Roanoke part - 3

Words 3,563

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The air reeks.

That by itself is not surprising, Gotham always had it owns pungent odor that permeated the streets, the unique and noxious combination of industrial sewage, rot, and the decay of an entire city.

But today, it is even fouler. It smells of ash and copper today. Fire crackles from the ruins of cars and the shattered insides of shops, the streets are a maze of hastily dissected vehicles, torn apart and scattered. And all around you, you could see ruddy puddles of crimson, as though the sky had wept tears.

And at the epicenter of each puddle-well, the sight would never leave you, and it defied all attempts at description. How could you put into thought the sheer magnitude of revulsion and loathing that overtakes you at the sight of the small broken bodies?

Ravager stands motionless beside you, not betraying even the slightest to inner feelings. The other heroes are far more vocal.

Concrete shatters under Superboy's grip, water lashes out in response to its master's fury, a sob and tear from Artemis and Wally cycles between venting his own anger or comforting her.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you can hear a girl scream, and when you turn to the Martian, you find her staring right back at you, no, she's looking through you, staring off into the distance. But you can hear her cries of horror and tears of ineffectual anger still.

And Dick, he takes one of out of the Dark Knights playbook, staring grimly ahead. "Come on, we have work to do, and lives to save."

You all stop abruptly when the sound of a million birds being thrown into a lawnmower reaches you. It gets louder and closer by the second, transforming into the ear-thumpping roar of a metal giant.

"Uh guys," you faintly hear Kid Flash speak. "we have a problem."

A huge shadow of what could only be a leviathan covers up the sky. You turn to look up and see, a plane, nose tilted downwards and slowly drifting to its doom on the far outskirts of Gotham.

The Atlantean's voice is full of awe and grim terror. "That's a plane,"

Ravager's voice is not. "No shit, Sherlock."

Pointedly ignoring her, Artemis continues her teammate's line of thought.

"And if there's no adults-"

"There's no pilot." Superboy finishes.

"But what about the kids, they're still on there!"

Dick snaps.

"Don't you think I know that? But what are we supposed to do?"

What could they do when something like that is falling on their head when there's no time to think, and thousands of lives are depending on them?

But, you could do something. Time is of the essence, and you - you have all the time in the world.

And what was the point of wasting any more time?

"You so fucking me owe for this, Dick." you grouse, ignoring the boy wonder's subsequent confused squawk as you push past them.

"Hey idiot, maybe not the best idea to walk towards the FALLING PLANE!" Superboy shouts over the din of the roaring engines.

Cold air fills your lungs driving away from the doubts of your undoubtedly suicidal plan. Because without question, had you voiced your inner thoughts aloud, Ravager would have been well within her own right to put you down, for your own safety, even.

You'd always been a bit lax with your own well-being, though, this was a significant escalation from killing a bunch of mobsters.

One did not simply turn off all the clocks in Gotham. Unless they're Cadmus Othrys, that is.

Gotham burns all around you, every sound and smell near overwhelming in their magnitude. Death's cloak covers the sun, and all the world holds its breath.

There is no great pattern of hand movements for this act, no ritual and fitting sacrifice to fulfill it. No, all there is, is a Will that even the gales of a Typhon's maelstrom would break upon.

The world in your sights takes upon a Golden hue, and the orbs beneath the mask burn with an intensity unseen before. The threads that bind reality together shake and waver at your call.

Tick Tock.

Your heart pounds against your chest threatening to rip free at any moment. Blood pounds in your ears, and you feel like you're drowning, being crushed beneath the weight of the world and sky.

Pressure builds throughout your body, driving the wind from your lungs, and only by an unnamed miracle do you not fall to the ground dead then and there.

Is this how Atlas felt beneath the burden of Ouranos? You think through the pain. To spend eternity teetering on the verge of triumph and defeat, life and death?

Because at this moment, you've never felt more alive.

Tick Tock.

The clock strikes midnight. The curtain rises, the crucible ignites, and Time is bound to your will once more. There is no great cry to herald your feat, no momentous change in the world. The roar of fire and death dies an ignoble death, and with but the petering out of the hourglass sands, Gotham goes silent.

One moment the world is engulfed in Chaos, a pitiless and ravenous beast fit to devour all the world, inexorable and unstoppable, the depths of its hunger unfathomable. Unspottable meets the Immovable and in defiance of all creation, you triumph. Chaos is bound and fettered, destruction broken and made subservient, and made impotent by the whim of a single being.

