Try to Remember
Chapter 15: Gone Midnight
Disclaimer: Do I even have to put a disclaimer? I see it all the time on other stories so I felt the need, but… never mind. The wonderful properties of South Park, Young Justice, and the Cthulhu Mythos are no things of mine!
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The Hall of Justice at midnight was a quiet place, made even more silent by the fact that there was only one person there to hear it. Everything from the persistent ticking of a wall clock, to the lethargic, unharmonious drumming of raindrops against ceiling windows, went towards creating the atmosphere of a place that never really sees any visitors at this time of night. It was as if all the sounds of an unheard hours were coming out to show off to their solitary occupant. An occupant who was sat back against a tabletop, tapping his foot impactiently, and waiting for the return of the man who had brought him there.
Mysterion was not exactly pissed off with Kent Nelson, for the man commanded a certain kind of respect given his age and power. Even mores the purple, grey and black clad vigilante did not mind that Mr. Nelson had managed to transport them across the country, from Massachusetts to Washington D.C. in all the time it takes to hop into a phone booth. A fact Mysterion was still getting used to, since teleportation, for him required something a little more strenuous. However, despite his venerable age, tremendous magical power, and access to convenient travel, Kent Nelson did not seem to be a man who placed very much stock in time, more specifically in relation to his own place in it. Because, Kenny McKormick reflected grouchily, the old man had been gone for forty-five minutes.
They had both arrived at the sparkling Hall of Justice, with it's white walls and brass statues set in dolorous moon-cast shadows, at twelve o'clock precisely. Where, after entering through a side-door and proceeding into what must be the main foyer, Kent had told him to 'wait here a moment' and 'try and dry some of the rain off'. After the old timer had disappeared further into the building, leaving Kenny in the large, dark room by himself, the young man had looked around for somewhere to dry his rain-soaked cloak. There were some radiators on a far wall, but after crossing over to see if they were on, Kenny discovered to his annoyance that they were just as cold as he was. As such he'd spent a despondently damp and sullenly sodden forty five minutes, walking around the room and inspecting it's decor. Yet despite it's copious framed photographs of League members, dazzling arrays of computer screens, and sets of comfortable chairs, Mysterion had found himself incredibly bored. When ten minutes had passed, he was checking behind the photo frames for hidden safes or listening devices. By twenty-five he was looking under chairs and tables for hidden trapdoors to secret labs. By thirty-five he'd explored every inch of this room. And by forty he'd told himself that he would wait just another five minutes, after which Kent Nelson could go fuck himself, and he would leave.
It was when the wall clock ticked over forty-five minutes past the hour, that Mysterion headed for the door, with one disdainful look back at the door Nelson had exited through. Kenny had tried that door of course, but it had apparently locked behind Nelson, either that or the old man didn't want him delving any deeper into the Justice Leagues base of operations. Just as he was about to leave the way he came however, Mysterion heard a door behind him open, and several footsteps enter the room.
"Took your fucking time." Mysterion groused, as he turned around to see three imposing figures standing at the other end of the room. Two of them he recognised, and one he would very much like to recognise more often; strictly speaking as Kenny McKormick that is. For two of them were Batman and Kent Nelson, while the other was recognisable as Justice League member, Black Canary.
Their dark colours; the black and white of Nelson's suit, the black and grey of Batman's costume, and the black and yellow of Canary's outfit and hair, stood out like a shadow over spilt ink. So dimly-lit was this room that the only things about them that stood out to any degree, were their faces, or what was visible of them in Batman's case. Each of them appraised him in the own way, Kent was still smiling, Batman was dour as ever, and black Canary was looking at him with a friendly if frankly curious eye.
Cutting across his profanity, Nelson struck in by saying. "Language. But yes, apologies for our tardiness, it's sometimes hard to get ahold of people this late at night."
"We've been informed on what transpired a the Tower, and Kent has told us what he saw, what he now believes. So we have some questions for you." Batman was straight to the point as always, and Kenny was beginning to get used to it. Instead of rolling his eyes and relenting, he simply nodded his head by way of an answer.
