knows she does too. He starts with ones close to Earth, expanding outwards, reaching all the way to Tamaran. He pulls back in the swirls of galaxies, and traces patterns in the stars, the shape of a two faces, alight with starry freckles, two Harpers, who’s body constellations Kyle imagines Mar’i’s also memorized. Let go, Mar’i, come back to them Kyle urges. “They need you.”

Bruce drags Roy to the edge of the lake, hauling the boy onto the sandy shore before he turns and dives, back into the water. He bobs up, taking a needed breath and continues to swim, back into the darkness towards Kyle, his granddaughter, looking under the murky ink-black of the water and seeing.. stars. Hundreds of thousands of them, glittering in the water in the distance. Bruce kicks his feet, propelling himself further.

"You can do this. She hears you. She loves you.", The Child speaks sweetly in his mind. Kyle smiles, albeit grimly. "Grazie, Il Bambino. Lo farò."

The thing pressing out the back of Mar’i’s head pushes more urgently, a web of black gunk stretching and showing the imprint of tiny hands, of a little face peering out. It makes its own roaring sound as the constellations zoom by, all the ones her father and mother had shown her from the Watchtower, all the ones her Uncle Ryand’r had pointed out during her summers on the outpost. She has to watch them all roll by because that fucking Lantern, that fucking interloper into our experiment, into our investigation won’t stop unraveling them, like a tapestry of underwater stars. Her voice cries out harder and harder as they pull back, as they shift and mold into— the thing in the back of her head breaks free of its sac and starts crawling out the back of Mar’i’s body, like a little snakeskin shedding off on its own. Mar’i opens her mouth and only bubbles emerge, and the constellations around them are tightening, changing, she’s doing it now, touching that power Kyle showed her the day before, correcting the body-constellations until they’re right, until Roy’s missing arm has Orion’s Belt and his face is Kymand’r, a Tamaranean queen, and Lian’s little shoulders are graced by the Pleiades. She’s crying now, not that it matters, not when you’re underwater, but she is, and she pulls her face into her palms and sobs, takes in one mouthful of water after another, in her throat, into her lungs. She’s drowning herself, and the creature bursting from her head is trying to break the last bit away because it knows what she’s doing.

"They’re waiting for you. He loves you. It’s all going to be okay," the Child says quietly, and Mar’i lets go, closes her eyes, lets the monster break free, lets the last of her air leave her lungs, lets everything go dark. It’s easier this way. It’ll all be okay for them, he’s free, she traded, Lian won’t ever have to know what it feels like to have your father ripped away from you.

Leraje ssenkrad eht otni nwod reh sehsup eh dna, yci dna htooms niks, retaw het rednu kcen reh dnuora esolc sdnah sih.

Dickiebird screams into Ollie’s back, the sound coming out solely in vibration, but it flows through Ollie’s entire body. Dick works his arms free and claws at Ollie’s chest, working their way up, trying to reach his face. Rip him apart, tear at him, kill him before he kills you! It won’t be too long before there’s no more air and that can’t happen. He can’t let Ollie win. He can’t let any of them win! “I love you. It’s okay.” A soft voice, a child’s voice, his voice rings in his head, and he stops struggling, his hands caressing the sensitive parts of Ollie’s face that moments before they were scratching. He goes limp beneath the older man, not losing breath, just…waiting. The darkness is being pushed back, dissipated.

"I love you. It’s okay." That voice floats down to cover the inflamed throbbing of Ollie’s brain, the fight-fight-fight survival instinct, and he knows Dick must have heard it too because the tight-coiled, enraged body underneath him goes still and lax, hands turning to caresses. Ollie lets himself slide off of Dick’s shoulders and face, his own head and shoulder thunking against the floor with two bangs in quick succession. They both lie there, tangled and ungainly and broken, breathing the dust motes in and out.

Leraje sneiv reh hguorht smurht llits that doolb eht ta gniwalc, raluguj reh otni gnihsup slian, taorht reh dnuora gnisolc sdnah sih, syas eh, “edart riaf.”

Mari doesn’t fight back. Can’t fight back. She’s staring at the woman with the necklace again. There is no water around them. She wears a necklace and she tilts her head as Mar’i’s jugular bursts open and thick gushes of blood spurt out, floating around them.

