peace or annihilation

[bossymarmalade]

Roy kisses the top of Mar’i’s forehead, when he enters the hospital room, moving his hand to curl around hers. “Hey, baby girl,” he murmurs. He holds a new plant in his other hand, and sets it next to the other succulents lining her bedside table.

Roy squeezes her hand, thumb rubbing against the inside of her palm. He picks up her hair brush, and gently combs her hair back, speaking quietly. “..gonna be moving you home, Mar’i. That’s good.. right?” He swallows, thickly, and moves his hand to lift her head off the pillow—careful of the wires and tubes—and brushes her hair down over her shoulders.

Parka lifts a cigarette to her mouth, standing on the roof of a building across from the hospital. She pulls a deep drag and holds the smoke, deep in her lungs.

Diana knocks on the door, peeking in, “Roy, hi. Am I interrupting?”

Roy rubs at his eyes for a brief moment, setting the brush down. “Nah,” he states, and looks over. “What’s up, Diana?”

Diana steps in, standing behind Roy, “I thought I should stop by and see how things are.” her hands clasp in front of her, “How both you and Mar’i are doing.”



Blinker is picking at her mascara idly, as Septum tries the Emergency Room exit door. “Locked,” she says unhelpfully, as if Septum can’t feel that for himself. She looks up at the building across the way, blinking in rapid succession, before looking back down at him.

Parka waves the cigarette at Blinker, the dot of glowing orange, red, sending a spiraled plume of smoke into the air.

"You’re a real helpful shithead, aren’t you," Septum growls, before the sound of sirens in the distance draw his attention. "Mealticket," he murmurs, backing a bit away from the door.

Dr. Ruiz is clearly still not pleased about the transfer orders, but the good night’s rest he had the night before has done wonders on his attitude. He nods at the two conscious people as he enters the room, eyes focusing in on the unconscious third. “I’ve got all the paperwork here, including care orders for that suture.” He taps the back of his head, where a small matching shaved spot exists on Mar’i’s head alongside a thin line of staples, the result of an exploratory surgery a few hours after her arrival. It’s almost healed, but he says it anyway, just to be safe.

Roy doesn’t look up at Diana, not just yet: he continues to smooth Mar’i’s hair away from her face, before pushing his thumbs over her eyebrows. He had taken tweezers, the day before, and carefully—and awkwardly, for an archer (for fuck’s sake)—plucked a few errant hairs, keeping the line of her brows separate. His hand, the calloused pads of his fingers, rest against her temple, and he works the tip of his finger against her cheek—least calloused, most sensitive—before he opens his mouth to answer Diana. “We’re—”

Roy nods, looking up at the doctor, and removes his hand, glancing to Diana apologetically.

«Doctor just said ‘care orders’.. They’re gonna move her.> > Parka looks away from where she is standing on the rooftop, the aquiline hook of her nose laced pink, in the sudden cold snap that had worked its way over the map of San Francisco.

Diana waves a hand, and takes a step back to allow Roy to discuss plans with the doctor. Supporting Roy as well as Mar’i was all she had wanted in her visit, and she could do so quietly.

Blinker nods her head as the ambulance comes flying into the covered entryway. Within a fraction of a second, doors are opening and people are spilling back and forth. She nods her head at Septum as a woman in a neck-brace is wheeled into the Emergency Room, and the two enter. If anyone looks at them for longer than a second, Blinker blinks and they return to their hectic schedules.

Roy holds his hand out for the papers, as he looks down to Mar’i. “Any charts and paperwork that you can rustle up will be good, too, doc.”

Parka moves forward to place her booted heel on the edge of the parapet, staring down at the room through the afternoon’s waning light. Her gaze doesn’t waver as Roy speaks, watching his mouth and how he forms the words, reading his lips without a second-guess.

Dr. Ruiz looks at Roy for a moment. “You want the original copies?” he asks, unspoken words lining the space between the spoken: Leave no record of her stay? He checks the IV bag, the ventilator, and the two monitors as he moves throughout the room. One hand gently pulls up Mar’i’s wrist, and Ruiz looks at his watch, lips moving silently as he counts the beats.

