Gargoyles: the Resurrection

Nightingale, Part IV

Previously, on Gargoyles:

Her panic swelled again until it mirrored the sound of rock breaking, falling, being smashed, and she couldn't control it. Deep within her frozen sleep-state, she fought like an animal to be free, before the same happened to her.

----

The green gargoyle sat up, and her eyes flashed white around the edges. In the backsplash of light, Brooklyn caught sight of silver jewelry at left wrist, right ankle, throat and upper right arm, dark leathers and green skin. High cheekbones and claw-tipped wings.

He reeled backwards, hands coming up and denials spilling from his mouth. "No," he breathed. "You're dead..."

----

"I'm Father O'Brien. Robert," the human added, then took a cautious step forward. The hand he'd been holding up to show he was unarmed extended out towards her. "You look in pain. Perhaps I can help."

----

"If she's out there," Goliath said to Brooklyn in a reassuring tone, clapping one massive hand on his shoulder, "we'll find her. We'll find them all."

oOoOoOoOo

Church of St. Michael the Archangel

Manhattan, New York

8:05pm

Nightingale sat on a stool in the kitchen, watching Father Robert moving around in what was obviously his domain, portioning out the roast chicken dinner he'd prepared. She was very carefully keeping her tail wrapped around one of the legs, her wings tucked very tightly to her body, and her hands firmly clasped in her lap. She cringed inwardly as she thought again of the vase she'd knocked over and broken when Father Robert's cat had startled her, and her wings flared on instinct.

Father Robert only laughed and told her that it was a hideous piece he only kept because his brother's wife thought it might look nice in the entry, and it wouldn't be missed too badly. But from the look in his eye, the vase had meant a bit more to him than just a thing he was obligated to show in case family came over. Nightingale didn't ask, and Father Robert didn't elaborate as he swept the pieces into a dustpan and laid them aside.

She still felt badly about it though, and as such, was keeping her wings, tail and hands to herself.

"I hope you like chicken," Father Robert said, passing her a bowl of something he called "mashed potatoes". She stared down at the lumpy white substance doubtfully, feeling the heat of the bowl through her talons. She resisted the urge to poke it to see if it felt as gooey as it looked. "Would you put those on the table, my dear?" Father Robert continued, already turning around to spoon vegetables from the pot on the stove into another bowl.

She carefully turned and set the bowl on the table beside the platter of chicken, then just as carefully withdrew her hands and set them back in her lap. A flicker of furtive motion from beneath the tablecloth caught her attention, and she tilted her head to peer beneath it. The grizzled black and white cat she so violently met in the hall glared back out at her, ears back and tail lashing. "Does your church have mice?" she inquired, hesitantly reaching towards the cat, which hissed softly in response and swiped at her talons.

"Hm?" Father Robert glanced over his shoulder and smiled gently when he saw her pulling her hand back. "Oh. No, no mice in the walls. Even if there were, I doubt Obadiah there would be much help getting rid of them. His sight isn't the best anymore, even with corrective surgeries." He paused, and hobbled to the table without his cane, hands full of more dishes. "Just feed him a bit of chicken, and you'll be his friend forever. He's a sucker for poultry."

Nightingale speared a single slice of chicken and carefully shredded it, eying the cat doubtfully. Obadiah eyed her right back, totally nonplussed, tail still lashing away. She held out a small strip to the cat, ready to pull back when he pounced. Obadiah sniffed at the meat, daintily plucked it from her talons, and leapt from the chair into her lap, batting gently at her hand and mewling for more as if they'd been friends for years.

Father Robert chuckled as he finally finished what he was doing at the stove and limped back to the table with one final bowl of a thick, brown, delicious-smelling liquid. "See? What did I tell you? Why don't you have a seat here, my dear--" and he indicated a chair, which Nightingale obligingly moved to, "—and I'll fix you up a plate."

There was a bad moment or two right at the beginning when she fumbled with the eating implements beside the plate, until Father Robert patiently showed her how to use the "fork" and "knife". They ate in companionable silence for a few minutes, Nightingale delighting to discover that mashed potatoes, once covered with the brown liquid, tasted far better than its appearance would have indicated. Obadiah remained in Nightingale's lap, head between her chest and the table, ready to steal bits of food that slipped from her fork.

