Chapter Text
Arkham Asylum
“Urrggh…urrggghh…ahh..where-where the bloody ‘ell am I?”
“Inferno”.
The quick answer from a voice he easily recognizes turns Oswald’s head instantly to his right, where he gazes upon the bound form of one Helena Mandragora who had, at that moment, a blanket wrapped around her. “Helena! Thank god you’re-,”
The diminutive gangster stops as it all comes back to him. All the memories of what had occurred. They rushed in, like the tidal waters of an oncoming tide, forcing him to remember all that had happened now that he was out from under Harleen’s control.
“That bitch” he says to himself, though clearly Helena could hear him.
“Si”.
She sounded…defeated, and beyond that? She sounded broken. Like there was no fight left inside of her. Even then she was looking down, averting her eyes and Oswald felt himself fill with guilt. His hands were bound to the wall, the two of them being kept in the bowels of the old asylum where lobotomies and all sorts of other medieval torture had been performed, and was still done within its walls.
“Helena…I…I’m so sorry love”.
“It’s okay Oswald” she says, the words not really seeming like she meant them and was instead just speaking out of necessity, wishing to say something, anything to fill the air. “It isn’t your fault”.
“Well, I don’t feel that way about it” he continues on, suddenly growing angry. “Goddammit. Blasted, bloody shite. Now I remember it all. I remember…her comin’ ta me. The cunt. She had that green witch with her and…afta’ that? I…I don’t rememba’ anything about Quinzel comin’ ta meet with me. She was with all of us in the Iceberg…god lord…Nubia! And-and the others! They-,”
“Are under her control Oswald” Helena says, raising her head and bringing her bright, but now dulled blue eyes, onto Oswald.
“I swear, if one hair is harmed on Nubia’s head, I’ll kill ‘em all! I’ll gut them like fish and leave ‘em on the sidewalk ta bleed out!” He rages impotently against his situation, trying to pull on the chains that, while aged, were still strongly anchored within the wall.
Someone like Oswald? He definitely wasn’t getting away.
He struggles for a moment longer, but eventually comes to the same conclusion that Helena already had. They were trapped, well and truly stuck, and Harleen Quinzel held all the cards. She held the entirety of Gotham City in her hands, an utter madwoman in control. And Helena was powerless to do anything about it.
Oswald settles back in, breathing heavily while turning to look at Helena.
“Wha-what about yer men? Yeah? They can mount a counter offensive and get us out of here, can’t they?”
“Pffft…Oswald, you and I both know that the ones who aren’t already morto? They’re running for the hills. They’re mafioso and you know what that means”.
“They they’re savin’ their own bleedin’ skins. Bastards. Right awful bastards”.
He spits out, the only thing he could do at that moment to show his feelings towards the situation. But even still, he wasn’t ready to throw in the towel. His concern for his friend kept him focused. “Are you alright love?”
“Me? Sono perfetto!” she laughs sarcastically, scoffing with that enraged and murderous gleam in her eyes that let the Penguin know that all of the fight wasn’t out of Helena Mandragora either. “I’m stuck here, ambushed, betrayed and outmaneuvered by Harleen Quinzel and her band of mostri and I’m only being kept alive because la strega bionda wants to take il mio bambino for herself. My men are dead or retreating, she is ravishing the city and she TORTURED MI PAPA!”
She was breathing heavily now, struggling once more against her bindings with a feral, animalistic snarl that made Oswald wince, knowing in his heart that if Harleen was there right then she’d claw out her eyes with her bare hands without any thought.
“So…not quite as well as you’re saying then?” he asks, trying to add some levity to the situation. “Pffft…no….I…I can’t believe it Oswald. I can’t. Everything, everything we had, all that we worked to build…it’s gone. In an instant. All it took was one madwoman…WHO CAN’T UNDERSTAND THAT I’M TELLING THE TRUTTTTTTHHHH!”
She screams this at the door, knowing that Harleen was listening in no matter what and once more wanting to point out that fact, a fact that the other woman didn’t believe in the least. It was her own act of defiance, akin to Oswald spitting.
She relaxes after it though, feeling at least slightly better for having let it out. “To undo it all. It…it makes me wonder…was it all worth it?”
“Stop talkin’ crazy now”.
“No Oswald…no. We…we have to ask it now. We have to. We seized control to make this city better, sicura, and now? That’s gone. And it’s all because Bruce was taken away. He was the one holding all of this together. All of it, and as soon as he was removed it all went to hell”.
“We did our fair share ta keep this place runnin’ I hope ya remember”.
“And look how that’s going without him?” she bites back, causing Oswald to go quiet, indeed feeling as if the woman was, at least on some level, right. “All our money…all our energia…it was worth nothing. Harleen Quinzel, UN FOTTUTO IDIOTA! Screwed it up. Gotham? It won’t ever go back to how it was”.
