For the first time in his life, Scott Free didn't know what to do.
From the day he first woke up to Apokolips, he had been consumed with a desire as strong as it was inexplicable: Escape. His life was measured in distance. Out his room, out the orphanage, out his section, but off the planet… never, never off the planet. On the other end of the sun orbited another world, a better world, the world of New Genesis. Locked in eternal reflection with its sister planet. Scott couldn't see it for the hellish red rays of the sun, but he felt a curious affinity for it. It called to him in pleasant song, like a mother's nursery singing that lulled him to sleep after he closed his eyes.
That distant home had shrunk to nothingness in his mind. Its ethereal promise was like a candle to the sun when compared to Barda.
He loved her.
He hated himself for loving her.
Scott was an escape artist. Not a rescuer, not a savior, not a hero. How could he save anyone? There was no room for friends on Apokolips, no room for family in Granny Goodness' Orphanage. There was only room for strength.
And loving Barda had taught Scott that he valued strength as much as his hellish home. His ruthlessness was different, but of the same shade. The things that truly separated New Genesis from Apokolips were absent in him. Although beauty was something to escape towards, he had never appreciated it except in Barda's eyes. Although friendship was something he admired over Apokolips' competition, he had let no one truly know him except Barda. And although he longed for love far more than he enjoyed hating his captors…
There was only one solution.
For Barda, he would become Apokolips' son.
The cities of Apokolips were, by chaotic turn, squat pits and skyscrapers which towered claustrophobically. The only tower which truly soared was the keep of Darkseid's palace. Its roof was high enough to give a view worthy of a god. A pity, Barda mused, that it was wasted on a god such as Darkseid.
He was even more imposing in person. His fingers were clods of stone, hewn into blunt instruments. His face, a façade that had been weathered by every millennia of his eternal life. His body, a mountain range stuffed into the form of a man and lit with the core of a planet. Although his touch was cold, she could feel his feverish warmth through the air. It was muggy instead of comforting, making her break out in an unpleasant sweat.
"I can smell life on you," he said in his voice that was mixed from granite. "Free thought and notions I never approved. They grow within your mind like viruses propagating through healthy cells."
"Then choose someone else," Barda shot back. She was not openly defiant, her voice did not raise above a monotone, but it took every ounce of courage she had.
"When a son becomes diseased, does the father cast him out? No. He provides medicine and pulls the child to his breast, nourishing him back to health. So it is with Darkseid and his people."
Barda sniffled and quickly took a drink of wine to cover it up. The food was prepared of ingredients culled from Apokolips' greatest conquests, and cooked by the greatest chefs to breath slave air. Barda would trade it all away to be back eating burnt rat and drinking filthy water with Scott in a fire-pit.
"Does your heart break?" Darkseid rumbled in frightful sympathy.
"Yes."
Darkseid's right hand closed into a fist with a sound like boulders grinding together. "Imagine a world without heartache. A universe of perfect strength and discipline, where not a moment of weakness is experienced. That is worth any cost. Paradise justifies its own means." His eyes were twin embers in his cracked obsidian face. "Paradise justifies me."
"You call this paradise?" Barda demanded with an arm sweeping over the vista. "This is hell."
"It is impure," Darkseid argued. "Corrupted by scions of free thought and beauty. Such as you and the mortal Scott Free. When the rest of the universe falls into lockstep with anti-life, such unpleasantness will not be necessary."
"Scott?" Barda asked, panicking. Not him, too!
"He is not like you and I. He is not from Apokolips." Darkseid's lips curled with disdain. "He was whelped on New Genesis. That is why he is weak. I tolerate his existence only because of the use he might one day serve."
Barda slumped down in her seat. She felt utterly defeated and wished, more than anything, that when she had said goodbye to Scott, she had meant it. "If this were paradise, it would have room for Scott."
"Do you think me so cold as to enjoy the violence here? I abhor it, as I have ever since I left New Genesis. But it is necessary. The strongest steel comes from the hottest flame." He swept the table out from between them with one off-hand gesture. "And Apokolips burns so very hot…"
His kiss was forceful enough to please…
Scott always was lax about keeping his head shaven, letting a fine stubble turn his cranium all… fuzzy. His hair grew out so fast and unruly that Granny's men tired of shaving him. Besides, he was able to collect so many escape tools while he was being shorn. A pair of good scissors were invaluable.
He wetted his head with murky brown water, already hating the way it darkened his skin, and drew the razor over his scalp.
