Gods and Monsters [cs: torture and murder and scary stuff]

[beetlebutt]

Jaime Reyes was standing on a street in El Paso, looking very confused, and talking to himself. Well, at least it looked like he was talking to himself. Really, he was talking to the scarab, because the two of them were trying to figure out what the heck had just happened. The world had blurred, Jaime had passed out and now...

"This is so not El Paso."

Now he was in a place that was home and yet not home.

|T L[][]KS \|/E|RD. \|/HERE'S THE PUTT-PUTT?

"Exactly. And that - what is that? That building wasn't there yesterday. Neither was that bank building. And where's the El Diablo?"

/-\LTERN/-\TE D|/|\ENS|[]N?

"Are your sensors picking up anything weird?"

...SENS[]RS /-\RE |N[]PER/-\T|[]N/-\L.

After doing a systems check, the scarab trilled a little wordless cry of alarm.

"What's wrong?"

/|\UTIPLE SYSTEMS |N[]PER/-\T|[]N/-\L. []NLY B/-\S|C L|FE SUPP[]RT, B/-\SIC TR/-\NSF[]O/|\/-\T|[]N /-\B|L|T|ES, /-\ND C[]/|\/|\S /-\V/-\|L/-\BLE. D|/-\GN[]ST|CS UN/-\BLE TO DETER/|\INE WHY.

"Whoa, whoa, okay, calm down, you're kinda panicking. Stop with the brain klaxons, okay?"

|'/|\ RUNN|NG BL|ND. Y[]U C/-\LM D[]WN!

"I know this is freaky, and you're not used to being blind like this, but you're still conscious and I'm still conscious, and we're not fighting an evil death satellite or, I don't know, being shot at by aliens. We'll figure this out, okay? Just keep a cool head."

The response was a very surly, | D[]N'T H/-\VE /-\ HE/-\D.

Jaime rolled his eyes. "You know what I meant, Mr. Literal. Look, we'll figure this out, okay?"

In fact, maybe he could just talk to someone and get some answers. Some teenagers ran down the street towards him.

"Hey! Very, very lost superhero here," he said, waving them down. "Any chance you could -"

They didn't notice. In fact, with a feeling like cold mist, they ran right through him. Jaime froze up after they did, expression stricken.

"Okay, we're a ghost or something and no one can see, hear, or touch us. Time to panic."

| T[]LD Y[]U!

Comments

[mark_in_the_sands]

"Nightwing, Khaji Da," Cassie said, gesturing to each in turn by way of introduction. "Khaji Da, Nightwing."

She listened as Brainy described the injuries that had been inflicted on Jaime by this alternate universe Harley Quinn, eyes going cold and fingers curling into fists that made her knuckles creak.

"I certainly don't object to that plan," she said with a nod toward Jaime/Khaji Da. "Did you see -- or sense -- anyone else? Anyone who might have been able to make that device or nerve gas?"

[goddamnwingman]

"Greetings, Khaji Da." The beetle had a name. Interesting and something that Dick would keep in mind. Because that was the kind of guy he was. And it was better than just calling the symbiote 'hey you' or something similar.

He kept quiet and let Brainy and Cassie speak for the moment. Their questions were questions that he had as well. For the moment, he did what he did best and listened, letting things slot into place for himself.

[beetlebutt]

HARLEY = N[]T W[]RKING AL[]NE. THERE WAS A TEENAGE GIRL WH[] C[]ULD C[]NTR[]L FIRE. JAIME HAD WHAT HE CALLS "BAD VIBES" S[] WE RAN BUT SHE KN[]CKED US B[]TH []FFLINE. WE W[]KE UP AS A PRIS[]NER OF HARLEY. 'Prisoner.' Singular. The scarab's concept of self was very different from a human's and Jaime's was, over time, becoming different, too. A lot of 'us' and 'we' and treating their physical form as a singular. THEN IT WAS REEET REEET REEET WITH HARLEY. THE FIRE GIRL MUST HAVE GIVEN US TO HER. Even more proof Kuk had a large group working together. The girl who controlled fire took them out, then handed them over to Harley to play with. But before they could talk about that anymore, Jaime started to stir. JAIME/H[]ST-FRIEND IS WAKING UP. HE IS VERY AGITATED. He seemed to be fighting his way to consciousness, fighting past the stupor the myth healing had him in. His body wanted to rest but his mind was still on alert, still afraid. His pulse increased slightly on the monitor as he started to finally wake up, his eyes flicking open just enough to see the green face working over him and the circles of lighter skin. Green face and circles, where had he seen - oh. He went from 0 to panic in about two seconds. He'd already woken up in the clutches of another supervillain today and it didn't seem that out there to wake up in the hands of another. "Brainiac!" Jaime cried out, terrified, and the heart monitor made it clear that his pulse had suddenly keyed up to become incredibly rapid. He moved with such speed that only Cassie really had a chance of stopping him, sitting up and slashing so fast that the suit had to spring up around his hand and form the claws in the middle of his hand's arc in the air. The transformation wasn't complete, because the scarab was trying to fight Jaime for control and calm him down. Brainy, who currently had his shields down while he helped treat Jaime, and who'd briefly turned away to grab a device, turned back to claws heading straight for his face.

