There is a couple things discussed in here that required trigger warnings, so approach cautiously if need be...
"Honestly, I think life after death is the cruelest thing in the world."
Robin pulled away from Artemis, as if he'd been stung. Her words were like a knife to his heart, and even his hardened shell of an exterior cracked. Tears bit behind the mask, threatening to spill from his eyes, but he only blinked them away.
"How can you say that?" Robin asked. Luckily, his voice didn't betray him.
"Because…well, just think about it. With everything life has to offer, the shit that it throws at you, you'd just think that death would be the end of it. That you'll finally find peace, and you'll never be in pain again, or…or anything." Artemis shook her head, squeezing her eyes closed as she was forced to live out the memories of her childhood in her head. "It's a punishment if you ask me. You finally escape this world, only to be sent back again into one just like it!"
She kicked hard at the metal wall that caged them all in. The metallic clang echoed throughout the small, cave-like space.
Robin looked to the rest of his teammates, trying to find some support or sympathy from any of them. Megan only gave him the saddest eyes he'd ever seen in his life, and then down at her own feet. Connor did the same, not able to meet his gaze. Even with his mask hiding his eyes, it was too much.
Kid Flash was the only one who seemed to stick up for him. He pulled the cowl of his Kid Flash mask off, and opened his mouth to say something. But words failed him at the last second, and as he sighed out his words, his entire body seemed to deflate.
"I see your point," Wally said quietly.
Artemis turned her head to look at him. She was partially surprised to hear such a thing come from him, of all people. But even more that she had found someone that agreed with her, after all this time. When she had told her sister a similar sentiment, Jade had only smiled and said that her mind worked well, then walked away from her.
"You do?" Artemis asked him, almost unbelieving.
"Yeah. I get that…well, I kinda do." Wally closed his eyes, and ran a gloved hand through his coppery hair. "Sure, I mean, I've never personally thought about it like that, but…"
Robin looked to Kaldur, trying to read his emotions. He seemed melancholy, but Robin could tell just by the look on his face, the slump in his shoulders, that he was deeply interested in their conversation. Robin studied his face for another minute more, before looking back to where Megan and Superboy crouched.
"Don't you think, Dick?" came Artemis' gentle question.
It lingered in the air, between all of them, in this metal-caged-hell that they were in. The only thing that offered them solace was the moon high, high above them. Too far for even Superboy to jump. Higher than Megan could fly without feeling faint and then crashing back down onto the floor, dizzy and in pain. Artemis' arrows wouldn't reach up that high, either. They were on their own.
"Why would I think that?" he almost spat out. "I've hoped, and prayed, and begged… I've had to believe in some form of afterlife or something, just to keep me from…" His angry words died in a sigh of defeat. "I want my parents to live on in some kind of way, so an afterlife was something I wished for, wished for so desperately. I want to think that they're waiting for me, y'know?"
He hung his head and bit back the tears once more.
"I can understand that, too," Wally said to him. He seemed reluctant to take either side. "I mean, really… If you think about it…well, I guess that death is a pretty tricky subject." His voice became a whisper.
"No shit, Wally," Artemis replied.
He made a face at her, but said nothing. He collapsed back down, his back hitting the thick metal wall that was indestructible (or at least they'd been told it was indestructible; without Superboy able to even so much as dent it, it seemed true).
"I kinda agree with Dick," Megan said shyly, speaking up for the first time in hours. "I like to think that death isn't the end. Death is kinda scary…"
Artemis sighed and leaned back up against the metal wall, her head tilting upwards to the faint moonlight that seemed through the thick, unreachable bars. Her eyes fluttered closed and open as she took in the distant sight of the night sky.
How long had they been in here? Artemis guessed all day, and then some. She honestly couldn't remember; the hours had all run together and spun around in her mind until it was all just a big clump of messed up memories that she couldn't sort. So it was anyone's guess. Her's was not the best.
"I agree with Artemis," Connor said, surprising them all.