Roy doesn’t look at the other man, smoothing back Mar’i’s hair when the doctor checks on her pulse—like she is Lian and might squirm at his touch, expecting a shot (instead of.. silence. More silence,)—and his own tacit reply might as well scream the confirmation: yes. Leave nothing. Get rid of every scrap of evidence.. Leave nothing. He looks up at the doctor and states, firmly and slowly. “I might wanna pay the hospital for the sheets and pillowcases, too.”

Dr. Ruiz almost rolls his eyes at the last part, making a mental note to never be the attending physician for a superhero again. “I’ll have the whole room scrubbed like she was plague-ridden,” he half-jokes, moving back towards the door. Ruiz glances at Diana, nodding a little. “I’ll see what all else we’ve gotten filed for her in the last week. Give me a few minutes.”

Diana moving a hand to rest against her hip as she nods back to the doctor, lips pursed. “Where are you planning to move her?” she asks softly as soon as the door is shut.

Roy turns to look at Diana, back to the window, and shakes his head slowly. In a low voice, quietly. “I don’t want to discuss it here.” The way he says it means that he wants to discuss it, just not now.

Diana nods, her gaze drawing to the window, beginning to scan about outside, “I understand, although I think I’d like to stay close. If that’s alright with you.”

Roy attempts to crack a grin, but the expression doesn’t quite make it: instead, it looks like a facial twitch, the tendons and muscles that run down his cheek spasming. “Yeah, of course it is.” He looks back down at Mar’i, and half-talks to the sleeping woman, half-talks to Diana. “Who refuses a private escort by Wonder Woman? Not this archer..”

Dr. Ruiz leaves the room quietly and closes the door behind him. He can already tell the whole covert “find-and-destroy-the-evidence” quest is one he’s expected to complete without the help of any of the floor nurses, so he makes his way behind the nurses’ station, snagging the handful of paperwork from Mar’i’s room’s slot. He thumbs through them, making sure they’re all in place, then heads towards the recordkeeping room, on the hunt for the originals. Vaguely he can hear some of the nurses discussing the highway collision that’s sent three ambulances to their hospital, but Ruiz doesn’t pay much attention to that.

Parka exhales when the woman moves towards the window and drops, faster than should be humanly possibly, to the ground, crouching low as she moves. «They are moving her and it’s happening soon.> >

Septum doesn’t even pause in his stride when Blinker taps his shoulder softly, a curl appearing on the edge of his mouth. They ride the elevator up, all alone with the musack, and he admires his reflection, admires the thick spray of burns across his face in the perfect shape of elegant fingers. There’s a distinct ding, then, and the doors slide open. The sign above their heads proclaims “Intensive Care Unit,” and the muscles underneath Septum’s skin begin moving.

Parka moves over towards an exhaust shed on the building, crab walking until she’s sure she can’t be seen. She lowers her head, and watches as two large ravens land in front of her, their wings fluttering until they settle. They turn their eyes, glassy opals void less, on the hospital. On the hospital room.

Diana rests her hand against his shoulder, giving it a quick squeeze, “I’d be stupid not to offer any assistance.” her face relaxes as she looks to Mar’i, a sad smile pulling at her lips, “For this case in particular.”

Roy nods, and reaches up to squeeze the top of her hand, before turning his body to meet her eyes. “It means a lot..” Roy swallows, his brow furrowing, and he removes his hand to scratch at the back of his head, freshly shorn, letting that noise fill the air for a second, or two, before continuing. He bobs his head, in a boyish nod. “Yeah, it means a shit ton, Diana.. and I—” He stops, and wags his head a bit: a you know where I’m going with this, right? Don’t make me say it gesture.

Diana squeezes her hand once more against his shoulder, “And I’m sure you appreciate it.” She pulls her hand back, “And I think you’d agree Mar’i deserves the best.”

Roy tries the half-grin again, and this time it settles a bit more. “Yeah, that’s why I’m glad we’ve got it.” He glances to the door, where the doctor left, and shifts, towards it, his hand trailing against Mar’i’s sheet-covered leg as he walks. “Wonder if I should be worried he hasn’t come back yet.”

