Fall
By that bastard
Disclaim this: I don't own it
Summary: The End has passed… and we have failed.
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Torn apart.
That's how it felt. Being ripped apart, piece by piece. It started as a prickly heat at the edges, my fingers, toes, pin pricks all over my skin. The pins dug deep and expanded into spikes, pulling and tearing my flesh until it ripped off, peeled off, like skinning an orange.
It hurt.
I often wondered what dying would feel like. The reckless, foolhardy part of me imagined it as an endless fall, like leaping from a rooftop and never hitting the street below. The logical side deduced it to be passive, calm, and completely beyond human comprehension. The lost, lonely spiritual part of me wished for peace, for an abandonment of responsibilities, and for eternal slumber.
I was quite shocked when after my skin was sheared away the knives assaulted my muscle tissue.
Small incisions worthy of surgery traipsing along the corded masses, just dipping their serrated edges into me, just enough to create lidded separations on my form. Then a vicious stab, cold metal sinking into hot flesh, twisting and turning, gutting and wrenching, forcing the screams from my throat.
I shouldn't have opened my mouth.
The thought of small worms with long, slanted mouths seems absurd when I really take the time to think about them. But when they're inside my mouth, burrowing through my gums, shredding my lips and cheeks, chewing apart my teeth… the notion of their existence doesn't seem so crazy.
But when they congregate on my tongue, ripping my taste buds until I can't take it anymore and I have to chew it off with the jagged hunks of teeth left to me, I long for what came before.
It continues, the swarming storm of pain and torture making lengthy stops over the rest of my body, making particular friends with any body cavities and openings until the mere thought of using my genitals for anything other than a drain for blood makes me ill. I tend to forget what comes last, my memory gets a bit hazy around that time, but after my bones break and shatter, after my brain is violated and put on display, everything… stops.
Everything stops and I am left to throb, to bleed, to feel the pain of being broken, layer by layer. And just when it begins to lessen…
I'm back. I'm back in my flesh and blood; no cuts, no needles, no hooks to separate my innards, nothing.
It's always the same. I collapse in a cold heap of flesh and wait for the hallucinogenic quality of massive trauma to yield to reason and logic.
And I always regret when it does.
What comes next is slightly different every time, but I always see them. My friends. They're bright, and brilliant, and alive. Brimming with vitality and beauty.
And then they see me.
Sometimes they turn against me, focusing their hate and fury and power on my helpless form. Sometimes they fight each other, killing themselves one by one while I stand and watch. Sometimes Slade does the job for them, sometimes Killer Moth, sometimes HIVE, sometimes Dr. Light, sometimes all of them in a frenzied melee of steel and energy and blood.
Those are the good times.
Too often things happen that I cannot repeat without crying. It's ridiculous: I haven't cried since… well since before. But when I think about what happens to them, while my own punishments seem so pitifully trivial in comparison… I cry.
I am not ashamed of it. What gives me shame is being able to do nothing but watch as they are butchered and slaughtered. This is my greatest punishment, the price I must pay. All I am allowed to do is watch. But I do not want to watch anymore. I do not want to watch Cyborg's flesh being slowly eaten away until nothing but metal remains. I do not want to watch Beast Boy locked in a cage for days until he has to resort to eating off his own limbs to stay alive. I do not want to watch those demons ruin and disgrace Starfire.
I would take it all, a thousand times over, simply for the chance to free a single one of them. They didn't deserve this. The fault lies with me. Solely with me. I was their leader. It was my decision to fight, to wage war against a being of unimaginable power and strength. It is my fault because I hoped.
At first I rebelled. I refused. I did not believe. But now I know better. I know this is where I belong. It took some time, far too much time, but I came to accept it. The truth. I know it to be fitting now. Finally.
After all, who wants to admit they belong in hell?
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The cycle starts anew. The dying reason in my head knows this will eventually drive me insane. Excuse me, completely insane. I wonder what that will be like. The Joker always seemed so happy. Maybe it isn't such a bad place to be. I suppose I was half-way there before this began, ages ago, when I ran moonlit streets in a cape and mask. I had to be crazy to do that, right? No sane, normal, rational human being would abandon a simple life for an existence of pain and midnight torment, right?
Of course not. But then… I don't think I ever was normal. Every second I'm here it gets harder to remember what came before. An infinite expanse of pain, stretching beyond and behind me as far as I can see. Anything good or joyful seems nothing more than a wispy dream.
I remember… hoping. Yes, I hoped, and I led my friends into oblivion. I tried to fight, we all tried to fight, but it was a whisper against a hurricane.
I remember…
The sky turning black.
An army of fiery devils. A battle on the beach.
A surrender.
A chase.
An incantation.
Sadness.
Then the end of the world.
I remember a red giant with four eyes, towering above us, reducing our might to nothing. Still I led them to battle. I led them to death.
I can't quite remember why I did it. I feel parts of me slipping away every moment I'm here. The funny thing is I can see the parts drift away. They leak out of me, sometimes along with my skin, or my muscles, or my insides, or when I watch the others get obliterated. I can see parts of me, parts that have no name, littered around me. No matter how hard I try I can never reach them though. They're always out of reach.
There's no time to think now. The needles are starting. It's surprising how much they hurt, even after so many times.