By your command alone, by your Will alone, Order reigns.

Had you not been hunched over in pain, desperately trying to withstand the full force of Creation attempting to crush you like an insect beneath its boot, you would have seen the looks of awe that dominated each of the hero's faces.

The plane's shadow hangs overhead, frozen in mid-air like some museum exhibit, the silence reverberating even louder in the wake of its roaring engines.

"It-it stopped," Artemis exclaims in equal parts disbelief and wonder. "How?"

The Martian takes to the sky, gently hovering towards the plane with a clear caution in her movements, and reaching out to the nose with a tentative before immediately recoiling. "It's cold, like ice."

The Atlantean's voice is not as quiet as he pretends it to be, especially in the deathly silence. "Remember what Red Arrow said-"

"Not now, Kal-dur, not here." The warning implication in Dick's words doesn't go unnoticed to his team, nor you. You may have felt something, maybe annoyance or indignation had your not entire existence tunneled into not falling face-first into the ground.

"Whatever's holding this thing together won't last long," you hear Wally say. "no offense,"

"Wally!"

"Just being honest," He disappears in a flurry of gold and red before suddenly appearing again. "I just checked the next couple of city blocks, it's all frozen."

"Do you think it could be the entire city?"

He shrugs his shoulders. "I don't know, but we don't have much time-"

To draw breath and form words makes your body groan in complaint. "Go!" you force out the word.

The world shutters. Spiderweb cracks materialize across the golden amber, and reality teeters on the knife's edge of Chaos and Order.

The kid speedster goes abruptly silent at the world-shaking outburst. "Err-duly noted, Robin?"

"Right, KF go on ahead, check every street, apartment, anywhere you think someone could be, and bring them to Gotham High as quick as you can."

The question of what to do if they find the dead goes unasked. The speedster disappears once again in a crackling shimmer of crimson and gold, tearing off into the streets.

"Superboy, MM, you're on overwatch, get that plane somewhere safe, and get anyone in there to Gotham High. Artemis, Kaldur, you're with me. Ravager-" His confidence swiftly dies under her glare.

"I don't need your orders."

And that is that.

"Yeah - of course, you do you."

The heroes disperse without another word taking to the streets, leaving you and Ravager alone.

A comforting presence presses into your side, her arm coming around your shoulder. It's a minute relief from the pain, one you can't even describe how grateful you are for, seeing as you've lost the ability to speak.

"How long can you hold this for?" she whispers softly.

Each moment feels like an eternity. What you're doing, it's an abomination to reality, and right now, Reality is doing its damn best to take every pound of flesh from you that it can, tearing you apart from the inside. But even now, you can still defy it, holding the lynchpin of this spell.

"Not long," you get out, the next words taste like ash on your tongue, even if the reality of the situation is obvious.

"Go with them, I'm no use right now."

Resistance is clear behind her mask. Even as Ravager, you know her tells all too well.

You force a grimace of a smile, not that she can see it. "I'll be fine, promise."

"If you say so. take care of yourself, Cadmus." She rushes out after the long-gone capes, leaving you alone to shoulder the burden of Eternity.

The threads that imprison Gotham in this unending moment glimmer violently, an ethereal golden hue, like the sun's light in intensity. But, as you sit at the crux of their storm, you feel none of the sun's warmth, only an unending cold that seeps deep into your bones.

And they whisper into your ear the softest of temptations, an end to this struggle, peace to be granted with but the most minimal of capitulations. Let Go. They say, like sirens bidding you crash headfirst onto their rocks, to break the tether that binds the world to this one moment, and in the process, lose yourself into the riptides of time. They press down on you, attempting to crush your will when your body proves unmalleable, and even then, you hold, clinging to the foundation of everything that you are, the bitter defiance of youth against all of creation.

It begins with a single step in no particular direction, and then another. The path you're walking doesn't matter, it is the intent, the Will behind it, that sustains the spell. Your spine cracks and pops as you force your back straight, head held high despite the unrelenting pressure falling down on your shoulders.

And once more, Time bows to its master.

The fiery shrouds that surround the corpses of vehicles and greedily devour the insides of a storefront are still as you slowly pass, the catalyst of destruction itself trapped forever within amber.

