The blood froze in his veins. Fingers trembled around the binoculars in his hands. Defeat had made it home in his chest long ago; it didn't stop him from trying. There were people he cared about getting hut – being killed. As long as he had someone to save, he would stand fighting.
And if he lost them all; he would use each and every breath he had to avenge them.
"Dude." Fingers dug into his shoulder. "What do we do?"
It was safe to say that they were surrounded. Their chances of getting away without being captured or killed was next to zero. Well – his chances of getting away without being captured or killed was next to zero, he was more than certain Wally was capable of getting to safety in the blink of an eye.
"Not gonna happen." The older boy hissed, as if he had read Dick's mind.
The aliens had them surrounded, faces blank as they held their staffs pointed at the two boys. Dick had seen what happened to those in his position. Seen what happened to civilians and vigilante's alike. The aliens went easier on the civilians. But vigilantes were a threat to the 'New World Order' and broke any and all laws they put in place. It wasn't often that vigilante's lived through such encounters.
"Robin and Kid Flash, you will get down onto your knees and put your hands behind your heads."
"We surrender." He replied to Wally's earlier question.
It was easier to surrender then and escape later, than it would be to fight and die. The world needed them.
As he slowly lowered to his knees, an arrow whizzed passed his head. The arrow hit the ground and smoke began emerging, filling the air and slowly blocking everything from sight. Seconds later a rumble trembled through the ground – the aftershock of something crashing into the ground. A hand wrapped around his wrist, pulling him up.
"Hop on."
Wally had placed Dick's hand on his shoulder, the younger boy resisted the urge to let out a sigh before hopping up onto his friends back. With his legs and arms wrapped securely around his friend, the older boy took off. Racing out of the smoke, stumbling slightly as he crashed into a number of the aliens. He never lost his footing though; and Dick held on for dear life as his friend found them a path out.
He trusted Wally with his life. They had been friends for years; met through their father figures long before they realised who their father figures were. They had grown up idolising the men that turned out to be those raising them. Men who had fought tooth and nail to protect as much of the world as they could.
Not that it had been enough. It had never been enough. Most of the world had fallen. Few cities were left standing against the aliens that were ravaging their country. At the tender age of nine, Dick had joined his father in his crusade to protect the world from the evil that had taken over. Wally joined his Uncle Barry six months after that. Fighting a fight that children should never be involved in.
They did it anyway. They had the ability to stand up and fight, so that's what they did.
"Are you two trying to get yourselves killed?"
He had been expecting Roy to yell at them, not Conner. Baby blue eyes darkening with rage, fists clenched by his side.
Technically, Conner was barely even a year old. They had found him in an underground lab – abandoned after the fall of Luthor – cryogenically frozen. Once they had woken up they had discovered that he was the clone of Clark Kent – a Kryptonian who had been sent to Earth as the last of his species. Conner was angry and frustrated; pushed down by the pressure of the legacy that he never asked for. The boy didn't have much of a habit of talking to them, more often than not simply grunting out one worded responses.
He hadn't actually believed that Conner really cared about anything, far less them.
Apparently he was wrong.
"No." Wally snapped as Dick landed on the ground behind him. "We were – once again – doing the damn Defenders job for them."
Green eyes landed on him, and he looked up to meet them. Nodding once he opened the pouch in his utility belt and pulled out what they had found.
"Is that-" Roy had appeared behind Conner; the skin around his mask stretched, meaning his eyes had widened.
Dick placed it back in the pouch. "Earth's Scarab. Dan Garrett used it before they arrived. Ted Kord's files say that it was 'off-mode'. It has no connection to them other than the fact they created it."
"Use their own technology against them?" Conner raised an eyebrow and folded his arms across his chest. "Wonder whose idea that was." He muttered under his breath.
"Hal's." Wally replied, folding his arms and narrowing his eyes ever so slightly. "Bruce reluctantly agreed."
"He's still bitter that he and Hal agree on something." Dick replied with a small smile.
Roy ran a hand through his hair. "So what? You two morons decided to go collect this on the word of Hal Fucking Jordan and a reluctant Bruce Bitter Wayne? On your own?"
Shrugging, an almost smug smile tugged at Dicks lips. "We weren't alone though. You two are here. Thanks for saving our asses, by the way. Kid Idiot was refusing to leave without me."
A green glare was aimed at him, but he pointedly ignored it. Both Roy and Conner fixed their glares on both himself and Wally.
"You can't constantly expect us to save your asses." Roy hissed.
"You're right." Wally sighed. "When you're not around we have to hope that our little shadow is close by."
"We don't even know if we can trust that damn shadow." Roy hissed.
With a laugh Dick raised an eyebrow. "Never attacked us. Never actually spoken to us. Only appears when we need help – kicks alien ass, then disappears. Trustworthy enough for me."
"You find someone – or something – that has never actually interacted with you, trustworthy." Roy was all but actually gaping at him.
