welcome to the justice lounge

The HSR was silent.

That is to say, upon returning to the ‘scene of the crime’ so to speak, the machine felt different. Obviously it was still broken and in the midst of repair; but more relevant to Kyle was that whatever connection Kyle had once felt - or thought he’d felt with it, was gone. The last time he’d been here was with Mar’i, and he’d been so focused on her, he hardly paid attention to the HSR itself (not like he was avoiding it or anything, no).

But now, Kyle hovered in the womb section of the HSR, in the exact same spot he’d been when he helped tear open space and time…but Kyle wasn’t thinking about that. Instead, he was spending long minutes looking down at the ruined doorway. He could almost imagine the Star Trek 'whoosh' of the door to the HSR opening and little boy standing there, staring up at him with dark grey eyes. Asking him 'mama?' in a tiny bird-like voice, so utterly vulnerable. The boy who had that much trust in Kyle Rayner.

No. Kyle felt nothing for the HSR any longer. It was a crime scene, nothing more.

( lies you tell yourself )

Mia makes her way out to the pools not even getting any one breakfast or coffee at all this morning and lays down in one of the pool chairs.

Mia she looks at what little of the water is still left in the pool and wonders if she could touch it and not get sick. Because it seems like that is what is happening to everyone around her… Well, if she was one to tempt fate she would totally try it. But instead she just lays in the sun pushing the tacky 70s style sunglasses onto her face and sighing.

Zach gets himself some coffee from the longhouse spotting Mia by the pool and debating for a moment whether to go over there or not. But he might as well because it’s not like he’s going to want to talk to anyone this early in the morning anyway. So he heads out and sits on the chair next to her. “No coffee this morning?” He asks sipping from his cup.

Mia turns her head and looks at him for a moment before turning back. “Nope. I don’t even really like coffee that much. Not plain coffee at least.” Gives a small shrug.

Zach looks disgusted for a moment, “Serioulsy?” Not that this instant coffee is really that good anyway. But he would die if he didn’t have any coffee at all.

( gooooood morning cachement!! )

You find yourself in an all-black building, pure obsidian walls and gentle oil lamp sconces that illuminate the room that you are in. You are among five people: Kyle Rayner, Clark Kent, Roy Harper, Mar’i Grayson, Cass Cain.

You have been fully healed.

There is an owl and a raven perched on the bower of an open doorway, and they seem to be bickering at each other and ignoring you and your group. Eventually they quiet and still when a figure steps into the room.

He is tall and long, with dark night stars for eyes and a mop of wild black hair. His skin is pale but also not quite skin. It looks more as if it is being illuminated brightly from unknown sources. He carries with him a single oil lamp.

"Welcome. You may call me Dream. First I shall assure you that everyone you care about is safe. Some have even returned home. Some of you I have met before. Hello again Clark Kent, and greetings Kyle Rayner.” He nods at them both coldly and looks back at the group. ”Allow me to explain this situation." Dream goes on to explain.

"Your path homewards is through this door, and you may each go through and speak your confession. Once you go through to the next room, you will be in the realm of the beings. We cannot protect you. If you try to fight them, they will kill you. There are some things that even you cannot try to control, no matter how much you believe you can.” Dream looks a little sad at this, and the owl and the raven both flap their wings, as if agitated.

"Speak the truth from your heart, and be well."

( once upon a dream )

Kate’s arms are brown and warm, as if she’s absorbed every last morsel of the Cachement summer heat before the snow settled in, but Ramsey nonetheless wiggles out of her grasp as soon as the sun rises. He murmurs vaguely something about ‘bathroom,’ and she releases him without fully awakening.

Ramsey does not lie to his mother. He goes to the bathroom down the hall first, and stares at himself in the mirror. He has to stand on tip-toes, but he can see the single bruise bloomed under the skin of his neck. Ramsey stares at it for a long time, memorizing the exact placement of the bruise, remembering the way Damian brought his elbow out and across to hit him so quickly. So effectively.

His little sneakers were brand new when they came here. Kate had helped him pick them out the day she took him to work in Los Angeles. She had sat him down in the chair at the shoe store, and knelt before him. Vaguely, Ramsey had thought of Cinderella and the Prince—glass slippers and magical destinies, and he had chosen the ones Kate liked most, because they were dark red like her costume, with bright blue accents, like the glow of her Manhunter staff.

His shoes had been brand new when they came here. Now they were covered in dust and mud and sap and blood and all the things that oozed around here, oozed from every orifice of every single thing, monster or not. Deep cracks had risen in the sides, and Ramsey hadn’t told anyone about the cold that seeped in when he had run through the snow.

He tugs the shoes on now, ties the laces like Peter showed him, rolls his heel into place like Momma Julie does, and heads outside the bungalow.

