moon lake, water sun

[bossymarmalade]

They’re laid out like fallen soldiers side-by-side, flat on their backs with hands clasped atop their stomachs. Damian opens his eyes first, the expanse of sky overhead white, too white to gaze upon for long, a bridal veil hanging heavy over the world. Feathered clouds break the canvas here and there, sickly shades of yellow and green and Damian imagines them vomiting a toxic rain as he sits up. Water laps gently on shore behind him, and it’s the purple tint he recalls from the pool; it tastes of plum and traces of iron when he cups some toward his mouth. He nudges Rayner then, and his arm is suspended over the sword that rests between them. “Rayner, awaken. We’ve died.”

There is nothing but silence. Kyle wants darkness, but instead there is only the white. It’s blinding. It burns him in the water. It is unyielding and relentless and silent. It scorches like the sun. “Damian!” he flails his limbs as he sits up and looks around, searching until he spots Damian beside him. Kyle crawls closer, unheeding of the sword as he pulls Damian to him and uses his free hand to search - there’s no sliced open belly, no blood, no open wounds. There is a hand mark on the child’s round face, and finger marks around his stout little neck. Kyle looks down at himself - no wounds, nothing to indicate that he’d driven the sword into himself. “Damian…” Kyle murmurs, head tucked into his chest. “We haven’t died. No one wakes up when they’re dead. But…where are we?” Kyle looks around, disoriented for a moment. The sky is a featureless cruel white, but there are colours staining the clouds, the water, the bright ochre ground they’re laying on.

They are on a small patch of yellow ground, and the purple tinted water surrounds them entirely on their island. It is like they have been set adrift, almost.



Damian is unusually patient as he allows Rayner to examine him, but he rises to his feet the moment the other’s grip slackens. He already knows Rayner’s wound must be gone; it was clearly fatal, and the Lantern wouldn’t be moving if it remained. And so he’s certain they’re spirits, non-corporeal somehow though they appear to each other in familiar forms. “Are you certain?” he says when Rayner protests his declaration that they’re deceased. “We appear to be in some form of limbo, waiting to be processed. I wish they’d hurry along.” He paces from one side of their island to the other, the yellow ground glowing red under the imprints of his shoes.

"I can’t be in Limbo, I was baptized," Kyle responds automatically, missing the point of Damian’s saying. Kyle stands up as well, sheltering his eyes from the glare of the sky. The purple water seems to stretch on for ages. It ripples and wavers, like Mar’i’s hair when she is full-on Starfire. "Maybe we’re at Moon Lake? But…that’s impossible." The invisible dome bisected the lake, Kyle remembers that in the first few days they’d gotten here. He looks down at the golden ground, a crispy warm sort of yellow that reminds him of Mia’s Speedy costume. The red footprints that Damian leaves as the boy runs off are vermilion, like…Kyle bends down and picks up the sword. "Damiannnn, wait up." He jogs lightly after Damian, catching up. "C’mon. Maybe this isn’t an island after all. Maybe it’ll connect to the rest of the area. What’s that called? An…isthmus? A promontory? A penisula?"

Damian halts and looks over his shoulder to peer up at Rayner’s face, eyes thin with scrutiny. “Peninsula,” he corrects automatically, failing to recognize any humor in the mistake but knowing for certain it’s Rayner beside him because of it. He lifts Rayner’s shirt— too formal for their environment, a tuxedo piece it seems and he balks at Rayner’s odd clothing style for only a second— and looks over the skin on his abdomen. As he suspected, it’s free of any mark, no piercing gash where a blade would have settled between his organs. He circles the banks of the island until he realizes the water is shallow at the east, a long sandbar stretching out into the lake with water lapping over it just deep enough to reach Rayner’s ankles, Damian’s shins. He walks ahead of Rayner to shield him against any potential attack, but he allows the Lantern to carry the sword. For now. “That’s mine,” he reminds him. “Don’t lose it.”