Everyone turned to look at him. His face was still blank, something that pure boredom had afforded him. But as he too gazed high up at the moon, his eyes softened and filled with the knowledge of something that none of them knew.
"You escape a bad life, only to be reborn into another one. Sounds like a punishment, alright."
Megan put her hand on his shoulder. She didn't want to believe what he was saying. To admit to herself that he was agreeing that death was a sweet relief and that life was a burden… Megan knew that it meant that he had thought about death a lot, had might even relished the thought of it. Sure, she knew his life as a clone wasn't perfect, and the emotional baggage that he carried on his shoulders wasn't the easier thing to carry... But Megan had to believe that something in this life was good enough to make him think otherwise.
"But if your life isn't bad," Megan said to him, trying to edge him away from dark thoughts that she could feel seeping into his mind.
"All lives had their bad points."
"But all lives have their good points, too," Megan offered. It sounded so weak, her voice so frail in the deafening silence that had permanently made its home in their heads.
"Yeah, I know. But really, you just sometimes gotta ask; Is it worth it?" Connor word's cut Megan straight to the heart. She didn't want to believe that she had heard it, but she had. There was no denying it, no escaping it.
Just the same as there was no escaping this prison they all found themselves in.
"You've been awfully quiet," Wally murmured, focusing his attention on Kaldur then. They all seemed to lazily fix their focus on him then.
"I can agree with all of you," he said, calmer than all of them. "Artemis and Connor have good points, but so do you and Dick." His eyes flickered down to his webbed feet. "Some of us are cursed with life, while others are blessed with it."
Artemis seemed to gather a kindred in her eyes as she took him in.
Of course Kaldur would take the median. Trying to see both sides of the story before making a decision. That was why he was their leader. Though now Kaldur was chastising himself for leading them into this situation.
Kaldur didn't notice the look she had fixed on him; all his attention was on the thoughts that were racing along in his brain, all vying for his attention but passing too fast for him to thoroughly examine them.
"Come on, Kaldur," Robin said, giving his friend a soft nudge. "You can't actually mean it. Life is suffering? That sounds so…"
He didn't have to finish his sentence; they all knew what he would have said. The message was clear.
"Dick, there is a point to what Artemis and Connor have said. Some peoples' lives are so terrible that they would do anything to escape them. To free themselves of whatever torments them. And if they are only brought back into the world, given life when they didn't wish for it…then yes, I can see how that is cruel."
Robin pouted. He fixed his gaze upon their darkened legs. He saw a tangle of his teammates' legs, all jumbled up together, all the fabrics clashing. Suddenly, he looked up at Artemis, the wheels in his head turning.
"You've wanted to die before, haven't you?" he asked.
Artemis blanched at his question. Her first instinct was to slap him for asking her such a question. So personal and triggering. But she didn't. Her jaw clenched, though, as she looked into the whites of his mask. She didn't know how to answer at first, and all the stares on her made her uncomfortable, like they were crawling under her skin.
"Don't ask me that," she hissed.
Robin shook his head, no. "Come on, tell me the truth. You've got nothing to lose. You've wanted to die before, haven't you?"
Artemis bared her teeth, and leaned forward. Robin didn't back down, even if every nerve in his body screamed for just that. But still, Artemis was slightly frightening, in the way she was reacting. Robin knew he was in the wrong, to straight up ask her something like that, and in the presence of so many others...
But still, he had asked.
He wanted his answer.
"Artemis…" he whispered, almost like a plea.
Artemis' lips slid back over her teeth, and she leaned back a little ways from him. Robin could still see the agitation in her body. Before Artemis even confessed to them all, Robin knew the answer. She wouldn't have reacted like this if the answer had been no.
"Yeah, okay, maybe I did. So what? Life wasn't exactly easy for me as a kid. You have any idea what my dad made me do?" Artemis closed her eyes and shivered as memories from her past bloomed in her mind. "But I wasn't–like–suicidal or anything. Those thoughts were mixed with a bunch of others, like just running away on a bus or stabbing him in the eye with a fork…"
Artemis' face changed.
