#phoenixtouched

Madrox still got antsy any time Rictor went up to the roof. He tried to hide it, but he wasn’t nearly as good at masking his emotions as he pretended to be and the nervousness was palpable any time he saw Ric heading up the stairs. It was why he’d waited until the other man was out on a grocery run to slip away, six pack in hand, to sit in the lawn chair Monet had dragged up there weeks ago. It was dark out, a good indicator that Monet wouldn’t come up and steal the chair for herself because she’d only brought it here for sunbathing anyway.

It would make them all feel better, he figured, to know he wasn’t up here alone. Rachel was a good person to have watch his back even if the thing she was watching it against was him. They’d been sitting on the roof in silence for a while now, sipping beer and staring up at a sky too polluted to see the stars, when she broke the silence with a quiet statement. Rictor hummed in acknowledgement, looking down at the bottle in his hand. 

“Did you think it would be better here?” It was something he’d wondered since she showed up. “When you came to this... time, this world, this whatever, did you think it’d be better?” He paused taking a long swig from his bottle. “Is it better? There’s still monsters. Still darkness. Still... I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine it could be worse than this, sometimes. At least for me.”

When Danny said he wanted a small wedding, what he meant was he didn’t want reporters and flashing camera lights. He’d always longed to have people around him, even before the loneliness that came with laying in a snowdrift oceans from home or sitting on the cold dirt floor of a hut that was too big and too small at once where no one would speak to him in a language he understood. He liked people, wanted people around. So, when it came time to send out the wedding invites, he wasn’t stingy.

He didn’t expect everyone he invited to show up, but he was pleasantly surprised at the number of attendees. He was also pleasantly surprised at some of the familiar faces. There was a bounce in his step as he made his way over to Rachel, grinning from ear to ear. “Hi!” He greeted with a wave. “You made it! I wasn’t sure you would. I thought, you know, maybe it was dumb. I didn’t think you liked me much? After the thing. With the fire escape. But you’re here! And I’m married! Hi!” The guests weren’t the only ones taking advantage of the open bar, as it turned out.

The question was, actually, one he got fairly often. Anyone who knew anything about the Green Lantern rings knew exactly how powerful they were and, by extension, assumed that anyone who had one didn’t need anything else watching their back. But Simon, he knew better. He still remembered being stuck in Edward Wale’s basement, staring down the barrel of a pistol. He still remembered calling on his ring to help him, still remembered the way it didn’t respond. Insufficient charge. It was dumb luck that allowed Simon to survive the experience, and dumb luck wasn’t something he was comfortable relying on indefinitely. 

So he had a gun. It was holstered at his side, like a safety net, a just in case kind of thing. He didn’t use it particularly often, but having it made him feel better. It made him feel powerful, made him feel calm, made him feel like he was still the one in charge. But people still asked the question.

Rachel asked the question, and Simon followed her eyeline to the holstered weapon at his side, feeling self conscious in a way he usually didn’t. He shifted, letting his jacket drop over the weapon’s handle. “To shoot stuff?” He offered with a grin that was more forced than his usual fare, tilting his head to the side. “The universe is a pretty sketchy place.”

It was a stupid decision on her part. Truthfully, Rachel didn’t know why she’d done it. Perhaps it was too much time spent with Gar, who would have thought it funny. Perhaps it was the influence of Kon, who could never quite say no to a fight. Perhaps it was Tabby, whose emotions were so explosive they often lingered in the air long after she was gone. Or perhaps it was Raven, who was two years out from the last thing she remembered and desperate for something, anything to fill that gap. The reason, she suspected, mattered very little. What mattered was that she was ducked behind a dumpster with a girl with red hair, waiting for a group of angry men to lose interest and leave them alone. And Rachel had instigated it.

Maybe the Young Justice were, collectively, a bad influence.

“I didn’t think they’d do it,” she hissed in return, shifting where she sat. She had no reason to hide. She could take the men, if she wanted. But Rachel was a pacifist, and she didn’t want to build violence where it didn’t need to be. She didn’t want to respond with anger when peace could do the trick. “They’ll lose interest soon. Men tend to have short attention spans.”

When there was a battle to be fought, Scott often shifted back into what he’d always thought of as ‘soldier mode.’ If his normal demeanor was stoic, soldier mode was another level. He became a literal man on a mission, someone wholly focused on fighting his battle and nothing else. That had its pros, sometimes. It meant he could do what it took to keep his people safe, to keep them alive.

But it also meant he missed things, sometimes.

It meant he stood beside his daughter in a fight and saw that she was struggling only to compartmentalize and push the realization back, like moving something down the to-do list, like prioritizing. That was exactly what he did when Rachel showed up to the fight with Malice, chest heaving and eyes wild. And maybe he did a bit of it in the aftermath, too. Maybe he kept pushing that thought away, even when he knew he shouldn’t. It wasn’t for no reason, of course. He got more information on the situation, because that was what soldiers did. He made sure he understood what had happened to her. He waited until he didn’t feel like he’d break if he tried to bring it up. And it was selfish and it wasn’t entirely fatherly, but he was still learning. He was still trying to figure out how to fight this battle.

When he was ready, he found her in the park. It was a nice one --- lots of trees, a wooden playground with roots tangling around it. It looked like something out of a fairytale. He could understand why she liked it. He sat beside her on the bench, watched a child on the swing shout for her father to look at her, felt a pang of grief and guilt at the sight. For a moment, he didn’t say anything. Then, he cleared his throat. “Hey,” he greeted quietly. “I, uh... I was wondering if you wanted to talk.” Off to a great start.

Rusty was talking his fucking ear off.

It was something Rictor had gotten used to at age fourteen, when Rusty couldn’t decide if he wanted to be an insufferable, bossy leader or a protective, well-meaning older brother and settled on both, nagging Rictor every time he did anything remotely rowdy with Tabby in tow. Rictor had spent years with Rusty rambling on and on about what he should and shouldn’t do, and after a time, he got used to it. Learned to tune it out, to ignore it.

But Rusty had been dead for years now, and Rictor was out of practice. 

He practically stormed into Rachel’s apartment, Rusty (or the ghost of Rusty, he supposed) hot on his heels still ranting up a storm. Rictor skillfully ignored him as he flopped onto Rachel’s couch. “Dead guy’s been following me around,” he said, pointing back to the ghost with his thumb. “You see him too, right? ‘Cause if I’m imagining this, I’m out. I’m going to knock myself upside the damn head with a crowbar and get some rest.”

“You’re not giving yourself a concussion just so you can ignore me, Julio,” Rusty snapped. Rictor leaned his head against the back of the couch and wordlessly flipped him the bird before turning back to Rachel.

“Do you wanna get ridiculously drunk?”