Kyle can see what she’s doing, he can feel it as touches her skin, how cold it feels. He isn’t trying to hold her down anymore because she’s doing it herself. No…Kyle frowns. No, something else is doing it for her - dammit how many of these things are there, how many of them want to take her?!?! - and this one speaks in a backwards tongue. It mocks Zatanna and everything she’s trying to do. It vilifies one woman, while taking the other away. She is sinking into its seductive embrace, it’s more powerful than even the black goo that had tried to possess Roy and eat her alive. No. No more of this. Kyle pulls his ring off the string around his neck and slips the ring on. He can feel Bruce now - Bruce is in the water too. Good. All three of them. The impossible shape. Kyle barely thinks about it, and a construct rebreather fits into Bruce’s mouth and he is pulled forward to join the other two under the water. Kyle points to the real thing - the demon that holds Mar’i. His eyes flash green. “Hold her tight, Bruce. Keep her safe. That’s what you do. Keep her with us.”

"What are you waiting for?" she asks the woman, the blood flowing more and more out of her neck. The woman smiles and shakes her head.

Bruce doesn’t question when the rebreather fits into his mouth, nodding as he kicks his legs under the water—hooking a hand around Kyle’s ankle as he reaches for Mar’i, not seeing the woman, only seeing her.

The Child steps over to Roy, lightly, on the sandy shore, crouching down next to his body. It moves its hand to touch his arm, his missing arm, but stops, when Mar’i, in the lake, speaks. Gone are the flaxen tendrils, instead, locks the colour of midnight, stars tangled in its curls, skin like charred mocha. Small feet that barely touch the sand move, and it skates over the top of the water, toes dimpling ripples into the silvery water of the lake as it moves, looking up at the moon.

Dickiebird pants when Ollie’s weight is off his face, one hand slowly coming up to stroke at the archer’s unruly hair, smiling slightly at the way his fingers tangle in the too-long locks. “We survived, Ollie. You survived. We did it. We can leave now. He’d be proud of us.” Oliver swallows and croaks, “Untie me, then.”

Dickiebird chuckles and rolls onto his side, scooting closer to Ollie. “Where are you gonna go when I do?” Oliver licks his lips, tiredly. “Dunno. Anywhere but in here.” He tries to flex his fingers, but his hands are cramped into claws now from being tied so long, the knuckles fat and swollen. “Go see why Mar’i was yelling for Bruce.” Dickiebird works diligently, humming as he undoes the tight knots. When he’s got them all free, he lets the rope fall, running his fingers gently over the abrasions left on Ollie’s skin. “I guess you and I do belong here.”

The Child turns to look towards the direction of the camp, standing on tip toe on the water, and cups its hands to its face, whispering.

Lets the water swirl around them as he starts to glow a bright, eerie green in the dark water. He’s no longer using the Starheart. He’s a Green Lantern again, and he has to make every moment count. The back of his head starts to hurt, but he ignores it. Kyle sees the demon holding Mar’i and the water slices at it, thin whips of water that flays its smooth pale-white skin, as it grips her. He does know what it is, but he doesn’t really care. “EHS SEOD TON GNOLEB OT UOY. OG KCAB. EREHT SI ON EDART HTIW EHT SEKIL FO UOY. EW EKAT TAHW SI SRUO. OG KCAB.”

"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!" she screams again, and the woman turns and looks behind her, like she’s watching something else. Mar’i puts her face back into her hands and sobs again, because now the constellations are gone and it’s dark and she’s alone.0:29

"…Dickie!" The voice pierces through him, taking all his attention. Someone is calling for him, someone needs him. He looks out the door. He has to go. Oliver rolls onto his side, pressing his hand to the floor to push himself up. He shifts piece by piece, curling his knee, righting his hips, hauling himself upright. "No," he says, "not quite." Ollie gets to his feet with some effort and rolls out his neck. "There’s somewhere else I need to go." He moves out of the building, not checking to see if Dick is following him or not, and across the camp, towards the bungalow that Roy had chosen to relocate to. The place is a mess, turned upside down, but there’s a faint green shimmer hanging in the air. Ollie moves towards it heedlessly. "..Punkinbird!", the voice replays in his head, and he mouths it as he steps through the shimmer — and opens his eyes to find himself knee-deep in the lake.

Leraje taeh htiw sliob retaw eht hguorht srettahs that raor eht dna htuom sih snepo eh. lluks sih hguorht egnulp hteet sih sa flah ni gnippir ecaf, murtceps eht gnidneb, etihw naht relap niks sih fo roloc eht, strotsid ecaf sih.

