dark wing

Medusa leans into Dark Wing’s space like it’s second nature. Lets her body gravitate toward them naturally, yearning for the warmth of their body, for their hands and the brush of her skin against theirs. She’s been touch starved for a long time, she thinks. The first few months of her return had left her cold in a way she was still recovering from, still unlearning. But now she could reach out and touch someone whenever she wanted.

Dark Wing shares with her an admission. They never lived in a house like she did. But not many people had, she supposes. An apartment, a bus, a jail cell, and then here. It was different than her childhood, in the gilded walls of her childhood home, lavishly decorated and built for high society. She’d been a little lady, a nice decoration for those who visited, a girl who was meant to be seen and not heard. Like a statue, even then. She’d gone from Lancaster House, to the war, bloody and dirty on the front lines. And then back here, to the Manor, to the home she would live in for the rest of her life.

 They say that they would like somewhere, out in the middle of nowhere, somewhere with room to be whatever they wanted to be. Stretch their wings, feel the freedom. She wants to give them that, if they do break out on their own. She wants to give them all the space in the world, wants to build a safe haven for them where they never have to worry about what people might see, or say, or think.

“I think I would.” She admits, slow. “Somewhere different, somewhere just for us. Maybe not right now, but soon, eventually.” It feels good to admit it, feels like a step forward. “I still love it here, the Manor. But it’s so full of ghosts I don’t know if I’ll ever really be able to let go, fully. And I – I want to let go.” 

She reaches out, rests a hand on their chest, over their heart. A tender touch. She lays down to look at them, her voice quieter. “I think Catalyst would be mad at me, though. If I stole you away forever. We’d have to get somewhere with a lot of guest rooms.” 

They card their fingers through her hair as she talks, enjoying the newfound closeness again as they settle into her bed. Her words make a little home in their chest, warming it with the fondness and the idea of a future they now had. They shared in her want to stay in the manor a little longer, even though they’d been living there for a decade already, they don’t like the idea of leaving it now, when so much was still uncertain with Hourglass and Judgement. If they were going to leave this place, they wanted to leave it knowing it was in good hands, and not in jeopardy of falling apart. 

“I like that idea,” they nod subtly, before leaning forward to brush a soft kiss against her lips. Their own lips soon curve into a smile though at her next words. “I thought that was just assumed,” they chuckle quietly, “I don’t think she’d even let me leave this place without promising first that she had free reign to come over whenever she wanted.” 

It’s a nice future, this one that they’re slowly building with one another as the weeks go on. And they want that future, desperately, and its the first time in some time where they feel the desperate urge to finally have something of their own for once, instead watch everyone else around them find their own separate futures. 

Pulling the blankets around the two of them, they nuzzle further into her space, their hand returning to the dark locks of her hair once they do. “Maybe the girls will finally get used to me, once I’m around more,” they say quietly, voice weighted with exhaustion as they nod their head back to the tank of snakes behind them. 

It’s funny to think that a year ago, she would have pushed Dark Wing away. She would have hated this, feeling so weak in front of them. She could have gone through hell in those early days of being back here, and she wouldn’t have sought them out. She wouldn’t have sought anyone out. Medusa had resigned herself to suffering in silence for the rest of her life, coping with things as best she could, closing herslef off to the world and just getting through it, until her life ended too and she could be done with it all. But now, she’s glad that they’re here. She’s glad that she has someone, a new family that she can lean on when things are awful and the world is working against her. 

Dark Wing pulls her in, and presses a gentle kiss to her forehead. It’s such a soft thing, she lets out a sigh at the feeling of it. It feels, with every moment, like they love her. And she couldn’t be happier that they’re here. 

She’s devastated, she feels like heart heart has been ripped apart again, but it isn’t something that can’t be fixed. They’re grown ups, made of flesh and blood, and at the end of the day even a broken heart will stitch itself back together with time and patience, and with enough care to encourage the healing. So she lets them lead her up the staris, to the comforing enclosed space of her bedroom. 

She only breaks away to strip off her costume, push her hair back away from her face. She freezes, a little bit, at their question. But it’s something she can shake off, quickly, pulling an oversized tshirt on and folding her clothes. “No, we still lived here. We had a bigger room, though.” She finally says. “I –– I liked it here, and it’s where Jim was, so…” 

She swallows, sits herself down on the edge of the bed. She sounds raw, talking about it. But it feels good. “There was this house, though. Something like an hour away from the Manor. Out in Craftsbury. It was big and it had… nice stonework, a fireplace, picture windows, room for a family. Not so close to anyone else that we couldn’t just be ourselves. We were thinking about it, I guess.” 

They watch her closely for a moment, as they wait for her response, still uncertain if they’d made a mistake in asking the question. She doesn’t seem mad at them, once she does begin to answer them, and after a moment they see a hint of catharsis settle into her frame. After removing their own uniform, they pull out a pair of lounge pants they’d stashed away in one of her drawers before joining her on the bed, situating themself closely to her as they do. 

It sounded nice, this home she tells them about. And they’re sure it’s still out there somewhere, probably occupied by a new family, one that grew up in it instead of Katherine and Ozy. Part of them wants to try to hunt it down, but the other half of them thinks that it was better to leave that dream with her and Ozy. Ozy would always be a part of their story, but they think it might be better for them to find a new future for themselves, rather than live out the one she’d hoped to have with another. 

“I’ve never lived in a house,” they confess, “not a traditional one anyway. I grew up in an apartment with my mom, then lived on a bus for a while, before spending some time in a jail cell, and then found myself living here.” They aren’t sure where exactly they see themself living after their time in the manor was over, but really, they were willing to live anywhere as long as Katherine was happy. 

“I think I’d like somewhere out in the middle of nowhere though,” they add after a moment, before leaning back on the bed, shifting themself so that their wings splayed out over the side of it. “Somewhere where I could actually roam around a yard, or even give my wings a good stretch without worrying about who could see.” 

She’s exhausted. Every inch of her. It’s a bone deep kind of weariness, the kind born from more than just physical excertion. They fight hadn’t even been a hard one, in the grand scope of things. So many of their friends had ended up far bloodier than her and Dark Wing had ever been in danger of. But sill, the day has rubbed open some of the raw wounds in her heart. 