"I've interacted with them. And-" A sly grin spread across his face. "Who said they haven't interacted with me. They're psychic you know, and very handed at gathering information the Defenders can't get."
Roy actually did gape, while Wally was looking at him as if he had grown a second head.
"M'Gann's your source?" Conner sounded incredulous, and Dick's own jaw threatened to drop.
"M'Gann?" Wally questioned, his voice slightly higher than usual.
Conner gave a shrug. "Or Miss M. Whatever you wanna call her. She was the one who rescued me from Green Beetle. Before she ran off I managed to thank her, we spoke for a little while before she disappeared. Dick's right though; she's trustworthy. Just, she's scared that if she introduced herself to us, that we'd shun her because she's a Martian – J'onn's niece actually."
A mix of guilt and pity built up in Dick's stomach. Someone was scared that they would be shunned because they were alien. Her specification of Martian didn't matter; it was obvious her fear stemmed from the fact that she was an alien on a planet already being invaded and conquered. Yet in all the time that she had appeared in Dick's life all she had done was help. Gather information that Dick had asked for – only if it was possible for her to acquire – and give him written reports on her findings. Their lives had been made far better because of her risking hers for complete strangers.
She could have been one of them and he would have welcomed her with open arms.
"J'onn is a member of the Defenders. Why-"
"He arrived before they did." A soft, feminine voice came from his left. She was stood in the shadow of the tree's, her left hand wrapped around her upper right arm. Gingery-red hair flowed out from under her hood. Like the rest of them she was dressed predominantly in black, a large red 'X' printed across the top half of her suit. "I thought that maybe, because I had arrived after they had that I would be considered just another outsider trying to force myself into this world-"
"Uh- M'Gann, is it?" Dick looked at where he suspected her eyes were, and she gave a small nod. "Your Uncle is trying to help defend our planet from these outsiders. He's from the planet right next to ours – we're like next-door neighbours. And I assume you're doing the same thing. You're here, on a planet that isn't yours, helping us fight the beings that are trying to take it from us. You're risking your life trying to help us. You fought a Martian that had joined them, to protect one of us. You've helped us more times than I can count, and you've risked your life at my request gaining nothing in return. You're not an outsider. You are one of us."
And he meant each and every word of it. Over the past year and a half that the shadow had been slipping in and out of his and Wally's lives, Dick had lost count at how much he owed her. Despite having never seen her face, he trusted her as much as he trusted Conner and Roy. Maybe even as much as he trusted Wally.
"Oh." It was small and soft, and he realised that maybe she had been listening into his thoughts.
"We need to get out of here." Conner hissed.
One of the many upsides to having a literal superboy around was that he could hear anything that got too close to them.
"We could take my ship." With a glance at Roy, she takes a step forward. "She's kept in camouflage mode. We should be able to get to safety without being found, or caught."
"Okay."
He wasn't their leader; they were group of rogue, reckless, leaderless teenagers. But he was in charge of himself; he trusted M'Gann, and whoever he trusted, Wally trusted too. Whatever he did, Wally was never far behind. If Wally followed him, Roy would never be too far behind. If Roy followed them, Conner sure as hell wasn't being left behind. Dick suspected that Conner worried about them more than he let on.
Not looking back, he squared his shoulders. They had a world to save, and a warrior to find.
With a gasp of air, a spasm ran down his spine. A cool, clammy hand clasped his shoulder – an anchor in a cold, unrelenting world.
"Dude, it's going to be alright." The lie slid off the younger boys tongue with ease.
The sky was grey, as was the ash the fell from it. The air was as thick as it was hot; breathing felt more like choking and had the situation not been dire, he would have been impressed that he had survived so long. He would have been even more impressed that his fellow escapee-companion-friend? had survived just as long.
He didn't know what they did to meta's, but they never seemed to live long.
"Gar, I appreciate the sentiment, but please stop saying that bullshit."
"Someone has to be the optimist, dude."
Looking over to the green boy, he felt his chest constrict. They were pressed tightly against the back wall of a cave. Hiding from the creatures who wanted to do horrific, unspeakable things to them; who wanted to tear them apart and find out what made them tick.
Gar had been their prisoner longer than he had. Separated from his adoptive parents; 'I don't know what's happened to Steve and Rita, I just hope that if they're dead, it was quick.' A meta who had the ability to shape-shift into other animals. Underneath his over the top grins, laughter and jokes was a pretty smart guy. After all, it wasn't every day that someone successfully executed an escape from one of the ships.
Part of him hoped they could make it north. Some of the Northern States had yet to fall. Delaware, New Jersey, New York were safe. Or at least relatively safer than anywhere else in the world. The Defenders had the the three states and bordering cities protected. There were rumours of walls being built – a hold fast against the enemy.
"Do you think we can make it?" His voice was hoarse, fear rattling his entire body.
A toothy grin lit up the darkness. "I know we're going to make it, Jaime."
At the moment this is just a little one-shot, I have a full fic planned out, we'll just have to see what happens.