Remembrance
This is a story about Match and Inertia. Please enjoy and review.
He remembered the day they'd first met. It hadn't been the most pleasant of circumstances, what with Titans East getting ready to go up against Titans West. But worse than that, he remembered that jolting feeling of fear and sudden uncertainty of his own future, probably because he'd seen him degenerating. Superboy's own superior clone – degenerating with the mind of a seven year old child. Inertia had never been so frightened of anyone in his entire existence.
Would it happen to him one day? Would he become nothing more than someone's mindless grunt? In his cold, twisted heart, he prayed to be partnered with someone else when the time came for them to attack the individual Titans West.
To his horror and slight chagrin, he was partnered with Match.
Thad didn't know what to say to Match.
"You Impulse clone?"
Ouch.
"Um...yes. You are Match right?"
"Me am not Match."
"Huh?"
It had taken him a minute to work out that Match only spoke in opposites now. He had heard such good things about Match - about his cunning, the control he had over his powers, the high level of combat training he'd gone through. For it to come to this was shameful.
"Nice to meet you Match." Thad did his best to smile cockily.
Match just nodded, accepting the by now common prejudice.
It had all been over far too quickly, but when you were a speedster, that was what tended to happen. All the while, as Inertia succeeded in intimidating Raven, Robin and Wondergirl. Match had been lurking in the back of his mind; he knew without glancing in that shadowy corner that Match was there, looming...waiting...a possible echo of his distant future.
"Match, you should take Wondergirl." Inertia startled himself by the softness of his voice; he had noticed the tender way the hulking clone gazed at the unconscious blonde. Shouldn't the young speedster be holding her hostage to have a dig at Match? Isn't that what villains do?
Match, however, didn't seem surprised. Inertia had to remind himself that Match was still human...still perceptive.
"Match am not thanking Inertia."
Those gravelly words faded as Match slung Wondergirl over his shoulder and shot upwards, flying away. Inertia looked down numbly at his two captives before spiriting them away to Deathstroke.
Match had that effect on you sometimes.
The battle had been lost. It had been so painful too, in more ways than one.
"Sungirl..." The blonde male slid down the cracked alley wall, allowing the elements to soak him through to the bone. His muscular runner's legs still ached, an aftershock of their healing from being badly broken. Rain trickled down his shoulder blades.
"I hate you, Allen." he mumbled, watching the freezing rain fall like a glittery curtain.
Pitter patter...
A picture of desolation.
He'd watched Jericho take over Match. Oh, how he'd pleaded in vain with Match.
"Don't look at his eyes! Stay away from him!"
He understood that feeling of invasion, that crazy battle for control.
Where was he now?
The lust of curiosity was too great for Inertia and he wobbled as he stood, speeding into the distance to search effectively for that clone. And he found him quickly enough, huddled by himself in a secluded alleyway, dripping wet just like himself. Jericho had fled hours before.
"M-Match?" Inertia stuttered, stepping cautiously closer as he wrapped his thin arms around himself.
"Inertia?" His name. Out of all the people he had met over his time on this earth, Inertia's was the one he remembered. His shortening memory wasn't so short after all.
"Come on, we need to get you out of here." Thaddeus zipped to his side, graceful and still cautious. He so badly wanted to run.
Match followed him without a word, not seeming cold in the slightest, like a child following its mother.
He visited as often as he could, which was every day in fact.
"How are you feeling?" It was a polite term, but heartfelt now.
Relations to each other...they were there.
"Me am not fine." Match nodded, his pure white skin still flaking. If only his damaged brain could work out how ironic that was.
"Uh huh."
They would sit silently together in that secure, isolated log cabin happy (in Match's case) to be like that. No words were ever needed to describe the unity they shared; the knowing and empathy of each other's plight.
One day though, Inertia thought of something to ask him while he was there on his daily visit. He couldn't shake the obligation of needing to keep an eye on him.
"Match, may I ask you something?"
Match painstakingly and slowly scribbled his reply on a pad of crinkled paper. He couldn't even talk anymore and his skin flaked with every movement. It was terror in one of its purest forms.
Yes.
"Do people...apart from myself obviously – I mean, does anyone else visit you at all? Ask if you're okay?" Inertia responded, critically eyeing Match's reaction.
His expression didn't change much, although a flicker of pain entered his now crimson eyes. Taking the pad back roughly, Match slowly wrote down a new word.
No.
No is a powerful word. It can stir the weakest of cowards or pacify the bravest of warriors. It can destroy and cause pain or start a movement that changes people's lives for the better. That particular no shattered Inertia's already scarred and broken heart. The young Thawne dully wondered if this was to be his fate until he died.
