From Mars, With Love
Sep. 21st, 2007 04:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shankieThis little series-within-a-series is coming out all weird. I think because it is weird. Heh.
From Mars, With Love
DCAU, J'onn/Wally, I'm gonna go with PG-13. At least for the moment.
Batman takes responsibility for the mission to rescue J'onn... but Flash isn't willing to wait.
The Rock
Part 2: If Wishes Were Dragons...
“We can’t get through. Some sort of magical constructs are keeping us out. They only appear when we go any further.”
“My magic can slow them down, but I can’t dispel them.”
“Options?”
“Where is Flash?” Superman’s question brought them back to their surroundings.
Batman and Flash had only just met up with the others; Zatanna, Diana, and Superman. Batman had been considering that Shayera and Lantern, both wanting to help, should be called in... but at present, Flash was running ahead.
There was a bit of a dust trail settling, and they followed, in the direction of the hulking fortress on the horizon.
Flash had stopped, not so far off that they couldn’t soon catch up and follow his gaze, trying to see what he was looking at so intently. “Flash? Flash?”
Diana touched his shoulder. “Wally?”
His face was flickering with uncertain expressions. The air temperature was dropping a few degrees.
“Is he here?” Batman asked quietly.
It was as if they weren’t even there.
“Oh God,” Wally whispered. His face fell.
The ground in front of them exploded with movement; hulking shapes didn’t rise so much as form from it, pulling rocks and trees and dirt into swirling tornadoes that became solid.
Dragons.
Everyone fell into postures and began to defend and attack, fire burning up oxygen and massive claws swiping in the direction. Superman lunged forward, Diana snared one with her lasso, and Batman rolled out of the way of a series of scaly, massive limbs set on rending him apart.
Zatanna’s voice called half-heard backwards spells and Superman hit the ground like a meteor. They’d fought these things before, but it didn’t seem to help. There had to be twenty of them, hundreds of yards long, and an explosive batarang hit what should have been a weak point only to detonate harmlessly.
They began falling back, and still, Flash did nothing. Becoming lost in the torrent of rising dirt and battle.
Diana was swatted away, Clark catching her before she hit the ground, and the dragons stopped attacking.
Behind an invisible line, they paced, watching their quarry. A myriad of jewel-toned colours on black, they gleamed like the magic-borne predators they were, black smoke curling from their flaring nostrils. Flash was standing among them with his hands out, pleading.
“Don’t you know who I am?” Wally was approached, cautiously, by the largest of them. It towered above him like a building with teeth, gracefully stalking him.
The dragon bent down and looked at him, snarling closely.
The onlookers held their breath.
“My mate.” The monster’s voice echoed like a deep booming charge, and Bruce could feel hot tendrils of smoke on his skin, even from here. “Come to me.”
“Stop him!” Batman but touched Clark’s arm and he moved.
Superman was fast, too. He barely caught Flash from giving himself over to the predators.
Zatanna threw up a shield just as he returned, sweat on her brow as she grimaced against the silvery barrier.
They were clawing their way through, the big green one taking the lead. Everyone retreated.
Zatanna caught her breath in between attempts to bellow out a teleport and the earth rumbled and shook. Fire scorched the ground.
It would seem they would all be doomed, until the pursuit stopped completely and all at once.
The retreat cautiously ended as they turned to face... a woman.
In a simple black tunic, with blonde hair streaming down her back, she could only be some creature of magic. Batman felt a familiar sensation of artificial attraction and frowned. Like Poison Ivy, only... he could shake it off more easily.
Behind the woman, the dragons were un-building themselves back into dust, all blowing away in a wind, all but one. One lingered like a ghost, now diminished in size to that of a man with uncertain features.
“Let me go!” Beside Batman, Flash began fighting Superman’s grip, snarling and vibrating hot until he forced him to shift his arms.
“Wally, stop!”
He was fighting tooth and nail to free himself, and they couldn’t let that happen. Batman moved forward and stuck a tranquilizer in Flash’s back, tossing it on the ground as he slowed, stopped, and fell limp in Clark’s hands.
