"And this is why people say it's never a good idea to date a supervillain."

The guy on the gurney has almost every bone in his body broken. It's amazing that he's even still alive, but somehow baseline humans just seem to be that little bit more resilient than you'd think.

His buddy got fed to a cement mixer. He wasn't so lucky.

I glance over at the trainee doctor who spoke. He's young, fresh out of college really, and probably abused some connections to get here.

I grab him by his sleeve and drag him towards the gurney, through the corridor that's already filled with spectators and staff. The emergency ward isn't quite full yet, but this one was someone that needed my attention, and it seems that whenever I'm about to work, medical experts crawl out of the walls to try and rationalise what I'm doing.

"Well, seeing as you're such an expert on who did this, that obviously means you know exactly how they did it too." I grab his hand, place it on the somehow-still breathing person - though I've already made sure to knock him out and flood his body with pain relief. "So come on then, hurry up." I glance at his name tag. Sullivan - makes sense that he's here then. The Falcones must be short on intelligent stock if they're looking to their dummy organisations for patsies. "So come on, tell me who did this, tell me how, and do it whilst you're healing them."

He stutters, glancing around for a friend.

"You don't have friends here, Sullivan," I tell him. "I don't care if you're nobody, if you come from criminals or if you're a former hero. When you're in this hospital and wearing those scrubs, you act like the medical professional you're supposed to be. Which means treating people without judging them."

"I, uh, yes ma'am," he says quickly, looking at the floor.

"You still didn't answer my demand."

He glances back at the unconscious man. "I, um, I guess it might have been-"

"Might have been?" There's a murmur in the crowd of junior doctors. I can see a couple of the older ones tutting and shaking their heads. "If you're going to comment about something, firstly, make sure that you know what you're talking about. Secondly, if you're going to try and be funny about it, make sure that your jokes are about people who aren't those you're supposed to be helping. Now. Do you know who did this to him?"

Sullivan removes his hand from the body and tries to shuffle back into the crowd. "No," he admits.

"So you were being facetious just to try and get more attention? Well congratulations. I can afford to take this time to chew you out because I have powers that let me heal these things. You don't. This is why all of you are here; to learn how to treat people without magic, superpowers or miracles. I'm here as a last-ditch attempt to save lives and believe me, if you act like an asshole, you will be treated like one. Now, class-clown," I click my fingers and point for him to stay standing on the spot. "After this is done, you're going to report to the facilities manager. For the next two weeks you're going to be helping the cleaners scrub the wards, changing the bins and doing everything you wrongly think you're better than."

Red rises in his cheeks. "But I was put here to train as a medical -"

I click my fingers in his face, cutting him off. "Tell me right now, do you expect the cleaners to do their jobs?"

"Well of course," he grunts, "that's what they're paid for, isn't it? At least they're not on the streets begging like the rest of their unskilled cohort."

"Four weeks," I say. "You'll be helping the cleaners for four weeks. You can't expect a service to be done whilst simultaneously demeaning everyone that works in that service." I look from him to the rest of the group. "You'll be working alongside nurses, janitors, cooks, electricians and more. Just because you can quote a medical textbook doesn't mean you're better than someone who provides a person with the humanity they deserve. If you have a problem treating people like people, then do everyone a favour and leave now."

Unsurprisingly, no one gets up to move. Honestly. It reminds me of when I first started helping hospitals, where all the trained medical doctors would spout rhetoric about how they were better than me because they had trained for it, whilst I was just born with an ability. Shockingly enough, the same doctors were the ones who would ignore patients who didn't have health insurance, or generally wouldn't have the money to pay for the better treatments.

Maybe my opinion is biased, but fuck the lot of the self-entitled assholes.

"Healers work for people," I tell them. "Now let's be honest, we're also in one of the professions likely to be held hostage by villains. If you're an asshole to your colleagues, then they may decide that the way you've treated them like shit isn't enough to warrant them saving your life."