"Shit," she whispered, the horror clear. "I shouldn't have said that."
"Hey, it's okay," Robin reassured her. "I've read about some of the things he's done. I can only imagine what being raised by him was like." He paused. Artemis' anger didn't up; it radiated out of her, seeming to fill their small prison were her wrath.
Megan looked slightly sick from the emotions that she was picking up from Artemis. She leaned heavily up against Superboy, two of her fingers resting on her temple while Artemis seethed.
"I'm not blaming you!" Robin exclaimed, throwing his hands up in surrender. "I was just asking. I mean, for you to think that life is a punishment, then you've had to think of death as a prize, right?"
Artemis was about to hit him when Kaldur darted forward, his hand clasping around Artemis' fist and stopping her.
Artemis turned her eyes, wild with pain, towards his. Smooth and pale gray, calm and steady. Something in them made her revert back to a simpler state, where she wasn't filled with rage and pain. His eyes soothed her, and she felt herself calming and leaning back up against the metal wall, not bothering to do anything other than breathe.
"We must not fight amongst ourselves," Kaldur said to them all.
No one said anything.
"Honestly, our top priority should be trying to figure out a way to get out of here," Kaldur continued on.
Superboy cut him off.
"You don't think we've tried that?" he yelled at him. "I've tried everything. I can't jump out of here, and this damn metal is too hard for even me to dent! Robin's tried almost every single gadget that hasn't been taken from him, and Miss Martian is still under the effects of whatever poison they gave her! We're pretty much helpless at this point!"
With all eyes now fixed on him, Superboy crossed his arms and glared at them, before he found that he couldn't bear too look at them. He couldn't help feeling so weak and helpless, so he turned away from them all, not wanting any of them to see him sulk.
"Connor," Megan hesitated to say. She reached out a hand to place on his shoulder, but he flinched away like he had been burned. Something inside of Megan crumpled when he did so. She withdrew her hand.
"Yes, all that is true," Kaldur said, taking lead again. Everyone except Connor looked at him. "We have tried many different tactics to get out of here, and all of them have failed so far. However, I still believe that there is a way out of here. All we need to do is think in a way that our enemies haven't."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Wally asked him.
"Yeah? Usually it's think like our enemies. Not think opposite of our enemies," Artemis chimed into the conversation. Behind the cowled mask that she wore, her brow furrowed as she took in Aqualad's form.
"Normally, yes," Kaldur said. "But so far, we have been thinking like our enemies. We've been using our powers and abilities in ways that they have expected, and that is why we are unable to break free. If we think of something that they haven't…"
"…Then we'll be out of here in no time!" Robin finished for him.
"Only one problem," Artemis snapped, making four pairs of eyes move to her. "What's that gonna be?"
Artemis turned to Robin, and he felt suddenly small under her gaze, though he didn't know why. He thought he fidgeted, twitched his fingers or shifted his body, but he didn't know for sure. He knew that he had adverted his eyes, but thanks to the mask, none of them could see it. He ran a bare hand through his dark hair, trying to ward off the nervous feeling he had growing within him and focus only on a plan that was trying to form.
So far he came up with nothing.
Silence stretched between all of them, so taut that it felt palpable. Robin still fidgeted while he tried to come up with some brilliant plan, while Artemis waited impatiently. Megan and Kaldur had a sad type of silence lingering on them both. Superboy was still seething, and although Megan could feel him starting to calm, she knew that he was too stressed to approach right then and there. Wally only seemed to have a disinterested demeanor to him, like he didn't care one way or the other if they ever got out of here.
"Will you stop staring at me?" Robin shouted.
Everyone jumped at his sudden outburst. Artemis' eyes widened for a second, and a look came to her face that said that she was about to protest. But then she blinked away the expression, and turned her head so that she no longer looked at him.