“Ya don’t know that”.
“Si...I do”.
“All this self doubt. Self pity. Where the ‘ell is it comin’ from? This ain’t the Huntress I know” the short man says, hoping to rouse the Italian woman. But it wasn’t working, he could see that as clear as day. “I couldn’t protect mi papa. I couldn’t protect Bruce. I couldn’t protect Gotham. Inferno…I couldn’t even protect my own bambino”. She looked down at her belly which was, of course, still flat, showing no signs of growth, but she knew it was there.
Oswald softens and indeed understands the reason for the woman’s demoralization.
He looks down and takes a deep breath, trying to collect his thoughts and instead finding that he has a headache, no doubt a leftover from Ivy’s mind control. “Ya gotta stay strong” he says, feeling drowsy once more. “Fer yer baby”.
“She’s gonna take him from me Oswald” she says, tears brimming in her voice, fear, the most primal kind one could have of that as a mother for her child, overwhelming her, something that not even Helena Mandragora could escape. She was crying now, the tears rushing down her face, joining and freshening up the nearly dried tracks of her prior ones. “She’s going to take mio figlio from me as soon as I give birth to him. And then? Then I will die”.
“Ya don’t know that”.
“Si…I do. I…I can’t find a way out of here. I…I CAN’T!!!!”
“Shhhh! Calm down Helena! This is what she wants” he says, trying to help the woman, though his words have the exact opposite intended response. “Well she’s getting it! I DON’T KNOW WHERE BRUCE IS YOU CAGNA!” she screams through her sobs. “HE WAS TAKEN! YOU BITCH! YOU FOTTUTO CAGNA!”
Oswald now knew the truth.
In a way, Helena was right. Without Bruce Wayne and to a lesser extent Jason Todd, this whole city, this whole world they built, one in which they were so sure was secure, safe from all threats, inside and out, came crumbling down. It wasn’t nearly as secure as they thought it was. It all hinged on one man.
A house of cards that had come tumbling down.
At that moment, despite his better angels, Oswald felt himself ready to give into grief and anguish. He could understand and even forgive Helena for feeling the way she did. She had much, much more to lose. It was so easy to forget she was a woman. Maybe even she’d forgotten. That she wasn’t just a mob boss, the first female Donna in the history of Gotham City. She was more.
‘Bruce…ya bloody well betta’ be on yer way here with all the guns ya can musta’ Oswald thinks, hoping and indeed inwardly praying, for a hero.
‘We’re gonna need ‘em’.
The Wrath of Krypton, On Board Quarters of the Furies
“This is ridiculous!”
“It’s called fun Barda” the man says with a smirk, seated as he was across the table from the woman who wore a cloak over her shoulders, keeping out the slight chill that permeated all across the ship. On Apokolips? Things were relatively warm, making such things rather useless. But here, in the vastness of space?
Lets just say that Lady Darkseid’s engineers hadn’t put much stock into creature comforts such as warmth. Besides that? The parademons were hardy creatures that didn’t require much when it came to their environment. The Furies? They were out of luck on that front.
Which is why most of them were wrapped up tightly in a series of blankets resting on their cots, looking down with undisguised jealousy at how Jason and Barda were interacting. Lashina was the most open about it, glaring hatefully at the back of Barda’s head and wishing to use her steel bands to whip the woman raw.
Stompa? She just looked sullen, confused and still lost as to how to recover from her last interaction with Jason in which he had told her that Lashina had made him ‘aware’ that she was secretly a man.
Bernadeth? She was not present, the torturess of Apokolips no doubt being off somewhere else on the ship tending to whatever duties that Lady Darkseid had set aside for her. But if she was? She’d be in the same boat when it came to hateful glares directed at Barda.
Perhaps it would be even more intense.
Harriet though? She was perched on the side of her bunk as if ready to jump down upon some prey of hers or other, a jungle cat almost, her eyes affixed, not to Jason or Barda, but upon the game that they were playing between them. ‘What an odd game. It’s played upon…paper? It…it must be some sort of-hehehehe-strategy game’.
That’s all the green haired, yellow skinned Fury could think of, though to what end she couldn’t exactly and rightfully say. So far? Jason had fought Barda to a stalemate each and every time with neither of them winning, the discarded piles of paper with boxes filled in by x’s and o’s a testament to that.
“This is not fun! It’s asinine!” she complains, yet even still at that moment reaching down to quickly mark her x on the paper that Jason had, once again, drawn a grid upon. She couldn’t help the childlike excitement at what she saw, even though her experience had told her that she would once again still be defeated.
Two x’s in a row.
