Note: I would like to hear your opinions. I have been debating making this story a short finish and moving on with either a sequel set entirely within the DC Universe, a Young Justice story with Ellery as the main character, or a DC Universe story with disregard to the plot line of this crossover but still with Ellery as the primary hero. If you have any requests for story types, a mash up of any of the options I have listed ect. please let me know. Yes, I am asking for your prefrences on the future of these characters.
Of Heroes and Hellions
Chapter Seven: Adieu to You
He already knows that they will not make it. Innocence is a thing too easily tainted and it is all he can do to guard it, make it stronger, and teach it to protect itself. But does that not ruin it in the process?
He thinks it probably does.
It is a lurid game they play, making tallies with the blood on their hands. The skeletons in their closet are of brittle bones, honest atrocities but atrocities all the same.
Spider-man leans into the flames, the metallic lip of the void drawing nearer to his shoulders. The car burns, oily flames, and angry fire, death held upon a single spider's thread. They are dangling above a hell whose waves crash upon columns of solid brimstone, a bridge attaching this city to chaos. And all while this Spider-man is fighting to win innocence once more, a childish act of care.
The young boy enclosed entirely by this flaming vehicle, all black paint and cackling inferno, tugs recklessly upon his seatbelt. But that will not help him now. The little boy, face crumpled and shadowed by the contrast of the fire, cries out at the site of the man dressed all in red and blue, wide white eyes true to his name. "Hey, hey," the spider raises his hand, five fingers rather than a single smooth appendage, "hey…" his voice is that of a boy, a mere child thirteen years older than the one he is attempting to save. He is too young for this. They all are.
Spider-man reaches up with that same hand, grasping the back of his mask and pulling it away. "I'm just a normal guy." He is, with his brunette hair and brown eyes that look darker in the horrors of the night. His grin is uneasy, a single movement, the passing of the wind, could pull it away. It could pull them all away. "Look at my mask," it hangs lifeless in his hand, as many other things will in due time. And the dead thing drops from his loosened grip, falling, falling, falling into that of the other child's. The youngest boy holds it close to his face, the piping from the design rough against his sweaty cheek.
Peter's darkening brown eyes scan the haul of the car, taking in the scattered children's toys, plastic dinosaurs and action figures: his fathers, his friends, his sister. They make him stronger. The bag that had been overturned, the toys spilling out from its gaping mouth, has a stitching on the side of it, and a little boy's name. Jack. "Hey, Jack."
The kid looks up, eyes wide in a question that does not matter now. It has too obvious an answer. "Yes," Jack says quietly.
"Let's get out of here." And how Spider-man wishes he could. But he can't. Even after this he will be trapped here, another nightmare to keep him awake at night. "Stay very still." This is the same rule Peter employs each night when the darkness descends. Do not move and the wars will not be able to find you, their death unable to consume you.
Peter climbs, careful steps of an arachnid, and unhooks Jack's seatbelt. The boy shudders; a sudden movement that releases the chill of his fear stiffened muscles and expels extra heat into the car. Or perhaps that is the coursing flames, greedy as they are. Just one more life they seek, a second one for luck. The webbing anchoring the car to the bridge melts through, a single centimeter and only a few more to go. The heavy thing lurches, as do the boys' hearts.
"Jack! Climb. Climb now." The coarse words sound as though they should be read from a child's book, but this story is far too gruesome to fall asleep to. Jack protests wildly, hands slick with sweat, anxiety, and fears of things he cannot comprehend. "Put on the mask," Peter says, "it's going to make you strong." His lie is just another for this child's ears, just another to pass his lips. It means nothing at all.
He tells himself this sometimes, though. It's going to make you strong.
The car shakes, a movement in the opposite direction of the boy. "Do me a little favor," just a little favor, "climb a little faster." Don't make me watch you die.