It was all dark grays and metallics as she focused in on the texture of their metal cage. Artemis closed her eyes, trying to find a second of serenity in the darkness. It held potential; the potential to escape from this reality, if only for a second, if only in thought and not feeling. She pictured herself back in Happy Harbor, in the Cave, when Megan had baked them all cookies and everyone was pretty much welcoming her to the team.
That had been one of the happiest moments she'd had in probably all her life. Hell knows she hadn't had a happy childhood.
"Anything yet?" Wally asked Dick.
Dick shook his head. "No, not yet. But trust me, I'm working on something. It's right on the border of my brain, y'know."
"Eh," Wally said with a shrug. "Not really."
Wally looked over to Kaldur, who still seemed to have that sad quietness about him. Kaldur had turned over all the possibilities in his head, weighed every option, attempting every fighting and escape maneuver that he had, but it still hadn't been enough.
His shoulders were slumped and his head bowed, his eyes fixated on nothing, not even the pattern of the solid sheet of metal beneath him. Wally knew what he thought; he thought that he had failed as a leader once again, and had lead his team into a mission that they might not come back from.
"Hey, Kaldur," Wally said gently.
Kaldur raised his head to look up at his friend. Wally offered him a small smile and kind eyes. "You know this isn't your fault, right?" he asked him.
Wally thought that he heard Connor scoff, but he ignored him.
"I don't see how it is not," Kaldur responded, folding his legs and leaning up to his full height.
Artemis opened her eyes to watch him, and Megan leaned forward to look at him as well.
"I was team leader. I should have known something was wrong. I should have sensed it when things didn't add up. I should have fought harder when we were ambushed. I should have…"
"Yeah, yeah," Connor cut in. "You should have done this, you should have done that. But you know what?" he asked, spinning around fully so that they all could see his face again. "What's done is done. Can't go back and change it. So stop dwelling on it."
Kaldur gave him a cold stare.
"That may be true, Connor, but looking at your past actually helps you," he said.
"How?" Superboy asked. Nearly challenged.
"If I focus on the mistakes that I have made in the past, there is less of a chance that I will repeat them in the future. If I dwell on the fact that I was not attentive enough, then perhaps in future missions I will be attentive enough. Perhaps that will save our lives in the long run. Strengthen my skills, as well."
"Seems more like a pity party to me," Connor replied.
"Well, it isn't." Kaldur paused, then darted his eyes down away from him. "Well, maybe." At last he sighed in defeat. "You are right. I am making this harder on myself than need be. But that still does not change the fact that the past can help us in the future."
"Your speaking like a fortune cookie," Artemis mumbled.
"Kaldur, if anything, the fault is mine," Megan told him. "If I hadn't stopped for a drink of water, we wouldn't be in this situation right now. I should have known that the water would be contaminated, and yet I drank it, and now here I am with my powers barely working and an immune system that's practically non-existent..."
"Don't blame yourself, Megan," Superboy said, putting a hand on her shoulder.
Kaldur quirked his lips at the clear favoritism Connor was showing her. But he forced himself to smooth his brow, and take deep breaths to not let such at thing bother him too much.
"You couldn't have known it would do that to you," Connor added.
"But I should have. I mean, the water didn't taste right. We were in enemy territory. My guard was down and I should have been more suspicious…"
"Hey, no one here blames you," Wally told her. Wally then turned back to Kaldur. "No one blames you, either," he told Kaldur, emphasizing each word he said.
Wally heard Superboy take in a breath, like he was about to disagree, but Wally shot him a dirty look and he piped back down.
Megan put a gentle hand on him, and his lips pulled back into a shy smile.
"Anything yet?" Artemis asked Robin.
He grit his teeth. "No, not yet. I can't really focus when everyone's talking," he said to them, but directed his anger at her. "Really. Just a little bit of quiet, and no death glares at each other, and maybe–maybe–I can think of a way out of this."
"Well, if all else fails, we just wait for the Justice League to arrive," Wally joked.