All she needed was one more. One, single, solitary x that would complete the-
Jason reaches in and quickly draws an o, cutting her off from making a straight line. He did so with a smile, which he directed up into Barda’s face without a hint of shame. He winks as she quivers in utter rage, her lips quenching and her fists grasping the side of the table. “GAAAAAH! This is infuriating! There’s no way to win! No matter what your opponent simply…blocks you! It’s impossible!”
“Hahaha! Now you’re getting it” Jason teases, reaching across the table and poking the larger woman in the cheek, causing her to blush profusely at such open, teasing contact right in front of the other Furies. On one hand? She wasn’t used to it. It still made her feel…odd. But on the other? It was a physical sign that the closeness between him and her was there…and it was being shown to the Furies.
“You…you…what nonsense is this?!! A game you can’t win???!”
“It does pass the time a bit though huh?” Jason asks back, himself wearing a thick fur robe that had been sent down to him by Lady Darkseid herself for his ‘comfort’. He was enjoying this, thoroughly, as were Bugs and Daffy, who maintained their vigil over the man even aboard the ship, mirthfully clicking in laughter at Barda’s rage.
“You…you tricked me, didn’t you?” she asks, softening a bit as she realizes it, indeed letting a smile curve her lips as it happened, not getting angry as she used to when such a fact was revealed to her.
“Yeaaah maybe a little. Nobody in the history of the game has ever won tic tac toe. It’s like that movie, War Games. The only winning move is to not play”.
“Movie? War Games? That sounds far, far more fun than this nonsense” she says, tossing the latest piece of paper onto the pile of other discarded pieces, already making up her mind to not play again. ‘How does he keep tricking me into playing these foolish games?’ she asks with a smile.
“For you? Definitely not. It’s anti-war and all that. Totally against the whole vibe you chicks got going on”.
“It does sound stupid” Stompa speaks up, finally reminding everyone of the hulking monster of a woman who was sitting down on one of the lower bunks, denting the bed in with her heavy frame. “Why would anyone be against war? It’s fun!” she says with a smile, as if she’d made some sort of sage and wise observation. But Jason? He doesn’t smile. He just quirks an eyebrow and shakes his head.
“Yeah…sure. If you’re immortal and can’t really die. But if you’re just a normal guy or girl caught up in someone else’s bullshit? It sucks”.
“Ahh, now we see Nightwing the philosopher” Barda teases, though without any venom or mockery as she leans back in her chair and crosses her arms over her chest, affixing her eyes on the man.
He turns to her, and shrugs softly.
“I guess a little. War on Earth? It’s kinda stupid when you break it down. At least usually it is. Going out to kill each other because you’re wearing a different uniform than the guy they want you to kill, they being some old men and women at the top who’ll never suffer through the shit. Pfft…at least things are the same out here then”.
“What do you mean?”
Barda found herself surprised with herself. She actually wanted to know what Jason meant. What he felt and why he felt the way he did. Things were changing between them, rapidly, and already even the normally stoic warrior was finding it harder and harder to keep the strange feelings in her belly at bay whenever he turned to look at her.
“Lady Darkseid versus Highfather. Guy’s an asshole right? I mean…I guess Kara isn’t on his or Uxas’ level, sure, but we’re all going out to kill and die, and for what? Nothing. Their personal bullshit. I…I don’t know. Maybe it’s-,”
“Stupid” Stompa says, growling that word out and then reaching up to scratch her ear. “War is fun. I like killing. Crushing people. It makes me feel good”.
“Hehehehehehe there’s not much else that means anything” Harriet chimes in, drawing a glare from Stompa who apparently also didn’t like the woman.
“Hey, it’s not stupid, alright? Don’t fucking call me stupid” Nightwing spits out, unsure of why that angered him so much. The dismissal, the apathy towards what he’d just said. And Stompa responds to it by going wide eyed, belatedly realizing she’d insulted the man she still wished to have as her husband.
“I…I…I’m sorry. You’re right. It…it isn’t stupid. I…I’m stupid. I’m sorry Jason” Stompa says, some synapse in her mind still firing somewhat and telling her to take a conciliatory approach and be ‘softer’ as she saw Barda doing with the man as of late.
‘Barda is acting weird…weak…but Jason likes it…I think? Maybe I should be soft! Then Jason will love me! Yes, yes!’ Stompa had been very, very excited when she came to this conclusion, and thus far had spent the entire trip trying to come up with an idea on how to show Jason that she could be like Barda was being, i.e weird.
But so far? Nothing, or at the very least an opportunity hadn’t presented itself.