It isn’t the kind of pain that can destroy her, even though a few months ago it might have been. She has other things to hold on to now, after all. Someone by her side, even when she falls into the quiet lull of grief, words failing her while the team cleans itself up and ties up loose ends. 

She doesn’t think about much, as they walk up to the manor. She allows the exhaustion to make her a little bit numb, just a little bit. Not enough to cut the world out, just enough to carry her through to the end of the day, back toward her bed. 

And she offers Dark Wing a smile, a weak one. But a warm one, too. Because she’ll never stop being warm for them, she imagines. They’ve earned that from her, along with her trust, and her faith, and as much of her heart as she has left to give to people. Every inch of what she has is theirs now, more or less. 

“I’m not very hungry.” She admits. Reaching out to take their hand, slipping her fingers in with his. She pulls them a little bit closer to her, to feel the distant warmth of their body. “I just want to shower and go to bed, I think. Will you come with me?”

As she goes to slip her fingers between their own they can already see her answer. And to be honest, they couldn’t agree more. That night seemed to have lasted a damn century somehow, between just finding their way to the Tower, to the fight with Ozy and Oppenheimer, and then eventually them and V carrying Ozy back out. They’re glad it went as smooth as it did, all things considering, but they’re easily the most tired they’d ever been. 

“Of course,” they reply quietly, before leaning forward to brush a soft kiss against her forehead. Giving her hand a small squeeze, they lead her up the stairs, grateful once again that they manage not to run into anyone before finally reaching her room. 

Once they’re inside, they let out a long sigh before beginning to tear off the various layers of their uniform, only struggling slightly when it came to lifting their wings up enough to slip off the layer that wrapped around their shoulders. 

“When you were here before,” they find themself asking, once they freed themself from the top half of their costume. “Were you still living here in the manor? Or had you and Ozy found your own place?” 

The kid looks visibly disappointed, as Dark Wing talks, genuinely fucking bummed, and it’s a little wild. He obviously doesn’t know what it’s like to be a teenager with super powers but he seriously doubts he would have spent his high school years idolizing super villains. Not because they were bad guys—hell, he joined the army when he was not much older than her, thought not because he respected military so much as it was just what kids like him with no prospects and no money did—but because he had a hard time imagining idolizing any adult at that age, even one like Dark Wing. 

     “Who, the fuckin’ Teen Terrors?” she answers, practically rolling her eyes. “They stopped being cool when Jetstream left. All the good villains are in the Collective, everybody knows that. No one takes the Terrors seriously, and every other group out there’s shit. Can’t I just be a Collective member? It’s not like I actually need to finish high school if I’m gonna be a super villain.”

Grizzly can’t help but snort at that. He’s really the wrong person to have been sent to talk this kid out of dropping out of high school, when he’d done the same thing. And he has a hunch Dark Wing didn’t make it to graduation either, if his best guess about how a kid with massive fuckin’ wings got bullied are anywhere near reality. 

     “You’re not getting an invite today, kid,” he says, instead of answering that. “Maybe in a couple of years. But not if you piss off our boss by lying about blowing up school toilets in the name of the Collective. You want to up your chances of joining up one day, you have to prove you know how to be smart about it, yeah?”

She seems to think about it for a second, and then looks up at the both of them, a look of resolution on her face.

      “Okay,” she says. “But only on one condition.” 

     “I wanna meet Catalyst.”

They hold their breath as Grizzly takes over for the time being, hoping that somehow they can just talk the kid out of putting such a massive target on her back. For a moment they think they’ve lost her, especially since she immediately shoots down the one place they think she’d fit in best. But Grizzly manages to sway her it seems, as she pauses to actually think for a second just what they were saying here. 

“You got a deal,” they reply, once she’s given her set of conditions. They know they should probably ask Cat first before signing her up for such a meeting, but they know her well enough by now, that she’d be totally down to meet a fan of hers, especially when said fan’s claim to fame was blowing up the toilets at their school. 

“You better not pussy out on me, DW,” Replica cautions as she extends her hand out for them to shake, because clearly this deal wouldn’t be official without one. 

“I wouldn’t imagine it- here,” they start before grabbing their own phone. Moving so that Replica could see their screen, they shoot Cat a text about meeting up with the young would-be villain, before sending her a selfie of them and Replica together. 

Once it seems like everything was just about as smoothed over as they could make it, they look over to Grizzy and give him a small nod, letting him know they were ready to wrap this up if he was. 

“You be careful posting all that shit, yeah?” They turn back to Replica one last time before they head out. “You got the makings of fucking sweet future villain, but you gotta be smart about it.” 

status: closed to @medusxa​

By the time they finally get to the manor that night, every muscle in their body aches, and their wings are hanging loosely enough that they’re dragging across the gravel of the driveway as they near the manor’s front door. They’re torn between crashing the minute they get inside or bathing, instead though, they continue to focus the majority of their attention on Katherine, whose fallen quiet again ever since they left Ozy back at the meet-up point for Lazarus to handle. 

“You want me to grab anything from the kitchens?” They ask her quietly as they open the front door, grateful that White wasn’t waiting for them on the other side, ready for an explanation on just why they all seemed to have collectively decided to play hero that night. Those questions would no doubt come later, they know, but for now they’re just grateful to put the night behind them first.

“I’m sure Jay has some leftovers stashed in the fridge if you’re hungry.” 

When Miss Mayhem finally reveals her hand, it does little to help answer the questions on their mind. It seemed she had some kind of mind reading power, or psychic ability to see ones secrets, they think. They don’t plan on bringing it up to Jet though, unless he wants to bring it up with them, so they shelve her comment away, and instead focus on the piece of information that’s important to what they’re there for. A diner- they could make that work, it was a bit public for their taste, considering what needed done, but at least they had a heading now. 