"Heyyy, look what you found," Kyle says. He lets Damian inspect him and follows the boy, staying behind but not too far behind. Within hovering distance of Kyle’s hand, which he keeps raised and poised by Damian’s back, ready to pull him close if anything happens. There is a shimmer grey-blue rock formation jutting out from the purple water, and the sandbar seems to lead to it. It looks like it is a cave, as they get closer. Everything around them is so quiet though; the only noise is their splashing.

"Remember the last time we got lost? At the Raven? We’re not so scared of the Things now, are we," Kyle says jauntily, tugging the long curly mane on the nape of Damian’s neck. "Maybe this means we—Damian, look down!" Kyle gasps suddenly, his hand leaving Damian. Swimming around their feet are about a dozen or so koi fish. They crowd to Damian, looking up at him expectantly, like his own koi did in the Watchtower Arboretum. "Bonito…."

Damian backs up against Rayner’s legs when he exclaims about something surrounding their feet, but his face brightens with a surprised smile when he recognizes the orange-dappled koi. He kneels there in the shallow water and sandbed beneath, letting the fish chase and nibble at his fingers. “Titania, Desdemona, Juliet…” he greets them individually, their markings familiar to him (or so he claims, and no one can persuade him that they aren’t perfectly distinct). “They’re hungry,” he tells Rayner, craning his neck to look at him overhead. “And I haven’t any food for them.” And suddenly the knowledge of it swells upon him like a rogue wave on the sea: “Rosalind is gone.” He says it aloud, eyes and voice distant. He’s not sure what it means, only that it’s true, only that he won’t see her again. The fish focus on the quarter of his nailbeds that haven’t yet been covered by new nail growth after he lost them to the vines that invaded his body.

Kyle watches the fish huddled against Damian’s fingers, eating and feeding of the boy, de-scaling him, in a sense. Kyle bends down and lets them feed off him too, his cut-up hands and torn hangnails. “You took care of Rosalind,” Kyle says in an effort of comfort, although he knows it’ll fall short, given why the cub was an orphan in the first place. He picks Damian up, holding him in his arms as they continue to the cave.

"It’s not your fault, hm? You’re still good." Kyle thinks suddenly of last night - the bargaining, Kyle trying to kill the demon out of Damian. The kiss, and Damian’s claim that he was always, still, himself. He pushes it all aside angrily. This place. It’s this godforsaken place. Kyle amends softly to Damian, “You do good things.”

They arrive at the deep slate-blue cave, and peer inside. It looks like a vibrantly colored mineshaft, dripping and cool and silent.



Damian stares down at the taut stretch of skin between Rayner’s neck and shoulder as he’s borne forth in his arms, and he recalls clearly where he pierced through the flesh with his sharp baby incisors, has a sharp recollection of the tang of the Lantern’s blood as he guzzled it into his mouth. Each word, each deed he performed is crystal, gleaming and transparent, in his mind— there is no fog of witnessing it through the eyes of an invading consciousness.

"Don’t," he begs, palm closing in to rest upon the once-marred patch of skin. "Just allow me to be wicked. It’s easier for me. Rayner, you ruin everything." He shifts his focus as the mineshaft gapes around them, his eyes traveling over the leaking pipes, the water stained with rust like a river of molten gold. He squirms until Rayner sets him upon his feet, and he takes his hand to walk beside him, just as he did when they traversed the desert so long ago.

Damian had been good, then, when he thought he was someone else. He had been good until his mother found them both and reminded Damian that he was an al Ghul— not a Grayson, not a Wayne. He’d proven her correct with the sheath of his dagger in her stomach, and he still tastes the vicious approval in her kiss. As he trudges through the cave now, bronze-stained to his knees, he turns back as if he expects to see her. Instead— “Rayner,” he gasps, grabbing his arm. The opening behind them is closed over with a wall of solid sand.

Kyle is about to mildly protest (not mild in tone, just in concern) at Damian’s admonition but he is distracted by the brilliant colors of the mineshaft as he sets the boy down on his feet. When the opening shuts close, Kyle puts his hand on Damian’s shoulder, holding the sword up to him. “I think you should have this now,” Kyle murmurs and then laughs, suddenly, the noise echoing in the cold dripping cave. “Nothing’s a surprise anymore. All we need to do is keep moving forward. All we can do, right?” The cave lights up, tiny little bright pink baubles that bubble from the rooftop, providing a dim illumination, enough to keep sloshing through the bronze water. The mine goes deeper into the earth, the cave surface becoming shiny with metal and jewel encrusted. “You’ve died before, haven’t you?” Kyle asks Damian suddenly, in a whisper. “What was it like? Do you remember?”