I turn to Sullivan and gesture for him to return back to the crowd. "If your attitude doesn't improve after the next four weeks, I won't just kick you out of my hospital. I'll be meeting personally with your big, big boss and telling him exactly how incompetent you are. The same goes for everyone here," I say, glaring at them. "I don't care what strings you pulled to get here, or who you know. I am more than happy to sit down with crime lords, thugs, teachers and spandex-wearing vigilantes and tell them exactly why you're not fit to work here. It's your desire to heal people, not your connections that help you here.

"Now!" I say, spinning around and grabbing the unconscious man by his exposed ankle. "Let's see about healing you."

I touch his skin and the network of nerve clusters appear in my understanding. I'm able to follow the pathways, dull the senses and let him have his bones reset and grown again in peace.

His legs are the worst - shattered in at least three places along each of his femurs alone. His kneecaps have had what appears to be a meat tenderiser taken to them, and that's before I even get to the way his feet have been broken so badly it was impossible to take off his shoes.

It's only when I take a passing glance at his blood to make sure the hormones are doing their job that something off makes itself known. He has everything he should, yet there's something else in there, smaller than the rest, almost hexagonal in shape. They're all following the same pathway. No matter where I look, they're all aiming towards his chest.

They're dull to my senses, not responding to my commands. It reminds me of when I tried to heal Artemis from Klarion's magic.

His body is diverting energy towards his chest. Metabolic processes are being shut off in his extremities. It's like his body is artificially collecting energy for an unknown purpose, bundling it all up in a swirling mass of -

Oh shit.

"Everyone get-!"

The explosion happens almost in slow motion. I see the man's chest cavity expand. Dark, purple fire erupts outwards, staining the ceiling above him with soot.

The body separates. Bits of viscera paint the walls.

The fire expands, at its centre a nexus of black evil.

Then everything else happens all at once. I'm thrown backwards with a force that sends me knocking into people and sending them flying like bowling pins. The hospital's fire alarms go off in an instant. Sprinklers in the ceilings being dousing us with water. They only feed the flames.

I groan as I get to my feet, shaking. My glasses have fallen off at some point. I crawl over the mass of bodies - all still breathing, though some are more damaged than most - and push myself to my feet, swaying unsteadily.

"Everyone get out!" Amanda's voice. She sounds far away. I don't know how she got here so quickly. Maybe the blast stunned me and made me lose time.

I glance at her, see the way her heart is racing in her chest. Her lungs inflate and deflate rapidly. She has her arms placed together, pointing something at me.

"Cleric, get out of the fucking way!"

Behind me.

I spin around, gasping. There's no one there. I take a step backwards and trip over a cat that my sends my senses into haywire. It's a constant shapeshifting mass of wrongness that seems ready to explode at any moment.

It's when the cackling starts.

"Everyone clear out!" Amanda's voice again. "That includes you Cleric! Don't make me have to dance around you to shoot this son of a bitch!"

The cackling continues. I get the feeling of a horrible cold that expands from within my arms and crawls towards my chest. I glance backwards and see that people are running, always looking back in my direction, their bodies flooding them with adrenaline.

I glance forwards and still can't see anything. There's a void where the person before me should be. I can see people through the walls behind them, hiding under desks, evacuating, on the phone to someone that can help.

I drop into a guarded position and try to clear my mind. There's only one thing in this world that I know of that ticks all the boxes of what I'm presented with right now.

"Klarion," I growl, looking towards the sound of the maniacal laughter.

He stops laughing. I watch the void move, almost like a nightmarish floater in my eye. His body stretches over my vision like a shadow moving across the walls.

"Well, well, well, you're the famous healer," he says. His voice is like nails on a chalkboard. I don't have a danger sense, and yet I can hear it screaming for me to get the fuck away. "You're taller than I thought you'd be."

"And you're significantly less frightening than you think you are."

I can feel the way the air changes. People around me shriek. The void moves, suddenly in front of me. There's a roaring sound. A smell like rotting meat. Humid, wet breath ghosts over my face, down my neck.

Gunshots.

The sound of them rings in my ears. It's impossible to hear for a moment. I slam my hands over my ears, and hiss as I try to focus. The ground feels like it's moving underneath my feet. I stumble forwards blindly, reaching out for the wall. I touch the remains of the John Doe that Klarion exploded out of.