“Well, finally. You said something that makes sense” Lashina murmurs to herself, mocking Stompa who glares up at her as she lays upon her bed. Her anger began to build within her, rolling around in her gut like a wave, back and forth, stoking the fire of her anger. She wanted to reach up through the bed and drag Lashina down through it, reminding the woman of what she had done to her before.
But she stops just short of it, reminding herself that she was supposed to be the opposite of herself. Weird. And the opposite thing she would do? Let Lashina’s insults go.
But beyond this trivial, stupid debate there was Barda, looking at Jason and searching his eyes, trying to ascertain what he was talking about. To connect and understand him on his level. He was embarrassed and heated, not liking being called stupid at all, and to that end Barda did something that felt natural, instinctual.
She reaches across the table and places her hand atop his, threading her digits through his own and giving it a light squeeze. The three other Furies notice this, and react with differing degrees of jealousy and shock. Stompa? She just scowls and looks away, blushing as she chastises herself for messing up.
‘Stupid! Should’ve gone and held his hand! Stupid Stompa! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!’
And Lashina? She was going practically candy apple red with her anger at seeing such an intimate, close action right before her, one that she wished for herself. ‘Bitch..bitch! It’s all Stompa’s fault! I would’ve had him had she not attacked me! It allowed Barda to push herself in. I have to find a way! I have to!’
Harriet looked of course and, while she was jealous, seeing this as proof positive that Barda would most likely be the one to assume the mantle of commander of the Furies, she was more intrigued than jealous, wondering what holding hands had to do with romance and affection.
“Hehehehehehehe!”
“I…I don’t understand” she begins with, keeping her tone even, steady, as she looks into Jason’s eyes. “But…I want to. Don’t you enjoy fighting? Winning victory after victory? Triumphing over your foes? And do you not do it for your city? For Batman?”
“I mean…yeah” he says with a shrug. “Who doesn’t?” He asks that with a scoff, as if the answer was apparent, though Barda found herself hanging on every word, wishing for more of an explanation.
“It feels great. You feel like you’re on top of the world and you’re always going to be but…I don’t know. I guess I’ve been thinking about a lot of things lately. About how all the drinking and women didn’t make me happy and…I guess I’m wondering if…maybe, my whole life was the problem. Like…the fighting and the killing and…all that too. I want something more I think. Something…more special. More lasting. Some smart ass on my planet said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. So…maybe…I’ll start trying something different”.
He was looking at Barda as he said all of this, their eye contact completely and utterly unbroken, and for the woman? The entire world shrunk to just him and her, the Furies not even registering.
‘Why…why did that all make sense?’
Happiness hadn’t been a consideration for Barda. Not ever. For none of them. It was an abstract concept, one that was ridiculous to even think about. But lately? She’d been wondering about it. ‘Is there more to life than this?’
“Maybe...maybe this is all a little…stupid. But it’s the only life we have” Barda says softly, airing her disagreements with Jason’s thesis while also trying, something that was amazing for her, to be considerate.
“Yeah…maybe. But is it bad to want more? Maybe something different?”
“What would you do if you were not fighting to protect Gotham Jason?” she asks, genuinely wishing for an answer. He shrugs. “I don’t know”. He looks her up and down, somewhat breaking the seriousness and tension of the situation and causing the woman to blush. “Something different”.
“That’s not a clear answer”.
“Well shit. Sorry I don’t have it all figured out, queen of discipline and order”.
“You keep testing me Jason” she retorts, actually flirting back as she smiles. “And you will find that I-,”
“This is nonsense!”
Lashina throws herself up, tossing the covers to the side as she makes to come down, her feet coming down before Stompa’s face, which the larger woman forcefully pushes away out of anger. This conversation, and the ensuing closeness between Barda and Jason, was apparently too much for her to take.
“I can win the game”.
Jason just smirks at Lashina’s proclamation while Barda turns her head, glaring at the other woman. “It’s impossible,” she says evenly. “He will simply counter any action you take, and he yours. It is a game you cannot win”.
“I will though!” Lashina says with a defiant smirk on her face, sure that she could triumph, and in doing so show Jason her superiority to the others. “There must be a way, and when I find it I will win with ease, and Jason will know-,”
Thunk!
The argument was interrupted as another figure entered the room, his boots clamping down upon the floor and forcing everyone to turn and look at him, taking in the scowling and barely anger restrained visage of the Batman. His eyes were fixed on Jason, and the former Robin turned Nightwing stiffens.
“We need to talk”.
“What’s going on?”
Jason could sense that something was wrong, deeply wrong if he was saying that the way he was, and fear rolled within his stomach at what might be coming down the pipe. Even so, he rises up, standing, quickly followed by Barda who moves to follow.
“Alone”.