Damian holds the sword at an angle across his waist and turns his face toward the ceiling, cotton candy bubbles popping against the welt on his cheek. “Father and I go home at the end of patrol,” he points out, but Rayner is correct: forward is the only option. His eyes flash up in surprise, luminous in the effervescent lighting, but his answer is nonchalant. “Like drowning, but the water didn’t taste of plums.” He halts and gestures with his sword straight ahead to the woman blocking their path, the blade a rigid pointer. Damian knows her by something around her mouth, the familiarity of her smile— one he’s seen before on someone else’s face, granted to him in moments where it seemed there was nothing to smile about at all. “You should ask your mother. Hasn’t she died, too?”

"Mom….Mom?" Kyle whispers and then he covers his mouth, pressing his lips tightly. You don’t call out to them. You don’t identify them by name, or they will respond. But she stands there, staring at Kyle with that smile - the sad one that told him nothing was okay, but she’d keep him happy, even as she suffered. Kyle grew up resenting that smile. He pulls Damian back against him, holding him tight. "Don’t look at him," Kyle says to the spectre, angry now. "Don’t say anything, don’t speak to me. Don’t—" Maura turns silently and starts walking away from them. Being the only path, Kyle and Damian have no choice but to follow her.

The tunnel eventually forks; two doors. The Maura sidhe goes to the right door and opens it, and sun and fresh air spill out onto Kyle and Damian. Maura beckons them, still with that smile.

“Stay here,” Kyle instructs Damian; and his voice is hard and firm, brooking no dissent. “I’ll check it out.” He walks towards Maura, skirting her as he leans in the doorway and peeks inside. After a moment, Kyle turns and stiffly walks back to Damian, his eyes glassed over with horror. “Come on. We’re - we’re - we - we’re talking the - the - we’re taking the other - the other door. The left one. Don’t look in there, Damian.”

What he saw inside the right door, were people - rows and rows of people, layered one after the other on a beautiful meadow, all in various forms of incredibly gruesome slaughter - men, women, children. And Kyle knew immediately who had killed each and every one of them: Damian. Kyle almost forcibly steers the child towards the left-hand door.

Damian is stiff and apprehensive as Rayner parts from him, and he wants to follow. He has the sword, after all. But Rayner’s tone is that of an adult hero isssuing an order— a rare edge to hear in his voice— and Damian realizes as he stands there, waiting with hands clutched around the hilt, that the Lantern is only his “sidekick” by choice. It perplexes Damian, Rayner’s reaction to the apparent embodiment of his mother, his further command to follow without looking into the room he’d just vacated. But Damian has hurt him, so many times now, and still he says you’re good, Damicito, you’re good— and Damian elects to obey him as his leader, to trust him as his friend who has never given him cause to do anything else. He doesn’t resist as Rayner guides him past the chamber of past horrors, and he doesn’t attempt to glance within.

To the left, then— the way is blocked with vines, thick and coiled and crowned with little violets and rosebuds that give Damian pause before he slashes through them with more force than is necessary. They give way to a long hall, and canvas adorns the paint-spattered walls, a spectrum that gradually fades from green to yellow to white. The boy thinks he recognizes Rayner’s style in the artwork displayed, but they depict scenes of carnage, of monsters stuffed with crib-like bellies full of infants, of a refrigerator door cracked open, light spilling out, a maw open and gaping with Rayner’s frightened eyes trapped somewhere behind. The boy understands some of it, and some of it is unfamiliar. But either way, Damian takes Rayner’s hand again until they reach the end of the chamber. “You’re good,” he echoes him, because he doesn’t know what else to say. “It’s easier for me to be good when I remember that you are.”

