AN: Okay. This took a lot longer to perfect than I hoped. But this update is FINALLY done, and I made it longer than I originally intended because I didn't want to deprive you all.

For those still following this story, I hope you enjoy this update. I had a vision of where I wanted this chapter to take us, and it gives me all the feels reading it.

Chapter 13: Blasphemy

XXX

River's POV

I'm trying.

I'm trying so hard to hold them in. Hold the pieces together. It's like a seam ripping apart… threadbare…no longer able take the strain. Maybe this is what she wanted to happen…

"You're not blessed, you're cursed…And it's getting worse now."

It feels like my ear drums will bleed with how loud everything sounds inside my head. So many angry voice, so many questions, so much denial.

My eyes clamp shut, but the laughing still plays on my lips. I vaguely feel someone pulling at me from multiple directions. I am a rag doll… something to be tossed around as others pleased. No one caring for what I wanted.

"It makes no sense but it must right."

Seeing, but not wanting to see. They don't understand… they don't comprehend.

"We hear no voice when we pray at night."

Tears are still streaming down my face. They sting like daggers and I screw my eyes tighter to try and stem the pain. But I can feel it bubbling up inside of me. I vaguely hear my laugh twisting into something more than laughter. Something more like madness.

"'Cause you got hell to pay but you already sold your soul."

It's like something deep-seated takes control. Something that was buried so deep I didn't even know it was there.

"…it's too late to turn back."

Nothing seems real anymore. It's all a piece of fiction, and she's writing every word. We're all her characters, all her players. Here to do her bidding. She wants a world of silence… she wants us to all lay down and die.

"Please… make me a stone."

She wants me to do it. I can feel it. It's as if she's put back what they tried to leave inside of me. The secrets just waiting underneath my skin. Waiting to take control. Clawing and gnawing away at me. Ripping me to shreds. A million nails and teeth trying to devour every last inch of my being.

"…Miranda…"

XXX

They didn't know what happened. One minute they had watched the girl in front of them devolve into a fit of hysterics. Crying, laughing, covering her ears and mumbling nonsense. It only got worse when Deadshot yanked her to her feet. More crying, more laughing.

Harley, Boomerang, and Flag had tried to help. Tried to pull her and the angry assassin demanding answers apart.

"Can't you see she's traumatized!" Harley had screamed.

They had almost got her away from Deadshot when it changed. When the crying girl went silent.

But it wasn't just her, it was everything. Time had stood still for the briefest of moments before everything snapped back into place, and the next thing they knew instead of wrenching her away, they were scrambling to get away.

The look in her eyes was vacant, dead. It was like a flip had switched and no one was home. It didn't matter who called out to her, everyone in the room had become a threat, something to beat to a bloody pulp.

XXX

River's POV

I'm not there. Well, at least not that there. I was back, back where I started.

It's a dream, walking down those stairs into that all too familiar bar. The sounds, the smells, the sights. Nothing had changed. The dancers with the large fans stand poised to hide illicit dealings from the cameras, the patrons drink and itch for a fight. But there were only koshered rules here.

"We've never been but a way station to those two…"

My heart sinks as I hear his unmistakable voice. I turn and watch as they descend into the bar. The wary and grouchy old Captain, the girl made of sunshine, the faithful first mate, the best pilot in the verse, and a somewhat trusty gunhand. Just as I remember them. In all their imperfect perfection…The family I left behind.

A whisper creeps through my lips. "It's not fair."

Not fair that she keeps reminding me of what she tore me away from. I've become a ghost. A figment of long forgotten dream. I ache for them to remember, for me to remember them in all their imperfect detail…before she rips me away from them again. I start to walk closer to them when I hear it… that all too familiar sound.

It's what they used to make me sleep. What they would sing to me to mold me into what they wanted. Hidden… buried deep under layers of innocuous and annoying banter.

"Fruity oaty bar…" The blue cartoons sing.

And it comes flooding back in a tidal wave of memory. Everything they did. Everything they caused. The lives they took and played with for their own sick pleasure. The one's who laid down and died because they had no will left to live. And the monsters they created… Reavers.

"Miranda."

It had all been hidden on Miranda. Meant to stay quiet. Stay buried. A planet of a thousand corpses. All they ever did was meddle… All she ever did was meddle….

"It's not fair!" I scream as I bold my hands over my ears and try and drown out the triggers buried deep in that song. But I am too late. I feel the rage bubbling up from those dark recesses.

Rage at the secrets they forced me to bare, forced into my brain without a second thought. Rage at her for bringing up what I thought I had left behind. Rage at being toyed with like her gorram personal puppet.