"I'm...sorry." Inertia gazed blankly at the opposite wooden wall, watching the firelight paint its normal brown colour with sunny yellow, fiery maroon and flickering oranges.
A new piece of nearly clean paper was thrust into his peripheral vision. Taking it, Match's companion scanned it carefully, going over it twice so he wouldn't miss his meaning.
Don't be. You visit me so everything is fine. Stay a little longer today?
Misspelled words and missing grammar jumped into Inertia's face, but their gentle meaning was clear. His golden eyes had never spilled crystalline tears before until now.
"Uh-huh. I'll stay for longer." Thad touched his own wet cheeks in reverence.
It was all coming apart.
Burning was everywhere. He hadn't seen Inertia for three (or was it five?) days now. Nerves caught alight too, spreading the icy, cancerous fire around his failing body. He had even dunked his raven black head under the tap in an effort to stop it. Only it made things much worse.
Hurting...hurt...where friend? Where Inertia? He abandoned him too. Angry now...agony...angry agony. Stop it! Leave well alone! Stop it!
Flakes everywhere...ribs beginning to show, glistening with blood...Cold.
Everything fading away...
"INERTIA!"
Inertia couldn't shrug off the sinking stomach and gut intuition that was haunting him, like a remnant of his gory past. Too petrified to run back to that quiet cabin in the dark green forest that blended in with his costume so well, Inertia had stayed away, the phobia of the ailing clone, the real vision of his possible future too powerful to overcome. There was definitely a storm coming. The chill and foggy humidity clashed violently together. Something was wrong.
Drastically wrong.
He had to see Match. It must be something to do with him.
The Flash could wait.
"Match?" Inertia arrived in half a second, startled to spy a gaping hole in the side of the cabin, splintered wood poking out and spraying frayed shavings just beneath the quaint window. Doom spread across his frazzled mind.
"Match?"
The voice came again, unsure this time.
When had he ever been sure?
Inertia pondered near the hole, debating whether to enter. Then he did and everything was lost to death.
The table had been smashed and its glass top sprinkled its fragments across the floor, glittering in the tiny droplets of blood. Match lay curled up in a foetal position, his red eyes bulging and staring, full of uncomprehending pain. The clone had soiled himself and that coupled together with the unmistakeable death stench of rotting corpse was appalling. His last moments had been humiliating and fuelled with much strife and despair.
Inertia swayed, trying to breathe through his mouth as his intelligent brain absorbed the horrific, blood-soaked scene in front of him. Putting a gloved hand to his mouth, he backed frantically away until he tripped and sunk to the rug-covered floor in a dead faint.
It was overloading, overwhelming, far too much to cope with.
Coming around a minute later, Thad stared wide-eyed at the ceiling, a trail of salt water flowing down from underneath suddenly closed lids.
"I left you here to die."
Too much...
He felt like a murderer.
Wandering blankly over to Match's body, Inertia could only keep his gaze firmly on it for a moment. Abruptly, the burning determination surged through his body, like the Speed Force used to before HE took it all. A determination to give the last kind of respect that Match deserved.
A proper burial.
One person attending his private funeral was better than nothing, right?
So began Match's final journey.
Thaddeus Thawne laboured long and hard over the digging of the grave under Match's favourite tree as torrential rain lashed down on him; a physical manifestation of his inner struggles perhaps? By the time he'd finished, the Velocity Nine he was constantly on courtesy of Deathstroke had worn off and his thin arms and slim legs shook violently. Slowly...respect for Match.
Despite the stress he was putting on his young body, Inertia persisted in hurrying back to the cabin and removing the dead clone, dragging his heavy body over fallen logs and twigs that delighted in tripping him up and halting his quest for relievement. Several times, the boy nearly collapsed with his burden, shivering fitfully. He managed it at last at five o'clock in the morning, as the tint of ruby sun began to peak shyly over the shaded horizon. Flopping the body into the grave, Inertia dropped with it, shaking forcefully. He sneezed once and bent his head back to herald the sunshine.
"You would have loved this...I'm sorry." He mumbled, resting for about five minutes before he tottered upwards and threw the soft damp earth over the body until it made a nice, neat little mound. A small grin.
The real Match would have detested it if it was a scruffy job.
Inertia stood above it, weaving dizzily for a second before passing out next to the fresh grave from exhaustion. As he lay curled up, so deeply asleep in the bouncy tufts of verdant grass, he was too far gone to notice a slight breeze start up and brush across his cheek – a feather light touch, a gentle hand across the boy's slightly rounded face.
Match smiled calmly at him from above.
"Thank you. My atonement is complete."
He faded and floated onwards to continue heavenly life anew.
The end.