It’s hot and wet outside, humid with the melted snow, but Ramsey doesn’t pay much attention to that. He makes his way to the far end of camp, where once his Pa and siblings had worked on an archery range. Roy’s handmade targets still stand there, the paint slightly faded and the grass around them higher than before, but standing nonetheless. Ramsey finds a smaller wooden bow discarded nearby and tries his hand at pulling the string back. Without his powers, Ramsey’s arms are weak, and the string barely moves.

He discards the bow back into the tall grass and makes his way to the target. It’s one of the shorter ones, but it still towers over him. He stares up at it for a long time. Walt’s voice drifts into his mind, holding his hand as he took the boy from the school, saying things like “potential” and “family.”

Ramsey has a lot of family. But only some of them are blood. And he knows Walt is blood.

He looks down at the scar on his arm, then the one on his thumb, and remembers his promise to Cass. She’s his sister now, and for some reason he knows she’ll understand. He doesn’t quite understand yet, but she does.

His hand pulls back, in imitation of Damian’s the night before, and he thinks about the third power he had developed. It had shown up exactly one time, it hadn’t stayed long, and it wasn’t much. But now, two years later, without his strength or his durability, Ramsey wonders.

He draws his elbow back, remembers the look on Walt’s face, cold and distant, and imitates it. He jumps up, swinging his elbow and the target’s stick-neck. He overestimates the balance he needs, though, and after he strikes it, he tumbles to the ground, emitting a soft oomph as he rolls onto his back to look up at the fissured sky.

The target’s head rolls to the ground, and Ramsey’s lower arm glows a violently bright blue, like the staff that once sent him to the hospital, the staff his mother holds so proudly. He puffs out a hot breath, and smiles.

The night that Kyle cut the green light construct display short and abandoned the Child and Zatanna, he headed straight to his room in the bunkhouse. He couldn’t control his shaking limbs, but he’d forced himself to breathe, eyes shut tight despite the green under the lids. Sorrow waxed inside him like a full moon, choking him from the inside. The Child brought wonder and beauty and hope in the form of free birds and sandy dry apples with crisp tangy red skin and overall love and life to the town; but all Kyle felt was an utter, overwhelming despair.

It was the delightful display of green constructs which the beautiful little Child effortlessly spun - with Kyle’s editing and Zee’s magic - it was that moment the despair struck him, solidly, like an arrow to the chest. The pain was unbearable, blanketing him. And that night when sleep-cozened, Kyle stood at his window and watched the strange sudden snow, it made sense: snow blanketed the town. All was not well. He went back to bed, bundling himself in the thin sheet and telling himself repeatedly it was all he needed to stay warm; and hours later he’d convinced himself it really was.

Zee came to check on him once and Kyle told her it was fine, he just needed to be alone for a while. ”Artist’s temperament,” was the case he pleaded ( god, he loved her, savored her taste ); and in a way it was true. She was an artist herself, so he trusted that she understood the vagary and would let him be. It wasn’t anything Kyle could explain anyway. How could one explain? How could one explain how it felt, to be the last Martian; to be a Kryptonian on Earth; to control the demon within; to live with the heritage and power of homo-magi; to be torn for no reason from your universe; to forever seek justice; to forever seek happiness; to forever seek self-redemption; to lose a child; to be a parent; to lose an arm; to live with the horrors inflicted on your childhood; to live with the horrors inflicted on yourself, on others. How did one begin to explain any of those feelings, never mind the countless others layered on top?

It was too much. It was too much. The green was there whenever he closed his eyes, it filled his senses and there was no word to articulate how it felt, to see the green - his green, his beloved bright, beautiful, creative, gorgeous green - and not be able to will it. The Child had willed it. The Child had willed it effortlessly and yet everything about it was wrong, wrong, so wrong. It was too, too much.

Sleep was fitful and yet waking up in the morning was also difficult, despite how freezing cold his room was. Snow lay over everything outside, The Child danced, snowmen were built; despite the cold, people looked happy.

It didn’t take long for all that to be stripped away, though. Of course.

But first, Kyle’s numb day was spent sharing a few notes on the message boards, answering strange questions that everyone got from Somewhere. The responses were generally angry, sometimes passionate, sometimes terse. The people of Cachement were used to strange questions now, and answered them without question. Roy even took the time to niggle at Kyle’s own careful response, as if the answers were posted on some sort of website forum, like an online thread open for discussion. The meta-idea was amusing to Kyle, for a brief second.

Then the violence.