Their mysterious hostess was laughing. “Is that how you treat each other? No wonder he so wants to get away.”
The phantom of smoke that could only be J’onn appeared to be restrained from moving forward. Pushing against an invisible wall with incorporeal hands.
Batman reminded himself that it was presumably her, but certainly not them that was forcibly keeping them apart. “Let him go,” he asked, with warning.
“Or what? You’ll present yourselves as dinner for my soldiers?” The ground rumbled, but for the moment, the others remained unseen. “I’m not afraid of you, Bruce.”
She waved her hands and the phantom blew out in the wind, just before the air became still again.
“This is your warning. Don’t come to bother me again. Or your lives will also be forfeit to me.” Her bewitching lips laughed again as she lifted her hand gracefully in the air and unfolded her hand. “Well, except for the fast one. So anxious to join my army.”
She snapped her fingers and they were outside the portal, back in the pit on Earth.
Batman was first to orient himself, contacted the Watchtower and brought them all up in a white beam of light. The air was warm and friendly in comparison to the world they’d just left, a unusual feeling.
Once on the pad, Clark and Diana went straight for the medbay, while Batman turned to Zatanna.
“What can you tell me?”
“I think I know what she’s doing. It’s just... it’s never worked before.”
“What?”
“If a magician had a source of power strong enough, and a way to subdue their minds... well, some of the less reputable tried to use telepaths to enhance their power. Using their minds as a lens, presumably controlling them at the same time.”
“It never worked in the past.”
“In the end, either the magician died, or their victims did. It usually didn’t take very long. This means... she’s got a way.” Zatanna frowned and looked aside, adjusting her hat. “It’ll take more than just me to find a way around this.”
“Keep me informed.”
Her eyes met his somberly a moment and then she vanished with a few words and a puff of smoke.
So their magician was capturing telepaths. There had been no unusual captures of human telepaths; so far as they knew, J’onn had been her only target on Earth.
Which meant it was likely she was capturing races that had natural psionic abilities. Perhaps a part of why she might be succeeding where others had failed. And why she hadn’t put any more effort into taking Flash, too.
It would do to contact the Guardians.
Batman followed the others to the med bay, not knowing what to expect. They’d taken Flash to the room beside J’onn’s, which had begun to take on the aura of a shrine. Candle-lit and quiet.
Flash’s room, however, was crowded with doctors and heroes around the bed. And yelling.
The tranquilizer had worn off and both Clark and Diana were holding Wally down on the bed while the doctors chattered frantically about what to use on him.
“Let go of me!”
“Please calm down...”
“Get your hands off me! Stop it!”
“Wally, please...”
They managed to hook up an IV, and as Flash again slowed, he looked past the others and straight at Bruce. His voice was slurred with the drugs, but emphatic. “You left him there.”
“We didn’t have much choice.”
“Why won’t you let me go?”
“Because we need you to get him back. Not to get caught yourself. You’re being irrational.”
Clark let go of his arm, and Diana did the same, as Wally finally laid down and stopped thrashing.
“Did you make contact?” Batman asked carefully, approaching the bed guardedly.
Wally looked like he was in pain. “Yes.”
“What can you tell us?”
“They... they used to be people.”
“Zatanna told me.”
“I have to go back.”
“You can’t.” Wally winced at the words, glared at Batman. “I’m sorry, Flash.”
It was possible J’onn had tainted him with the spell he was under, by contacting him. Flash might turn on them at any moment. But they needed him; J’onn hadn’t reacted to anyone else.
Batman turned to the lead physician and whispered, “keep him sedated until I tell you otherwise. I don’t want problems.” The doctor looked suitably intimidated, and the others didn’t look as if they were like to be leaving Flash’s side anytime soon.
“You don’t understand..!”
Flash wasn’t in his right mind. So Batman left to the sound of his screaming. As if it didn’t pain him to hear the noise as the door slid shut to cut it off.
He didn’t go far. Next door, into the dim flickering light, the candles and the glowing monitors with flat, only slightly moving lines. So little to tell that he was even still alive.