Kyle’s eyes scan the walls quickly, barely looking, like one does when they want to scan an entire page of a comicbook without getting spoiled; except Kyle does it here and now because he knows this story. He knows it too well. And it’s humiliating and unconscionable to have it displayed like this, open and accessible like some sort of public art exhibit. Everyone who knows these things about him, everyone he’d completely shared his life with - they’ve died. It’s a mural of agony and endings that he’s created; all he had to do was imagine it.

But there’s an echo in the hall - “You’re good" - and Kyle looks down at Damian, the child’s hand taking his own. The Lantern’s eyes prickle, and Kyle smiles down at him. "Really?" he asks. Because he really wants to know if that’s true. Damian doesn’t always say the truth, not his fault, but. Kyle wants to know, for real. For true.

Damian nods, and though he looks away because there’s too much raw emotion in Rayner’s face and he finds it threatening somehow, he speaks with sincerity. “Yes. Even when you were Parallax, I wasn’t scared of you. I knew it wasn’t your fault because you’d never—” he licks his lips and makes himself meet Rayner’s eyes as they pass through the final series of canvas, blinding white like the sky over the islands, the images sketched in gray upon them too light to be discerned unless one stepped close, nearly pressed a nose to the stretched fabric. “I used to measure your value primarily by your ring. I don’t now, not anymore.”

Kyle tugs Damian back to the grey, the final sketch among their path. “Do you see?” Kyle points, his finger tracing out the lines, familiar with them as if he’d drawn it himself. “Do you see this?” Kyle’s fingers run along the drawing, tracing out the HSR, the image of Kyle in there, Mar’i and Bruce out there; Ibn and the other Bruce and Duk-Ga through there; and then there is a scratchy little image of Damian, standing in the doorway. The boy is depicted looking up, up…and when Kyle sketches the outline of the entire fresco, Damian can see the face of his mother, encapsulating all the other smaller scenes. “Can you see your mother?” Kyle asks Damian, glancing down. “I see her too. I think about her too.”

Damian follows the path of Rayner’s fingers with his eyes, and he recognizes the HSR, remembers when he opened the hatch to interrupt Rayner’s test. He isn’t familiar with all the people depicted, but certainly he recognizes her when he sees her. “Yes, I see her. I often think of you and Mother in tandem, and you are nothing like her. Nothing.” His shoulders bunch and teeth grind upon each other, and even he doesn’t know if he means it as an insult, a point of relief, a mere observation stemming from the desire to apply logic to a situation that doesn’t follow its rules. As he considers, the sound of water rushing toward them makes him run without looking to identify its source, Rayner’s hand still held tightly in his own.

The viscous gold liquid overwhelms them though, thick and roiling with the odor of rust and spoiled honey. It’s sticky enough to levitate them with ease, and they half-float above the waves as the jet of water terminates in a large drain at the end of the tunnel. Around and around they swirl, reaching for each other as the liquid seeks to rip them apart, and the canvas and lifeless bodies that Damian never saw join them in the funnel as they’re displaced with the flood. “Rayner!” Damian yelps, catching a mouthful of syrupy fluid. The gold is all he can see, absorbing him until he’s coated like a bronze statue while they circle toward the pipe far below.

The world is suddenly awash in gold and Kyle can barely stay afloat. But he isn’t afraid. He feels like they’ve seen what was necessary; for what, he’s not quite sure. But regardless of what Their intentions were and whatever terrors they’d intended to spin for the boy and his Lantern, Kyle isn’t going to play along anymore. He knows what he’s going to try and do now, after this odd little journey - violence, death, resurrection and redemption.

"Stay calm!" Kyle calls out before he’s submerged. "Just let it happen!" They swirl through the pipe and are deposited in a large golden room. It is beautiful and cool, and there is a large logo stamped into one golden wall - the CACHE logo, with a stylised sun in the middle. Under the logo is stamped the word: HELIODROME. Kyle pulls Damian up, and they are both as golden as the room itself. "We’re - we’re in another terminal," he realizes, staring at the logo. Kyle turns and slicks the syrup off Damian’s face. "Are you okay?" When Kyle tastes the golden liquid on his own lips it is indeed, like honey. There is dark green water dripping from the ceiling and Kyle blinks slowly. "I know where we are. We’re underneath Moon Lake."