The biological material is enough for me to work with, like luminous moss in a dark cave. I have to move quickly, before the sprinklers wash it away.

"Get out of here!" I scream back to Amanda. I know she fired the shots. I can see two little holes in the middle of the void's head. It's looking at her, and I can see the way it's twisting. Its hands are getting longer. They're turning into claws. I feel the heat washing off of it, blink at the flames that seem to be growing from its back, despite the sprinklers raining down on us. It stretches up and howls.

"Protect the-!"

The wind is knocked out of me. The creature sends me flying with a casual backhand. A wall greets my back with all the comfort concrete can provide.

I force myself to my feet, my head spinning. Amanda is suddenly in front of me. No, I got sent flying behind her. The monster is looming forwards. His footsteps thud on the ground. It's like a demonic Solomon Grundy out to consume our souls.

"Go!" I say, slashing an arm. "There's patients and staff that need helping. They're your priority!"

"Yes, run," cackles Klarion. He stomps towards me. I feel the structure around us groan. "Flee now! Live what little life you have left in fear!"

"Some Lord of Chaos you are," I growl. My bones ache. My teeth hurt. My brain is throbbing. I can see every injury that I've got. I force my body into action, setting it to heal what it can, as quickly as it can. Doesn't matter if I burn up too much energy. I'd rather be starving than dead.

"Attacking a place where the dying and injured come to be healed?" I sneer at the giant void. "What, is this the magical alternative to overcompensating?"

He rears backwards. This time I'm ready. I throw myself under his arm, roll beneath his swing. He roars. I leap forwards, landing in a somersault that has no grace. Tumbling, I spring out and land flat against the wall, breathless. The heat of the still-burning flames is a paradox against the icy cold of the spluttering sprinklers.

They'll go out soon. They're not designed to work with this sort of fire. I can already feel it crawling through the walls, consuming the stockroom adjacent.

Behind me, Klarion is still chuckling. "Three blind mice," he sings. His voice is distorted, horrifying. It sounds like knives being scraped together through a microphone. Each droplet of water from above seems to carry it. My skin feels cold, wet and now slimy at the sound of his voice. "Well just one, but she'll soon be dead."

I snatch the fire extinguisher from the wall and point it at him. I don't waste time with one-liners. Instead, screaming, I activate it and cover him in a flurry of foam.

"And what was the point of that?" His voice is something not even my nightmares could have dreamt up.

The fire extinguisher sputters, exhausted. I chuck it to the side and grin.

I can see him now, all seven foot of his nightmarish proportions. Horns just out of his head and his cheeks. His arms are each as wide as my legs are long, decorated with thick spikes. What appear to be eyes run down his face, his neck and his chest in parallel lines of horror.

"If you're going to go full Eldritch Nightmare, you could at least remember leg day."

He throws his head back and cackles. "So the blind mouse learnt how to see."

"Biological protein based fire retardant," I tell him.

"And what is that supposed to do?"

I grin. "Stall you."

"Nrub eht citoahc secrof!"

The fires swirl and throw themselves at Klarion. I leap backwards as he snarls, falling, and find myself caught by a pair of gauntleted, stable hands.

Batman places me to one side. His expression is grave. Zatara is by his side, his blood pumping. I can see something eating away at his cells, as if fuelling this magic is consuming his very life force.

"Cleric," Batman says. He presses something on his arm and to my surprise, he holds out something for me. I grab what he's offering, trying to tune out the way Klarion is screaming. There's a sound like a wall collapsing. I hope that whoever's in that room evacuated first.

My fingers wrap around the arm of a pair of glasses. "Really?" I ask, staggering back as the world blossoms back into reality. My hospital is in ruins. The lights are flickering, if they're even still functioning. The walls look like Swiss cheese.

Klarion gets back to his feet, covered in unholy purple flames.

With the way his veins are exposed right now, pumping a thick green liquid, I'm almost regretting putting on the glasses.

Batman grabs me before I can move. "I brought you those because I knew you wouldn't be able to see him otherwise."