Then Black Canary stepped forward, crossing some of the distance between the two sides. "Hello Mysterion, I'm Black Canary. I have a few questions for you, if you don't mind?" Her tone was hardly the most friendly thing in the world, but Kenny was reminded of various authority figures he'd met during his life; the stern but fair sort.
All that feasibly remained to do was for him to accept and say. "Shoot."
"First of all…" She passed a quick glance at Batman, so quick it was almost invisible, but as brief as it was it showed her hesitation. The need to check if they were really doing this. "We want you to tell us who you are… We can't fully trust you otherwise."
Kenny didn't reply for a moment; he hadn't expected them to be so blunt. But perhaps the time for flirting around the subject was over. It still didn't change his answer, so he hid his exasperation and said. "I don't want to do that."
"Afraid we'd recognise you?" Canary's tone was light, but it was clear they had considered the possibility that he could be someone important. He'd just have to disappoint them.
"You wouldn't." He replied, holding her inquisitive gaze, the silent glimmer of amusement behind his eyes.
"Do you have something to hide?" Again her tone was skeptical, but not outright suspicious.
"Obviously." He let nothing show in his tone or facial expression, keeping the three venerated hero's on their toes. Partly for his own amusement, partly for theirs, and partly because he was being basically interrogated in the Hall of Justice, he deserved to have some fun with it.
Black Canary was not impressed it seemed, and she shot another glance at Batman, this time one bearing the seal of a woman annoyed. Batman gave no reaction, perhaps playing the same game as Mysterion, but somehow Mysterion himself doubted that. "… Can you tell us why you don't want to reveal your identity." The blonde heroine turned her attention back onto him.
Her insistence twigged Kenny's own annoyance, and an edge crept into his voice. Nothing aggressive, but enough of a shift to let her know he did not enjoy this line of questioning. "The fewer people who know the safer it'll be." Again, something that should've been obvious.
"You can entrust your safety to us, you know that right?"
It went without saying, so Kenny spelled it out for her. "I'm always safe, it's not my safety I'm worried about."
"You have people you care about?"
The fact she phrased it as a question, really did piss him off now, and he felt provoked enough to completely break the mask of impassivity he had been toying with so far. "I have a person. That makes it all the more important."
"If you let us know who you are, we can help you protect this person." Was she talking to him like he was a child now? Suggesting he couldn't look after his own sister?
"I think one big brother is enough." The idea of he and Karen being under any kind of surveillance was something he found greatly distasteful.
"So it's your sister?"
Then it leapt out at him; what she had been doing. Black Canary wasn't just blindly asking him questions that he wasn't going to answer. She knew he wasn't going to answer them straight out, so instead she was manoeuvring him into a position where he would give her the answers without even realising it. That's what those uncertain looks at the Bat had been about; her own questions about whether this was the kind of questioning that built trust. Short answer was; it wasn't. But one thing couldn't be denied. "… You're good."
"I'm not trying to trick you." He saw the honesty in her face, and realised for the first time how much he could respect hero's who didn't hide their faces. "We need to know who you are if you're going to-"
"Going to what." A little thread of patience in him snapped. Canary wasn't being patronising, but that didn't matter, he was being backed into a corner, and as much as he could respect her guile, he couldn't let them treat him like one of their own, like one of their sidekicks. "I've not agreed to anything except to come here and chat, which I've done out of my own goddamn charity by the way. So before Batman turns on the bad cop routine, y'all better ask what it is you wanna ask." Whatever form of questioning Batman had planned, if any at all, Mysterion would have none of it Knowing full well what it was they wanted to ask, he turned his iron gaze on Nelson.
"I want you to become the next Dr. Fate." For the second time that night, Nelson brought up that almost unfathomable question. Now however, the old man seemed to be a little more forthcoming with information "The Helmet doesn't overwrite control of your body. That opportunity is something we can't pass by, it's everything I could've hoped for in the next Dr. Fate."