Once all seems said and done with the Teen Terrors, they bid them goodbye, promising them they’ll get the cop taken care of once and for all, before finally leaving them all behind. There really isn’t much else for them to after that than to wait, and so wait they do, until it comes closer to the time Miss Mayhem had mentioned the cop would shop up at the diner. Once they’re there, it isn’t too hard to spot him out of the rest of the diners. He’s sitting alone at the counter, hunched over a cop of coffee and that day’s paper. 

“Alright, I guess we’ll play this out,” they say quietly just before they reach the cop, “see if we can get this taken care of here, if we can’t, we can try to catch him later on when he’s alone.” 

When they reach the counter they take a seat next to the detective, thankful at least that his spot at the counter didn’t make it look all that suspicious when they sit right next to him. Once they’re seated and order themself a cup of coffee they look to Jet, letting him know that he can take the lead. He was the former Teen Terror between them, after all, if any one deserved the first shot at this asshole it was him. 

.

MISSION SUMMARY

Oppenheimer –– the real Oppenheimer, used to spar with her back in the old days. He was strong, and his powers were so interesting to her. The way he could soak up so much energy – any kind you threw at him. A punch would only make him more powerful, a bullet wouldn’t do anything but ensure you a very painful night. Ira got stronger the more you tried to hurt him. And it made him a difficult foe to face. 

She’s never tried to turn him to stone before. 

She doesn’t know, really, if that counts as energy. Powers can have such strange limitations sometimes, and the weirdest things can work or not work, depending on who you’re facing. It was all semantics at the end of the day. It’s like a dance, figuring out what’s going to work and what isn’t. 

But she gets distracted from her dance by Dark Wing, by Ozymandias. She catches sight of them, out of the corner of her eye. The two people she probably loved most in the world right now. The past and the future in the same room. Her past, and her future. The fight doesn’t seem like it’s going well. The bullets in the stunner doesn’t have any effect on Ozy, and she should have anticipated that. He was all decay, right now. His powers active because that was what someone else had decided for him. They had reduced him to this, to a tool, to the thing that could suck life away from the world. 

She hesitates, only for a second. Oppenheimer seems pulled, he wants to leave, wants to follow after wherever Sam went. He won’t follow her now when she moves. 

So she lets him go. She thinks they can find him later. And she can’t let Dark Wing get hurt. That’s the one thought in her head. To save them, to protect them, to not let Ozy touch them. 

Medusa moves quickly, and reaches them when Ozy is reaching out to touch Dark Wing’s skin, to grab them by the neck. 

She pulls Ozymandias away from Dark Wing by the half decayed fabric of his clothing. She pushes him away to make space between them, and puts herself in the middle. She’s ready to lash out, ready to turn him to stone in a glance. But when he straightens, he looks at her. And looks, and looks, and looks. Medusa hadn’t managed to push him far, too gentle as an instinct, unwilling to actually hurt him –– but she would, if she had to. If she needed to hurt him to save Dark Wing, she would do it. 

He shifts towards her, ragged movement for a second, and her breath sticks in her chest. He looks the same. Practically the same as the last time she saw him. With his beautiful face, and his kind eyes. There was feeling behind them now, but it was a distant and unknowing kind of feeling, it wasn’t right. Still, she doesn’t move away when he shifts towards her. Better for him to focus on her than Dark Wing. And she doesn’t move away either, when he reaches up, when his hand hovers over her cheek. Delicate fingers make contact, and nothing decays. 

He would never hurt her. 

So she reaches up and touches him too. A goodbye, in a simple press of her hand against his chest. “Ozy.” She says, a whisper. And then: “It’s okay. It’s all okay.” 

“I’m gonna take you home, it’s okay.” 

cw: violence, neck snapping, zombie death, blood

It all happens so quickly. One moment they’re looking over to Katherine, checking to see how she was faring in her own fight, and the next she’s standing between them and Ozy, trying to protect them from her former lover’s decaying touch. Even though they know she was far stronger than them, they can’t help but feel their heartbeat pick up when they see Ozy reach for her, his hand ghosting over the curve of her cheek before it finally touches it. They nearly jerk her away from the touch, but she seems confident Ozy wasn’t going to hurt her, and in the end her confidence seems to pay off. 

It isn’t until that realization hits, that the Ozy standing before them now had regained some fragment of his humanity, do they realize this was their window to finally subdue him. Stepping away from Katherine, they slowly walk over to where their stun gun lay on the ground, and look over to her briefly to make sure she was okay with them doing what they were planning to do next. Once her confirmation is given, they carefully step behind Ozy, whose attention was so stolen by Katherine, he didn’t seem to register what Malik was doing in the interim since Ozy’s eyes locked with Katherine’s. 

Looking over to her, they check one last time that she was ready for what was to come next, before they fire two shots into Ozy’s side. He drops instantly at the second shot, and Malik swoops in to help catch his weight before he hits the floor. Once Malik has a good hold of him, he looks back up to Katherine, their lips turning into a weak smile now that their grisly task was completed. 

“We should head-”, they begin to say until suddenly they’re interrupted by the sounds of fighting from out in the hallway. They wonder briefly if it’s Covert, but the fight sounded far more brutal and heavy-handed than one they would have expected Covert would have found himself in. 

Still holding on to Ozy, they brace for whatever battle would soon find its way to them, as the sounds of the brawl grow closer. Soon enough, a body comes crashing through the door, it’s form rolling into the room. They don’t recognize the person at first, although their costume screamed 80s superhero. It’s just as the body begins to stir, when suddenly the doors swing wildly open again, and a blur of motion races into the training room and towards the undead hero. 

The resulting collision ends with the sickly crunch of bone as the blur of motion slows to reveal V, and his foot coming down hard on the hero’s neck while his hand gripped their head upright, resulting in the hero’s body going limp immediately. 

It’s a shockingly violent sight, despite the nature of the night so far. But it wasn’t the violence necessarily that was shocking, more so the person dealing it. They’d seen V fight before, and knew he used his speed to make his blows particularly devastating, but this violence was far beyond what they’d ever seen him display before. 

V doesn’t seem to notice they’re in the room at first, as he doubles over to catch his breath. He looks like absolute shit, his hair sticking to his forehead, drenched in sweat, and his clothes were splattered with blood in varying places. He looks like he has had to fight tooth and nail through every floor of that place just to get as far as he’s come. 