Bruce follows up with that, causing the woman to stop in her tracks. She didn’t want to stay here, and instead she wished to follow Jason. But she also knew that Batman was a general and shared and odd…closeness to Lady Darkseid. ‘Who knows what the consequences will be for disobeying him’ she muses to herself, mostly thinking that whatever they were they'd be worth it.
She moves to defy him, to speak against the Apokoliptian general, but Jason just turns and smirks, giving it a shrug while reaching out for her shoulder.
“It’s alright babe. I’ll be right back. Sure it’s nothing. Then I’ll find something else to kick your ass at”.
“That word again…and secondly it was a draw between the two of us, not a defeat. If it were a true test of our skills in which a path to victory was possible we both know that I would be the one to emerge victorious”.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m sure. I’ll be right back”.
His touch lingered, as did his gaze, and all of the Furies as well as Bruce, were aware of it, unable to see anything but that strange, uncharacteristic and ever growing softness between them. The Furies seethed in jealousy, while Bruce?
He was simply discomforted by it.
Perhaps because it was familiar.
“What?”
Barda asks, not out of a desire to be free of his touch, but out of simple curiosity, finding his gaze to be soothing to her. She found that she liked it when he looked at her. Especially like that. “Nothing. Nothing. Just…checking you out. Anyways, yeah, I’ll be back”.
The blushing man turns and moves away from her quickly, making his way towards the door and thus Bruce who moves to the side so as to allow him an exit. Bugs and Daffy follow, and Bruce knows better than to try and command them otherwise.
When he looks back he sees Barda sitting, the woman blushing just as much as Jason was, no doubt still stuck upon the moment they’d shared with one another.
“Hmmm”.
He says nothing else, and simply turns, leaving them behind in the room.
Silence reigns as soon as the two men exit, and Barda just breathes softly to herself, ruminating over what kept happening between her and Jason. These soft little moments, all seeming to be piggybacking off the conversation he’d had with her about her mother in which he praised the woman.
‘I need to distract myself’ she thinks, turning to Lashina and finding herself thankful for the woman’s presence for once. “Lashina, did you still wish to play…tic tac toe?” she asks, the words she spoke still sounding foreign.
“Pffft. Burn in the fire pits Barda,” Lashina spits, turning and moving away, no doubt angered by the fact that she’d been prevented from playing against Jason, and thus having another chance at seducing him. Barda says nothing, not even bothering to ask Stompa who, in a very depressed state, pulls her legs back onto the cot and rolls her bulk onto her side.
‘I…we’ll never have babies, will we?’
That left only one more option for Barda, and she looks up at the still cackling Harriet who turns her uncertain gaze to the dark haired woman. ‘Hmm…I’m in a good mood if I’m considering asking her’.
“Harriet. Would you like to play?”
“Hehehehehehehehehe…..yes!”
The yellow skinned woman was excited, very excited, at being included for once, and even if she didn’t feel she had a chance at securing command of the Furies for herself any longer she found this to be a good day.
The Iceberg Lounge
“We don’t know anything!” Robert Vreeland says, pleading and begging as he kneels there on the ground, his hands clasped together and his suit all cut up, burn marks and numerous different cuts dotting his flesh. The older man looked awful, but even then, he was more concerned with his wife who kneeled in a similar position next to him, her hands in her hands as she sobbed.
Robert Vreeland put his arm around his wife, Rebecca’s shoulders, and tried to calm her, all while Harleen looked upon them with an expression of utter boredom.
“I don’t believe ya. That’s the problem”.
The Iceberg Lounge was now under different management, and Harleen was flanked on either side by Ivy, Cheetah and the Amazons she’d stolen from Oswald, Nubia being first and foremost amongst them.
Harley leans forward, glaring down at the rich couple, hoping that if she asked again she’d receive the answer she wanted.
“Where. Is. Bruce. Wayne?”
She enunciates every word clearly and succinctly, glaring with such intensity, such fire in her eyes, that they knew the penalty for not giving her what she wanted this time would be the highest one could pay. And yet, even still, the old man with the salt and pepper hair and thick walrus mustache didn’t have the answer she wanted.
And he glares back, equally as hatefully as he clutches his wife, who holds onto him with all her strength, burying her face in his chest.
“You’ve already taken everything else from us you…you…you…BITCH!”
He spits that word out after struggling for a moment to find the correct one, the one that would communicate the required amount of hate he held within himself for the woman. “You burned down our home, killed our staff, our dog! You’ve taken everything from us…and all for nothing! We don’t have him!!!!”
Harleen opens her mouth, making ready with a snappy retort before she closes it just as quickly and looks to the side, peering up at Ivy who remains stoic and motionless, facing ahead. “Ya know. He does make a good point. We did so freakin’ much ta ‘him and he still ain’t crackin’. It’s…almost like he’s tellin’ the truth”.