Enchantress's cackle echoes around me as my rage burns into me. "Bend the knee and give away your life. Bite your tongue and close your mind. They'll never know."

I seethe and scream at her in my head, but her cackle only grows louder.

"Don't try to tell me that you still believe."

I steel my resolve. There's only one way out of this. "I more than believe."

And all at once everything becomes cacophonous. Wood splintering, glass shattering, men shouting… All the figments…all her projections of what that bar would have looked like in another life are vacant and emotionless zombies hell bent on tearing me limb from limb.

I grit my teeth. "Not today." And I let go. I let myself feel the rage within me… channel it, and now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. A whirling dervish of high kicks, pirouettes, jabs, uppercuts.

I feel a much bigger body come up behind me and wrap their arms around me, pinning my arms downward. I hear a vaguely familiar voice, but I know it's just her fucked up fantasy. I quickly side step and grab and twist the sensitive area between the man's legs until I feel his grip loosen around me. Once it does, I grab the nearest tray and smash it into the body's face before I bolt away.

I see a body rushing up the stairs to my right and I quickly lunge for a discarded gun to my left and swing it into the air as I hear the unmistakable sound of a gun cocking.

I swing my arm to meet the assailant head on and I ….freeze. Because even though I know it's a projection, know it's all in my head, it's still hard to try and pull the trigger when I am staring at my brother.

"Simon." I manage to say as my voice cracks.

I watch as his lips move… and I feel the darkness creeping back in behind my eyes.

I hear her voice as my body become heavy and I fall to the floor.

"Eta Kooram Nah Smech."

XXX

Deadshot hesitates to pull the trigger. He didn't kill women and kids. But this girl? He wasn't sure what she was.

He watches as she hesitates to pull the trigger of the gun in her hand. Watches as if something comes over her and her lips move in low whispers. And in the blink of an eye, he watches as she drops like a bag of lead to the floor.

No one moves towards her limp figure. They all stand at the ready, waiting, just in case.

"What the fuck was that?" Deadshot says, pistol still in hand.

XXX

River's POV

The throb in my head intensifies as I feel something cold against my skin. I try and move an arm to cover my eyes from the intense light bleeding through the cracks, but I can't seem to move either arm. I slowly realize why I can't move them… they're handcuffed above my head.

I crane my head backwards and see I'm chained to sink plumbing in a bathroom. But for the life of me I can't remember why I'm here. I pull on the cuffs testing the pipe they are around.

"Won't do you no good." A voice to my right rumbles with a low chuckle.

My head and neck are throbbing, but I glance in his direction.

"I checked'um myself before we cuffed ya to them." Digger says with a smirk, clearly amused with the situation. He's perched on the restroom counter, sporting a fresh bloody nose and holding what appears to be ice in front of his pants.

It doesn't take long for my brain to capture flashes of what happened from Digger's head and I wince at his thoughts as I piece everything together. It wasn't just her meddling in my mind. Fuck.

My head begins to ache as tendrils of thought creep in from outside in the bar. Whispers of violence… of fear… of exceptions to rules. They want answers, they don't trust what she could become… again.

"They're all afraid of me."

Their emotions are washing over me like a tidal wave and chocking me. The tears bubble up again as I try and catch my breath, but it just comes in short gasps.

"I'm sorry…" Digger says quietly as he moves to help me sit up a little so I can breath easier. "We tried to stop ya, but…"

"Show me off like a dog, old men covered in blood, it never touched them but they're drowning in it… so much loss…"

"Doll?" Digger says places his hands on either side of my head and tries to force me to focus on him.

"Look at me doll. Focus on me." He says as he holds my gaze.

I try and ground myself… hold on to anything in his head to try and keep the panic at bay. There's possessiveness and anger buried deep in his gaze, along with lust. It's like watching him paint a picture of what he sees in front of him.

A picture I'm not sure I can measure up to. "Put a bullet to me. Bullet in the brain pan, squish." I say as I try and break his gaze and turn my head away.

But he's not giving up that easily and his hands snap my face back towards his as he moves mere inches from me so I am forced to look at nothing but him.

"Don't say that. Not ever. We'll get through this."

Was that an echo? Didn't someone tell me that before? She can remember traces of a memory… but that's quickly forgotten as Digger's lips gently meet hers.

XXX

The tension in the bar is still thick from the fight before. Except with no clear enemy to fight, they're starting to get tetchy with each other. Harley and Flag are holding position outside the restroom… well trying to hold position and keep an increasingly more testy Deadshot in line.

"So we're just supposed to keep goin? After all that just happened?" Deadshot seethes as he paces back and forth.