“V” They say after a moment, quietly so as not to alarm him too much.

They can see V’s shoulders sag the moment he hears their voice, before he turns to look at them, revealing his face half splattered with blood as well. HIs shirt had been cut open on various spots too, as though someone had come at him with a blade, he seemed to have a few slash marks from the weapon used, but nothing looked too serious, thankfully. 

V looks between the three of them breathlessly for a moment, gaze drifting from Malik, down to Ozy, and finally over to Katherine before he lets out a shaking breath. They wish they could give him more time to collect himself, they’d known V for a decade now, and could see how much he was fighting off not falling apart at the sight of his salvation. But that has to wait until later, and knowing V, they know he’ll understand. 

“Can you help me carry him?” They ask instead, before nodding their head down to Ozy. They’re only halfway through the question though before V begins walking over beside them and slings one of Ozy’s arms around his neck. 

“The way back to the elevator should be clear,” he says quietly before looking over to them, and gives their arm a small squeeze as they help redistribute Ozy’s weight. 

She always thought that Sam was wonderful, beautiful, brave. They were one of the people she cherished back in the day, though maybe not quite as intensely as she should have been. And she’s been grateful, the last few weeks, that they’re here in this new world with her. Sharing in the strangeness of it all, being far better adjusted than her. And she’s even more grateful for them now, because they did this. They brought Oppenheimer and Ozy here, even when it meant that they couldn’t go out and find Ramses too. 

And she’s grateful, as well, because they aren’t really someone she needs to worry about. Sam can hold their own. Captain Covert is quick and stealthy, and they can avoid a lot of trouble. “When you see an opening, head out and find Ramses.” She offers him, eyes fixed now on Ira. And she tosses them the stun gun, while she’s at it. Shooting Oppenheimer, even with a stun gun, likely wouldn’t be worthwhile. The odds were that he wouldn’t feel a thing, that he would just absorb the impact and make everything worse. They were better off trying to use it on Ramses, or anyone else that they ran into. 

Oppenheimer might need to be stone, instead. 

And god, Ozy is here too. She can see him now, further back, still half looking for a target.

“I’ll take Ira.” She says, after that moment of hesitation. It isn’t too long. A split second, where she imagines facing Ozy, where she imagines possibly having to fight him, where she imagines raising a gun and pointing it at him. It’s just a stunner, it wouldn’t hurt him. He’s faced worse, and she’s done worse. But something in her quakes at the thought. But Dark Wing can face it, Dark Wing can do it for her. They’re ready and willing. “He’s more dangerous.” 

She doesn’t really need the excuse. But it’s nice to pull out. Something comforting for the parts of her that are still too proud. So she moves, careful to lead Ira further away from Sam so that they would have a chance to get away and find Ramses as well.

They nod their head quickly once she’s made her decision, giving them the task of subduing Ozy while she took on Oppenheimer. They were more than ready to take on whichever one she chose for them, and so they’re not taken off guard in the slightest when she hands them Ozy. They don’t know enough about Oppenheimer to know if he truly was more powerful than the other undead villain, or if it was just the excuse Katherine needed to give, but they don’t try to figure out which of the two it is. They were glad she gave them Ozy in the end, if only so that they could help spare her from the pain that facing him would be. 

Pulling up both their mask and hood they give her another nod before taking to the air. Between what she’d told them, and what research they did on their own, they knew that above all else they couldn’t give Ozy the chance to touch their bare skin. His touch meant death and decay, when he had the mind to do it, and they’d seen the grisly black and white photos of his various victims from the war, to know just what kind of damage he could do to them if given the chance. 

When they reach the other side of the training facility, they land on one of the steel beams above, before aiming their gun in his direction and firing three quick shots of stun ammo at him, hoping that three would be all they’d need to take him down. That hope it quickly dashed, however, when once the bullets hit Ozy they clatter to the floor breaking into small rusted fragments. 

“Right, so you can decay bullets too...”, they sigh as they stare down at Ozy whose attention was now focused in on them where they were perched above him. With their stun gun essentially useless, they toss it to the ground beneath them, before hopping down to join it. 

Ozy stands still as he glares at them, whatever thought process he did possess seemingly trying to figure out how to take down the prey standing before him. 

A chilling silence falls between them as they both look back at one another. They don’t think for a second Ozy in this state possesses the mental coherence to know just who they are and who they are to Katherine. But it is surreal for them to look at the face of the man they’d once served as a ghost for for so long, before their and Katherine’s relationship began to evolve further away from being simple distractions for one another. 

“Alright big guy, guess it’s just you and me now,” they sigh before bracing themself for the fight they really weren’t sure they could win. In a moment though it begins, once Ozy rushes towards them, and they have to side step away from avoiding him touching their face and doing unspeakable damage to it. They try their best to get around him, and try to pin him before he has the chance to grab at them, but they fail with each attempt hopelessly. 

tw also a gif with strobe effect 

She nods her head, because it was a good idea. Sharing knowledge was the best way to get out of this with as few scratches as possible. And the odds were rather high that one of them would know something about the villians or the undead that they were facing when they stepped into a fight. “Sounds like a plan, dear.” She manages, and takes a breath. 

And then she tries to do her best to focus. She couldn’t lock away all the emotions that were constantly bubbling up under her skin, given the odds of her running into someone she loved here. She was going to find Ozy one way or another, she wouldn’t leave the tower without him. Him and Ramses. The rest of them could burn in hell for all she cared. And as long as Sam was okay, most of the Guardians could join them. But she was going to try her best, she was going to put her own determination aside and do everything she could to aid the mission as a whole, as well. They had been sent here to do something, and she would do it. Save whatever idiot Guardian they got stuck with, and drag any rogue villian to safety by the scruff of their neck, if she had to. 

The sound in the hallway is much calmer than she imagined. And her forehead wrinkles in thought at that. It didn’t sound like there was much fighting going on behind the door at the end of the hallway. “Let’s just hope they don’t get in our way.” She says, a little absent, and leads them forward down the hall. 

