With a rather blatant disregard of the traffic laws, Nomura was back in the Janus Order base in record time.
Barbara was pacing around the room and glanced up when she entered. Nomura noted that her eyes were bloodshot and the skin around them red and puffy.
She held eye contact with Nomura for a long moment and the changeling debated shifting back to human form, but ultimately decided not to. It was better that she got used to trolls. No point in using kid gloves with her.
Finally she looked away and Nomura turned her gaze to the boy laying on the table.
He looked worse than when she left. The beeping of the heart monitor was sluggish and most of his skin was covered with livid red rashes.
"Did you find what Wal… what Strickler asked you to find?" Barbara asked.
Nomura glanced at the human and nodded. It was a pity there hadn't been time or she might have had some fun with the old stiff's office.
"That's good," Barbara said with a sigh.
She moved forward to stand beside the changeling (though still with several feet between them). The two of them watched Jim.
"Do you know how he got those scars?"
Nomura blinked at the question before she saw what Barbara was pointing to. A series of branching scars, like frost on a window pane, ran across the boy's body starting from his left arm. Lichtenberg figures, she realized with a start.
When had that happened? He'd definitely shocked himself a few times trying to escape from his cell in the Darklands, but she didn't think they had been hard enough to give him this sort of scarring.
"I don't know," She said.
"Oh… okay."
They were both quiet.
Eventually Barbara went back to fussing with the machines hooked up to Jim, while Nomura settled in a corner and started to polish one of her khopeshes. She hated all this waiting, she was a fighter not a physician.
Her lip curled up from her teeth just slightly and her clawed fingers clenched around the hilt. Never before had she wanted a real physical foe to throw her energy at so much.
What felt like an eternity later, though it was really only about ten minutes, the door snapped open and Strickler entered.
"How is he doing?" He asked.
"He's weakening," said Barbara. "Did you find everything you needed?"
"Almost. I still need changeling blood. We will need to extract it in troll form."
Finally! Something she could do.
"Well that shouldn't be too hard," Said Nomura standing up and tightening her grip on the khopesh.
She'd willingly sacrifice a finger (though preferably one of Stricklander's) if it would save Little Gynt.
Strickler held up a hand to stop her.
"We need to do this in such a way that the blood is clean," He said pointedly.
"Right." She put the khopesh back in its sheaf.
"Do changelings have blood types like humans?" Barbara asked, looking rather wary.
Strickler opened his mouth and then paused.
"In troll form? I'm not sure," He admitted. "Let me…"
"We do but they're different than humans'."
Barbara and Strickler turned to look at Nomura. She shrugged. Why was that it so surprising that she would know that?
"I was curious and asked my teacher when I was studying poisons."
Barbara stared at her for a moment before closing her eyes and taking a breath.
"Do you know how doing a transfusion from a changeling to a human would go?" She asked when she reopened them.
Nomura shook her head. Normally there was absolutely no reason anyone would do that.
They sat for a moment thinking. The only sound was the beeping of Jim's heart monitor and his faint raspy breathing.
"Shall I go through with the spell?" Strickler asked finally.
Barbara hesitated a moment chewing on her lip as she glanced at her son's still form before nodding.
Strickler turned to Nomura.
"Since I will be doing the spell, I won't be able to spare any blood. Not without risking running short of energy. Could you… ?"
"Just hurry up," Nomura said holding out an arm.
After a bit of back and forth on how to extract blood from something with stone skin and the eventual use of a surgical drill, Nomura was about a half pint of blood lighter and had a new soon-to-be-scar on her arm.
That didn't bother her. She'd gotten scars over lots of petty things… what was one more one acquired willingly?
"What about the stone?" She asked.
"I will supply that," Strickler said. "Having a component of my own involved will make it easier to channel the magic."
Nomura nodded. Magic wasn't her forte, but that lined up with the little she knew.
"Okay," He said, opening his briefcase. "I will need quiet. Magic of this sort is finicky and I can't afford to mess up."