"She's never done something like this." Flag says unflinchingly.

"But she has done something before? I'd like you to elaborate on 'something'. What she has done?"

There is an uneasiness as Flag tries to not look away from the man in front of him, but Deadshot refuses to let up though. "Would one of them happen to be, "Kill everybody in the room"?"

Flag's eyes falter and he can't help but look away. "She mentioned triggers…"

"Jesus christ man!" Deadshot yells. "You brought her out here knowing full well she might go monkeyshit at the wrong word and you never said a thing…"

"She's a soldier!" Flag says as he steps up to Deadshot. "She knew what the mission…"

"FUCK THE MISSION. You had a fuckin' time-bomb with us!"

Before tensions mount any higher a glass can be heard breaking against a wall and both men look at the direction of who threw it. "Will you two just cut the macho posturing bullshit!?" Harley yells at them as they both blink in surprise at what she just said.

"You really want to side with him on this Harl?" Deadshot says somewhat stunned.

"Oh, I got all the reason to side with him!" Harley says as she moves from the stool she had been perched on to stand in front of Deadshot and poke him in the chest. "I TOLD YOU TO LAY OFF HER! But did you listen? NO!" Harley says as she shoves Deadshot for emphasis.

"You really want to push me Harley?" Deadshot says as he moves to step back into her face.

XXX

River's POV

He'd been trying to take it slow. He didn't plan to kiss her, but like most things with Digger Harkness, he acted on impulse. An impulse to comfort me. To trade the pain I felt with a kiss. It doesn't last more than a second or two, but the minute he begins to pull away I feel an immense sense of loss. Like a fire had been stoked by that simple kiss and she needed more.

While I can't move my arms to pull him back towards me, I am quick to close the distance between our lips before he can pull too far away.

This kiss wasn't chaste. It was a battle of tongues and wills. I'm aching to touch him… aching to pull the lifeline he's become closer.

The air seems to buzz around me and the next thing I feel is a realize of tension in my arms… and I realize I've somehow managed to slip the cuffs from them? I break the kiss and look down at my freed hands. How did that happen?

"How'd you do that?" Digger says as he also looks at my free hands in front of me.

"I… don't know."

And like that the spell is broken.

"You had a fuckin' time-bomb with us!" Deadshot's voice echoes into the room and I throw a glance towards the door.

"They need answers." I says as I move to stand up.

"You ready for this?"

I cock my head to the side… it's another echo… another not so distant memory?

"Are you?"

He throws me his signature toothy grin. "I'm not goin' anywhere doll."

It's nice to know he means it as I follow him back to into the waiting lion's den.

"What the FUCK do you think you're doing?" Deadshot say as he raises his pistol towards me as I walk back into the room.

I raise my hands slowly as guns are unholstered and pointed in every direction.

I steady my gaze and level it at Deadshot. "She's a puzzlement, that girl. Don't make sense… 'Cept sometimes she does. Is there any way out of this?"

His gaze narrows but he doesn't remove his finger from the trigger. "That is a hell of a parlor trick."

"Not a parlor trick. She… I… told you, I was tortured. The who, what, when, where, and how aren't the important questions. It's the why. The reason… the purpose behind it all."

Click… click… click… she hears them all begin to piece it together.

"To make you into a weapon." Deadshot says evenly.

"To hone it, mold it, and shape me into their ideal. A perfect psychic assassin."

And now the disbelief sets in from around the room.

"Woah now." Flag starts trying to get her to cut story time short.

"Ain't no such thing." A few of the Alpha team mumbles under their breath.

Digger's slightly confused. "Psychic? Like a comic-book?"

Only Harley and Chato are firmly believing everything she is saying.

"To do their bidding." Harley says solemnly.

"To wage their war." Chato chimes in shortly after.

"I was always gifted… my brother called me a gift. I could always hear whispers. Faint and just underneath the surface. Like a gut instinct but more salient."

I steal my resolve and take a deep breath before I continue. "What they did to me… was…" Harley comes up beside me and offers her a hand to squeeze. I take her hand. It's a small gesture, but what I needed, and I continue on.

"The cut into my brain. Stripped the amygdala. Instead of hearing whispers, I hear everything… feel everything. Which means they could also implant controls, triggers, and training."

"They made you into a living weapon." Deadshot says as his finger finally slides away from his trigger and he holsters his gun. Everyone else follows suit.

They don't say anything, but they are all carefully appraising her. Wanting to ask more, but not wanting to trigger another episode.

It's Chato that finally breaks the silence. "So what the fuck are we walkin' into?"