J’onn wasn’t here to reply, but Bruce could imagine what he might say.
“I made a serious mistake,” Batman said. Walked up to the foot of the bed, where there were still blankets wrapped around the still body. “I should never have brought him there so hastily. I have doubts I should be leading this mission.”
Flowers had been left, all over the tables. Cards, notes. “It seems you’re not so alone anymore. What was it that Flash once called us? Two hermits with huts on our own hills, sometimes meeting in the valley? He makes things complicated. You must know that.” Batman sighed. J’onn remained still and silent. “He’s certainly causing me no end of complications at the moment. I just hope it’s worth it.”
Knowing that it was.
* * *
Wally woke up to darkness and the gentle beeping sound of his own heart on a monitor. He looked up into Shayera’s face as she squeezed his hand.
“Hi,” she said. “How do you feel?”
Come to me.
“Fine. I’m... just fine.” He was groggy, but managed to sit up without much trouble. Went for the IV and Shayera slapped his hand. “Ow!”
“Leave it alone. I don’t want you going crazy on me again,” she chided. “We’re all very worried.”
“Well, you should be. A witch turned J’onn into her prized guard dog and we didn’t do a damned thing.”
“We’re...”
Beloved...
“Working on it. I know.” Wally turned away and frowned at the wall.
Shayera tugged a little on his hand. “Hey, at least we know where he is. That’s progress.”
Wally snorted. “Yeah. Great.”
He couldn’t stand to sit here any longer. Took his hand away and pulled out the needle before Shayera could stop him, a look of alarm on her face.
“Wally..!”
He left without letting her finish whatever protest she wanted to make.
Wally knew what he had to do. The only thing he could possibly be doing.
I’m waiting.
The technician didn’t dare argue with him about being transported down to the surface, and he was gone before the others were alerted. Which was good. Alarms only went off as he was already dematerializing.
His head start was slim, but he didn’t need one to begin with. Seconds to his destination, the pit was dark.
Stars were overhead, twinkling merrily at the lone figure standing on the edge of the abyss.
“When we get out of this, we’re so going on vacation.”
Fear traveled down Wally’s fingers, but he didn’t shake, and he didn’t hesitate. Together they’d overcome death. They could do it again. The others didn’t understand.
No force in the universe could keep them apart.
I’m here.
* * *
The portal wouldn’t open now; it’s magic was drained away, with only traces that it had ever been there.
And the remaining bits of destruction in San Francisco that had yet to be cleaned up.
But what the others didn’t find, as they arrived at Wally’s heels just moments too late, was an innocuous granite rock laying on the ground beside many others that weren’t ground so smooth.
At some point during their brief battle, Wally had dropped it on the other side. How it came to be here, Batman could only guess. He considered the dormant stone, then picked the rock up, and carried it back to the plane for further testing.
He should have put more security on the room. It seemed unlikely that Flash would have put together anything of a clear plan, but there were a few things that Batman could see him trying to do by this.
Perhaps Flash was trying to shake J’onn out of the spell. To find the way to do it and make his way back. Or perhaps he was merely willing to do anything to be with his other half.
“I’ll have to address this to them at the next meeting,” he grumbled, then fired up the engines.
Bruce didn’t know if Wally had a plan; so had to assume he didn’t.
And hope to be wrong.
From Mars, With Love
DCAU, J'onn/Wally, I'm gonna go with PG-13. At least for the moment.
Batman takes responsibility for the mission to rescue J'onn... but Flash isn't willing to wait.
The Rock
Part 2: If Wishes Were Dragons...
“We can’t get through. Some sort of magical constructs are keeping us out. They only appear when we go any further.”
“My magic can slow them down, but I can’t dispel them.”
“Options?”
“Where is Flash?” Superman’s question brought them back to their surroundings.
Batman and Flash had only just met up with the others; Zatanna, Diana, and Superman. Batman had been considering that Shayera and Lantern, both wanting to help, should be called in... but at present, Flash was running ahead.
There was a bit of a dust trail settling, and they followed, in the direction of the hulking fortress on the horizon.