Nomura withdrew, moving to stand by Barbara and watch as Strickler worked. His eyes were narrow and his brows low as he pulled out a square sheet of parchment and began to inscribe an intricate pattern circles and runes onto it. When he was done with that, he set the vial of blood in the center. He carefully arranged some hairs he had taken from Jim around it. Next he took his knife out of the disinfectant where it had been sitting for the last few minutes.
With a flash he transformed into his troll form. Beside Nomura, Barbara jumped and her eyes widened. Her lips moved soundlessly as if she had come to some realization.
Sticklander wiped down the surface of his stoney skin with disinfectant and then water. Once he was done he scraped a very small amount of stone powder off into the blood. With another flash he was human again.
"I'll need some of Jim's blood," He told Barbara quietly.
He held out a new syringe.
Barbara hesitated a moment and then took it.
Despite the tightness around her eyes, her hands didn't shake as she took one of Jim's arms and inserted the needle. Nomura felt her respect for the doctor go up a notch. She might be scared and out of her element, but she knew her job well. Nomura had made the right decision bringing her into this.
When Barbara was done she gave the syringe to Strickler.
Some of Jim's blood went into the vial. The rest he meticulously used to fill three empty circles in the midst of the runes.
Strickler handed the syringe back to Barbara, without looking, and set his hands on either side of the paper.
He took a slow deep breath and then began chanting.
At first the strange words simply jarred her ears, then Nomura felt her hair stand on end as a charge of energy filled the air. The runes, beginning at the circles of blood, started to glow. Strickler's voice shook as he got farther into the chant. The green glow became steadily brighter and brighter until…
All the light rushed inward to the center of the circle into the vial. The contents turned black.
Strickler's knees buckled and he nearly fell but he caught himself on the counter.
"It's done," He said, rubbing his forehead.
He picked up the vial and swirled it around.
"Now we will need to inject this into him."
Barbara grimaced at this but didn't protest. She held out her hand for it.
She removed the stopper and filled a clean syringe with the potion. She held it up to the light and flicked the sides to make sure there was no air in it.
She turned back to Jim and stopped…
Nomura watched as she stood there. Her shoulders were shaking a little. Her hands clenched and unclenched. She glanced at the door and then back at Jim. Eventually she seemed to reach some conclusion to her internal debate and she moved forward.
Barbara carefully pressed the needle into the crook of her son's arm. Once it was empty, she withdrew it and bandaged the insertion point.
They waited.
Nothing happened.
"Come on, little Gynt," Nomura snarled under her breath.
An uncomfortable feeling fluttered in her core. If the little shit dared die on them she'd…
The heart monitor began to beep frantically. Barbara started to dart forward but stopped with a gasp. Black veins were appearing on Jim's skin.
On Nomura's left Strickler let out a startled cry as something glowing and blue shot out of his pocket.
It was the amulet. It settled on Jim's chest with a flash of blinding light.
A scream rent the air, dropping several octaves as it progressed. Nomura blinked rapidly trying to clear the spots out of her vision.
Not a moment too soon.
The first thing she saw was a clawed hand drawing near her face.
She rolled quickly to the side, bowling over Strickler in the process (His fault for not moving quick enough). She came up in a crouch and got her first look at Jim's new form.
Where the silver Daylight Armor wasn't covering him, he was a grey blue color, almost purple. She had a brief moment to note that he had wings like Strickler and digitigrade legs like her (but ending in claws rather than hooves) before he was lunging again.
His eyes were still glowing a sickly gold and red.
Nomura bared her teeth and her hands twitched toward her khopeshes. It was just their luck that the gravesand would still be in effect. She pulled her hands back, letting them fall to her sides. They couldn't risk injuring him further. She shouldn't have done it the first time. She just hadn't realized how bad this was.
Jim growled and dropped to all fours, new wings flaring out and tail (why did he have a tail?!) lashing threateningly.
Nomura hazarded a quick glance behind her and saw that Strickler and Barbara where huddled together… or rather Barbara was huddled, fear clear in her wide blue eyes, and Strickler appeared to be trying to calm her down.