“Yes Doctor Quinzel”.
“It was kinda funny though. Watchin’ Cheetah ‘ere tear poor little Mitzy apart with her bare teeth”. The woman in question, Cheetah, still stood there with the blood dripping down her maw, clinging to her fur. Harleen smiles sickeningly as Mrs. Vreeland sobs out loudly again, causing Robert to turn and hold her even tighter, whispering sweet nothings to try and calm her.
“Our family is safe, Becca” he says. “They’re out of the city. They’re safe”.
Harleen would’ve retorted had she not known that what the man was saying was true. Essentially? Gotham City was now cut off from the rest of the world, surrounded on all sides by the National Guard and police units.
Nobody got on or off this island.
‘Dammit. Wish I coulda’ gotten their kids and grandkids. Skinnin’ ‘em in front o’ ‘em definitely would’ve at least been fun’. Harleen was in an ever increasingly sour and awful mood now as her block by block, house by house search for Bruce Wayne was yielding nothing in the way of results. All of Helena’s safehouses had been turned upside down, including killing numerous of her guys.
Nothing. Nada, zilch.
And her warnings via news agencies to the rest of the world to ‘cough up her puddin’’had done even less. ‘He’s in the city. He freakin’ has ta be! He has ta!’ She wanted to go back to the Asylum. Back to where Helena and Oswald were where she could maybe make another attempt at beating the info out of Helena. But she discards that idea too.
‘Nah. Can’t hurt the baby. Not the baby. Nope, nope, nope’.
That was one silver lining that the woman could take out of an utterly screwed up situation. The baby in Helena’s stomach. Her soon to be son or daughter. She’d get them without having to go through the pain of childbirth, at least for this first one. ‘Gives me time ta work it all out so I don’t screw it up when me and Brucey make our own’ she thinks, happily bobbing her head along at the thought as if she’d forgotten about the Vreelands.
“L-let us go! We don’t have anything to tell you!”
“Yeah, yeah. Yer just as useless as the rest o’ the assholes I had carted in here. Jeez….Manta?!!!! TAKE OUR GUESTS OUT!”
“Wha-,”
SCHWINK!
“AHHHHH!”
Rebecca Vreeland tosses herself back in horror as she looks up at her husband, looking just in time to watch his eyeball literally explode out of the front of his face along with the attendant gore and viscera that came with it, a long spear protruding from the front of his face to the back. Blood, bright red and crimson, dripped down his cheeks and onto the floor, his brain pierced and the man already dead as Black Manta had come up behind them to do his mistress’ bidding.
“ROBERT! ROBERT!”
Harleen already put the older couple out of her mind, turning to Cheetah to, once again, give out orders for yet another person to be brought before her. “Vale. I want ya ta finds Vicki Vale. The reporta’. Long shot but hell, who knows?”
Rebecca Vreeland didn’t have much time to think about what the woman was saying or asking of her underling as she was too focused upon the wet retraction of the blade from her husband’s head, shedding more blood across the floor as the black armored mercenary stood over him.
His body slumps over, falling down onto the ground and instantly causing a puddle of blood to form, moving ever outwards as the body is drained more and more of the life giving liquid. Her pain, her agony, was pronounced, but so was her fear as the older woman with no means to defend herself, fell upon her back and elbows, scurrying away, desperately trying to escape as Black Manta turned his sight on her.
He begins to approach, his heavily armored boots thumping on the ground as Harleen keeps speaking to Cheetah, acting as if nothing was happening.
“Kill her mom and pop. I think they live innnnnnnnn…I don’t know. When ya gets ta her apartment find out”.
Manta reaches Rebecca Vreeland, and raises his foot as she turns her hide, trying in vain to hide from the horrific fate that awaited her. As his foot came down there was pain, pain and then blackness as everything ceased to exist.
Just another murder in a city of death and misfortune. Her head had been caved in, crushed like a grape,
All because of Harleen Quinzel’s madness.
The Wrath of Krypton, Hallway Just Outside the Munitions Storage
“What’s this about Bruce?”
Jason didn’t want to keep walking and now? Neither did Bruce. Only belatedly did the vigilante realize that he had absolutely no clue where to actually have this conversation. Jason’s quarters? They were shared with the Furies, and him? He didn’t have any quarters of his own. No. He was forced, by the woman herself, to share her bed, her space.
He felt boxed in. Trapped. A slave of fate and destiny like never before. Not since that night in the alleyway, and it discomforted him greatly. He was like a caged animal, desperate for an escape, more than anything wanting to be free.
But he couldn’t.
He was trapped and now he was reaching out for help due to a lack of any other options able to be presented to him. Even still though, before they got to the issue at hand, he had some questions. Questions pertaining to what he had just seen in there.