Zatara moves forwards, between us and Klarion. A flick of his hands and the radiator on the wall unravels with a metallic screech. It unwinds, turns into a sentient snake made of cutting metal and leaps for Klarion, wrapping around his legs.

"I kinda found a way," I say. The flames burn through the protein foam I coated him in. Annoying, but if I can keep my glasses on it shouldn't be a problem.

"Not him," Batman says.

A brilliantly bright, golden ankh appears in the middle of the corridor. I hiss and throw my hand over my eyes. I hear a guttural growl from Klarion, as well as an otherworldly hiss from his cat, echoing from somewhere behind me.

A figure steps out of the golden portal, clad in gold and blue. Their golden cape billows behind them. The helmet on their head obscures their face, but the eyes are unnatural, an endless void of white.

"You!" Klarion snarls, pointing a finger. "You're not supposed to be here! You're ruining my plans!"

"We found a new host," Zatara says. "One who was more than happy to wear the helm in exchange for taking you down, Klarion!"

The nightmarish creature shrinks before my very eyes. He returns to being a skinny twig of a person, clad in a pinstripe suit, with his jet black hair styled up in a way that reminds me of his horns.

"You heroes never play fair!" he declares. He jumps backwards, into a sudden portal that appears on the wall behind him. It shuts with a sound like a pop, leaving nothing but a slight breeze in his wake.

"That was far easier than I expected," Batman growls. "Batman to League," he says, turning to talk into his gauntlet. "Klarion has vanished into a portal. Check to ensure this wasn't just a distraction."

"I agree," Zatara says. The new Lord of Order touches down beside him, cape still fluttering on a non-existent breeze. "This was far too easy, as if-"

A cat hisses.

I gasp, spin around.

And find myself staring into a pair of nightmarish red eyes.

Four individual needles of pain burn their way through my chest. I gasp, making barely a squeak as I feel my nerves go into overdrive.

"Tsk, tsk," Klarion says, smiling at me, displaying rows of rotting, yellow teeth. "You didn't think it'd be that easy, did you?"

He lifts me up, slams me against the wall behind. I hear my name being shouted. My hands wrap over his arm. His hand is buried into my chest, up to his wrist. I feel my own blood on my hands. He moves a finger. Agony erupts through me.

I take a deep breath and cut off all nerve impulses below my shoulders. I'm left numb from the neck down, yet aware there's still a hand rearranging my insides.

"Nothing more from any of you!" Klarion declares. He waves a hand. All three of the heroes are thrown backwards, sucked into a black hole that screams with the voices of a thousand people. A snap of his fingers and the void closes, leaving us alone once more.

"They'll be back," he tells me, his smile widening. "That pesky Nabu always finds a way back to spoil my fun, but this time he'll be too late."

He moves his hand. I go through the motions of making the proper pained moaning sounds. I'm trying to get my body to heal what it can, whilst it can. I'm shutting off blood flow to my extremities, cutting off what I can restart later.

I can't feel the pain anymore, but my powers let me see the damage he's causing. Every movement of his nails cuts through more soft tissue. My liver is pierced. My intestines are open, spasming.

"Ooh, trying to heal yourself, are we?" Klarion cackles. "Well, I have just the thing for that." He flicks his wrist. A firehose appears in his hand, the hose coiled around his body, emerging from a shadowy hole in the ground.

"Now, I heard they found an antithesis to your powers." He runs a finger along the bottom of the hosepipe. A single drop of water plops out onto his finger. "Now, I wonder. What would happen if I…"

He presses his finger to my open chest.

My powers unravel in an instant.

The agony returns.

I suck in a deep, pained breath. My gasps are shallow, through gritted teeth. I can taste blood, smell it as it pools in my nose. My nerves are on fire.

Nothing I haven't been through before. The League had its own ways of testing how much I could heal.

Doesn't mean it doesn't fucking hurt.

My hands tighten around his arm. He cackles.

"Oh, hurts, does it?" He presses the hosepipe to my mouth. His smile is an evil thing. "Now, let's see how well you cope with drowning."