XXX

The rag tag group was gathered around one of the large tables in the back of the bar. River's notes and binder spread out for everyone to look at and study. Flag walks them through the briefing.

"Three days ago, a non-human entity appeared in the subway station."

"Non-human?" Digger asks confused from where he's leaning against the bar.

"A meta-human. Like him or Croc, but different." Harley says as she motions towards Diablo.

Flag continues. "So Waller sent me and a woman with incredibles abilities. Another meta-human known as Enchantress."

"Seems like these meta-humans are a whole lotta trouble. No offense guys." Deadshot says as he studies the notes on Enchantress.

"None taken." Chato says dismissively while Croc just growls.

Again, Flag continues. "Nobody could get near this thing ...but Enchantress could…Needless to say the whole thing was a bad idea. She bolted."

"So that's it, huh? We're some kind of suicide squad? Sent in to a place that will get us killed and if we fail you all just pin it on us."

Flag doesn't say anything, but his silence pretty much confirms what Deadshot is saying.

"So where does she come into this picture?" Deadshot says as he motions towards where River is perched on the bar near Digger.

XXX

River's POV

"While you may be the suicide squad, your directive wasn't to engage with the target. It was to evacuate HVT1 and carry the weapon used to neutralize non-human entity threats."

"Meaning, we get mean ol'boss lady out then take you to the center of all this."

"More or less." I say with a shrug.

There's a moment where the situation starts to sink in to everyone's thoughts. The gravity and seriousness of it all. Everything that's riding on this, and everything they stand to lose.

"Look…I know none of you asked for this. That you all wound up here because of me. That you were all running from something. But we've all come to the same place. And I'm asking more of you than I ever should. But I can't leave this place like this. I can't let her, Enchantress, ruin…"

I stop myself short of the full truth. It might be just too much for them to hear right now.

"Everything that we love… or our hope." I say before they can question why I paused. My words sink in and I feel a wash of emotions float into their heads as they reflect on what it is that they do love.

"So no more running." I say as I move to the backpack I discarded earlier and fish out a stack of letters. I turn and stride over to where Deadshot sits and shove the stack towards him.

"Your daughter writes you everyday. Every single day." I say with sorrow.

There is a flash of fury in his face as he looks at the letters in his hands. But it's gone just as soon. "You had these the whole time? You had letters from my daughter the whole time?"

"She loves you. More than anything in this world. It doesn't matter what you are, to her you will always be her father."

The flood of emotion that comes off Deadshot is almost overwhelming. It's everything all at once, backed with a new found resolve to keep pushing forward.

"Im gonna get you there. And you're gonna end this. Im gonna carry your ass if I have to. 'Cause this shit is gonna be like a chapter in the Bible. Everybody's gonna know what we did. And my daughter is gonna know that her daddy is not a piece of shit.

"I'll come." Harley pipes up as she raises her hand in the air.

Chato and Diablo look at her questioningly.

"What? You got something better to do?" Harley questions.

"No, I'm in." Croc says with a laugh.

"I always did like a spot of tasty trouble." Digger says from behind me. I blush at his words and turn to smirk at him. He throws a wink in my direction.

"Aww, the team is getting along!" Harley says with slightly psychopathic glee.

I roll my eyes but do allow myself to smile momentarily.

"Alright, enough of the pep talk shit…. You got a plan cooked up in that genius brain of yours?" Flag says as he brings everyone back to the task at hand.

"The demo charge you left down in the subway. It's still viable." I say as I move to spread out a map of the city on the table in front of everyone. "The tunnel is likely flooded from the amount of damage done to the pipes underneath the station, but might be clear of major debris. If the SEALs can recover the charge to set it. We can distract and target the thing helping Enchantress and take it out.

"You think those things can swim?" One of the SEALs asks as he pears over the map.

"Possibly. You would need all of you down there to secure the tunnel."

"Hate to break it to you but, we're a man short." GQ says from his seat.

"Not if he goes with them." I say as I motion towards Croc.

The SEALs suspiciously eye Croc. "We got this Tam."

"She's not asking bro." Croc says with a small snarl. "I live underground. Y'all are just tourists."

"You're going to need help if the Reavers are down there. You won't have your weapons to use."

"See? She got this." Croc says as he motions to fist bump him. I oblige the gesture.

"So what about the rest of us? Distract and draw this thing to where we want it?" Flag asks. "What about Enchantress?"

I hide the wince her name gives me. "She'll have her hands full with me."

"You sure you can take her?" Deadshot asks.

No. I'm not sure I can take her. But I don't want to tell them that. "Only one way to find out."

XXX

AN: Okay. We're getting close to the big showdown. Anyone else excited? Till next time ;)