The Child crouches at the edge of the water, pushing its hands against the shimmering surface like it is flat, and it pushes, slams a small fist against it, making a mournful birdlike noise at the hardness of the water.

She is buried into herself, the demon is distorted and screaming and Kyle calls out to her, desperately now. There’s only so much he can do. Even as a Lantern, he has limitations if she doesn’t want it to, “Mar’i!! Mar’i please! You don’t belong with those Things! You belong here, with us, dammit! Mar’i - we need you -” His glowing green eyes cut to look at Bruce. “DO something!”

Leraje ti sdrawot elyK sllup eh sa, ssenkrad lla, hteet lla, htuom s’hsif relgna na, ediw gninepo htuom, sworg erats sih fo ssenkrad eht sa gnikcarc stekcos eye, nwod sllup eh .flac sih pu, nodnet sellihcA eht tsniaga gnidils niks looc, htooms, elkna rehto s’elyK dnuora gniliart, sworg mra sih fo htgnel elap eht dna taorht reh gnivael slian sih, namow eht sesaeler.

The woman watches something beyond her shoulders, following it past where she stands, looking at it as it seems to go past Mar’i. Mar’i herself blinks, pulls her face out of her hands, and looks over her shoulder. The thing she sees is turning in on itself, face twisting and ripping, and she instinctively clasps a hand over her neck, over the gushing jugular. Her fingers burn hot, cauterizing the wound, the rest of her body turning now to stare at it straight on. “You were the thing inside him?” she asks, and her body goes white-hot again, but this time she remembers what this power is, and she surges forward, grabs at its face, her hands like the surfaces of twin stars. “YOU WERE THE THING THAT PRETENDED TO BE HIM?!” Her eyes are burning peridots and her hair takes on a life of its own.

Dickiebird follows Ollie—he knows where he’s going because Dick must go there too—to the lake. He spies the child—poor thing, precious thing—and steps toward it, the water and silt rushing around his legs. “Where are they? Where do we go?” They will all go together and they will come back together. Oliver moves forward, legs pushing through the water as if powered by clockworks, towards the Child. “Punkinbird,” he says, with his ruined voice, the rags of it barely audible over the ploshy swish of dark, mutinous water around his legs. Dick is there, moving faster, darting towards the Child as well, but Ollie maintains his pace. “Where,” he adds his question to Dick’s. “Where’s Roy.”

Roy is in the middle of a very pleasant dream with a partially dressed, very young, Christiane Amanpour, explaining the Middle East crisis, using props to aid her case: a funny set of string beads and a little bead that if you depress in the middle, it—

Roy rolls over onto his stomach, coughing, wetly. Oliver hears Roy before he sees him and wades up onto the sand, dropping to his knees next to his son, unbundling the bow and quiver he’d automatically picked up from Roy’s bedside on the way through the shimmer. “Dick,” Ollie calls, expecting Nightwing to appear at his side, the constant of all Bats. “Fix my shoulder. Do it fast.”

Leraje ssyba eht otni gnikcus gnilriws retaw seloh kcalb ekil gniworg seye .enog eson waj nekorb dna hteet lla siht ekil kool ton dluohs secaf taht nettogrof sah ti ekil gnidnapxe ecaf reh ta pu selims.

Mari can feel the thing extended, past where its trapped her, past and through the woman with the necklace, wrapping around something else. Mar’i doesn’t turn her head, but she buries her burning thumbs into the closest thing the monster has to eyesockets, her throat issuing the first cry in two days that is completely and totally her own. She remembers the pain from yesterday, the pain from burning out, and decides she doesn’t give a flying fuck anymore. “I’LL BURN YOU AND YOUR FUCKING DARKNESS!” she screams, gripping until she hears a crack, illuminating her own body until the darkness is a hot, hot purple. The woman behind her smiles and opens up a dark umbrella, shielding herself from the light.

The Child claps its hands, its little feet pounding the surface of the water, giddy as it watches, and plants itself on hands and knees, peering down, the edges of the moon-white dress getting soaked.

His head explodes in pain as soon as the Demon touches him, crawling up his body, and when Kyle looks down, all he can see is the mouth of Parallax, once more consuming him. Only this time no one will save him because he doesn’t deserve it, not a second time. Kyle’s glow diminishes to nothing and he is not a Green Lantern, not anymore, he’s just Kyle. He closes his eyes to let it swallow him…but it doesn’t happen. Instead, he sees purple, purple surrounding him. Kyle kicks himself free of the thing, mesmerized by the violet light.0:46

Bruce keeps his hand on Kyle, and keeps swimming towards Mar’i, even as it feels like miles are slipping him by. He knows his strength, he knows what it should feel like, and it is tiring him. Too fast. Too fast. He looks up at Kyle, then, when the rebreather disappears, as the Lantern’s power fades, and belatedly, sucks in a breath of water.

