Wind and the Snow
Part 8
Disclaimer: Young Justice belongs to DC and Time Warner. I represent neither of the aforementioned. I am simply a student who is borrowing the characters briefly for the purpose of entertainment. No profit is being made from this fic.
C&C greatly appreciated. Even if it's just to let me know you've read this part, I really wanna hear about it.
*************
Unaware of Robin's gasping recognition, Empress sprang to the attack, one thought only on her mind, protect the others! I must protect the others, no matter what it costs me! She was, she grimly realised, ready to put her all to that end. Simultaneously teleporting and swinging her ornately carved club to her waist, she prepared to draw the hidden blade within it. . .
She never got the chance.
With the same careless ease that Robin had displayed when snatching her out of the air, the figure batted Empress aside. She hit the wall hard, slumping to the floor as her staff rolled a few feet away. The black-clad fighter didn't even spare the limp body a glance as with a flowing move, it rounded on the rest of Young Justice. Trapped, the others could only stare as the androgenous figure stalked gracefully closer.
Behind it, Robin stirred from his position on the floor. But he did not launch an offensive. Instead, to the growing concern of his still-conscious team-mates, he seemed to be occupied with rummaging in a compartment in his belt, withdrawing a small tube of what looked like solvent.
"Uh . . . a little help here . . ." Superboy opined, struggling a little harder against the black goo that held him fast. Beside him, from her cage of energy, Secret sobbed gratingly.
"Secret? You okay?"
"It's wrong . . . it's just wrong! Death and the girl and the other! But only two souls! They're both **hurting**!! Robin won't . . . Robin can't –"
She was cut off as Robin staggered to his feet, hands covering his face, and screamed. Not in terror, but with a harsh-edged desperation that drilled to the very core of all who were listening.
"Kaze!. . . DIX-HUIT!!"
Amazingly, the figure paused, even turned. It's icy, blank face slowly cracking as it regarded the boy wonder standing shakily behind it. Robin dropped his hands, pulling off his mask. And something else. To the combined shock of Young Justice, Robin's hair came away in his palms.
"What the?"
"Rob?"
"Since when . . .?"
The mask and short-haired wig fell discarded to the floor beside him, and Robin loosed the pin holding the thick braid of hair firmly around his head, the heavy plait falling over his shoulder to drape his chest.
"It's me, Kaze. . . It's me." In front of him, the fighter clutched at it's head, and tumbled to it's knees. In the same soft voice, Robin continued, edging closer to the silently sobbing figure with every word. "I know you're Kaze, and I know that's Yuki's body. I thought at first it was just you, my friend, but the face is too rounded, so very faintly different. But the Doctor's lab was destroyed! I saw you do it yourself! How did R'as do this to you!? Where's Yuki's mind?!" A back up! The Doctor must have left a back up, but not of the finished Dix-huit, for this is most definitely Kaze-Dewitt. How on earth did Al Ghul manage to install it – him – into Yuki? Gently he reached the figure's side, hugging the shaking girl – for girl it was revealed to be, as Robin's arms pulled cloth taut over the fighter's body – in a kneeling embrace.
"Th-this is the chick we came to rescue?" Superboy and the others could only look on in sickened silence as the enormity of the situation came crashing in on them.
*************
Young Justice weren't the only ones stunned by the revelation. Sitting in a monitoring room surrounded by multiple televisions all playing out the scene from a variety of angles, a certain eerie immortal was struck speechless for the first time in almost two hundred years (periods just following emergence from the Lazarus pit didn't count).
**Robin** is the elusive surviving test subject!? The successful Unit Twenty? The non-killing Bat's squire is the ultimate assassin?! The irony did not elude him. For a change, Detective, it would appear you have something other than your person that I very dearly want, and not just for my daughter's sake.
Settling back in his chair, the Demon ordered the dispatch of a certain other unit, one designed not for assassination per se, but rather specifically the elimination of the annoying metahuman pests that occasionally fell into his path. I'll get rid of these other brats, and then, at my leisure, I'll reactivate you, Twenty. For my own personal use. His face hidden in shadow, only Ra's' Cheshire grin was visible.
Humourless, the smirk widened as the monitors showed the mop-up unit enter the fight chamber. What the Demon wanted, he got.
***********
Usually, at least. Certain people – namely the Detective – had a habit of thwarting Ra's Al Ghul's desires. It was a characteristic, he discovered, that the man's squire shared.