The wind, as light as it is, carries upon it heavy things. Things like grief, and the car that the little boy is moving so desperately to escape from. The burdensome vehicle shatters the silent ebony water below, a glass coffin full of salty tears, and shards of water like black diamonds splashing upwards, cutting the ankles of the two boys hanging from a single string of solidified spider's fluid. The cold seeping depths engulf the flames, smothered, and hissing a decisive warning, a single dismissal, a last goodbye. Spider-man takes no time to respond but instead spins a second web, swinging himself and Jack back upon the sturdy asphalt of the bridge and loses himself in the mayhem once more.
Jack stands there, small stature lost in the tumult of the crowd, waving his final adieu.
When Ellery was a small child she always knew she could fly. She would tie a sheet around her neck—blankets were always too small, and comforters too heavy—Alfred always contrite over the misuse of clean laundry, and leap. That is how she broke her arm the first time: rooftop gravel digging into the calloused skin of her toes, next, trimmed lawn grass staining the threads of her clothes. Her arm had twisted; an odd angle opposite of the direction her anatomy originally allowed, as if it were reforming itself into the wing of a bird. The second time she was shoved, pushed forward and outward against her own actions, and by then she knew that she could not fly. When winter descends upon dreary cities, gargoyles and skyscrapers clothed in snow too white, too pure, for their own corrupt entities, she can still feel the ache in her bones. Things so chilling roll in waves, moving together.
The hook of Ellery's grappling gun connects with the second column of the bridge, body moving by way of cords, unbreakable, and above the chaos of the dark asphalt; she found a different way to soar. The road lines reflect the light of the fire. Shadows move with the same temperament as her, ennui, a hidden darkness, and a careless terror to descend upon the populous of New York. But unlike Greyhawk these shadows are mere puppets, their controller a tress of red and green, the terror of scarlet blood upon spring grass. This cloying liquid oppresses the growth of the seed, the ongoing continuation of life, its sticky hue seeping downward and burying dreams and corpses.
There seem to be so many heroes, too many, for a world that is meant to burn. It is a demented life. They will never be able to save everyone, not even their selves. Someone is always left behind, and each time a piece of themselves as well, nothing more than a swath of spandex and Kevlar. One may suppose this is what makes them so seemingly invincible; they are a suit and nothing more, a spirit that plagues nightmares as well as chases them away. But they can still burn, will burn, with the rest of them.
Soul flies, all green and white and pure above the horror. The dead speak louder than the living do, a new voice screaming high by each passing minute. Greyhawk scales the column, a spike of obsidian reaching up from the depths of the lake of blood, red and thick, sweetness that rests upon the tongue. Her feet touch position, unsteady ground that makes her body tense, muscles contracting and rippling in the single motion of a shadow, in front of the righteous girl. Soul speaks first, as she most often does without prompting, "The attacks are centered in the darkness. We must not let the lights go out."
Greyhawk grins, roguishly, a rebel with an unknown cause, "Is that not always our job?" Such a career is tiring for a child whom works solely within the dark obscurity between life and death. She moves seamlessly between the civilians, a slick body and nothing more than a mask. She has no face behind this hidden identity.
A streetlamp bursts from above, coving in an unnatural inferno. The glass shatters, solidified rain upon the street, tears of a civil angel. Each light ruptures in line, hot fires that stink of burnt sugar like magic. Greyhawk moves across the silver, the reflection of a heavy moon with no stars to keep it company. The fires smolder, percolating into the metal with their blistering heat, their light leeching, and then falling away. They leave, just as all things do in time. Miss Direction stands here, somewhere, an epicenter of calamity. Follow where those run from.
Gunfire splits the night, a familiar sound among familiar chaos, and the seeping adrenaline within her bloodstream is welcome. A man stands, tall and burly with thick black bristle for a beard, holding a handgun. The shadows close in on him, slick beasts with talons and powers of intangibility. His finger closes around the trigger a second time, entire body jerking in the recoil. A single shadow separates, black mist parting like a curtain before falling closed once more. And then he is lost in the pitch of darkness and fear.