There they go. Now the barbs piercing through my nails to rip them off… there. I can't be sure if I'm screaming yet. I probably am.
The rest hits me in a perpetual wave, but there is so little to be gleaned from repeated ponderings on the matter. It hurts, and I scream, and then
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"Friend?"
She's calling me again. She always calls me, every time.
"Friend? Please? Help me?"
I want to, Star. I want to but… I can't.
God, she doesn't even cry anymore. She doesn't even react anymore as they ruin her.
"Friend? Please?"
Her face is blank. Her eyes are glassy and empty. There is nothing in her voice but confusion. She cannot understand why I'm not rescuing her. She can see me—she can see me watching and not rescuing her—and she can't fathom why that is. Her body reacts—bleeds, shudders, convulses—but her face and voice are detached from it all. She is outside it all, it seems. Just like me.
"Help me?"
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"Why did I ever listen to you? Why did I ever follow you? You arrogant, overconfident, senseless son of a bitch. You knew what we were up against and you still made us fight. And for what? She knew. She knew fighting was useless and she gave in. She always was the smart one. Smarter than you, at least."
It starts. A hissing film over his skin, starting in at the edges, at the junction of man and machine. It looks like a type of acid the way it slowly eats away the flesh. The pain must be extraordinary.
"What did you expect from us? Did you think we could stop a God? Something that devours entire worlds? Why? What were you thinking? Or maybe… yeah, maybe all the talk, the bravado, the cockiness… it was an act, wasn't it? All a grand performance played out for everybody else."
The skin is gone, allowing pulpy muscle tissue to peek up. The acid is so strong he doesn't have the chance to bleed. It cauterizes as it strips him to the bone.
"You had to be the invincible super hero, didn't you? Never give up, never say die. Never accept the reality that we aren't you. We can't overcompensate for whatever failure as a human being you have. We can't make whatever keeps you up at night all better by fighting harder. We aren't you! We're more human than you!"
How can he still speak? Does he hate me so much?
"We fight because it's the right thing to do. You… no, you fight like it's a crusade. Whatever your past is to make you what you are, it won't disappear no matter how many punks you throw in jail, no matter how many times you cheat death, no matter how many times we go out and play hero. But I hope you're satisfied. Has this last hero act made it all worth it? Has dying made you happy, at last?"
I can hear bone clattering against metal.
"God damn it all, man, when you punch a wall the wall doesn't feel a damn thing! We—"
The last of his flesh finally dissolves from his body.
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"I'm scared."
I know.
"Sometimes… I get scared. Mento always scolded me when I got scared. But you didn't. You knew fear was something to accept, and then get past. Repressing it only made things worse. And that's why I liked you most of all."
I…
"Not like, in a weird way or anything, but… I mean I love Cy like a brother. We can joke and goof around and it's all cool, but I can't be silly forever. And Star's fun too. It's like every day's Christmas morning with her. She can make normal boring stuff fun and new. And she always laughed at my jokes, even though I doubt she understood half of them. And I liked… her too. She was like a challenge, you know? She was like the last peanut at a baseball game. It was always the hardest to crack open, but you knew it was worth the effort, 'cause it would taste that much better. But… with you…"
I can't bear this, please…
"You were… you were a big brother like Cy. But you were a teacher, too. You were someone I looked up to. Someone I admired. I wanted to be you. You never gave up, or backed down, even though you didn't have powers. And you were smart and cool… and… you let me have friends, for the first time in my life. Real friends. You can't imagine how grateful I am for that. Thank you."
No more…
"But… I think… don't hate me for this but I think I would have liked it better if I never met you. If it meant I wouldn't be here right now. You understand, don't you? O-of course you do. You always understand stuff. I know you'll understand why I wish I never saw you."
I do.
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I do not have any hope left. It has abandoned me. I have abandoned it. I miss it sometimes.
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Sometimes I have faded recollections of someone, a girl, a woman, a being not bound by age or time. She was dark. And she was light, too. I think I liked her. She was a friend. Like the orange girl. Or the green boy. Or the metal boy. I think… we were all friends at one point.
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Sometimes I have faded recollections of someone, a man, a bat, a thing not bound by law or weakness. He was dark. I think I hated him.
Sometimes I have faded recollections of someone else, a man, a terminator, a thing not bound by feelings or emotions. He was dark, too. I think I…
I think I cannot remember.
The pain. It
gets inside me and pushes old memories out
like water
overflowing a
rusty bucket.
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I used to know a bird that sang and flew. It was bright and pretty and good. People liked it.
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Break me open. Break me apart and scatter the remains. Do not put me back togetherrrrrRrrrr aGaiNnnNNn.
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Save me, Bruce. It hurts. I can't… keep… doing this… again…
Alfred… Babs…
You're all slipping away…
I can't…
Help… me…
Help me, mommy. Daddy.
Mommy… mommy… stop it… make it stop…
Again… and again… and again… and again…and
AGaiNnnnnNNnNnnN
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I'm sorry.
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End.
End notes: a glimpse of hell, through the eyes of the one who led them in. Because being frozen in stone seemed so… bland when I thought about it. I had hoped Trigon would craft a far more human fate awaiting those who defied him.