Water rushes out of the pipe, smacking me in the face. Dazed, my head hits the wall again. I can't do anything to stop him opening my mouth and forcing the water down it. I gag. It does nothing. Water rushes down my throat, filling my lungs.

It hurts.

I can't scream. My lungs are filled with water. My vision is blurring. Everything is becoming dull, dark.

I can't breathe.

I can't heal it.

I'm going to drown.

I can't heal drowning.

I need to think of a way out!

I need-

I need gills.

I can't alter myself like that!

I suck in a breath through my nose by habit and choke on the water rushing down my throat. My legs are spasming. I picture Kaldur, remember the way his body combined the two circulatory systems.

Gills still require lungs, at some stage.

The Lazarus water blocks my healing. At the same time, I feel something different about it. My powers are reacting, bubbling beneath the surface, demanding to be used.

I open the floodgates and change myself from the inside out. I turn my lungs into part of my digestive system. Gills grow down my back, away from Klarion's view. I kill off damaged cells, replace them with new ones.

My body consumes my appendix for energy. I fuse my liver to my intestines, force them to perform each other's roles. I grow alveoli down my arms, attaching them to the veins and arteries.

"Oh, are you dead already?" Klarion mutters, shaking my body. "That's boring."

My eyes have closed at some stage. I feel the smile growing. Grunting, I force my hands slowly to my mouth. He cackles at my resistance, allows me to try and struggle for my life.

His mistake.

I force all my adrenal glands into production at once. I rip the hosepipe free and direct it at him. The sudden deluge of water catches him off guard.

Bolstered by the adrenaline, I have enough strength to grab him by the collar and fling him down the corridor.

I press a hand to my chest as I slide down the wall. I use the other to help myself get back up. As i stand I'm directing my body into action. It uses one of my lungs as energy, consuming it to repair the damage. I can regrow it later. I move bodily functions back to normal as my tissues knit themselves back together.

"You can't do that!" Klarion wails, actually stomping his foot. "That's not fair!"

I turn away from him, to look at his cat that watches us, even now. It hisses at me as I approach it.

A quick movement and I brush my fingers against its fur. I stun it, forcing complacency into it.

"No, no, no," Klarion seethes. He takes a step forwards. I hold out a hand between us, grasping the other around his cat's neck. "You wouldn't! Harm a defenceless little kitty?" His expression darkens. "I'll slit your throat before you can ever think of breaking his neck."

The cat purrs in my touch. It's easy to manipulate now, to make it think I'm an ally, that it's safe.

Were it not for him trying to kill me with them, I'd never have thought of doing such a thing. Within me now are two forms of Lazarus. The dual waters of Lazarus are a paradox, yet somehow they're in equilibrium. Being born in one gave me the powers of life.

Nearly dying in one has given me the additional power of death.

It takes the barest of nudges to stop the cat's heart.

"What? No!" Klarion's hands go into his hair. He leaps forwards. His legs turn to dust. He screams, twisting as his body disintegrates before my eyes. "You monster!" he wails. "You heathen! Just you wait, when I get back here I'll make you suffer! I'll go to hell itself and make them truly know how to torture you!"

I toss the body of his cat at him. His ghostly hands cradle it. He sobs as his cat begins to vanish with him.

"Fuck you, and take your mangy-ass cat with you."

"I will be back!" he declares, his tone dark, reverberating through the very walls themselves. "I don't care where it is. If you're dead, I'll bring you back to life just to kill you again every day!"

My smile is smug as he disappears.

It's only when the last shadow of his twisted, nightmarish face vanishes that I allow myself to collapse.

My body is spent, running on almost nothing. I can feel my cells dying through a lack of energy. My stomach visible shrinks before my eyes as my body consumes more of itself to survive.

I grunt as a golden light blossoms from the ceiling above me. My vision is blurring as three figures drop out of it.

I hear my name being called. Feel something being pressed to my mouth. I open, chewing the energy bar.

"Coma," I manage to whisper. "High energy. Increase all doses tenfold."

Batman says something to me. I grunt in an attempt of understanding.

I slip into unconsciousness and for the first time in my life, I sleep.