He Is.
Rating: K+
Disclaimer: copyright, DC
Notes: I was trying to finish the next chapter of my other story, but Q demanded to talk. And talk he did.
When content, people tended to not ask the hows and whys of it. Complacency could easily be bought by simply providing everything a person could want.
But his name is (apparently) Victor Sage, and he finds himself asking too many questions.
He is currently thirty-four years old.
(fact.)
His parents are Thomas and Renae Sage, ages
(beat)
fifty-six and fifty-four, respectively.
(...not recalled. provided.)
Helena says his father is going to die from lung cancer any day now. Helena says (she laughs as she does, bright and mockingly and ever so beautiful) that Victor gets his good looks from his mother. His mother has black, black hair that he remembers braiding as a child-
Only that's not right.
Victor tightens his arms around Helena, but gently, careful not to wake her. He stares at her sleeping face, and fails to see anything at all.
His name is (apparently) Victor Szasz, and he finds himself with too many questions.
His is thirty-four years old.
His parents, Thomas and Renae Szasz, have been dead from some years now-
(how long, how long?)
-fifteen going on next March-
(from what, from who?)
-His father had been killed in a car accident, his mother had-
(their faces, what were their faces?)
-had freckles and red hair and been tall for a woman-
(did they love you?)
-and...
Victor thinks about cupboards and dark, small spaces and going to sleep hungry.
Helena is staring at him, eyes luminous in the dark.
His name is (apparently) Charles Szasz, and he finds himself wanting answers.
His is thirty-four years old.
He is an orphan.
He is an investigative journalist, and he has lived in Metropolis for the past ten years.
(no man made from steel. no gods. the dirt, the blood, the sin-)
His last report had been on politics and the city was too bright, blinding itself to reality.
(-the whores, the crack pushers, nonsensical killings resulting in faceless deaths-)
Metropolis is clean beneath his feet and he can feel the crack of bone breaking beneath his hand. Blood, both warm and cold, beneath his skin.
(can you remember the smell?)
Charles thinks of yellow streetlights, a back ally dumpster, and a tiny dead baby wrapped in a plastic bag and aging vegetable matter.
(do you remember-)
"Helena. Where's my face?"
Helena reaches out and cups Charles' cheek, thumb brushing against cheekbone. She is naked under the thin cotton sheet, and perfect. So very perfect.
His name is Charles Victor Szasz. His name is Vic Sage. His name is-
He is thirty-four years old.
He is an orphan.
He didn't belong here, where clarity wasn't painful and the truth was only a nagging, insistent voice instead of an overwhelming urge.
Charlie pulls Helena close, burying his face in her hair. He breaths in her smell. He brushes his lips against her scalp.
And neither did Helena.
Her voice is soft and soothing and devastatingly final. "Babydoll, you need to wake up."
The Question opens his eyes. One couch cushion away, Oliver Queen is frozen mid-sentence, his complaint about taxes only ever half formed. The Watchtower recreation hall is crowded, still, and deathly silent.
Two minutes, fourteen seconds to break an illusion of a prefect world.
- - -
Later, after Question has awoken a few choice heroes (Oliver is going to have a rather nasty bruise on his jaw by tomorrow) and the threat has been dealt with, J'onn J'onzz releases an announcement explaining the mind controlling properties of the alien spores that had been spread throughout the ventilation system, and how these spores were used to stun the alien's prey before digestion.
Flash proclaims 'it was a plot worthy of Star Trek'.