The robot had entered the room, it's hefty bulk dwarfed by the gargantuan proportions of the chamber. Despite this, it was a more than unnerving sight to the trapped heroes.
"M-Metallo?" Superboy could only gasp, waiting with sickening certainty for someone to confirm his guess. From his position on the floor in front of the others, Robin drew in a sharp breath, moving to place himself between the approaching mechanoid and the rest of the chamber's occupants.
"No," Softly spoken, the word nonetheless cut through the tension. Despite being most definitely a boy's voice it was, Wondergirl belatedly realised, coming from the girl in black. Robin turned back to her, listening intently though not, the blonde heroine noticed, withdrawing his attention entirely from the approaching metallic fiend.
Shivering, s/he continued, "it's an elimination mecha. Designed specifically for metas. Having them neatly lined up like festival goldfish will make its job a lot easier." Robin nodded slightly.
"Weaknesses?"
Suddenly, the figure smiled. It wasn't, Robin noted, a Yuki smile at all. The tilt of the head, the unbridled – and undisguised – joy which imbued every grin he'd ever seen on Yuki's face wasn't there. Nonetheless, it was a real smile. As full of pain as of warmth, of irony as of humour. Of desperation as of hope.
It was Kaze's smile.
Involuntarily, he felt his own lips twisting to match it. Then, his eyes joined his mouth, expressing the emotions he could never say out loud. Robin smiled. A real, honest-to-god, genuine smile.
As the Shishou had noted, and Kaze now realised, it was the perfected variant.
It was also for him, and him alone. A gift he'd nearly missed out on for all eternity.
A slight pause as Kaze accessed Yuki's memories of her own martial education and the part he had played within it, then "Tell me," he said, an abrupt playfulness in his tone, "Have you been training with the Master and the Lady?"
"Need you ask?" Robin's smile deepened.
"Ah. Then you will know the hundred and forty-seventh kata?"
"Indeed. I'll meet you on the other side."
"Acknowledged."
With matched fluidity, the two stood to attack, ignoring the bewildered looks of the rest of Young Justice; while they had not understood the short-hand conversation, Robin had followed it perfectly. The robot had two vulnerable sites. Both needed to be hit.
Simultaneously.
Something not even Impulse with his speed or Superboy with his tactile telekinesis would have a hope of doing alone, even if they weren't currently rooted to the spot. Something neither the boy, nor the boy-in-girl currently facing the monstrosity could do solo.
But they weren't solo. Nor were they ordinary.
Unit Nineteen and Unit Twenty moved forward to attack, but it was the wind and the bird that synchronised perfectly, turning the destructiveness of the martial arts they deployed into an intricately beautiful dance, one no less deadly for all it's grace. Leading and following so intermingled it was impossible to tell who held which role. The wind swirled through the attack, the bird dancing expertly with it, around it, moulding directed gusts to suit feathered purpose.
They hit the two sites, Robin low, Kaze high.
They hit them hard, they hit them fast.
They hit them simultaneously.
The robot exploded.
That was unexpected, that was when it all came apart.
Replaying the scene agonisingly in his mind afterwards, over and over, Robin would torment himself wondering what he could have done differently. It would only be a good deal later, after much soul-searching, that he'd come to realise the answer was 'nothing'.
Rather than the expected shut-down, the robot's detonation caught the room's occupants off-guard as heated shrapnel from the blast sprayed the area. One chunk, thudding into a nondescript section of the wall behind the trapped members of Young Justice, caused the black goo to disappear as abruptly as a thrown switch (a likely scenario, Superboy realised; after all, the goo had to be activated from a point somewhere). Another chunk interrupted the energy bars of the cage holding Secret, allowing a gap through which she could escape.
But before all this, a third shard hurtled towards the much-closer Robin.
He saw it coming, they all did. Robin, crouched in the aftermath of hitting the lower of the two target sites, flung himself to the side, knowing with sick certainty even as he did so that he'd never make it in time . . .
There was a sick, wet thud as a large chunk of shrapnel punched into flesh. A pattering rain of blood completed the gory orchestra, and Robin felt a heavy weight descend upon his chest.
It took him another few seconds to realise that it was weight only. The dull ache in his side was a souvenir of the earlier bruising he'd sustained from the shooting and the fall, but there was no new pain.
No other pain . . . Robin rolled over, shifting the weight off. Disbelievingly, he stared down at the source of the pressure.
Kaze's – or rather Yuki's – body.