Kyle had retreated back to his freezing cold room. He could smell the mouth-watering cooking from the kitchen families and friends gathered and making the best out of the situation, being strong for the kids; but he wasn’t hungry. He slept. Kyle saw a shadow of red glide out from the forest; but Kyle dismissed it as a dream. Yet even in the cold it was an arousing dream, one that filled Kyle with warmth and slight dread and it turned him on. He slept more, dreamed longer. He didn’t wake up to see Ramsey being dragged by Damian from one bungalow to another. He saw The Child though, tottering out of the tiny yellow home, bright red blood spattering in drops - snow white and rose red - as Damian followed. Kyle saw Damian slide the dagger into The Child, as easy as soft butter. When the adults came spilling out of Longhouse and bungalow - the family moment over and despair, pain, sorrow and distress set in on them all. Bruce heading away from the group, affected. Mar’i retreating into her bungalow, backwards limping steps. Damian screaming for mother, mother, Mother. The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.

The Child was dead. The snow melted. Kyle shut his eyes to the nightmareish scene and saw only -

Green.



Green.

The dream had just begun.

His bag is all packed. Kyle’s mask sits atop jerky and canteens. Around his waist is the utility belt from Bruce. Dick has done all that he can here.

Things are getting worse in this lull of attacks, he can feel it. The other night with Damian proved as much, if that’s who the Things were going after now. He has to go. He must. He stands at the twisted base of the beanstalk, staring up to where it disappears in the sky. He needs to fly. A Flying Grayson is no good when stuck on the ground.

He climbs up, fingernails digging into the bark as tiny handholds appear for him and disappear once they’ve been used. He’s said what goodbyes he needs to. Bruce will take care of everyone. They will all take care of each other. They’ll all be strong.

He climbs higher and higher, over the trees, into the clouds before he sees it. That’s where he needs to go. He must. He crouches low on a limb and springs into the air, arms extended to catch the branch that swings toward him like a trapeze.

——-

In the morning, a body is found beneath the siren tower, on the opposite side from camp, dressed in the clothes Dick left in. It is broken and twisted as if it fell from a great height. Dark swirls of hair lie out in a halo around its head, glassy bright blue eyes stare up at the sky in silent horror from behind the masquerade mask Kyle had given Dick. Around its waist is the belt and dagger from Bruce and by its side is the bag Dick had taken, filled with canteens of water and strips of jerky.

There is no face beneath the mask; all of its features have been wiped clean save for the terror in its eyes.

A note lies beside the body, the words sit a heavy dark red on the page as if they’d bled from the pulp of the paper itself. There is only one word:

FOOLS

---

Standing Here Outside Your Door

The body is gone the next morning, just an impression left in the ground, the bag, clothes, and belt are there.

The mask is not.

On patrol, a silhouette of a man flits through the shadows, lithe and golden. It stands at the window of each of the Bats’ bungalows, watching them before disappearing back into the darkness.

That afternoon, the body is in the isolation room, tethered to the wall.

The mask is in place.

The face is still gone.

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.

( heliotrope sunscape )

The Child's Apples
The apple still looks perfect
Counting to five
Gift or trap
High in the treetops
Random fruit
Flesh like a necklace



Lay you down
Ollie ollie oxen free
Blanket fort
Like a polaroid picture
Ragdoll
Two in a sheet fort
Todo mi corazon
And here together alone
The best way to
A heartbeat that never really died

Kate sits on the porch of the bungalow, reading a book, brow furrowing a little as the pages are blown by the wind. She almost feels like she should be hiding herself away, secluded, but about an hour ago decided to hell with it.

Oliver comes out to the porch, blinking. “You woke up before me,” he says, voice still kind of croaky. It had been a long and confusing day and harrowing night for all of them, Kate most of all, and he’d expected that she’d be spending a lot more time sleeping. Ollie bends to kiss her head and sits on the front of the porch with his back against the post, one foot on the step and the other peaked so he can rest his arm on it. The gash he’d opened hurts, today, and blood is seeping up through Bruce’s bandage work. He’ll have to get it changed. But right now Ollie’s more drawn by the swell of Kate’s belly and heaviness of her breasts. He doesn’t ask how she’s feeling, not yet.

Kate turns, looks back at him over her shoulder, shrugs a little. Her forehead is drawn a bit, and she’s a little bit pale, but otherwise she’s all right. “Couldn’t sleep,” she says, then gestures a little. “Your arm. Oliver…” Kate bites her lower lip a little, frustrated, but not sure how to express it.

Oliver doesn’t look away from her. “I slipped,” he repeats. He’d said it a few times last night, but neither Bruce nor Kate seemed that convinced. “Honestly. I hit a joint I shouldn’t have and the knife jumped. It’ll be fine.” He moves his arm from on top his knee, letting it trail next to him instead. “Kate. One accidental slice on my arm isn’t the most pressing issue here, sweetie.”

Kate says, “If you slipped, then you slipped because of me.” She picks up Ollie’s arm, scrutinizes the red splotch on the bandage, runs her fingertips against it. “I knew that’s why they were doing this. They couldn’t get at you two enough, any other way, so they broke the rules.”

( by the light of your breath steer me home )

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.”

( tear the skin from the flesh )