The remnants of glass shards, trash, and torn scraps of paper and steel litter the open space, suspended in mid-air by invisible tethers. You part them with but a glancing wave of your hand, sending them fluttering in each and every way before the amber encases once more around them.

As you walk through the silent streets of Gotham, bereft of the blare of traffic, nor the sounds that made Gotham, well, Gotham, you realize that this is what death is like. The complete absence of anything, there is no pit, no darkness, no haunting wails, it's simply nothing.

You'd flipped the switch, and from living festering Chaos was born deathly and static Order.

You catch sight of nothing, much less, survivors, the street empty of corpses and living bodies. What are the odds that this one street had no kids on it?

But then, you see something, a flit of movement across the periphery of your vision, a shade hidden among the dark grey of the skies and pale glow of the time. Your eyes follow of their own accord, and what you find is not a girl, but the figure of a woman.

She's dressed in something like punk-goth clothes, a black tank top with the decal of some band you've never heard of, black hair done into a long wild mane of falling ringlets, and lips colored as dark as her hair, all in stark contrast the unnaturally pale pallor of her skin, as though she had never known the touch of sunlight. And around her neck hangs a golden shimmering Ankh.

She walks through the streets casually, umbrella in hand to ward off the non-existent sun, and smiling at nothing. Her head turns, your eyes meet, and you find yourself staring into the depths of Creation, a ceaseless and unending abyss that beckons at your soul with unspoken words. You do not pull yourself out, no, it's almost as though she had let you go, like a fisherman releasing a hooked fish for an unknown purpose.

This is no woman, you realize, no, this is something more, something elemental, something fundamental, encased in a body it had no right being in. But, the realization does not fill you with fear or the need to flee, no, it is the exact opposite, your very soul burning with the need to know, to understand the being before you in all her entirety.

Her lips curl into a smile inexplicably bittersweet and lingering with unspoken words, revealing just a glimpse of pearly white teeth framed by the black of her lips. Your heart leaps into the back of your throat.

And without a word, she walks into an alleyway, leaving the world to echo with the sound of her heels clicking against the street.

"Hey! Wait up, who are you?" you exclaim, your words peremeating within the empty confines of Gotham, and yet you only receive the quickly fading clack of footsteps as an answer.

You ignore the protests of your body, rushing after the enigmatic stranger and turning headwords into the alley. When you turn into it, however, there's no sign of her, only frozen heaps of trash and slum rubbish, not even the barest trace of footsteps along with the dust and grime-covered round.

It's like she was never there, a figment of your imagination. But, how could that be, when you see could see every inch of her with such vividness as though she's still standing right in front of you?

The pressure of a hundred mountains on your back acutely reminds you of what you're actually supposed to be doing, which to be clear to yourself, is not chasing mysterious women all across the city.

Turning on your heel, and halfway ready to stomp out of the alleyway, you stop abruptly as a wave of something, not warning, more like need, washes over you. You turn back to the dark alleyway, peering intently for any sign for the source of the premonition.

You find it peeking out behind an overturned dumpster, dressed in a jacket the color of a very loud stop sign that swallows up their small form, and two little braids framing a tear-encrusted, red-nosed face.

The sight of teary doe brown eyes staring up at you sightlessly makes something deep jerk inside of you.

It's a kid. No, a child. All alone and forgotten. But not gone, not yet, and not if you had anything to say about it.

Pointedly ignoring the internal bout of heroism that's suddenly taken hold of you, you go about shuffling your gear and any noticeable sharp objects out of the way.

With arms now free, you tentatively reach down and lift the girl up, and in the greatest irony of all, lift Time's veil off of her. And like Galatea given life, she goes from a teary-eyed girl of stone to a very loud, and very much alive, crying girl.

You'd thought concussion grenades caused bad headaches, but ear-splitting wails tearing apart your eardrums make you realize that weaponizing crying children is a very possible alternative.

"Hey, hey, it's-it's okay, err, calm down?" you try to assure the very much not calm child, rubbing what you imagine to be soothing circles on her back.

Her eyes shoot up to you, and the crying stops as she takes in your features with the inquisitive curiosity only a child could muster. Then her eyes start to water like an overflowing glass of water, and waterworks start again.