[mark_in_the_sands]

Cassie had already been moving to Jaime's side when Khaji Da said he was waking up; even so, she barely managed to get herself between the Titan and the Coluan in time to divert Jaime's claws away from Brainy's face.

"Easy, Beetle, easy!" she said, trying for a combination of both commanding and soothing. She didn't want to freak him out further, but she also didn't want her ignoring her words in his panic. "It's me, Wonder Girl." She wrapped her arm around his extended one to restrain him from moving it further, or from ducking around her to attack again.

"You're safe here. He's a friend."

[goddamnwingman]

Nightwing tensed, but there was no way that he could have moved in time to save anybody. Instead, once Cassie had hold of Blue Beetle's arm, he moved forward into the boy's line of vision.

And, consequently, putting another body between Beetle and Brainy.

"I know it's a lot to process at the moment, but you are safe." He wasn't resorting to his 'Bat' voice yet, but that might happen soon enough if Jamie didn't calm down. "You're hurt and that's going to be fueling the adrenaline spike you've just gone through, but right now, you're safe and we're doing what we can to get you patched up, but for the moment, just listen to our voices, mine and Cassie's, all right?"

[beetlebutt]

AND MINE. "But he's - he's - Brainiac -" N[]T BRAINIAC. SAME SPECIES. "Not Brainiac?" he said, tilting his head the way he often did when focusing on what the scarab was saying. N[]T BRAINIAC. HE IS A RUDE BUT HELPFUL C[]LUAN D[]CT[]R. SAFE. Y[]U ARE SAFE. JAIME-H[]ST/FRIEND. SUIT FUNCTI[]NS = NEARLY FULLY []PERATI[]NAL. TITANS ARE HERE. KHAJI DA + TITANS WILL N[]T LET ANY[]NE HURT Y[]U. These two were Titans and Khaji Da knew what that meant to Jaime. Even though he'd left the team, the solidarity he'd felt with them, the relief that came of hanging out with superheroes his own age - that understood everything he was dealing with - were things that Khaji Da was acutely aware of. So that was what he used to try to calm Jaime down. Jaime had left the team not because he didn't want to be around them anymore but partly because his parents had concerns about the danger and mostly because he cared too much. Eddie's death had weighed heavily on him and he'd needed some time to think. Now that Jaime's vision was a little less bleary, the green guy looked very different from the towering, imposing villain he'd seen on TV. And the room, which in his fevered and terrified mind had initially looked like some kind of scientific torture chamber (like he'd been in once before), seemed to be just a Medbay. It definitely looked a lot more medical than scary. He'd been to his mom's work often enough to recognize some of the machines and things. There was also someone else, some strange guy that Jaime had never seen before, who seemed to using some kind of power on him. He looked about as threatening as a kitten. Jaime looked around, his head wobbling as he did, clearly disoriented, trying to force his eyes to focus. Cassie. Cassie was here. And Nightwing. He'd only met Nightwing a few times when the younger Titans had teamed up with the older Titans, but he'd been friendly enough. And he was a grown up who knew what he was doing and he was a Titan, too. Jaime knew how it worked: once a Titan, always a Titan, and even though he'd left the team, he knew the two people standing here had his back. Safe. He was safe now? He was alive? He was still sitting up and now that he wasn't trying to attack Brainiac, he went limp in Cassie's grip, leaning against her, the claws retreating, his hand gripping her sleeve with a death grip. He looked at his knee, propped up, healing, at the drains in it. He looked down at the horrible bruise on his side. It didn't really hurt. He felt a vague sensation of an ache and a hitch in his side but whatever was treating his pain was doing a good job. When he reached up his free hand to an itch at his temple he felt some kind of Star Trekky device there - possibly what was blocking his pain? He felt comfortable. Scared but physically comfortable, at least. He seemed to be wearing clean boxers and all the blood had been washed from his skin. He reached his hand to tug a bit on the oxygen tubing, just verifying that was there, in a fuzzy, 'oh, this is here' kind of way. It made sense he'd be on oxygen. He'd drowned and he'd thought he was dying and maybe he even had died for a little while. He probably'd had to be resuscitated. The way he was acting, dazed and shaking, gave off the sense that he was establishing that reality was real. Poking and prodding at it to be sure he was here. Then, head still wobbling, he looked up at Cassie. "Harley Quinn. She was - she - fire girl kicked my butt and - and - I woke up. And I was on a meat hook, and Harley Quinn - she -" He couldn't seem to articulate anything. "There were people, there were - she had people with wires. Propped up. She was going to put wires in me. She was -" This was real. He was in some kind of Medbay, clinging to Cassie and she was real. This was real. Cassie and Nightwing were from home. They wouldn't let Harley Quinn put wires in him. "Parts. They were. There were parts. People. Parts. Part of - bins. Bags and - on the table." Parts everywhere. "I think I stepped on a lady's hand," he said distantly. There had been a wedding ring on it. He remembered that. There had been a wedding band, like his parents', and the little kids had been Milagro' age and - And as understanding finally caught up to him, as his addled brain started to think again, as the weight of being free - when so many of those people never made it out - finally bore down on him, there was no force on earth that would've been able to hold him together. Nothing had the right gravitation pull to stop him from crumbling. He tried to hold it in - something he never did with his family - because he was a superhero and he was in front of other superheroes, but the force of the effort he exerted doing it only contributed to causing all the brittle bits of him to shatter and snap even faster. His breakdown started with the shaking intensifying as he looked up at Cassie, then his eyes started welling up, and then, still clinging to her sleeve with his one hand, he buried his face in his other hand, his whole body shaking violently as he tried to hold it all in.