Father Robert was the first to break the silence, setting aside his utensils and taking a sip of tea. "It isn't often I have company for dinner," he said, and smiled across the table at her. "I feel rather blessed to share this meal with a friend. I'm glad you're here."

"Are we friends?" The moment she said it, she knew it sounded rude. Heat rose to her cheeks and she ducked her head in embarrassment. "I didn't mean that to sound like that."

Father Robert chuckled. "I understand, I think," he said. "Your kind has met with a great deal of mistrust in the media of late, and the Quarrymen certainly aren't helping you out either, with their campaigns of hate and prejudice."

Nightingale frowned in confusion, absently rubbing Obadiah's ears. Nothing he said was making any sense. "I... don't understand. Media? My kind?"

Father Robert blinked. "Surely you're not the only one in the city," he said in surprise. "The stories say as many as eight or nine gargoyles at a time have been sighted, mostly downtown at that Aerie Building."

"I... I don't know, Father." She rubbed her temple against the sudden throb of pain that lanced through her forehead. "I... Everything is so confused. I... I can't remember much. Just pieces, and none of them make any sense. Fire, machines, men in white coats. A castle overlooking the sea. A feast, this church. It all just runs together."

She stared at the tablecloth, tears of frustration and confusion pricking at her eyes, so intent on avoiding any looks of pity or disgust she might see in her newfound friend's eyes that she nearly jumped a mile when he gently laid his hand atop hers.

"The important thing is that you're safe here," Father Robert said, and the compassion in his voice nearly made those tears spill over. He chuckled when she looked up, startled, and met his eyes. "Were you expecting judgement?" he asked gently.

A little embarrassed, she bit her lip and nodded. "It isn't natural, memory loss," she said quietly. "I know that much. There must be something wrong with me, that I can't remember anything but bits that don't fit together."

"Oh, my dear," Father Robert said, and gently squeezed her hand. "There's nothing wrong with you at all."

"There is," she insisted. "It isn't normal to not know anything."

Father Robert closed his eyes for a brief moment, then opened them again, and there was a very faraway gleam to them. "A long time ago," he said, "I was in a war that did terrible things to good men. Nowadays, they call it post-traumatic stress disorder, but back then, there wasn't much help for anyone who suffered it. And those good men were more or less abandoned by the people they were trying to protect." He smiled, a little sadly. "Thankfully, we're in different times now, and people know a lot more about things that happen after traumatic experiences. If you've lost your memory, Nightingale, it's not because you're crazy, or because there's something wrong with you. It's because you've suffered something traumatic, and the memory loss is just your mind's way of coping while it heals itself."

She blinked, slowly puzzling out the point he was trying to make. "You think things will eventually make sense? My memories will start coming back?"

"I'm sure it will, but it might take some time." He patted her hand, then picked up the bowl of gravy and ladled more sauce over his potatoes. "I'll keep it in my prayers, how's that?"

Despite herself, she smiled, thinking of another holy man with a bad leg and a crutch. "Brother Mathias used to pray for my soul," she said. "He never gave up on me."

"And neither will I," Father Robert said. "Who is Brother Mathias?"

"He's one of those random bits of memory," she said, following Father Robert's example and returning to her own meal as she spoke. "He was a monk in the castle by the sea. I liked him very much, even though I get the feeling that he exasperated me sometimes. He had a bad leg that ached in the rain, and he couldn't walk without his crutch." She strained for any other scrap of memory, but the low throb in the front of her head warned her off. She rubbed at her temple again with a faint grimace. "That's all I really remember of him."

"That's something, isn't it?"

When she thought about it like that, she realized he was right, and despite herself she smiled faintly. "I suppose it is." She dropped her gaze to her half-eaten dinner, and resolutely forked more of the potatoes into her mouth. "This is rather good," she said after swallowing.

Father Robert smiled blissfully. "Thank you," he said. "Eat up, dear, for there's hot apple pie for dessert."

oOoOoOoOo

Ruins of Majix Technologies

Manhattan, New York

11:30pm

"Do you believe it?" Angela said, then grunted as she picked up a steel door that was heavier than it looked. She cast about for a safe place to toss it, found one, and heaved with precision that would have done her father proud. It landed on its side in the lab behind them, next to the mangled remains of some machine or another, before teetering and tipping flat with a loud bang.

