A/N: This is the second to last chapter. One left and then it's done. This chapter jumps a bit, and there will be some confusion, but the last chapter will explain everything.
The girl was still, silent. Her skin pale, heartbeat weak- a mere flutter, soft as the pounding of a bird's wings yet amplified by the overall quiet of the large room. A needle was nestled under the skin of her hand, running clear liquid from a tube through the metal burrowed under her flesh. The features of her face were neutral. Sickly shadows cast under her eyes from the florescent spotlight positioned above her, contrasting sharply with the promising dusting of rosy pink over her cheekbones.
Surrounding this dormant girl was darkness, though not complete. It was night time, but slivers of pale moonlight shifted through the metal grates of high, dusty windows. Rafters crossed above, and splintered strips of warped wood overlapped to create walls. Heavy industrial slabs of concrete, cracked and crumbled made the floors, or what could be seen of them, for the surface was littered with wrinkled pages of newsprint, hundreds of pages strewn about, all displaying the same bolded lettering.
The girl was dead to the world, but the world was not dead to her. She had company.
A man had made the building his home, had moved a desk in to perch upon the metal catwalk above, forever vigilant, and promptly cluttered the surface with an abundance of items.
He sat slumped in the dark. His workspace lit by a lamp with a 40 watt, which glinted from the glass of his frameless glasses when he bent his head to focus. His hands shook as he dipped the needle of a syringe into a vial pulled from a heavy metal case, and as he pulled back the plunger, blue tinged liquid slushed greedily into the needle. The wind howled outside. Water sloshed below his feet, below the girl, below the building.
Deed completed, the man pushed up from his desk with a weary and well-practiced sigh, gingerly making his way down the catwalk's steps in muttered metallic thuds.
When he approached the sleeping-comatose girl, he hesitated, sadness flickering restlessly about his face, and with a morose set of his mouth took hold of the I.V. drip and stuck the needle in, administering the blue liquid in defeat.
He had noticed that this vial had been the last. He knew it would be his last, because his best friend was imprisoned and he had no further connections. It was enough, would have to be enough. There was just one piece missing.
He ran a hand over the scruff speckled across his cheeks and chin before sliding his fingers under his glasses to rub at his tired eyes. At forty six the man looked ragged, disheartened, and utterly miserable, each lasting characteristic shaving years from his appearance.
"I don't know what to do."
The sentiment was lost to the girl, who slept on, unaware.
"What would your mother have wanted?"
The girl slept on. She had his hair, a shiny caramel as soft as her eyes.
"Is this even right? I…" Tears burned the man's eyes. "Am I holding you back from something better Marna? Please…just…I'm out of options. If this doesn't work…"
The soles of his boots slide lamely on the news pages below, tearing and creasing the words that had haunted him for five years, heel wrinkling the picture of a face that hadn't smiled in just as long.
Cargo boats sloshed in the water just outside, blaring horns that filled the air.
Warehouse forty four was a strange place to call home, but options were slim and the man was desperate. He was not a criminal, but had resulted to criminal behavior, theft specifically.
He was many things, however. He was a mess, but his friend had tried to fix that. He'd been a scientist, and a damn good one at that, but the circumstances had fixed that. He was a husband, but death had fixed that. He was a father, but death had tried to fix that.
And now, encased in glass like her favorite childhood princess, his daughter lay, looking like an experiment gone awry… but alive.
Alive because his best friend had decided to sacrifice his freedom to steal experimental medication from Camdus, where they had worked together five years ago.
It was risky, but it had worked. Up until the night before.
xXxX
"Babs."
Barbara was frozen, her blood frigid. She'd heard him, heard his voice right in her ear, and she didn't like what she had heard.
"Babs."
His representation had returned, albeit briefly. The little robin had flown straight at her, path certain, and came to a rest on her narrow shoulder. The second its brittle feet made contact, she could hear his voice, a quiet echo so full of sorrow it had made her flinch.
He'd apologized.
He'd always apologized, and she'd always hated it, but never more than in this moment, hearing the utter despair laced into every syllable.