She couldn't help but be a little disappointed, but she supposed that was a fairly natural reaction to an angry troll for an inexperienced human.
It looked like this was all on her for the moment.
Jim advanced and Nomura planted her hooves firmly, steeling herself for a fight she wasn't entirely sure how to win.
"Listen, Young At… Jim is still under the influence of the gravesand," Strickler was saying. Barbara could barely hear him over the ruckus of the fight and the pounding of her own heart. "I am going to help Nomura pin him down. You need to talk to him… connect with him emotionally… to make him snap out of it. Do you understand?"
She continued to stare in shock over his shoulder, where Nomura was trying to subdue Jim.
"Barbara!" He said sharply.
Her eyes snapped to his.
"Did you hear what I just said?"
"I… Yeah…"
Barbara watched as Walter changed into a green troll again in a flash of light and joined the other changeling in helping restrain her son.
She could barely believe it was really Jim.
The grey blue troll lunged against two larger changelings, eyes wild. He snapped sharp fangs at them and growled.
Barbara flinched.
How could this be her son?
The vicious feral creature before her was nothing like the sweet kind boy she knew.
Walter finally managed to capture his right arm and pin it against the wall, Nomura got his left.
"Come on little Gynt," She snarled at him. "I know you're in there."
He twisted his neck and tried to bite the hand holding him in response. Nomura slammed her other hand into his throat to keep him from moving but didn't press any harder than that.
"Quit it," Nomura said. "Where's your dumb speeches about hope and all that." She hesitated. "You wouldn't give up on me when I was trying to kill you, so I'm not leaving you like this. Quit fucking around and snap out of it."
Jim growled but the yellow light flickered in his eyes flickered.
"She's right," Walter said, seeming to take heart. "I've tried to toughen you up but none of it stuck. Not in the way I intended. You are one of the most caring people I know, Young Atlas, and that's your strength. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that. You don't need to do this all alone. We're here for you, let us shoulder some of the load."
Jim was struggling less, but it still wasn't quite enough.
Barbara needed to help them.
She was scared and shaking and way out of her element but…
But this was her son.
She loved him and he loved her. He'd always been there for her, even when it should have been the other way around.
She took a breath and shoved down the instinctual fear that was screaming at her to run and walked across the room.
"Jim," She said.
The two changelings shifted out of the way slightly but still kept him pinned.
"Jim," She said again. She reached out a hand. Beside her Walter flinched.
She pushed his sweaty black hair with shaking fingers. Jim growled slightly but didn't try to bite her. His chest was heaving and she could feel that he was shaking as well.
"Please Jim," She said, hand sliding down to cup his cheek. "I'm sorry I didn't listen to you before… When you wrote that letter… You were trying to tell me what was going on but I wanted you to do it my way… I want to know what's going on in your life to be there for you. So please…" Her voice cracked. "Please come back."
The yellow light finally faded in Jim's eyes. He started coughing. Nomura and Strickler let go and he brought up a fist and coughed harder. It was a raspy cough and followed with a rather unpleasant retching. He spat out a lump of black and purple mucus.
"Mom?" His voice was weak and rough, but when he looked up his eyes were blue and familiar.
"Jim." She hugged him, tears leaking out of her eyes.
He was alive. They had done it.
Author Notes:
I think I'm just going to wait to do my meta bit on how Jim's reaction to the gravesand and how the potion/spell worked. I'll do a bonus update with that after I'm done with the story.
This is the second time I've written something from Nomura's perspective. Which is funny because I really enjoy her character. Hopefully I did her justice.
I'm going to give myself another week for the next chapter, since I want to give this a satisfying conclusion and I'm considerably busier now that I'm working. The goal is to end this with the next chapter, but I might write some little oneshots in the AU if the mood strikes me.
As always let me know what you think and thank you for all the wonderful comments!
(Updated the chapter: I accidentally uploaded one of the earlier versions)