Broadway rummaged through his investigator's kit, really little more than a backpack filled with odds and ends he thought would help him on cases, and triumphantly held aloft a flashlight. "Did I remember to put in fresh batteries?" he muttered to himself. He fiddled with the device for a moment, and then grinned as it obediently turned on. "Yes, I did!"

Angela turned over another door, this one in five pieces, and gingerly tested the footing below it. The ground shifted disturbingly, creakingly, and Angela wisely drew her foot back from that spot. "Broadway?"

Broadway glanced over at her then, as if he'd only now heard her ask the question. "Oh! Uh... I don't know, Angela. Seems pretty out there, you know?"

"This coming from a gargoyle that slept in stone for a thousand years," she said drily. "Who's speaking to another gargoyle that grew up on a magical island with fairies."

"Yeah, but that's magic. I get magic. Gargoyles coming back from the dead? It's like something out of those cheesy movies Brooklyn likes so much."

Angela sighed as Broadway ignored her waving for him to come help her. It wasn't that he wasn't interested in helping. It was just that a mystery like this excited him to the point where he was very easily distracted by any bit of evidence he thought he found. Still, she really wished he'd stop peering about and help. She braced herself and pushed, wincing as a jagged spike of metal scraped across her shoulder when the thing toppled free, leaving a clear space. "You know, I could really use some help with this."

Broadway shone the flashlight this way and that, with no discernable pattern Angela could find, though from the expression on his face, she assumed he had one. Brow ridges furrowed in concentration, Broadway moved through the space she'd just cleared and looked further down with the help of his flashlight. "I think someone went through here recently," he said. "After the fire, but before us. I don't think we're going to find much to go on."

Angela grasped the side of one particularly cumbersome bank of machinery awkwardly skewed in the confines of the corridor and gestured for him to get the other side. "How can you tell?" He didn't answer and, still frowning, set a hand on the metal. But he didn't dig in and lift when she did like she expected him to. She bit back a growl of frustration as the machine lifted three inches and dropped back down, narrowly missing her talons. "Broadway?"

"Nothing here fell right," he said, and tapped a talon against the top of the slagged metal. "If this had been thrown by the blast, it's heavy enough to have gone through the walls, even if they're reinforced." He glanced over his shoulder at her with a tiny grin. "Which they are. I checked. There aren't even any marks on the walls where it might have impacted."

She gave up on moving the barrier anytime soon and just leaned on it with her elbows. She had never felt so grimy and unclean in her life, and her shoulder hurt where the wood had scratched it. Longingly, she thought of the hot showers back at the castle, and wondered if they'd get back in time for her to have one before dawn came. "So?"

"So," he said. "That means someone put it here. Deliberately. And I'd bet my magnifying glass that all of this rubble was put here, to block off this corridor from anyone poking around down here."

Angela frowned and looked around at all the junk. For the life of her, she couldn't tell the difference between deliberately placed barricades and debris thrown by an explosion. It all looked randomly placed to her. Though, she supposed, that might have been the point. "Okay," she said slowly. "So someone here had something to hide. So what do we do now?"

Broadway grinned, his fangs startlingly white against the grime plastering his skin. "So we move this wreckage, and see what's further down the corridor," he declared, then dug his talons into the machine like she'd wanted him to five minutes ago. "C'mon! What are you waiting for?"

Angela closed her eyes and counted to ten in time with Broadway's audible efforts to move the obstruction. When she opened them again, it was in time to see a midnight-blue fist fly out of the shadows behind the machine bank and crack across Broadway's cheek with enough force to send him flying halfway down the corridor.

oOoOoOoOo

Castle Wyvern

Manhattan, New York

1:00am

Lexington hadn't wanted to open his mouth, especially since his callous dismissal of Brooklyn's story about meeting his dead girlfriend on a rooftop on the lower East Side. More than twenty-four hours later, and he was still cringing over that. Couldn't even grit a path with her indeed. Maybe he'd been spending too much time immersed in his video games lately, talking to barely pubescent human males who seemed to delight in trying to shock others with their metaphors and expletives. He'd find some way to make it up to Brooklyn, no matter what it took.