"Barbara." A hand wrapped itself around her wrist, the rough texture of bandage scratching at her skin. She turned, face grim, and felt more tired in that moment than she would ever in her life.
"I know you feel helpless. I get it. I felt like that too." Hazel eyes sparkled briefly. "but I learned that my control over what happens down there is limited. It's…funny, almost. Unlimited capability here, virtually none in the real world."
The redhead nodded, a humorless scoff escaping her lips as she looked around. Such a beautiful place reached under horrifying circumstances.
And then everything fell into place, so suddenly that Barbara reeled back at the realization.
The bandages, the costume, the ambiguous answers, all clicked into place. The familiarity that had been tugging at her mind since she'd woken cleared, and the memories resurface felt like a cold dunk in an ice bath.
"You're Marna Meadows."
XxXx
"To the docks, warehouse forty four."
Commissioner Gordon pressed his foot harder on the gas, flying past dilapidated building under the cover of thick city smog. Robin, buckled into the passenger seat, was jittery and restless, silencing his flashing belt every minute as it lite the cruiser's interior up red.
"You've gotta go faster." The hero muttered, flicking open the computer built into his glove and cursing silently.
Commish raised an eyebrow. "I'm pressing eighty here, kid."
Cutting the GPS hologram short, the teen flicked the computer screen shut and huffed.
'Come on, Commish. You can break the law just this once."
Jim tensed, feeling the anxiety of the situation setting in heavily. Prying his eyes from the road briefly, he peered over at Robin, noting his tense features, and flicked his hand to the dash to cut unit transmission.
"I am the law." None the less, his foot pressed harder, and soon, the tires shifted with the change of traction as the asphalt melted to plywood.
xXxX
Dirty blonde hair hung in his eyes, which refused to meet Roy's or Clane's.
'Déjà vu' The sergeant thought, standing in that cramped interrogation room as he had hours before, one table's length and a shred of sanity away from strangling the smug thug. Red Arrow was straddling one of the heavy metal chairs, head propped in his palm lazily.
"Alright blondie, we've got enough sense to knock you some, if you don't start talking now." Clane atoned, voice clearly reserved. "What gives you the right to scare a kid who just witnessed his partner put in the hospital?"
That caused the man's dark navy eyes to flicker up, first to Clane's face, and then to Roy's bicep before a petulant astonishment settled into his features.
"Scare him? I did him a favor." He breathed.
"That so?" Red Arrow growled, back straightening as his muscles tensed. "and how's that?"
The man's jaw clenched as if he were mulling over his words, chewing them thoroughly before spitting them out. Clane pulled a chair out and sat, attention peaked when he saw resolve settle into those dark orbs.
The man leaned forward, trademark smirk replaced with a new persona, something more genuine.
"Alright. The first thing you gotta know is my previous employment. I was workin' as a janitor for Camdus, cleanin' up all their weird experiments while they was payin me under the table to keep my mouth shut." The man paused, pulling in a breath to steel himself before leaning closer, as if telling a secret. " I saw some crazy shit there, lemme tell ya, but the craziest is what got me here."
Clane and Roy exchanged glances.
…
"Back then, I met this scientist, one of their best. He was always stayin' late and scribblin' in these notebooks. A real cluttered guy, I tell ya, but one of the best men I ever met. You see, those Camdus creeps are all jerks- high and mighty like, you know? And they saw me as this lowly cleanin' guy, but Meadows wasn't like that. He showed me his experiments, and talked for hours 'bout all of that nonsense, and before long, we were real close. When his wife got sick, she didn't make it, and after that he got real devoted like with his work, to the point of obsession I tell ya.
Blondie paused, fingers flitting over the metal table, drawing invisible patterns.
"They was working on some "alternate dimension" bullshit to send people to before they could heal the wounded. It was like, I dunno, fake purgatory, so they could fix ya up while you slept and then wake you up and send you on your way when you were healed. Thing was, the testing wasn't going so well, so they had to keep it under wraps for a while. They couldn't figure out how to bring people back. They'd get stuck there, all comatose like, and the scientists couldn't figure out how to bring 'em out of it. It was like their brains couldn't separate the real from the fake, so it assumed everything was real and trapped them there. Well, Meadows was hell bent on figuring it all out, I think 'cus he was feeling real guilty that he hadn't when his wife needed it, and it got worse when Marna got hurt.