“What’s going on between you and Barda?”
Jason goes still for a second, letting those words hit him with their impact and meaning, and for a second or so he was confused as to what he should say. ‘Great. The world’s greatest detective saw you and Barda acting like you were on a date. Dammit’.
He had a few options, though none of them were all that attractive. He could lie of course, but what would that do? It wouldn’t convince Bruce, and if anything would only draw this uncomfortable conversation out even longer than it needed to be.
That really only left him with one option.
Telling the truth, which would, most likely, open up a whole other can of worms. In the end though, that was the option he went with. The only workable solution to this problem.
“We uhh…I don’t…we…”
‘Great. Easier said than done’ Jason thinks, chastising himself.
“Are you falling for her?” Bruce asks, a hardened expression coming over his face as he glares down at Jason, reminding him of when he was a little boy, freshly brought into Bruce Wayne’s orbit and inducted into the world of violent crime fighting. Here though he could at least advance on the truth front.
“No! No..it…it isn’t like that…not…not yet”.
“What do you mean not yet?” Bruce asks, angered by the answer as he reaches out and grasps the man’s shoulder, pushing him into the wall. Jason for a second, was shocked, and then? Angered. He glares at Bruce, and even though it wasn’t hard, nor did it hurt him, he responds with double the force.
He reaches out and pushes Bruce back with both hands, forcing him away from him, and shocking Bruce in the moment as Jason had never gone against him.
“Get your fucking hands off me!”
Bruce was disorientated to say the least, his own heady, raging anger having an effect on him, causing him to act rashly and without thought. He reels himself in and prevents his body from reacting on instinct, from slamming Jason down into the floor and beating him until into a bloody pulp. Both men were heated now, angry and not thinking straight.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Batman repeats.
“I don’t love her or anything like that but…I like her” Jason says, straightening himself up and relaxing, knowing more than anyone that Bruce had just let him off the hook and to definitely not push it any further than that. “So…I don’t know, maybe it’s heading that way”.
“That wasn’t the mission” Bruce snarls.
“Hey, get off my back, alright? It’s none of your business”.
This was…weird. Jason was, for all intents and purposes, Bruce’s business. He was the closest thing to a father the young boy had ever had, and despite all the issues surrounding them, all the pain and the heartbreak, the barriers, he still loved him as such. But he’d be damned before letting him boss him around like he was twelve again.
“It is my business. We’re trying to leave Jason. We’re trying to get home. Did you forget about that? About Gotham? Our mission?”
“Uggggh againnnn with that” Jason groans, shaking his head and sighing. “You know what? Fuck Gotham. Fuck the mission. Okay? Your mission fucking sucks”. Things were getting heated again. Rapidly. “Here we are, billions of miles away or whatever, flying through space with an alien warlord and all you can think about is Gotham City”.
“You’re throwing away all of this…all of what we’ve worked for…for a woman”.
“FIRST OFF!” Jason starts with a shout, raising his hand and actually pointing at Batman right before he realizes that he needs to cool off again. He sighs, takes a deep breath, and then continues.
“Barda isn’t just a woman, alright? She’s actually interesting. Fun and…weird. In a good way, alright? So don’t just…dismiss her like that. And secondly? What if I wanted to?” he asks, implying it as a challenge of some sort, a challenge that Bruce doesn’t immediately answer as Bruce glowered.
“Huh? What if I wanted to say forget Earth? What if I wanted to stay back here with Barda, Kara and these two, huh?” he asks, gesturing over his shoulder at Bugs and Daffy who remained there to watch the argument unfold. “It’s my life isn’t it? My right to decide? Maybe I don’t want to just keep giving and giving to Gotham when it gives fuck all back to me”.
“You’re rich. You can have any woman you want. You don’t have to work. What else could you want from Gotham?” Bruce retorts, seizing on something, anything that would get Jason back in line. Back to where he wanted him to be.
“Meaning man! I…I want to mean something to someone, okay? Yeah, maybe it’s stupid. Maybe it’s simple but hell I like how Barda looks at me”.
“And that’s enough to make you forget it all?”
“YES!” Jason iterates. “It is, and that should tell you something about how meaningless and stupid our lives are. About how unhappy and screwed up we are”. We. That was an uncomfortable word to use in that sentence. Why? Because it reminded Bruce of Kara and him.
Of how he…liked how Kara would look at him. When she thought he wasn’t watching her, when in reality? He was always watching her.
“Bruce…come on man, listen to me please” Jason says, breathing heavily as he rubs his forehead. “For once in your life, listen to me. We might never be going home. Okay? I know Kara is going to bring us back after we win, but-,”
“She isn’t”.