Dr. Ruiz shuts the filing cabinet with his foot—gotta love that backup tree-kiling, he thinks wryly—and exists the recordkeeping room, hovering in the doorway as he fishes for keys in his coat pockets. He only peripherally notices the two people coming down the hall, and when he glances over to make sure they’re not some other heroes disobeying the visitation policies, Blinker closes her eyes briefly and the door snaps shut, cracking around his neck with a single noise. Ruiz falls silently to the ground, papers spilling around him, and a nurse nearby makes a choked scream before Blinker’s glance throws her straight into the wall.

Diana is about to check the clock when the nearby sound of a neck cracking and a body crumpling to the ground, “Something tells me we have company, Roy.”

Roy ‘s feet quicken, as he near-slides across the floor, for his quiver, and bow, removing the jacket he wears and chucking it onto Mar’i’s feet, protectively.

Parka watches the woman move, her body language changing, and sees the man—the archer—move for his weapon. She blinks, and moves back over to the edge of the building. «He’s got a bow and arrows. They know.> > She looks over as a few more ravens land: in the time since the first pair, they have been settling against the concrete parapets, radio antennae, the sills of the windows below her. They number more than a hundred, now.

Diana smirks because of course he’d be well prepared. She slides off her own jacket, as her stance shifts defensively. “Either we go to them or wait for them to find us. Either way it’s going to be quick.”

Septum sends a spare bed lined against the wall at the police officer who comes running around the corner. His muscles are full-on shifting now, twisting and curling underneath his sleeveless shirt and… expanding. Expanding like some strange gym time-lapse, like watching a balloon inflate. “Hey Royyyy,” he calls out, because he knows, he saw it written on t-shirts at the woman’s house, on the phone that she dropped when Blinker turned her brain off, in the little chalk drawing of a trio of smiley stick people on the board beside her fridge. “Wanna know the noise the little slut made when we dropped her?”

Blinker separates from Septum the moment the man begins speaking. She heads around the other side of the hall, eyes locked on the closed hospital room door.

Roy is about to answer Diana—again—when he hears the man’s voice, hears what he says. There’s a shift in the sound around them, that Roy recognizes, instinctively—the songbirds have gone quiet. Outside of the hospital room, there is no warbling pigeon or wayward finch chattering. Even the wind seems to have picked up, muting the sound of traffic down below them. Roy doesn’t have to look back to understand what’s outside. He’s a hunter, and he can smell a trap a mile away, hidden under foliage and masked with the sweetest perfume. Of course it wouldn’t be easy. “We need to stay with her.. Diana.” Roy’s expression darkens. “If it comes down to it, you bundle her up and leave. Get her to Queen Tower, or another hospital, but don’t..” Roy’s feet slide against linoleum, soundless. He swallows, thickly, throat lined thick, rubbed raw. “Can you get her out if it goes south?”

Blinker slams her eyelids shut, rubbing idly at the thin stream of blood slipping from her right nostril, and inside the hospital room the lock on the window cracks and the glass shatters into glittering little pieces.

Diana takes a deep breath at his request but she nods, “Of course. She’ll be safe, Roy, I’ll promise you that.” the quiet hanging thick in the air has her on edge, just wanting the attack to begin, and before she can wait any longer it’s there.

Roy winces when the windows shatter, and grabs his jacket, moving to cover what he can of Mar’i’s face, leaving her nose and mouth free for air, before he whirls back around, lifting his bow.

Roy growls, and then shouts, through the edges of grit teeth: “What’s with all the fireworks, guys? We at Disney?”

Diana moves to stand in the broken glass littering the ground, guarding the wide open hole that was the window, “They’d better make a grand entrance if they want to live up to that.” she adds roughly.

Septum laughs, and the sound booms down the hall, underneath the crack of the door, into the room. His body is massive now, engorged and twisted, and when he lays a hand down on the handle of the door, it looks like a giant is playing with a dollhouse. He’s still laughing when his body suddenly slams the entire door forward, off its framework, straight back into the room.