"Monster!" she wails doing her utmost to wriggle herself out of your grip, tiny fists trying to rend a hole as they bang furiously on your forearms.

More than a little perturbed by the reaction, it takes you a second to realize you're still wearing your helmet, the one designed to make grown men piss their pants.

"Oh yeah, the mask, sorry about that, guess it's not popular with kids," you say letting out an abashed chuckle.

Like an off switch the crying stops. For now.

"There, see all better, see? No scary monster here?" you ask almost beseechingly.

You never thought you'd be negotiating down a crying toddler, but you guess they don't call it the apocalypse for nothing.

She looks at you suspiciously as though judging the truth of your words. She turns to look around the alleyway, shifting in your grip like a slippery eel, movements becoming more frantic when she can't seem to find whatever she's looking for.

"Mom? Where's my mom?"

Defcon 1 alarms blare loudly in the back of your mind.

So this is what it's like to get a pop quiz you've never studied for, you muse in between the desperate onslaught of thoughts and hastily made solutions, each more disastrous than that.

If only you'd been taught how to handle such situations or grown up in a somewhat nurturing environment with a parental figure.

Instead, you got the world's deadliest assassin, a kleptomaniac with a dominatrix streak, and a billionaire who likes to play dress up.

You never had any chance, did you?

Unfortunately, you don't think the squirming toddler in your arms would be very understanding of your predicament.

"Uh-well, you see, we're looking for them right now! Yeah, me and my- err, friends, we're heroes?" You had just indirectly called Dick a friend, and yourself a hero. If only Slade, could see you now, Seppuku is seeming like a more attractive option with each second. But, you press on, mainly because the kid hasn't started bawling again. "And we're doing our best to find your parents right now. And until then you can just stay with me, and as soon as we find your mom and dad, I'll take you to them personally, sound like a deal?"

"You-you promise?" her voice warbles.

Something twists in your heart. This is unfair. Completely unfair. Since when did kids become experts in psychological manipulation?

"As long as you promise not to cry, deal?"

She gives a full head shake in agreement, tears slowing to a bare trickle. She wipes at her nose, scowling childishly at the snot now staining her hands, and with sufficient theatrics, uses your chest plate as an impromptu metal napkin.

Note to self, have a pocket for tissues installed into the suit.

"What's your name?"

"Ab-Abbie," she gets out in between her sniffling.

"A pretty name for a pretty girl, now how about we get you somewhere safe?"

You come to learn something very quickly about your new...ward? stoaway? parasite? And toddlers in general, get bored very, very quickly.

"Okay, ow, no, that is my nose. Yes, Abbie, I'd like to have it back. Please stop pulling my lip. No, I don't particularly like having my eyelids flipped."

It seems to make Abbie happy at least and spend less thought on her recently disappeared parents, and you, well you're considering the benefits and downsides of leaving her to find her own way home more seriously with each attempt.

Maybe you could give her something else to play with, preferably not attached to your face. Kids like that kind of stuff, right?

You fumble through your utility belt in search of something appropriate to keep the toddler entertained. Your hand closes around something suitably small.

The toddler immediately stops her torture and stares curiously at the object in your hand.

"Oh, never mind that's a switchblade. No, no! Stop trying to touch the very sharp switchblade, stop! Okay, what else do I have? Nope, I am not giving you a bullet, pouting won't help. Do you want this taser? Too bad you can't have it. Uh, alright, maybe this will work? It's a senbon, you can handle that right, right? Wait, never mind that's dart frog poison, back in the pouch with that one." You hastily return it to where it belongs, pointedly ignoring her warbling complaint.

"Hmm, what about this? Okay, no, that's a grenade. Abbie, don't bite the grenade. Ow! that doesn't mean bite my hand, incorrigible twirp. Aren't you too old for teething? "

You actually had no idea if that's true or not, and it didn't seem to matter to her either, luckily whatever demon empowers toddlers with such unholy power isn't enough to break through your skin, or the hardened leather and metal-plated gloves.

She giggles as you scowl at her intensely. "You enjoy causing me pain, don't you? Little sadist."

You get a snot-covered hand sliding across your face for your troubles. With a rapidly twitching eye, and quickly fraying patience you march through Gotham's streets, all thoughts of the mysterious woman long gone, and your only objective is extracting this little hellion from you before it tears out of your chest like some Alien facehugger.