The Child looks up at the moon, suddenly, still on hands and knees. It clambers up, still appearing to be standing on a hard surface, even as its tiny toes are bathed in water, looking up at the moon, the strange moon, the false moon; the best it could do with such short notice.

Mari pushes on and on, every cell in her body burning her own power, no one else’s, all hers, all the power her mother gave her. All the power her entire universe gave her, this last stand for the right to stay here, to stay with him and her, with everyone. She screams again, a war cry, and the darkness he’s trapped her in cracks, and water is visible on the outside.

Dickiebird immediately comes to Ollie’s side, pressing the injured shoulder against his chest. “Three.” He slams it back into place, using his body as a brace, rubbing Ollie’s back gently once it’s done. He takes a step back, then, to give both of them some room. Oliver takes a few hissing breaths to clear the whirling of his head, giving Dick a nod of thanks once he gets it under control. “Roy,” he says, pulling his son upright. “What — what the hell is going on? Where are the others? What’s attacking you?”

Even in the purple haze, Kyle realizes that Bruce is there too, under the water. In a surge of adrenaline, Kyle grabs hold of Bruce firmly and hauls him upwards, swimming them both to the surface. One thing Kyle learned after nearly drowning as a child - how to swim. He’s good at that. They break through the surface, Kyle still keeping a hold of Bruce, slapping his thick muscular back to get him to cough. Dickiebird sprints out into the water the second Bruce and Kyle break the surface, wading deeper and deeper. He needs to reach them, needs to get Bruce to safety, because it’s Bruce, his Bruce, Bruce!!

mialc tonnac eh snus dnasuoht a fo yruf eht rednu ti pots ot elbanu eh dna gnikaerb nosirp eht fo ecafrus eht tuo retaw eht sehsup sdneb thgil teloiv eht sa neve mih snrub taht erutaerc eht ecaf ot tuoba gninrut eye single a water the under flickering skin its of color wan the water the boils creature the from pours that scream the.

"Can’t…drown me, can’t touch the people I love, can’t pretend to be them, can’t touch me, don’t deserve to touch me or them, don’t deserve to exist," she growls, hoisting him up, holding the monster by his face like he’s a rag doll. "I’ll just fly, you fucker."

Bruce rises to the surface with a horrible retching noise, looking up and over at the moon, the Child, Mar’i. Bruce croaks: “Mar’i..” He begins to swim back over to where she was, still sputtering, still coughing. Kyle hacks. “Dammit Bruce! Look —” Kyle swims over and points, all of the purple in the middle of the lake, the way the water has parted for her. “She - she’s the one saving us.” Kyle treads water, seeing someone approaching…somehow he knows it’s Dick. “Bruce — your son —” Dickiebird pants, swimming toward Bruce. His arms don’t want to work right, but his legs are losing ground fast, so he flails wildly until he gets himself organized, pushing himself to reach what he can’t lose.

Oliver goes still before Roy can answer, his gaze drawn to the bow and arrows lying in the sand. “It’s the demon archer,” he says, only half-asking. “That fucking … Oray, Leraje, gangrene arrows, him, isn’t it?”

The Child looks down when the bubble shatters, breaks, under Mar’i’s violet light, and slaps its hands against the water-wall, teeth bright and gap toothed, still, imperfect in the perfection of its smile. It gestures at a hand for Mar’i.

Leraje name its speaks Archer The when noise a howls, and when IT beckons HIM FORTH, slinking back, back, ripping itself in half, the noise like breaking, splintering bones under the water; it’

's arm remains

in Mar’i’s

grasp.

Mari explodes into a burst of burning solar heat, bright violet and nebula-shaped. It expands out, sending the water thrashing in heavy waves, but it contains itself—she contains it, doesn’t know how she does it, but she does, trapped with the monster in the middle of the heat—in the heart of her star—burning him down to ash. She’s burning every last bit of it, and when it’s all done, she looks up at the moon reflecting into the water, the little child smiling down at her, unaware of what’s in her grasp. Her body goes limp again, but this time it floats up like a corpse, right into the child’s waiting arms.