Greyhawk grips a metal piece in her hand, round and cool despite the hot power it holds within it. Her finger glides across a button, fingers pulsing and arm dipping in a toss. The orb clicks midair, opening above the man whom is lost to the horrors of the world and dragged below them, and bursting in a single supernova of light. The ghosts of the dead dissipate, mere memories of the outlines they had once been. Greyhawk moves forward towards the pile of cloth that is nothing more than a weeping man. "Sir," she bends down, knees curving but not resting upon the concrete, "do you need medical attention?" Her eyes scan the man once and then their surroundings. Their alcove is built of cars, broken windows and broken glass, metal with not light to gleam upon it. The darkness has risen.
The man screams, too hoarse to be loud, drowning in the background noise of the night. Saliva strains across his chin, not separating from his lips when his jaw gapes open wider. His eyes are bloodshot, pupils blown wide in a way that speaks of incomparability. She wonders if this is what Tim had seen that night, if she had looked that weak. Her body jolts at the very thought of it. She wonders if that's what he sees now, still, when he looks upon her.
A second click resonates through the shivering body of the night, sharper than the cries of the man. "Get away," he says. The barrel of the gun feels cool against Greyhawk's temple, inviting. "You're one of them."
The imagry of a girl in life steps away; her skin is not metal armor, the body within her suit more than an idea. She is more than a nightmare. "I did not disappear in the light," Ellery reasons. She is a child again, a broken thing that shatters peices so that she may belong with them and they to her. A breeze crosses the night, separating the pair further, and pulling at her hair, a golden color she does not deserve. She feels as though she will be blown away.
"I'm not one of them." But not even she seems to believe it.
"Get away from me!" He stands on wobbly legs as desperation drags him upwards, claws pulling at his weakness and spilling it carelessly upon the ground. His insanity swirls, aiding the wind as it drags them both towards the abyss.
Ellery stands straight, her shoulders pushed back, muscles straining where they are strung too tight upon her body. She grins, a derisive, arrogant, smile as she holds up her knuckles and smears the blood that runs cold from a cut upon her cheek, a slice from a piece of glass, broken moon shattered across this bridge to nowhere; it had burned like fire when the ice fell across her shoulders but now, as everything else is, it is numb. She is protected behind panes of broken glass. The shadows flicker, from the corner of her shoulder, almost out of sight, and consume her. "I could kill you," she says. The words seem a silent confession in a court of the mind, a place where one will always be found guilty.
"I could kill you. It would be a mercy" She inhales chaos and exhales despair. She has never been shown mercy.
The gun in the man's hand trembles and that is why she knows he will use it. There is desperation in his eyes, a reeling madness that will soon come to pass, after time perhaps, after the sun dawns and sheds light upon his actions, hues of scarlet and pink mixing upon the air.
"Then I—then I'll just have to kill you first." The gun jerks to left, a faulty movement of the hand, a grip of terror torn by prophecy.
They stand as paper dolls between the panic of the night, flimsy things that fold too easy. Others scream too loud for them, the dead cheering them on. "Wicked:" Ellery fights demons in the night, dreams that refuse to release her. "Unstable:" there's another boy there, dark hair and pale eyes, she knows him, knows him so well. Too well. She has to get away. "Tragic." She doesn't though, neither of them do. They both die there, together yet alone. These thrashing spirits whisper, desolation catching between sharp teeth. The wind drags her ashes away; she is mere dust in the wind. Corpses will conquer this Earth; soon, everyone will join them. But there is no victory in this, only the shared tears of hollow misery.
"But father—" She never seems to finish her words, an incomplete story. The universe roars louder than the misery upon her lips, louder, even, than the hammer of the gunshot. It burns brighter still than the both of them, more vivid than the blood blooming from this girl-with-two-name's wound.
Another tally is drawn.