S/he'd protected him. He . . . Kaze threw himself in front of me? Threw **themselves**, himself and his cousin? To protect me? Frantically, he checked for a pulse, grabbed a pressure bandage from his first aid pouch to try and stem the outpouring of blood from the central wound. Oh please, please, no! Not now I've just found you! Please!
As his normally green gloves became incarnadined with blood, the figure he was frantically working on opened its eyes.
"I . . . heard you," Kaze said, the first indication Robin had that he'd voiced his pleas aloud.
"Shh. Don't try to speak. I've got to get this bleeding stopped and then get you to medical care and –"
"Don't." It was, Robin realised, pure Kaze speaking, the essence of Dix-huit subsumed. "Don't, Ro-kun. Just listen." With a painful wheeze, Kaze drew in a deep breath.
"My abdominal aorta's tearing. I'll die in a few minutes."
"NO!"
"Shh. It's okay," gently, a now-frail seeming hand reached tremulously up to Robin's cheek. Unconsciously, he leaned into the caress, catching the hand in his own. "I did . . . what I . . . wanted." Kaze's eyes closed.
"What **we** wanted", eyes snapped open. This time the intelligence behind them was unmistakably Yuki. "I couldn't stand being . . . dix-huit. Even though . . . Kaze and I could be . . . together. It's . . . better like this. This way . . . we're still together . . . but we've . . . also helped . . ."
Again, Kaze took over. "She's right. We . . . saved you. . . that's all I . . ever wanted to do . . . mission accomplished."
"No!" Robin wailed, "No! You can't die! Don't leave me! You kept your promise to help me, but don't leave me now!"
"It's fine," this time Kaze and Yuki both spoke; still two people in the same body, but less distinct. "I kept my . . . promise, as you . . . kept yours."
"Did I?" Robin's simple anguish, the weeks of misery, poured into the two simple words. "Did I really? I no longer know who or what I am! Did I really keep my promise, to survive 'as myself'? How can I have, when I don't even know who that is anymore!?
"Silly," This time, though the choice of the first word was most definitely Yuki's, the comments that followed came straight from Kaze's heart. "You're still . . . a caring, kind person. One who . . . knows what's right, and how . . . to live your life with . . . honour and justice. One who will . . . always give. . . his best. All the strengths that were you before . . . I see in you now. Whether your . . . memories remain or not, you have survived, Ro-kun." Kaze's voice sharpened in intensity, the pain ignored as death took a steadily tighter grip, forcing him to hasten his words. "You have survived as yourself, just like you promised. I could do no less than keep my own vow."
He lay back then, eyes drifting nearly shut, blood still bubbling out. "Hold . . . me? Like . . before?" Robin thought it was Kaze who spoke, though he could sense Yuki's assent.
"Always, my friend. Always."
"I . . . I love . . ." This time, Robin could no longer tell who whispered the final words; the two intelligences, the two souls, were indistinguishable.
Robin simply held the tattered body of his friend close, the blood still flowing from the abdominal wound, smearing his arms and chest, soaking his cape until all the world was red, the metallic tang of blood filling his nostrils.
The hand fell from its place on his cheek.
The blood flow slowed, then stopped completely.
Robin howled with grief and rage.
His world narrowed to himself and the body in his arms, it's rapid cooling defeating all his attempts to warm it. Before, even in the face of the Doctor's tortures, he'd been able to heat his friend, and be warmed in return, their comradeship a steady fire that cast off the chill of pain. But that fire was fading to memory, even as the figure cradled in his arms cooled. Now Robin was faced with his failure, the sense of it increasing with every chilling second, and it seemed overwhelming. Kaze? Yuki? Please? Please wake up. You're getting too cold! Dimly he realised he was going into shock, but that paled in importance when compared with his loss.
Oblivious to the events behind him, Robin simply sat, cradling the corpse.
*******
As it was, the events behind him turned out to be extremely interesting. The moment life fled Yuki's body, taking both the souls within it, Secret startled. Her eyes widened, and then narrowed into a look of pure rage.
Without a word, she dissipated, wending her way through the cracks in the kill-chamber's ceiling.
Chains! They put chains on that boy's soul! On and around and through! That's how they brought him back, forced him into that girl's body! It wasn't a voluntary possession at all. With the certainty of a homing pigeon, Secret followed the air currents deeper and deeper into the base.
It didn't take her long to find that which she sought, and certainly her anger had not yet resolved by the time she arrived at her destination.