Bruce looks back at Dick, his eyes widening, shaking his head. “Go back to shore, boy!” Dickiebird shakes his head, swimming harder. “No! I wanna be here for you! Let me!”

Roy mumbles, finally, in response: “..just five more minutes, eh?”

Kyle watches Mar’i and The Child, but he’s distracted by something else, further in the lake. Bruce’s attention is split on Dick, and Mar’i. And Mar’i is safe. The Demon is destroyed by her fury; they’re all, technically, safe. And so Kyle starts to swim towards the glint deeper in the late, an outline bathed in white moonlight and purple energy.

The Child greedily opens and closes its hands, taking the time to pull the hand—it is skeletal, bone-white, crumbling to ash under the moonlight—out of Mar’i’s grasp. It sits down, little dress and petticoats flaring, right on the water, cradling Mar’i’s head in its lap. It purrs, fingers stroking through the woman’s hair, over her neck, soothing easing away the scabs, the wounds, dark fingers quick.

Bruce grits his teeth, before looking to towards the sound of something breaking the surface of the lake: Mar’i. He calls out, as he shifts in the water, kicking his legs. “..then help me get our girl!”

Mari stirs under the soft touch, before she rolls her head to the side and vomits lakewater back into the lake, head held aloft by its tiny hands. She opens her eyes, pupils out of focus, and looks up at the child’s face, at the star-wrapped curls and dark skin. “Hope I…” she coughs again, the tide slowly pushing them back to shore. “I hope I meet you again someday,” she murmurs, feeling everything heal, all the wounds, and she closes her eyes again, smiling.

Oliver clutches at Roy, over-optimistically at where his arm should be, hand closing on nothing. He bites back a noise of disappointment and instead wraps his own arms around Roy, rocking him. “Thank god, I didn’t know what the fuck was happening … that demon’s gone now, it’ll be all right, son…”

The Child sews its hands into Mar’i’s hair, every stroke lighting up the dark strands a glowing purple; it chortles, delighted, smoothing both hands from root to tip, urging the color forth, over and over, making the strands grow.

Dickiebird nods and swims hard toward Mar’i, toward Bruce, toward his family that needs help. Roy , ultimately, says nothing, slipping back into unconsciousness. His hair is, oddly enough, longer than it has been in months. Bruce swims to Mar’i, the child, paddling to stay afloat as he approaches, warily, his eyes drawn up to The Child; he looks back to Dick.

Kyle is at the brink of tiring out and he pauses to catch his breath and tread water again when his feet kick down against solid ground. He tentatively stands, in the lake. Kyle looks behind him. Queen and Roy are on the shore, The Child is still with Mar’i, floating on the water’s surface like gods. Bruce and Dick, swimming towards them. It’s quiet where Kyle is, in the middle of the lake, standing on what seems to be a submerged island, in the middle of the lake. Pushed up at some point maybe; because Kyle doesn’t remember ever seeing the structure he’s looking at now. The earthquake that him and Mar’i caused a couple days ago - did that push it out of the lake? Kyle walks towards the structure and touches it. The surface is smooth and shiny and golden, it seems. It feels soft and curved, like metal or kevlar or nomex. It’s taller than him, which means Kyle assumes there is a way to get inside it. Kyle walks around its perimeter, but sees no door or hatch. It’s just a structure. “Hunh…” Kyle grunts, frowning. It’s really only then than a wave of exhaustion overcomes him and he leans against the structure, almost tempted to slide down and rest right there, on the watery hill.

Oliver gathers Roy against him, turning them to watch what’s going on with the Child. He lowers his face to Roy’s head, nibbling at the longer hairs there as he watches. Dickiebird paddles up from the other side, panting as he floats, a healing exhaustion settling through him from the proximity of The Child. The shadows are at bay here, and things are bright again.

The Child looks over at Kyle when he approaches the structure, and looks over at Bruce and Dick, at Oliver and Roy on shore. At the woman in its arms. Gently, it relinquishes the woman with the beautiful hair to the two men, rising up, to look over at the Lantern, cupping its hands around its mouth.

The Child makes sure to pull the sheets up around them all, a glass of water on the nightstand, when it sends them all to bed.

The Child shakes a chubby finger at the pile of ash sitting on top of the lake and then, shaking with laughter, kicks the dusty pile, sending it scattering across the lake, carried by the wind. It shakes with inaudible laughter and takes off running, back, towards the tall grass. Over its shoulder, it waves at the moon, and slips into the grass, silently.