She has to force the door open, something had fallen against it recently, it seemed. But her heart stops cold when she enters the room. It’s Ira she sees first, looking as young as she ever knew him to be. Oppenheimer. There’s another she can hear that she doesn’t have eyes on, yet. And someone in the very corner of the room, invisible. “Don’t hit him too hard.” She says, to Dark Wing. “He’ll just absorb your energy and throw it right back at you.” 

And with that, she steps further into the room, calling out. “Come on now, Ira. This is no way to behave when you’re a guest in someone else’s house.” And the zombie version of her old friend swivels around to look at her, dark intent in the eyes, mindless violence. 

The training room is disheveled when they reach it, not to the degree that speaks of some grand battle that occurred. Things weren’t smashed- more so turned over and thrown about, like the undead were looking for something. They focus their attention on what Medusa says though, as they slowly step further into the room, their guard up as they try to figure out the next best course of action.

The undead villain in front of them is one from her time, which is to their advantage, although they aren’t exactly sure how in the hell they were going to subdue the guy without hitting him too hard. 

“Kitty, dear, there’s no use in talking to him,” a third voice calls out to them shortly Katherine tries just that. They recognize the voice immediately to be Captain Covert’s, although they can’t for the life of them figure out just where he is. 

“Trust me, I tried, but the only thing that gets his attention is this,” and before they know it they see a tennis shoe being lopped from atop a corner cabinet and in the direction of Ira, pulling the villain’s attention briefly before his gaze snaps back at Katherine. 

“Sweetheart, Ozy is in here too,” they hear Covert call out to her, “I managed to lure these two in here, and was hoping to make another run outside and find Ramses, but it appears two zombies are just about all I can handle on my own.” 

They can hear Covert laugh weakly, before finally he reveals himself where he’s sitting atop the cabinet the tennis shoe had flew from. They have to fight the urge to fly up to that cabinet and kiss the hero, because he’d somehow managed to make this shitty fucking situation far less shittier by sequestering the one undead villain they were hoping to find into relative safety, and they know he did it for Katherine’s sake. 

He follows after Dark Wing and the kid as they get their coffee and head to the grocery store he’d mentioned, a few steps behind, honestly a little bemused by the entire interaction. And that bewilderment only grows when he spots five identical copies of the same teenager doing some dance routine in the parking lot, then stopping, then turning to look at Dark Wing and letting out a string of entirely incomprehensible words that he genuinely cannot begin to figure out the meaning of. 

She begins to turn the camera on the two of them, and he instinctively puts his hand up between himself and the camera to block his face, but she goes on undeterred, keeps talking to the audience—live or otherwise—on the phone.

     “That’s right, you guessed it, it’s motherfuckin’ Dark Wing! Practically the sickest villain in history. And with them, no way, you’ll never believe—” 

She looks at him, for a second, and since her face isn’t on camera, he sees her let the persona drop for just a second as she tries to figure out who the fuck he is, and okay, he has to laugh at that, because there’s no reason she would know, but he has to hand it to her, she’s bold as hell, and keeps going right on as if she hadn’t paused.

     “The one, the only KODIAK!”

He shakes his head, still laughing. If that sticks he’s gonna be pissed, it’s a shitty fucking super villain name, but for having never seen him before, she got shockingly close to the real thing with her first guess.

     “Alright, alright,” he says, finally dropping his hand, still laughing slightly as he does. “You want to turn that thing off? We’ve got some Collective business we need to talk to you about.” He eyes the camera meaningfully, in case it is live, hoping the intentional vagueness here will endear her to them a little, make her more likely to listen. And sure enough, after a moment, she concedes, giving a last few parting words to her audience before tapping the phone screen and then slipping it into your pocket. 

     “When you say ‘Collective business,’ what are we talking here?”

.

They have to bite their lip to hold back the laugh that threatens to spill out of them, when she chooses Kodiak of all names to bestow upon Grizzly. If her follower count was really what the mission file made it out to be, than they doubt this will be the last time anyone under the age of twenty shouts that name to him. 

Luckily though, Grizzly manages to convince Replica to put down her phone, that way they can finally get down to the business at hand. 

“You know what its about,” Dark Wing sighs, feeling like the mean old adult who ruined the kid’s fun, but they know it was needed here. She could get herself in some serious trouble throwing around the Collective’s name like she is, and they doubt the next people White sends her way will be as patient as they and Grizzly have been so far. 

They fix her a look then, trying to emulate every stern teacher or librarian they’d ever encountered in their life until finally she cuts the shit, and throws her hands up in surrender. 

“C’mon, you gotta admit, I seriously upped your guys’ street cred these last few months,” she chuckles. “The two of us were the only ones at our school who even followed some of you guys on Instagram. I’m pretty sure Daydreamer was the only one over five thousand followers before I came into the picture.” 

Not being on any kind of social media themself, they aren’t sure just how credible her claim is, but they could see what she was getting at. It still did nothing to change their mind though, that she shouldn’t be out there posting videos of her varying crimes then crediting the Collective as her home.

“You’re lucky you haven’t gotten yourself arrested yet,” they sigh, cringing at how grown up they sound. “You know they have teen villain organizations, right? There’s a reason why we belong to the Collective, other than cushy digs. They make sure we’re protected too- which right now you aren’t.”  

Jetstream is distinctly uncomfortable with the amount of mess these kids were in, when he heard them tell the details. He didn’t understand how someone could make children do that kind of thing for them, use them to potentially shift blame off yourself. But he supposed that’s what made him a dirty cop. Though, Jet didn’t really differentiate from the dirty and clean ones all that often. He’d never met a cop he could say he liked. They were all rat bastards at the end of the day, serving a system that was so inherently broken they could get away with nearly anything. They weren’t really there to help people nine times out of ten, and they certainly had never been there to help kids like Jet. Or kids like this. 