None of them took is as a joke, though. Angry eyes pierced though his skin and buried themselves into his subconscious. Wally wanted to make himself small, to shrink away from their furious stares, but all he could do was pull his knees up protectively around him and try to block them all out.
"It won't come to that," Kaldur told him. At least, I hope it will not, Kaldur added silently. But his face didn't betray his thoughts; the doubt that he had hiding somewhere within him.
"No, it won't," Robin agreed, and went back to his thoughts.
Luckily, this time everything truly was quiet. Even their breathing seemed to be under control, as they measured their breaths just perfectly to keep it as soundless as possible. Robin could still hear the ghost of the sounds, though, which was good. If he hadn't heard that, thoughts of death and loneliness would come rushing back to him. The same type of feeling he had after his parents had died.
When he swallowed, he noticed that a lump had risen in his throat.
He tried to force it away. He didn't open his eyes to see if his teammates had noticed, afraid that tears might spill out of him if he did so. And he didn't want to appear weak in front of them. He was supposed to be the wiz kid, the kid who didn't have emotional trauma hiding behind every corner of his life.
He wasn't Batman, no matter what he had wanted back when he was younger.
Robin had grown to accept that as he got older.
"In all honestly, I feel kinda strange," Megan chimed in suddenly, causing everyone to look at her. Something had prompted this change in the course of their conversation. Expectation lay in the eyes of all Megan's friends, and she blushed and hugged her knees tighter to her chest. "Don't you feel it too?" she asked quietly.
"Not really," Connor answered.
"There's something in the air," Megan whispered, and for the first time that night, her teammates thought she sounded scared. They all leaned in closer in a vague attempt to comfort her. Connor placed his arm around her, suddenly worried. At least she didn't look pale.
"I don't feel anything," Kaldur said gently.
"Neither do I," Artemis murmured.
"Maybe it's just in your head?" Wally suggested, and they all shot him a deadly look. He shrank back against the wall, feeling scrutinized and almost crushed by the pressure of so many cutting eyes on him. "It was just a suggestion," he said in a last attempt to save his skin.
"Thought of anything yet, Rob?" Wally asked then, turning to Dick.
Dick shook his head. "Nope, nothing," he said, and then breathed out a heavy sigh. It wasn't like him to take so long with coming up with a plan, but these weren't normal situations. Trapped inside a hull so deep that the sky was but a pinprick in the distance, in a prison made of Kryptonite-infused metal, all while being radiated with some kind of supernatural power (that's what he guessed it as at least).
Robin scratched his scalp, as if that would make an idea suddenly appear.
"I don't feel right," Megan said again, her words cutting into everybody. Though they wouldn't admit it, there was a certain aspect of fear that creeped into them as Megan admitted her frailty.
"We've got you," Connor said weakly.
"I know you do," she said back. "I don't feel sick…but I don't feel right…"
Her words drifted in the silence that lingered over everyone. It was like a cloak had been drawn over them, casting them in some kind of blanketed coven that made them hidden and calm and yet apprehensive all at the same time. They were trapped, but it felt too eerie almost. Too…different.
"Do you wanna talk about it?" Superboy prompted. "We're all here to listen."
No one disagreed with him.
Robin did his best to try to block out her words, but then realized that might not be the best idea. After all, some things can come to you when you are simply sitting around listening to other people talk. Who knew? She might just give him an idea on how to get them all out of here.
"I feel vulnerable," Megan said, speaking only to Superboy. She was admitting something so private and personal that talking to him (pretending that she was only talking to him), helped calm her nerves somewhat.
"So do I," Connor said, reminding them all of the Kryptonite that was draining his energy. He did look pale.
"I feel raw," Megan said, and Connor didn't know what to make of that. He quickly glanced around at his teammates, wondering if they knew what she meant. Given by the looks on their faces, they hadn't a clue.
"I don't know what you mean," Connor told her.
"I don't think I do either, but that's just how I feel," Megan said, and then ceased to talk.