Since everyone had departed from the castle, Lexington had been hard at work, not just pulling up more information – scant though that was – from the depths of the Internet and the various news sites he managed to hack into, but also refining the images, trying to clear up the pixilation and extract more details. It was hard going, he hadn't been kidding when he told the Goliath and the others that gargoyles and shaky hand-cams didn't mix well. But Xanatos had access to some really top-end editing programs, stuff that hadn't even hit the market yet, and once Lexington had wheedled his way into access (though truth be told, it wasn't as hard as he thought it would be; maybe Xanatos really was going soft), everything went much quicker.

Finally, after hours of tweaking colors and removing random noise, he had the images as clear as a bell, and every single instinct he had was clamouring that he should have said something before the others had separated for their assignments.

No one else said anything about the new gargoyles, despite having grainy photos to go on. No one had commented on how familiar they all seemed, in their shapes and their movements, when motion images were available. But an unpleasant feeling had settled into Lexington's gut from the moment he'd first seen the still of Brooklyn's Nightingale, and it only grew worse as the rest came clear, gargoyles he recognized from memories of the original Wyvern clan still painful and fresh.

"Dammit," he swore, and hopped out of his swivel chair to retrieve the stack of printed stills from the printer. He sorted through them, cursed again, and took them over to the corkboard where he'd pinned other images and articles as he found them. One by one, he posted them up with pushpins, right next to all the notes he'd made after the fact about Nightingale's confusion, fear, panic and apparent memory issues. There was no way to know if any of the other resurrected gargoyles suffered the same problems, but had the clan known in advance, they might have been able to prepare for it, instead of possibly being caught off guard. And the clan had gone off without any of them, Lexington included, remembering – or possibly trusting – the communications headsets provided to them by Xanatos.

Glumly, he returned to the bank of computers and hunched over the keyboard to monitor the news networks. He should have said something, dammit. He should have said something.

oOoOoOoOo

Ruins of Majix Technologies

Angela ducked the massive fist coming towards her and desperately threw herself to the side as an equally massive tail slammed down, burying a club of bone the size of her head into the spot she'd just been standing. Insanely, she thought of all those dinosaur toys Alexander was so fond of as the gargoyle stepped into the sputtering beam of Broadway's fallen flashlight, revealing a form only slightly less hulking than Goliath's, with a wicked set of horns curling from his head and a double row of plates curving over his limbs and tail.

Big Blue didn't make a sound as he kept coming. Not a grunt of effort, not a single roar so instinctual to a fighting gargoyle. No trash talk, no taunts to unnerve her. His face was slack and emotionless. His white eyes glowed blankly, like the TV screen after Broadway finished watching his movies. The lights were on, but there was no one home.

The thought of Broadway snapped her back to the reality of the situation, and she threw a quick glance in her companion's direction. But he still lay where he'd landed, a crumpled aquamarine heap that was, thankfully, still breathing. A glancing blow sent her reeling with her ears ringing, firmly returning her attention to Big Blue.

"Stop! I am not your enemy!" she shouted frantically, then had to throw herself completely flat and cover her head as Big Blue whirled with a speed that belied his bulk and struck at her again with that tail of his, then rolled as a follow-up strike with a ham-sized fist smashed through the floor where her head had just been. She caught the trailing edge of her left wing on a jagged jut of steel from the debris still on the floor, tearing through the delicate membrane in a hot line of pain, quickly replaced by the equally hot surge of rage that followed in its wake.

She swung a punch, a textbook perfect uppercut she'd used many times on various criminals and lowlifes. Normally, whoever she hit would crumple like a paper bag, eyes rolling back in their skulls and knees giving out. When her fist hit Big Blue, however, there was no eye-rolling or boneless crumpling. His head snapped back, and he staggered backwards a single pace. Angela's hand felt like she'd grabbed hold of a supercharged Quarryman hammer. His return blow drove her a good fifteen feet down the hall, to land in a painful tangle of wings, tail and detritus beside Broadway.

Her rage deserted her as suddenly as it had come, and suddenly, she wanted nothing more than to run away, find a dark corner to crawl into where Big Blue wouldn't find her and wait for the dawn to claim her in stone sleep. Fear was not an emotion Angela was particularly comfortable with it. She was the daughter of Goliath of Wyvern, for the Dragon's sake! Child of Demona, arguably insane but unquestionably fearless. She was made of sterner stuff than this, and had proved as much over and over again in battle. She had nothing to fear from a mere fight.

