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]

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."