Connor pet his hand across her hair, each movement feeling like it required insatiable amounts of energy from him, but he did it all the same. "I love you, M'gann," Connor admitted then, right in front of everyone. He felt their eyes shift away from them, wanting to give them some kind of privacy even in their close quarters.
Megan looked up with tears in her eyes and a smile on her face.
"I love you too."
I still feel strange, though, Megan thought to herself. She closed her eyes and leaned into Connor's embrace. He closed his eyes and kissed her on the forehead, before the two sat together with their arms tangled around each others' bodies.
The rest of the team still tried looking away, but it was difficult. Eventually they all just relaxed and accepted Megan and Connor's intimate moment as a part of their circumstances. It was't something to be hidden away, and at the moment, none of them cared. They all weren't sure they were going to live anyway, so they might as well start sharing their more personal, intimate sides.
"I still can't think of anything," Dick admitted at last, peeling the mask off his face and baring it to all.
Dick felt all their eyes upon him, taking in his face with something akin to ease. Bright blue eyes and a somewhat downfallen look clear on his face. Dick watched them all adjust to the sight of his true face, and then felt the shift in the air when that too became something that they accepted openly.
"I must apologize yet again," Kaldur said, looking at his feet. "If it were not for my mistake as team leader, we would not be in such a compromising situation." He didn't expect any sort of answer but the silence, but of course there were his two closest and most-trusted friends to back him up and say it wasn't solely his fault.
But it is still my fault, Kaldur thought to himself.
"Don't get downcast on yourself," Wally said, leaning forward and placing a hand on Kaldur's shoulder. Kaldur couldn't even muster up the energy to give a small, fake smile.
Wally turned to Dick.
"And don't you get down on yourself either!" Wally told Dick. "You've got no reason to be! Besides, we need a way out of here, and you can't think when you're down in the dumps like this."
Dick nodded. "Yeah, you're right. I just don't feel like my mind is working properly." He sighed, twitching his fingers and toes. It nagged at him how he couldn't come up with anything, anything!, in the whole world.
Kaldur placed a hand on Dick's shoulder, mirroring Wally's gesture. "He is right," Kaldur said gently. "We can't afford to have you emotionally compromised."
"Emotionally compromised," Dick scoffed, his fingers twitching even more. "You make it sound so technical."
"Well, how would you make it sound?" Kaldur asked him.
"I don't know," Dick said with a shake of his head. "Something not so technical at least. Something more…personal…something more real, something more…" His words trailed off as he thought for a moment. "Something more raw."
He felt Megan's eyes temporarily flick to his form.
"We cannot afford to have you beating yourself up?" Kaldur tried. "Is that more accurate to how you are feeling?"
Dick shrugged. "Yes and no."
Kaldur nodded once, and then turned to Wally and Artemis, who leaned up against the same wall, neither of them making eye contact. Wally wanted to sling his arm around Artemis' shoulders, or at the very least shift closer to her body, but he didn't. They were in close enough quarters as it was; he didn't need to make it worse.
"Wally," Kaldur said, making his friend look at him.
"What's up?" he asked.
"Why do you seem so troubled?" Kaldur asked him, eyes flicking from him to Artemis. Wally's face tinged pink and he took deep breaths to return to normal.
"Gee, I dunno. Maybe it's because were stuck here with no way out and our powers are fading from us and it's getting dark so we must have been in here for hours and no one's come to rescue us and no one's been able to get us ourselves out of here–"
"I'm trying!" Dick shouted back to him.
"I didn't mean it like that!" Wally shot back. "I just meant–"
He cut himself off, for he knew that nothing he said would have made a difference at this point. He shook his head quickly, until it was nothing more than a speedy blur, and then locked his eyes on his bright red boots. Not thinking anything of it, he pulled off a single boot, and tipped it out. He'd thought that at the very least he'd get out a bit of gravel or sand or a leaf or something. But there was nothing.
