Adrian gets taken over by a butterfly right as they’re on the verge of victory, after they’ve killed the cow and when the team figures out what’s happened they’re all like “well this is horrible but we have to kill him obviously”

and Peacemaker can’t bring himself to let them actually shoot Adrian so he trusses butterfly Vij up and stashed him in a safehouse while he tries to find a cure. He has about 3 weeks before the butterfly starves and Adrian’s body dies too. 

this whole time the team is looking for them, maybe they think Adrian escaped and did something to Peacemaker? but eventually Leota finds them and Chris begs her not to give them up and to help him find a cure

and of course this whole time butterfly Adrian has been running his mouth about things that Adrian loved and hated through all his interactions with Chris, every time he was hurt, every time he made him smile. And also just being a whole new level of unsettling by wearing Adrian’s face but not acting like him at all

(one of the worst moments is when they realize he’s a butterfly and he’s trying to act like Vigilante with the body language and the speech patterns, and failing in a truly unsettling way)

Leota keeps their location secret (maybe the butterfly is getting really weak from starvation, maybe he’s running out of time regardless) and she starts doing her own research into how to possibly save Adrian

She comes back with a Hail Mary plan, tells Chris- you’re not going to like it but this is all there is. What’s the plan? Butterflies can only inhabit a living host, so if Adrian’s body dies the butterfly will be forced to leave. If they drown him, keep him underwater until the butterfly is gone there might be time to resuscitate him. Lots of angst, it’s all very dramatic. Gee I wonder who’s going to administer the CPR?

But it works! Adrian coughs up a bunch of water and has no memory of anything after the battle,or what the butterfly might have confessed to Chris, but he’s going to be ok!

The journal was fake, that much had been made public. Everything else the cops, butterflies and butterfly-cops had impounded was supposed to be returned to him after Leota’s press conference, but the wheels of reversing injustice moved slowly. And the road back out of the evidence locker was 85% cracks. Chris had spent a tedious Thursday signing forms and sitting on uncomfortable plastic benches at the precinct next to a woman trying to recover her family’s electronics- there were four kids and herself after all, and only the oldest was accused of a crime, and she couldn’t afford to replace two laptops, five phones, an iPad and one of those smart picture frames that runs a little slide show of your photos. “Just the electronics”, she sighed, “They took all my makeup. In case the powder was drugs, ya know? But I don’t have the time to argue them over it.”

Chris tried to feel his breath and ignore his heartbeat as he reached hour five of waiting. He tried not to think about his-- Keith’s--  records (devastating) and the box of sex toys (humiliating) and the dozens of other things that the police had decided they needed to take a closer look at. And the letters-- fuck-- the letters. 

It might be fine. They might just be dismissed as garbage, although the thought of them ending up in the office shredder made it hard to breathe. He’d held on to them for so long, kept them safe.

And even though he’s working hard to unload the internalized toxic masculinity there’s a small part of him that’s secretly pleased that he doesn’t have triggers. No criticism- totally fine if other people have triggers, they’re a real thing and don’t mean anything about a person’s character. But ya know, personally ~*he’s*~ never had one.

Until the day he’s sparring with Adrian in the woods- they’ve blown through all the explosives and ammo they can spare on shits and giggles- and they’re on to some hand-to-hand. Until Adrian gets him pinned, on his back with Vigilante looming over him- which has happened before, Adrian is perfectly capable of taking him down depending on how the fight is going (not to mention other circumstances where they end up like this).

Only then the sun goes behind Adrian, and for a moment he can’t see his opponent’s face. Just a searing halo of light around a void. And it’s not Adrian above him, it’s Rick Flag.

@peacemakernet EVENT 02: once more, with feeling!

Sadness

Happiness