"The helmet doesn't work on me, i don't see how I can be Dr. Fate if that's case."
"With the right training you could learn to open that innate barrier around your mind and reach out to meet Fate halfway." The mention of an 'innate barrier' around his mind was unsettling, but he wouldn't press on it now, not when Nelson seemed to be in favour of explaining his request. Because if he was honest, the idea of such power as Dr. Fate had, was very appealing to the young hero. No matter how much he might've said otherwise. "You could access the powers of Fate without losing your will to him, you could perform the decrees of Fate as his avatar, not his host."
But even if the helmet granted him the powers to put Cthulhu in a shoebox and ship him to the end of all things, the question remained. "Why would I want that." The answer was clear in many ways to Kenny, but something about Nelson's demeanour hadn't been there before back at the tower. He seemed more insistent this time, more eager to induct Kenny into the Legacy of Fate.
"I've said that the world needs Dr. Fate. I haven't explained exactly why. Without Fate there are corners of this world that we cannot see, enemies that move without us knowing. There are a great many things Fate does that the Justice League, even it's magical members, cannot do."
Kenny let the words sink in, unknowingly taking half a step back and bracing himself. "Like what…" The way Nelson was talking did not bode well, and Mysterion could almost sense what the old sorcerer's next words would be.
"Batman has told me you know about the Elder Gods." Kent Nelson's face had darkened, Mysterion was not sure when the change had come over him, but the former Dr. Fate looked even older than his venerable years would dictate.
But if Fate was indeed like him, in that his duty was to protect the world from the likes of Gla'aki, of Cthulhu, and all the nameless horrors that the world was better off forgetting. Then what did that make Fate. Because Kenny could understand that there were many forms an Elder God could take. "… What is Dr. Fate."
"Pardon?" The shift of subject seemed to catch the old sorcerer like whiplash.
So Kenny reiterated, speaking more deliberately this time to emphasis the importance of Nelson's next answer. "What is the thing in that helmet."
"Fate is…" He started but did not seem to know how, or whether at all, to finish. "Nabu is…"
Nelson's fluctuating expression of worry and anxiety did nothing to settle Mysterion's own fears. "You better not say what I think you're gonna say, old man."
Catching on, Kent began a brief explanation, but he spoke slowly, seeming to heavily consider the information he gave out. "He's not that. Fate's history begins in ancient Egypt, the Lords of Order and Chaos, their pasts are… complicated… but unless you intend to accept my offer, I cannot tell you more. I hope you understand that." The old man was being diplomatic as fuck in Kenny's opinion, but he couldn't exactly blame him considering what they were now talking about.
There was a brief silence, where the conversation settled down to it's previous level of awkward tension. "I'm not normally the one on this side of that ass-pull, but yeah, i understand." If Kenny was honest with himself, he did not like the taste of his own medicine.
"There is someone else who I felt you should talk to. He's the reason left you waiting as long as we did. He's not an easy man to get ahold of. But maybe if you talk with him, you can understand the depth of our need for Dr. Fate." In that moment Mysterion saw that desperate old man in Kent again, a man who was very old, a widower, who had a heavy legacy sitting on his shoulders.
Out of his suit pocket, Nelson withdrew a mobile phone. It was an old thing, nothing like what he knew the Justice League used for communication. It was all chunky buttons and a digital screen, not even a caller ID.
Nelson came over and handed it to Mysterion, who took it and put it up to his ear. "Hello?" He asked, wondering as to what kind of person would be on the other end of the line. Superman? Green Lantern? Flash? Captain Chucklefuck? It could've been anyone at that moment, but as Kenny would come to discover, it was a someone who enjoyed answering questions even less than he did.
"Mysterion. I have a set of questions for you. It is important you answer them quickly and truthfully." The reply came so fluidly and strangely that Kenny barely had time to recognise the words that had made up the sentence. The connection on the phone was poor, and little could be made out about the caller's voice other than that it was male, and rather low.