[mark_in_the_sands]

Cassie made soothing noises as Jaime went limp in her arms.

"You don't have to tell us now," she murmured. "Khaji Da's been filling us in. You don't have to do this now. We've got someone looking in on the...pieces."

Oh, they were absolutely going to not-kill this version of Harley Quinn repeatedly in the face so hard. And if she couldn't be caged...

As Jaime's face started to crumple, Cassie cast a quick glance around at the others in the room. "Tadashi, Br- Doc, could we get a moment?"

It'd be best to save the "well, the guy who put you back together actually is a Brainiac, just the heroic one from the future" talk for sometime that was not now.

"Jaime, it's okay," she said softly, moving in to hug him without tugging on his bandages of jabbing him anywhere that was still healing. "Don't try to hold it in. No one's going to think less of you for crying, and no one's going to say anything either. We got you. We've got your back."

[goddamnwingman]

"I checked on my way here and Bunny is already headed back where you were found to deal with the mess. Took one of the other transplants with him." So that Jamie, at least, knew that it wasn't being ignored. So that he'd know something was being done. Though Nightwing hadn't had much to do with Jamie at this point in his life, what he had gleaned and picked up from the one he'd met during the shard mission was enough for him to know that this one would want to know that.

He moved forward on Jamie's other side, bracketing and helping to shelter the kid. He probably needed to feel safe for the moment, even if he logically knew it. "And I know that you probably have a million questions and I promise that we'll answer them. For now, though, Cassie's right. Just let yourself have the time to cry. We all do it."

[beetlebutt]

'We all do it,' was what he needed to hear more than anything. And the hugging - he needed that, too. With the two strangers having cleared out, and Nightwing there being all supportive and Cassie hugging him, he couldn't hold it back any longer, and quite frankly, he didn't entirely want to. He felt like something ugly was trying to claw its way out from inside of him and that crying it out was a less violent way for it to escape than letting it tear apart his insides. So the shaking turned to weeping, and the leaning turned to clinging, as he hugged Cassie back. Cassie had never exactly been a cuddly person while he was on the team, but she had been fiercely protective and if he couldn't have protective hugs from his mother, Traci, or Brenda, this was definitely not a bad runner up. The crying was not pretty crying. It was definitely ugly crying. Snotty, soggy, hyperventilating, hard enough that if his pain wasn't being suppressed, it would have made his body ache. He had a lot to cry about. He cried for himself, for his own fear, for his own terrifying not-death and the pain he'd gone through and how close things had come to his family losing him. He cried for the scarab, knowing his friend had felt him slip away. He could still feel the lingering knife's edge of worry and concern and disturbed anger it had caused Khaji Da, as if they were his own. He cried for the people he'd never even had a chance to save: the little kids propped up with wire, the parts that had once made whole people, the woman whose hand he'd stepped on that still had its wedding band. And he cried for the wife or husband out there that'd lost her. With that many people dead, how many other people out there had lost them? Mothers and fathers and sons and daughters and sisters and brothers? Just like his parents had worried and grieved when he'd disappeared, preparing for the worst but hoping against hope he'd show up alive, the families of those people had probably gone through the same thing. Only they wouldn't come home like he did. He knew what it did to a family to lose someone and in his family's case, they'd been lucky enough to get him back, but now for the loved ones of those people, there'd be a hole in their lives that'd never get filled, a pain that would never truly go away - especially when they found out how horrifically and tortuously their loved ones had died. He couldn't stop picturing his mother and the way she would've wept and broken down if he'd gone missing for a year and then in the end she found out he was some stuffed sick doll propped up with wire. So he cried. For quite a while. Then finally the flash flood started to ebb down to a trickle, and the body-shaking sobs stopped, and he just leaned his head against Cassie's shoulder, sniffling, finally getting it under control but not quite ready to lose the contact yet. "I think I snotted on your shirt," he said bashfully. "Sorry."