Damian wills himself to relax and stop scrabbling at the walls of the funnel in a futile effort to gain purchase. Rayner will be there with him regardless of where he emerges; he repeats this mantra in his head as he holds his breath and hopes the journey isn’t a long one. Thankfully, he still has a careful store of oxygen in his lungs when they’re finally spewed into a wide, open room. Damian shakes himself as he stands upright, as he takes slow steps forward to reach out and touch the sun emblazoned on the wall. Rayner catches his eye in the den of burnished gold, and Damian takes him in as well. The embellishment, the walls, their clothes all cast in glittering bronze like two gods reigning over the kingdom of the sun. It’s a notion Damian fancies as he extends his arm to better examine his own lacquered clothing.

"I’m fine. Heliodrome," he announces in a voice injected with pomp and grandeur, hand sweeping an arc as if he’s presenting it for Rayner’s approval. Damian appreciates the bunker’s dramatic aesthetics, at any rate, and is glad to presently match them. That they’re embedded in the bottom of the lake doesn’t seem to concern him. He looks to the sun again, thinking its fire a worthy emblem for him to represent, when he notices the notch just below its fattest ray. Damian takes up his sword and carefully slides the blade within the opening until it clicks, the mechanism within trapping the scimitar in a fast grip.



"Dami—" But Kyle cut’s his warning off - what’s the point? Child gotta do what child gotta do - as the mechanism spins with the scimitar trapped in it like a key, opening the large expanse of the sun in the centre of the logo in a spinning, revolving movement. Kyle watches in interest as the sun opens up to a golden staircase. It looks like it’s ascending to heaven. Kyle almost smiles. "Sorry about your sword, but. Maybe when we come back here, we can fetch it for you? C’mon. Let’s go back to Cachement." They trot up the stairs (both somewhat reluctant to leave Heliodrome, but also the lure of soft comfy beds in town is too tempting to resist) and Kyle pushes open a door at the top….opening into the magical disappearing box that Clark and Kyle found Zee in. Kyle crows.

"Ha! Wouldja lookat that. Full circle, Damicito," he imparts wisely, although he’s clearly acting the fool. Kyle hauls Damian out of the box, noting how the back of the structure is a trick wall, one that slides to allow people access down the stairs into the Heliodrome itself. There is an Ankh symbol painted on the trick door. "I’m glad you’re alive, manito." Kyle says, once they paddle across the now-familiar lake, and walk back to the town.



Damian is visibly frustrated over his loss of the sword, which refuses to budge when he attempts to free it from the wall, but he’s weary enough from their excursion to follow along after mild protest. He knows nothing of the significance of the enclosure from which they emerge, of the Magician having been discovered inside its thick walls. He shakes water from his hair as they surface from a swim across the lake, spattering gold flecks across the bank under his feet. “I prefer you not being dead, as well.” He doesn’t take Rayner’s hand now, not with them approaching an area populated by their peers. But he stays close to him— he follows him, and he knows the Lantern will lead him to safety once more.

Just before they step into the camp proper, Damian stops him with a hand on his arm. He plans to apologize, to acknowledge his sins even though he’s not certain he was in control of himself for those committed against Rayner last night. He plans to explain, to promise future efforts to be good, good just like Rayner insists upon believing he is. But he’s said all this during past incidents. He’s made those promises and failed in them. So instead he says, “Thank you, Kyle,” and leaves for the bungalow he shares with Grayson. He glances overhead as he walks, but the constellations of Talia and Maura he identified last night are no longer there. The stars are shapeless, but they’re bright and they’re clear.

Kyle watches him go, partially stunned, but a feeling of warmth flows through him like a slow burn. It’s not that sticky uncomfortable fly-buzzing warmth, like so much of Cachement is; it’s that feeling of love and kindness. It’s a feeling he’d forgotten, for a long time: compassion. He grins and makes sure Damian enters the bungalow, safe with his family. Kyle heads straight for the showers, stripping down as soon as he gets in. This suit is completely trashed; there is only one more, now, in his closet. Kyle turns the water on, just a gentle heat that he can stand under for long, lovely minutes as he comes clean.