"Okay." Mysterion replied numbly, trying to put himself on the level of conference that this caller apparently expected him to be on.
"Look at the nearest clock, tell me what the time is exactly."
Frowning at the odd demand, Kenny looked around the room until his eyes chanced upon a wall clock. Walking over to better see it in the dark, he read out the time. "Uh, it's about forty-nine minutes and thirty odd seconds past midnight."
"Is there a sign nearby? Piece of paper? Something with writing. Read it aloud. Then look away. Then look back, read it again." The voice remained low and level, but the way he framed his words was a little alien, disjointed and fragmented. Like a drunk, or a particularly strained poet.
Picking up a newspaper that sat folded on a nearby table, Kenny read the first headline that caught his eye. "Officials say General Singh Manh Li has agreed to historic peace conference." Then, complying with the instructions, Kenny turned his face away for a few seconds, then looked back and read the headline again. "Officials say General Singh Manh Li has agreed to historic peace conference."
There was utter silence on the other end of the line, until after what seemed like an age the voice replied. It's words causing Mysterion's blood to freeze.
"… Dream much, Kenny?"
All rational thought, all thought in general, stopped inside his head. It was as if he'd suddenly been plunged, unassuming, into an ocean of arctic seawater. All he could do was numbly answer, the truth having been shocked out of him. "… Yeah."
"Every night?" The retort came quickly, the voice sounding more curious and less unfathomable.
Who was this person, how did they know him, what kind of joke was this. The only thing Kenny could think to do was keep them talking. "… Pretty much."
"Same dream or different?" The rabbit hole deepened, the voice seeming to grow closer to the speaker on the other end of the line.
"Different." The theming of the inquiries didn't vex him now, they would come to over the next few weeks, but right now they just stirred in him a terrible sense of weightless caution.
"Dreams are they, or nightmares?" The voice, despite it's knowing and calm way of speaking, did not provoke in him the ire that Black Canary's or Nelson's had. It just made him all the more wary.
"… Depends." Most people would call Kenny McKormick's dreams nightmares, but when they often amounted to premonitions or forewarnings, he couldn't bring himself to call them either.
"On what."
"A lot of things…" Finally the unknown, unreadable air of the voice got to him, he had to ask a question of his own, he had to know. "Who are you."
And just like that it was broken. "Goodnight, Mysterion. " Were the last words the voice spoke, before he heard the click of a receiver, and the line went dead.
He stood there, motionless, for as long as it took for the three Leaguers to get worried. "… Mysterion?" It was Kent Nelson who had called his name, but he seemed so far away. The Sorcerer Supreme might as well have been, because he was calling to Mysterion through a wall of the young man's own thoughts.
Every possible question came over him like a waterfall, each one tumbling over the next so fast and solid that he couldn't make heads nor tails of anything. He needed space to think, he needed something to drink, he shook his head and blinked. It was all too clear what he needed.
Much to Kent Nelson's shock, Mysterion's arm flew out and the phone he had been holding came speeding directly for his head. Batman, who had been standing closer to Mysterion while he talked, shot out his own arm and caught the device in mid air. But before they could say anything to the boy's action, Mysterion spoke again. His voice was slow and weighted down, the gravelly overtone having somewhat slipped away, revealing the melancholy voice of a teenager.
"Fuck you…" With one cathartic sigh, Mysterion turned away from the Leaguers, and began walking towards the door, unholstering something from his belt as he did so. The last words the three older hero's heard from Mysterion that night, were.
"I'm tired."
The gunshot didn't even have time to echo, before it was forgotten, and the dead body on the pristine floor of the Hall of Justice was swallowed up by the midnight shadows.
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A/N: I didn't spellcheck this one for some reason… Maybe it's because it's past one in the morning, maybe it's because I got this one done rather quickly by my standards. But I'm hoping if there are any typos and whatnot, that you can forgive them this time. I want to thank everyone who has been dropping reviews, you're all really very kind. And especially those of you who do so regularly, y'all are who I'm writing this for :) Thanks for reading, until next time.
-Faff