He thinks they should get this done fast, to make sure that the kids don’t end up with any more trouble on their hands than they already have. Dark Wing, as always, seems to be on the same page. This is what Jet has always liked about working with his friends. He can depend on them to pretty much always be on the same page as him. And he glances away from Feline, when the answer to Dark Wing’s question doesn’t come instantly. Miss Mayhem has her eyes fixed firly on him, head tilted just slightly. When he looks back, the other two are looking at her, like this is something she probably does a lot. 

“Is there something on my face?” He asks, slightly self consious, and in an instant she’s rolling her eyes. Some of the power in her gaze has been broken, something shifting in her posture. 

“I can’t believe we’re getting help someone with the worst taste in men imaginable.” She says, and it’s almost a sigh, ever the bitchy teenager. “Like, really? Is it a kinky thing?” And then she gets to her feet, brushes her hands against her skirt, and sighs. “Nevermind, I already know enough. He works at the station downtown. But he always gets lunch at the diner across the street. You’ll find him there in a couple of hours.” 

She flicks her gaze over to Dark Wing, for a moment, too. And manages a smile for them, already starting to make her departure. “If you need help beating him up, Hematoma is practically gagging for it. I’m going to let Songbird paint my nails.”

When Miss Mayhem finally reveals her hand, it does little to help answer the questions on their mind. It seemed she had some kind of mind reading power, or psychic ability to see ones secrets, they think. They don’t plan on bringing it up to Jet though, unless he wants to bring it up with them, so they shelve her comment away, and instead focus on the piece of information that’s important to what they’re there for. A diner- they could make that work, it was a bit public for their taste, considering what needed done, but at least they had a heading now. 

Once all seems said and done with the Teen Terrors, they bid them goodbye, promising them they’ll get the cop taken care of once and for all, before finally leaving them all behind. There really isn’t much else for them to after that than to wait, and so wait they do, until it comes closer to the time Miss Mayhem had mentioned the cop would shop up at the diner. Once they’re there, it isn’t too hard to spot him out of the rest of the diners. He’s sitting alone at the counter, hunched over a cop of coffee and that day’s paper. 

“Alright, I guess we’ll play this out,” they say quietly just before they reach the cop, “see if we can get this taken care of here, if we can’t, we can try to catch him later on when he’s alone.” 

When they reach the counter they take a seat next to the detective, thankful at least that his spot at the counter didn’t make it look all that suspicious when they sit right next to him. Once they’re seated and order themself a cup of coffee they look to Jet, letting him know that he can take the lead. He was the former Teen Terror between them, after all, if any one deserved the first shot at this asshole it was him. 

( tower time, the elevator? @darkxwing​ )

Medusa walked in to Guardian Tower with a strange sense of calm. 

She should have been more angry, she thinks. She should be cultivating the hate and the anger that made it so easy to use her powers. But it’s all simple, at the end of the day. This is something that needs to be done. It’s the righting of a wrong. It’s the chance to put everything back in the right place, and save a few people along the way. She doesn’t think she would have cared, probably wouldn’t have agreed to help as readily if it wasn’t for Ozymandias’s involevement in this. Oh, she might have come along for Dark Wing’s sake, even without it. She would come to protect them, or just because they asked. 

But this was personal, and her determination to fix it all helped to steady her. Medusa was strong, she never failed. The fuckers who had done all of this really didn’t know what they were getting themselves into. 

So she stands in stoney calm, next to Dark Wing, as they ride up the last few levels. 

Medusa is grateful that they got the chance for softness. She’s grateful that they’re not walking into this with things still unspoken between them. It wouldn’t feel right to face real danger and not have told Dark Wing the truth of things, the way that she felt about them, all the things she wanted. The two of them getting through this is the most important thing, she imagines. They can bring Ozy home and put him to rest, and move on together. 

So she takes the moment to breathe, and say: “Be careful in there,” as the distant sound of chaos grows louder, the building groaning around them, fighting happening in other places. “I’ll have to kill you if you’re an idiot and get yourself hurt.” It isn’t quite the emotional vulnerability that she had when they were in bed together, but Medusa always has to focus on being cold as stone when she can, cultivating her power so she can unleash it. And she knows they’ll hear the fondness behind her words, as they always do. 

The elevator comes to a stop, and she steps out, ready to face the world of chaos. 

cw: gif with strobe effect 

They’re grateful beyond words, that Catalyst had paired them with Medusa- even though they’re certain there was some intent put behind the decision than just to throw them and their girlfriend together. They’d told Cat about Ozy, after the discovery at the cemetery, and Medusa’s connection to him. So they can’t help but think Cat must have recognized that while Medusa was a hell of a good fighter to have here, she was going to need someone with her that could keep her grounded at the same time. Someone to help her keep one foot locked in the present, while the rest of her was going to have to face this tragic part of her past. 

There was no telling if they would face Ozy tonight, there were numerous other undead villains running around that Tower, and rogue villains they’d been friends with too. The chance of them running into Ozy was slim probability wise, although they know Medusa wouldn’t stop searching that Tower until they did finally find him. 

“If we run into someone you know, let me know how best to subdue them,” they say after nudging her shoulder with their own after her last comment. “I’ll do the same. Between the dead villains and heroes from the 50s, and the rogue villains, we both know intimately a few of these guys running around here.” 

When they reach their floor finally, they find the dimly light hall hallway free from the sounds of a fight. In fact, it’s nearly free from any sounds at all except for the distant clatter and movement behind a door at one of the other ends of the hallway. The sounds weren’t violent necessarily, more like it sounded as though someone was searching for something- or maybe someone. 

At times like this, Katherine isn’t sure how she ever really held back. She probably wouldn’t have been able to do it for so long, if she hadn’t spent so much time when she was growing up building walls for herself. The only person who used to have an all access pass to her was her brother, sweet Jim, who would accept her for anything and everything that she was. He never flinched away from her, even when she was turning their family to stone. She repaid the effort in turn, though. After the war, she was the one who accepted him for exactly what he was, exactly the kind of life that he wanted to live. It feels so strange to feel this much for someone now. Malik deserved it, she thought. They deserved all of her and so much more, so much better than what she could give to them. Her heart aches with it, when they nuzzle into her hand, when they let out a soft sigh at her words. They seem relieved, almost. It seems like exactly what they want.