Darkseid's kiss was forceful enough to please, but the heat burned her tongue like hot soup and he couldn't match the simple emotion that swelled in her breast at Scott's touch, not with a thousand such caresses. She marshaled all her strength and shoved him back.
"YOU DARE…"
Barda spat out rock chips. "You dare! All your talk of anti-life and discipline, yet you can't even control your own lust."
The smoke issuing from Darkseid's shadowed eyes cooled from smoggy black to white, dwindling down to tiny wisps. His eyes burned down to blood-red once more.
"Darkseid… apologizes for his action. It was hasty and shall not happen again. However…" He cupped her chin between two monolithic fingers. "By the end of the week, you shall be my servant in all things. And though you scoff now, in time you will live for the slightest hint of affection from me. And when that time comes, I shall find a new whore. The last one lasted two hundred years before she worshipped at my feet. I doubt you will prove as spirited."
"You win," Scott told Granny Goodness.
Her office was decorated in Early Martinet, portraits of prize students hanging from the walls. Their broken faces reflected Scott's like a thousand prisms.
"I win what?" Granny asked innocently from behind her obelisk of a desk.
"Call it off. Reassign Barda to the Furies. Take her out of the Pleasure Corps. I'll give you whatever you want."
"Dear boy," Granny folded her hands together, "this is what I want. You, a good boy, finally ready to behave. I see no reason to remove Barda from the Pleasure Corps. Even if I did, Darkseid's taken a liking to her. But her fate does give me leverage over you. How foolish of you to reveal that to me. If you misbehave, I'll have her service an entire battalion of Parademons. But if you're a good little boy, I'll give her the honor of licking the great Darkseid's boots clean."
Scott leaned forward, trembling hands resting on the desk. His arms twitched. Sweat dripped down over his eyelids.
"For twenty years, there have been lines I haven't crossed. Because I knew that if I went too far, I'd be in real trouble. I cared what happened to me. But you know what, Granny?"
"What, good little boy?"
Scott's smile was Apokolips turned against itself. "I don't care anymore."
He threw himself across the desk, arms outstretched for Granny's throat. It took minutes for the Parademons to drag Scott off of her, but every second he had his hands wringing Granny's neck was paradise.
Somehow, the sound of the cell doors clanging shut seemed to resound more portentously than before. As if the metal weighted more just for him. It might at that. Apokolips was funny like that.
"You sit here and think about what you've done," Granny said, red welts standing up bright as sparks from her neck. "You're a lost cause, Scott Free. The Furies will terminate you in the morning."
Scott's hands clenched around the bars like they were her throat. "I'll live long enough to see you dead. That's a promise."
Granny cackled. "The only man whose word matters here is Darkseid's." She laughed all the way out of the cell block.
Scott observed his surroundings. Four by four cell, just enough room to turn around. When he got tired, he would sleep sitting down with his back against the wall. A manhole in the floor for when he had to relieve himself. Probably a bottleneck; no way he would get out through there. He reached around the bars and felt out the lock. It gave him a little electric buzz. Son of a bitch!
"You've really stepped in it this time," Himon said as he stepped out of the shadows. Scott didn't ask how he'd gotten into the otherwise abandoned block. It was Himon.
"Always wanted to see the inside of Darkseid's personal torture chamber before I died." This was merely Granny's dungeon. "Guess dreams don't come true."
"Not here." Himon leaned against the wall opposite Scott's cell. "What's your plan?"
"They won't execute me here. I'll make a break for it during transfer."
"Not much margin for error."
"Just makes it more impressive."
"You know you never would've gotten into this mess if you weren't on Apokolips."
Scott blinked in surprise. "Yeah, that goes without saying."
"And yet you're here."
"Not by choice."
Himon tried the lock. His first tool failed. Brow furrowed, he tried a second and a third from his belt. An alarm sounded. Himon stepped back, spotlighting in flashing red lights. "Scott, I taught you everything I knew about escape and a few things I didn't. But the reason you could never escape Apokolips is that you weren't ready to leave it behind. Hell is home. But now, you've learned the most important lesson I could never teach you."
Scott sagged against the bars. "Escape is pointless… unless you're escaping to something."
"Good luck, Scott." Himon was phasing out of view. "From here on out, you're on your own."
"I'm used to it," Scott said as the alarm was turned off. Scott looked to his savior's face.
"We need to talk," Barda said.