“Huh?”
The interruption from Bruce surprised Jason who didn’t know what to make of what the man just said. He looks at him with a fish out of water expression, trying to ascertain if he’d really said what he just said.
“She isn’t going to bring us back Jason”.
“How do you know? She tell you?”
“Not directly, no, but…I saw it in her eyes” Bruce admits with reluctance, a sentiment that draws a smirk from Jason who now sees a weapon he could use against his mentor. “Uh huh. Looking into her eyes enough that you can tell what she’s thinking huh?”
“Stop”.
“You came in here all pissed off about something maybe brewing between me and Barda” he says while nodding his head, seemingly putting all the puzzle pieces back together within the confines of his mind, working it out. “And it’s because you’re pissed at yourself”.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about Jason” Bruce retorts, though weakly, knowing for a fact that, in the end? Jason did know what he was talking about. Or at least was onto something.
“Yeah I do. You’re pissed at something bubbling between me and Barda because you know there’s something going on between you and Lady Darkseid that’s special. That’s it isn’t it?”
“She’s a liar and a fraud and the first chance I get I’m going to kill her”.
Normally? The Batman saying he was going to kill someone was an admission that they were as good as dead and that all it would be was a matter of time. However it felt different this time. Off. Like he didn’t really mean it. And from Bruce? That was big.
“Yeah. I believe that”.
“What about Alfred? Oswald, Helena and Harleen?” he asks his adopted son back. “What about them? The people that rely on us?”
“They have it handled Bruce” Jason says. “Let's face it. Our job was done a while ago. And we’ve just been dying since then. Bored. Fucking and drinking our lives away. You know it’s been…years since I’ve gone this long without getting plastered to get through the fucking day?”
“Jason-,”
“No…no. Alright? Even if you do get to go back? I’m staying”.
He was putting his foot down, making it clear that in the end? This was his stance. His pledge. He wasn’t going back to Earth, a place that held so much misery and self destruction for him. It was insane, crazy, but on Apokolips? At least he liked himself.
“This woman…the one you’re staking your entire future on…you’re doing it on a crush. One that might not even work out. She could be playing you, the same way you thought you were playing them”.
“Maybe, maybe”.
Jason doesn’t immediately disregard what Bruce says, indeed seeing it as a possibility. But he doesn’t let the man convince him. Not that way. No. He couldn’t. He was right. In the end? This all might be one big mistake. But he’d been going on this way for too long. He’d been unhappy too long. And now?
Now he had a chance to do something different.
To be happy in the end.
And he was going to take it.
Even here, lightyears away from home.
It was crazy, sure. But then again, so was continuing on the way he was.
“But that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna take the chance. Bruce…you should do it too”. Batman seemed genuinely perplexed by this, unable to even speak as Jason pushed past him, making his way back towards the Furies. He looks back at Bruce though, wanting him to get what he was saying.
“I mean…sure, she’s a maniac despot intent on world domination whose essentially enslaved us and made us do her bidding to conquer another world of despots who, in my opinion, are worse than her, but she’s really the only woman that’s gotten a genuine reaction from you”. Bruce was transfixed by his words, knowing that Jason was telling the truth.
“I mean…I don’t know if she makes you happy or just permanently pissed off but….either way? She’s the first woman you didn’t look at like she was a piece of furniture and hell that might be the best chance you, as you are, get in your life of meeting someone you can build something with. You’re not happy either, and don’t bullshit me and try and pretend you are”.
“It isn’t about happiness Jason. It’s about the mission”.
“And then what? We die? Nothing else? Come on, even you aren’t as boneheaded to believe in that. Anyways, so we’re not going home huh? Cool. Gotham can rot for all I care. They all deserve each other”.
He does soften a bit as he looks at Bruce, feeling bad for how utterly despondent the man looked. As if everything of meaning had been stripped away from him, taken, and what was left? He wasn’t sure. He’d never considered who Bruce Wayne was without the cowl. Without Gotham.
‘God…please let Kara help him with that. Please’.
“Just…I don’t know, think about it. She’s not that bad is she?”
Bruce doesn’t answer, this conversation not having gone the way he wanted it to as Jason had, against all odds, actually pushed back against him. He hadn’t expected that. Hadn’t been ready for it, and was still affected by it.
‘Trapped. I’m trapped. I’m alone’.
“Yeah well…see you later I guess”.
There was nothing more to say. Sure, this had been an honest conversation, albeit one sided, and for some reason? Jason felt like some walls had come down between him and Bruce with the realization that this life wasn’t what Jason wanted.
Bugs and Daffy left too, and Bruce?
He was alone in the hallway. Alone with his thoughts, his fears and his worries. It felt like…like he was alone in the whole universe right at that moment.