Odd, Wally thought. He almost always had stuff in his shoes.
"What are you doing?" Artemis asked him, her voice tense. But then again, that's just how Artemis' voice was.
Wally undid his other red boot, tipping it in turn.
"What's it look like?" he asked her, inspecting the boot. Not even scuff marks. His boots always had scuff marks. It came with the territory of running everywhere.
"Looks like you picked at bad time to air out your feet," she hissed back.
"Hey, Rob," Wally asked, choosing to ignore her. "Do you see anything?" Wally held up the bottom of his red boot, and Dick looked it over the same way he had.
"No."
Wally waited. "Well," he said at last, "what does it mean?"
Dick's head swam as he tried to figure out what Wally meant. Everyone: Kaldur, Dick, Artemis, Connor, and Megan all looked at him with a puzzled expression. Like he had gone made. Maybe that's what this imprisonment was doing to them.
"That the sole is…unmarked?" Dick tried, but Wally shook his head vigorously.
"So what's that tell you?" Wally asked.
Dick finally huffed and threw his arms up in the air. "I! Don't! Know!" he exclaimed, his voice loud enough to reverberate off the metal walls and descend back down upon them in violent waves of sound.
"Sorry," Dick mumbled.
"It means there's something wrong here," Wally said, leaning forward.
Everyone seemed to sense the serious, urgent tone in his voice, so they all focused their ears on his words, trying to figure out just what he was getting at. What was making him react in such a way? Megan untangled her arms from Superboy's form and shifted closer to Wally on the cold metal floor, made only a tad bit warmer from their collective bodies.
"Why do you say that?" Megan asked.
"No scuff marks!" He said it like it was supposed to be the answer to everything.
It wasn't.
"So?" Artemis asked curtly.
"So?" Wally repeated her question. "So? So? Artemis, my shoes always have scuff marks. Always. If they don't–"
"–Then that means we're somewhere outside of the material world!" Robin finished for him. His eyes lit up like fire in the dark as he finally figured out what was going on. He stood up on to his feet, erecting himself to his full height and squaring his shoulders, trying to look as proud as he felt.
"Whoever you are, come out and face us for real!" he screamed into the night air.
Nothing happened for a long while.
But then the world around the five teens began to shift and shimmer, and then finally melt away with wisps of reality stringing itself through the dimensions awkwardly, like ribbons caught in water. The five of them sat in a circle on Dr. Fate's rug, in his home, surrounded by the mysteriousness of the castle they'd found theirselves in somehow, someway.
None of them knew how they got there.
"Well done," said a voice. The golden mask of Fate appeared first, then the rest of his body materialized in front of them. "You have almost completed the assignment."
"What assignment?" Dick asked, standing up almost immediately.
"You were all supposed to know more about each other, and more about yourselves, through this exercise. You were supposed to be trapped, and eventually in your closeness, you would reveal things about yourselves and each other. In time, you would have used that to build character and trust."
"Why not just tell us?" Artemis nearly growled.
"Because, if you knew that you were being tested, you would not have done well. You would have told each other only what you thought you wanted them to know, and thus missing the aim of this exercise completely."
A long pause went through all of them.
"Close you eyes," Dr. Fate instructed them. "Hold hands, only for a moment. You are all going back into the illusion. This time, I'll add the scuff marks."
As the team clasped hands and closed eyes, they couldn't help the sad apprehension that was building within their guts. It was all a lie, and they had never been the wiser. Even worse, they had been so close to their goal (or what Dr. Fate said was their goal), and then had missed it completely.
As the cage appeared around them again, and their energy bled out of them and their memories of knowing this was all a test left their minds, they stared at each other in the moonlight that drifted down from the high, high window far above their heads in the metal confines of their prison.
"How'd we get here?" Robin asked, standing up and pawing at the walls, and then his utility belt.
"This is all my fault," Kaldur said, leaning up against the Kryptonite-infused metal and pushing his hands to his face. "I shouldn't have led us down here…"