"Marna…" Clane paused, searching his brain for the familiar name until it clicked. "Marna Meadows, the party kid?"
"That's the one. Shame, she was a sweet girl. Always bringin' us lunch and what not. Meadows adored her, being she was his only kid, so when she got hurt, he went to the research team and begged 'em to start trials on her. They agreed, of course, 'cus they needed a test dummy, so they put her under, but she just wouldn't wake up. All healed and everything, just…gone, you know? Meadows lost it big time, and when they wanted to pull the test, he refused, and they fired him."
The man fingers kept swirling, eyes trained on the table, steeling himself for the confession.
" It was awful, but he wouldn't let her go. So, I helped him sneak her out one night, hooked up and all, and we packed her up in my car and bunkered down in one of those old warehouses on the pier. Me an' a couple a' lackies were sneakin' into the facility every month to grab a case of that serum so Meadows could keep Marna alive until he figured out how to bring her out. I was using my custodial access card to get in and out, and seeing as they never paid the cleaning staff any mind, they never caught on. Those vials were the code, man. The code to everything, and we needed to keep gettin' it to him so he could work it all out, and we weren't hurtin' anyone until, well. It got outta hand."
A pause. The room was silent.
"He finally figured it out, and that was the last batch he needed before he could bring her back, and after all these years I just went a little crazy, seeing it so close to the finish line and all. I didn't want him to lose everything so close to the finish line. No was was suppose ta get hurt." At this sentiment, the man's dark eyes flitted up, revealing emotion so raw and real that Clane tensed.
"Me an' the crew had skirted around all of ya for so long, we got cocky. We left a trial, and the Bats picked up on it. Course they would. I aint never had a reason to use the gun before. It was just for show, to keep the other criminals off of us when we was workin. I never wanted to use it, but when I thought everything was gonna be ruined after two years of this…I lost it."
The room was quiet as Clane and Roy considered the story, clicking pieces into place as clarity came. Roy sat forward, uncrossing his arms.
"Something's missing here." The redhead concluded. "you had all of ten seconds to talk to Robin before we pulled you off. What, exactly, did you say to him?"
Blondie sat forward as well, meeting the hero's masked eyes with determination.
"I told the kid the address to the warehouse. I told him to go there and that girl would be fine."
Roy started. "What? Why? How?"
But Clane was already up, chair clattering to the floor as he shot up. Blondie looked grim.
'He finally figured it out.'
"It's not a true solution, but it's good enough for Meadows. You can't bring somebody back without putting someone in to fill their place."
Clane went running, ripping the door open and shouting for dispatch. Roy was shaking, rage and fear mingling to boil under his skin. He grabbed the man, seemingly deflated now that the secret was out, and shook him hard, itching to lash out. The blonde was unaffected, dark eyes showing remorse, and something else. Something…triumphant.
"He's part of the equation now. You'll be too late."
XxXx
Here we are. The home stretch. One chapter left. I actually can't believe it, but it's been a long time coming, and I'm more excited than anything to bring this story to a close. The next chapter will be called "Chain Reactions" and it will be posted next Tuesday (April 19th). And then that's it. I'll wait to get sentimental until then. Thank you, as always.
TheImaginativeFox- Hi, again! Alternative POVS are always a bit confusing, so I'll definitely work on making them as clear as possible. Yes, Barbara could tell he was there. Whenever he's in her general vicinity, she can tell because of how the place she's in works. Thank you, as always!
IrisLillyRose- Haha, sometimes cursing is necessary, but I do have reservations. You'll never see anything too vulgar in this story. Canary was frustrated, and she's typically quite a sassy individual, so I tried to mix the two and create "sassy frustration." I thought it fit her, but who knows. Thank you! It's taken some time, but the story will officially be over next week. Crazy, huh?
Guest- Who said that was the ending? Thanks ;)
Until Tuesday
-Arrow.