And she decides she definitely isn’t going to be holding back anymore. 

Neither of them are, it seems. Because they pull her closer into their arms, they kiss her with an intensity that makes her come alive. There’s so much feeling in it, intense, mixed in with the tender adoration of them. She doesn’t hold back either, lets herself melt into the feeling, lets herself return it all. It feels like a promise, in some strange way, a vow that she isn’t fucking with them when she tells them she wants to live a life together. She can’t believe that she’s lucky enough to have this, suddenly. It’s been right in front of her for so long, and she’s been clouded by grief and pain. Maybe they would have had this intensity earlier, if she hadn’t lost so much. But it’s all the better for having earned it slowly. She thinks it will last longer this way, with the knowledge that they don’t mind her baggage, that they’ll accept her even with the long and storied past she brings to the table. 

She feels breathless when the kiss ends, mirroring the ragged pattern of their breathing. And even more breathless, then, at the words they say. Eloquent as always. It almost makes her want to cry, but she doesn’t. She smiles instead, uninhibited and bright, and manages to laugh. “I know now.” She gets out, and kisses them again, quick but just as intense. “I love the fuck out of you as well,even if  it took me so long to see it.” She scatters a kiss along their cheek. “I’ve been – it’s been hard to imagine what life would be like now. If I wanted to be a person at all anymore. But you make me want… fuck, everything. Every stupid thing people do together. Houses and promises and kids, or cats, or whatever you want.”

They let out a small laugh, both freeing and giddy in the way it makes them feel nearly like some dumb teenager, head over heals for their first crush. They weren’t looking for her to return their sentiment yet- only if she wanted to, and the fact that she does makes the world seem suddenly full of possibilities. They could want more than this life- they were allowed to now, and voice those dreams and aspirations with her. They’d never quite let themself think their life would ever move any further beyond the manor, and yet here was that the future now, staring up at them with those damn eyes of hers. 

“Me too,” is all they say at first, because fuck... they aren’t sure what more there was to say. There would be more talks like this in the future, now that they’ve crossed this bridge together. There would be more time later on, to discuss just how precisely they wanted to move forward from here, and the timeline they wanted to take that all in. 

And they were content with that- more than content actually. They were ecstatic at the potential of the all those conversations and decisions that now seemed so within reach. 

She doesn’t think they’re expecting it, for Katherine to look at them and ask a real question. With her eyes earnest, full of a distant longing. Malik looks like he’s taking it seriously, propping themself up to look down at her. She knows that the question probably comes out of the blue, but she feels like she should stop waiting. Katherine knows she can’t spend the rest of her life living like a ghost, lingering on the things that had been taken away from her. She wanted something new. A life to look forward to.

And she wanted to know if Malik meant it when they said things like that, if they really had a future together. If not, well. God, it would make her so sad. She’s not delusional enough to think it would kill her. She knows better than most that you can survive even when you lose someone. But she doesn’t want that to happen with them. She doesn’t want to lose them, or to have to find someone else who makes her feel as good as they do. 

But by the look in their eye, the gentle caress of their hand against her cheek, she doesn’t think she should really be worrying about that. They’ve never run away from her before, and all of this has shifted so much since its started. It’s clear that they both care about each other far more than they ever planned at the start of this. She leans in to the touch, letting out a soft breath of amusement at their words. She’d always thought she would be one of those weirdos too. After all, she had spent so much of her life in this house. After all, it had been easier to imagine it was her home when half her family seemed to live there. Her brother, and Clara, who was like a sister to her. And Ozy, and all of their friends. But even then, she would have liked a place of her own, distant. 

“More with you.” She breathes, because it’s an offer that would have been hard to imagine a long time ago. She wasn’t sure that she even really deserved it now. Dark Wing would be well within their rights to keep everything exactly the way it had been before. When she thinks about the way she treated them at the start of things, like a placeholder, someone to touch her while she thought of someone else… It makes her feel guilty, and a little sick. Because they deserved better than that. Because they deserved the world, and she had realised that far too late. But they say that she can have it, they say it’s already hers. And god, they sound besotted, in their own way. They sound like they feel so much, and she could drown in it now if she let herself. And shes so glad that they feel like they can laugh about it, because it makes her smile as well, something genuine and soft blooming across her face. She brushes fingers against their cheek in turn, and nods her head.

“I’d like that. More with you. All of you. If I have to have a life with anyone, I think you’re…” My best option, she could say, and slip into that old mannerism where she acted like they were only there because she had no other people she could lean on. But she takes a breath, and carries on. “I think you’re the only person I’d really want to do it with.”

She doesn’t shy away from them, when they reveal even the smallest hint of the wealth of adoration they feel towards her. They didn’t think she would exactly, not with how far they’ve come, and when she was the one to guide them further into the topic at hand. It’s still a relief though, when she leans into them further, they nuzzle her hand when it finds their cheek, scratching at her palm with their stubble. When she does finally answer them, and it’s everything they ever hoped or wanted to hear from her, they close their eyes for a moment to let out a long release air, letting themself ride out the next hit of emotion that washes over them as they do. 

They never thought they’d have something like this, it just never seemed in the cards. They weren’t someone people generally looked to for a relationship of this nature. They were supposed to be the fun and casual one, someone to go to for a good roll in the sheets, and a few drinks here and there but nothing more. They were Dark Wing, after all, Dark Wing wasn’t the type to settle down or want anything more than what they already had. Malik, however, did....

When she says just that though- that they were someone she wanted to try to have all of that with, all they can do is kiss her again- because fuck... it’s the only thing on their mind. They don’t think they have the mind in that moment anyway, to string together a coherent response, but they carry every bit of adoration they have for her in that kiss, as they move their lips against her’s desperately, taking in every bit of her they can, while flooding her with everything they can’t find the words to say. 