But this was no mere fight, and she forced herself to take an objective look at it. The corridor was too narrow and cluttered for her to take advantage of her superior speed and slighter build. The ceiling was too low for her to climb out of Big Blue's reach, and the walls were thick and reinforced, so she had no great hope to tear through. She was injured, and Broadway was still out of commission, though it sounded like he was finally starting to come around.

Angela gritted her teeth. Though she hated like hell to do it, it was definitely time to run.

She sank her talons into the heavy steel door she'd tossed aside a lifetime ago and hurled it down the hall with a shriek of exertion. Big Blue had to see it coming, but he didn't duck or try to dodge at all. He just kept plodding towards her, with that creepy vacant expression still firmly plastered on his face.

She didn't wait to see the impact the door would have on Big Blue. The second it had left her grasp, she was by Broadway's side, hurriedly reaching down to help get him back on his feet. He peered at her cross-eyed, holding one side of his head. "Angela?" he mumbled. "Wha's goin' on?"

"No time!" she said, ducking under his arm to physically drag him down the hall and away from their eerily silent attacker if need be. "We need to go! Now!"

To his credit, he didn't argue or ask questions or even try to fish up the scattered bits of his investigator's kit. He merely hobbled down the hall, leaning heavily on Angela until his legs could support him properly.

Every few steps, Angela glanced anxiously over her shoulder, worried that the huge blue gargoyle was coming after them. But she saw no sign of him until they were well out of the corridor, back into the better-lit sections of the ruins, and then it was only his blazing eyes, watching them from the depths of the shadows before the light faded away and left only impenetrable shadows.

"Can you fly?" Angela asked Broadway, and the aquamarine gargoyle gave a brisk shake of his head and carefully pushed away from her to try standing on his own two feet. A sizeable lump had formed on his jaw, and the skin around it was already darkening into a spectacular bruise that had to hurt like hell.

"My ears are ringing, but I think so," he said, carefully stretching his wings to their full extension and inspecting them for damage. "How about you? Are you alright?"

Angela shook her head, and ever so cautiously lifted her left wing. The motion brought fresh, sharp twinges of pain, and she hissed in a breath before folding it around her body again. "No," she admitted. "Do you think you could manage both of us?"

"I think so," he said again, and looked back down the hall. "Man, what was that?"

"I have no idea," Angela replied truthfully. "But I don't think it's safe to explore down that hallway without more of us here."

"Agreed," Broadway replied, and shook his head briskly again. He held out his arms to Angela, and she moved into them. "It'll be dawn soon. Let's just get back to the castle and let the others know what happened. Goliath can decide what to do next."

oOoOoOoOo

Church of St. Michael the Archangel

Near Dawn

The rooftop from the night before had been a complete wash, despite Brooklyn and Hudson's best efforts to find any lead on where the green gargoyle might have gone. There were talon marks to bear witness to the fact that she'd been here, but there was nothing to indicate where she went. After awhile, all the rooftops started to blend together, and no matter how many he landed on, none of them gave him what he wanted.

"This is pointless!" he snarled, closing his talons around the edge of their current rooftop, a church ringed with carved statues. The stone crumbled under his grip with a dim crunch. "I know she was here!"

Hudson straightened from his crouch, turning over a stone shard in his hands. "A gargoyle slept here, fair recently," he said. "Could be yuir lass."

Brooklyn sighed. "Yeah, could be. Could be one of the clones, or Demona even. But chances are, whoever it was, they've already moved on again."

"The sun's coming up soon," Hudson said, with an eye to the east. "We should be getting back to the castle before we're caught beyond its walls." He clapped a hand reassuringly on Brooklyn's shoulder. "We can pick up the search again from here when the sun sets, lad."

"Yeah," Brooklyn muttered, knowing that every day that passed only made it more unlikely they'd find her before people like the Quarrymen did. "We'll try again tomorrow night."

Moments after they leapt into the winds and climbed far above the skyline, a door nearly hidden behind the statue of an angel opened, and two figures stepped out, one with wings, the other leaning on a cane.

oOoOoOoOo

To Be Concluded