This rage formed the basis of a very large part of the events that followed her discovery of the second, smaller chamber. A laboratory rather than a kill room and currently devoid of people, it was nonetheless equipped with all manner of surgical equipment and torture devices, to which Secret paid scant attention. Her focus was not on these, but rather on the innocuous-looking computer unit that sat tucked securely on a desk in the corner.
Secret quivered with rage as she saw the hooks and chains extending from it in the dead realm she moved so easily through, it's nondescript appearance in the living world doing nothing to mute the monstrousness of it's true form to her sensitive eyes. Bindings from it, bindings of pure data, trapped a fragile, weakening soul in their grasp, a second spirit fluttering helplessly beside it, radiating concern. So this is how they trapped you, Casey or what ever your name is. This is how they bound you away and pulled you back from the abyss, from sweet oblivion and the paradise you deserved!
Her lips thinning, she reached out, gently disentangling the caught spirit, and gathering up its companion. She paused, anguished indecision as she contemplated her options. I'm sorry Robin. I'm so sorry. But I can't keep them here! No matter how much you love them, it'd be wrong! They've suffered enough, let them make their own choice about where to go now. If I make it for them, if I keep them here for you, I'm no better than that computer! With that thought, she sent them onwards, through the abyss to their journey's end, her reward the heart-felt gratitude they washed over her.
It wasn't enough. Robin's emotional agony was great, she knew, and Secret felt irrationally that she'd betrayed him. Harshly, she shoved it into a corner of her mind, she'd deal with it later. Right now she had other things to do; a team to return to, an escape to make, a friend to comfort if he'd let her . . . but first and foremost, a little mass destruction to unleash. She turned her attention back to the computer, and her guilt and misery turned again to anger as she shifted to a semi-solid state and walked through the machine.
For the second time that day, something exploded in Al Ghul's base. This time, though, it was more precious than a simple elimination mecha. This time it was the unique computer that held the Doctor's neural maps, the plans for the unfinished number eighteen, and the activation sequences for the successful twenty.
In her pique, Secret ensured that the lab went up with it.
Unfortunately, the result of this was that the base's foundations were no longer stable. As a spitting, angry Demon evacuated from one side of the base, the mist girl made her way back to her companions in the kill-chamber, the building rocking, tearing itself apart around her.
Not that Robin noticed.
He remained sitting on the floor, covered in rapidly congealing blood and holding the lifeless corpse that had recently housed two of his dear friends, oblivious to the destruction around him as first one, then the second, of the security camera fixtures came crashing down.
Fortunately, Wondergirl managed to catch the first before it hit the nearly-insensate Boy Wonder, while Superboy prevented the other from splintering into shards every bit as lethal as the ones from the robot.
Projectiles had already claimed one life this day. He was loath to let them take another.
In the interim, Impulse had done a circuit of the complex, assuring himself that it was indeed devoid of other people (after Shiva's trashing of his India base and with it the loss of certain useful personnel, the Demon had gotten evacuation drills right, at least), gently picked up the still-groggy Empress and helped her to the cycle, and snatched up Robin's discarded wig and mask at the same time. I don't know if he'll want these. I guess at the moment it doesn't matter. But then again, it might.
"C'mon guys! Let's go!" He shouted, hauling himself into the revving Supercycle. Wondergirl quickly followed suit, as did the newly returned Secret.
Sharply, the blonde looked at the mist girl beside her, noting her team mate's expression. "Everything okay?"
"No. Not at all. But better than the alternative." Even if Robin will hate me for it. Secret turned aside then, and Wondergirl took the hint. After all, everyone had their little . . . secrets. Following the other's gaze, she fixed on the remaining two members of Young Justice.
She was just in time to see Superboy bodily pick up the unresponsive Robin and half carry, half throw him towards the cycle. The Boy Wonder's face held an expression so lost, so desolate, that she had to turn aside, hearing rather than seeing Superboy shove him into his accustomed place astride the cycle, holding him there with his TK while taking his own seat.
Briefly, Wondergirl worried that they'd be stuck, wouldn't get out with Robin obviously in no state to pilot the cycle. Her concerns were groundless.
Whether by some subtle direction from the boy wonder, or (more likely) on it's own initiative, the cycle phased out as soon as all of Young Justice was aboard.
The trip back was almost an anticlimax.
Almost.
What happened when they arrived was anything but.
End Part Eight.
Continued in Part Nine.
NOTES
A big apology to Lockheed. Next part involves less (no?) Timmy-torture. Promise. No, really I do. Thanks again to those who've commented on previous parts, and yes, this is also a blatant request for more C&C on this part – I love getting feedback. Makes me write more.