She can feel herself blushing slightly at their words, the light and teasing nature of the moment. If they ever moved out of the manor… she can imagine that, a home away from this building full of ghosts, somewhere thay would suit them both. The idea should scare her – it does, a little bit, but when she examines the fear it’s nothing but muscle memory. And she’d had that issue with Ozy, too. The parts of her that always chimed in and told her she shouldn’t want the softer parts of life. The parts of her that thought for so long that she didn’t want a cozy house away from here, or a wedding, or children, or any of those things. That was all Elizabeth’s domain, her oldest sister who had taken such joy in the life of a housewife. That could never be Katherine. But she’d started to realise, even then, that she could have those things and still be her. Not all wives had to be like her mother. Not all mothers had to be like Elizabeth, cold and perfect and utterly devoted to the wrong things. Katherine would have been different from them, if she allowed herself. 

So she shoos away the fear, and tries to be strong instead. 

“Temperature control built in.” She muses, trying to keep her voice light, after that moment in hesitation. “Oh, the wonders of living in the future.” She shifts a little, resting in the expanse of their arms, turns her face just a little bit more into the pillow. Because she feels foolishly vulnerable now, soft and bare in front of them. She feels the furthest from stone she’s ever been, at least in recent memory. “I wouldn’t kick you out, even if we didn’t have that.” She says, a little quieter, like its a secret. “I’d just learn to put up with being gross and sweaty, for you.”

And she probably could have just stayed quiet, and not said something that felt stupidly sappy. But she’d done it now, so there was no going back, so she twisted a little to actually look at them, to see their eyes, to try and see how they actuallt felt.  

“Would you actually want to do that, someday? Leave here?”

There is a moment- a minute one, that passes briefly, where they fear they have let slip too much. That their words on a possible shared future, as thoughtlessly spoken as they were, may push her back into that shell of hers again. They can almost feel it in her body where it rests against theirs, the tension that builds then just as quickly is released. The hand that still rested on her stomach caresses her there soothingly as a response, wanting nothing for her but to feel as comfortable as possible, whether that be keeping them where they are, or venturing further into whatever it was that could lay ahead for them. 

“Hm, jokes on you, I like making you sweat,” they hum in satisfaction, letting their tone in the tease get a little feral as they relax into their pillow. And they think that’ll be the end of the conversation, and they’ll slip back into the comforting quiet of the morning, before eventually chasing back down that little feral edge in their words, and make the morning of it. 

But then she turns, those large brown eyes of hers they so often get lost in meet theirs, and they realize she’s looking for something in them.  She’s testing the waters, they realize, as she carefully shifts her position, her gaze curious. Realizing they needed to be more attentive- more focused on the words that were about to come next, they move their hand that was resting beneath them to perch their head up, so they could properly look down at her. 

“I used to think I would be one of the old weirdos, still living here in my fifties,” they confess, as they slip the hand that’d been resting under her shirt, out from underneath it and towards her cheek. “And if you want that- to stay here,” they add as they caress her cheek, “like this, I would do that, for you.” 

They lean down briefly before they continue, and capture her lips in theirs, kissing her gently before pulling away again. 

“But if you wanted more than that, and wanted to have that ‘more’ with me...” they add quietly, “I would give you that, you know? I mean, I wouldn’t even need to give it to you, because it’s yours already, any bit of me you want, when you want, it’s yours.” 

He’s impressed with the hangout they’ve pulled together, the way it all looks, the atmosphere of it. He sends smiles towards the scattered members of the terrors, and lets his eyes trail over the half finished testament to the Teen Terrors of old. He thinks he can see a flash of purple that matches his jacket, in the paint, and it almost makes him want to blush. Hero worship: that was a feeling he was familiar with too, when he first joined the Terrors. They all tended to find someone to fixate on, safety nets and people to make family out of. 

The two other members Feline leads them to must be around his age –– the elders of the group, Jetstream can see that much. The pseudo leaders, the grand council., the ones who felt like they had to take responsibility for everyone else. They’d all be in the Collective someda, probably, learning how to live outside of this place. Jetstream can’t help but melt a little, meeting them all, watching them all interact with each other. This is familiar to him, this kind of family. 

Jetstream gives them both a little wave, when he slips on to the lovesteat, says a brief hello.

Hematoma’s demenor is different from Feline, and Jetstream feels a burst of fondness for them somehow, seeing the scowl spread across their face. He’s about to open his mouth and promise they will put an end to this problem for them, but the blonde girl is shifting first, sending an eyeroll in their direction.  

“Because killing a cop is totally an accusation we need landing on us right now.” The girl, Miss Mayhem, says. Her voice is tinged with a small amount of sarcasm, but there’s fondness leaking through as well. She loves these people. And he takes a second to take her in, this girl who looks like she should be in High School, like she should be a cheerleader or being crowned the prom queen. She hasn’t quite looked at him or Dark Wing yet, and Jetstream doesn’t really understand why. But then again, these people are all moody teenagers. 

Hematoma levels that scowl in her direction, then, but even that isn’t sharp. He can see the resignation in Feline’s face, as he watches this obviously well worn routine. “Dudes,” he whispers, semi-scolding, “We’ve got company.” 

Jetstream half smiles, and cuts in before Miss Mayhem can again. “So tell us what exactly your dealing with here. This cop is… blackmailing you into being his own private crime squad? What exactly has he been making you all do for him?”

Dark Wing sits back quietly and enjoys the show unfold before them. It only serves to make them further wish that they could have found a place like this instead of flounder for as long as they did. If they’d been a Teen Terror, they could have easily been able to avoid the troubles they faced themself- and largely alone before they finally came knocking on the Collective’s front door. 

“Mostly a bunch of grunt work- everything from delivering shady ass packages, to destroying shit he gives us. Clearly shit that if he got caught- the blame could easily fall on us than him,” Hematoma answers. 

“Taking bribes seems to be his main cash flow,” Feline adds after a moment, “and I think he’s selling stuff out of the evidence locker. At least that’s what I’d guess is in the packages, but I tell all of our guys never to mess with shit more than they have too. The less our hands are involved with this the better.” 

It’s easy to see just how in deep these kids have gotten themselves, and the more they help this scumbag the further in they get. Jet and them needed to get this shit taken care of and quickly, they think to themself, before these kids get so far deep they’ll never be able to get out clean from it.