Flash had stopped, not so far off that they couldn’t soon catch up and follow his gaze, trying to see what he was looking at so intently. “Flash? Flash?”
Diana touched his shoulder. “Wally?”
His face was flickering with uncertain expressions. The air temperature was dropping a few degrees.
“Is he here?” Batman asked quietly.
It was as if they weren’t even there.
“Oh God,” Wally whispered. His face fell.
The ground in front of them exploded with movement; hulking shapes didn’t rise so much as form from it, pulling rocks and trees and dirt into swirling tornadoes that became solid.
Dragons.
Everyone fell into postures and began to defend and attack, fire burning up oxygen and massive claws swiping in the direction. Superman lunged forward, Diana snared one with her lasso, and Batman rolled out of the way of a series of scaly, massive limbs set on rending him apart.
Zatanna’s voice called half-heard backwards spells and Superman hit the ground like a meteor. They’d fought these things before, but it didn’t seem to help. There had to be twenty of them, hundreds of yards long, and an explosive batarang hit what should have been a weak point only to detonate harmlessly.
They began falling back, and still, Flash did nothing. Becoming lost in the torrent of rising dirt and battle.
Diana was swatted away, Clark catching her before she hit the ground, and the dragons stopped attacking.
Behind an invisible line, they paced, watching their quarry. A myriad of jewel-toned colours on black, they gleamed like the magic-borne predators they were, black smoke curling from their flaring nostrils. Flash was standing among them with his hands out, pleading.
“Don’t you know who I am?” Wally was approached, cautiously, by the largest of them. It towered above him like a building with teeth, gracefully stalking him.
The dragon bent down and looked at him, snarling closely.
The onlookers held their breath.
“My mate.” The monster’s voice echoed like a deep booming charge, and Bruce could feel hot tendrils of smoke on his skin, even from here. “Come to me.”
“Stop him!” Batman but touched Clark’s arm and he moved.
Superman was fast, too. He barely caught Flash from giving himself over to the predators.
Zatanna threw up a shield just as he returned, sweat on her brow as she grimaced against the silvery barrier.
They were clawing their way through, the big green one taking the lead. Everyone retreated.
Zatanna caught her breath in between attempts to bellow out a teleport and the earth rumbled and shook. Fire scorched the ground.
It would seem they would all be doomed, until the pursuit stopped completely and all at once.
The retreat cautiously ended as they turned to face... a woman.
In a simple black tunic, with blonde hair streaming down her back, she could only be some creature of magic. Batman felt a familiar sensation of artificial attraction and frowned. Like Poison Ivy, only... he could shake it off more easily.
Behind the woman, the dragons were un-building themselves back into dust, all blowing away in a wind, all but one. One lingered like a ghost, now diminished in size to that of a man with uncertain features.
“Let me go!” Beside Batman, Flash began fighting Superman’s grip, snarling and vibrating hot until he forced him to shift his arms.
“Wally, stop!”
He was fighting tooth and nail to free himself, and they couldn’t let that happen. Batman moved forward and stuck a tranquilizer in Flash’s back, tossing it on the ground as he slowed, stopped, and fell limp in Clark’s hands.
Their mysterious hostess was laughing. “Is that how you treat each other? No wonder he so wants to get away.”
The phantom of smoke that could only be J’onn appeared to be restrained from moving forward. Pushing against an invisible wall with incorporeal hands.
Batman reminded himself that it was presumably her, but certainly not them that was forcibly keeping them apart. “Let him go,” he asked, with warning.
“Or what? You’ll present yourselves as dinner for my soldiers?” The ground rumbled, but for the moment, the others remained unseen. “I’m not afraid of you, Bruce.”
She waved her hands and the phantom blew out in the wind, just before the air became still again.
“This is your warning. Don’t come to bother me again. Or your lives will also be forfeit to me.” Her bewitching lips laughed again as she lifted her hand gracefully in the air and unfolded her hand. “Well, except for the fast one. So anxious to join my army.”
She snapped her fingers and they were outside the portal, back in the pit on Earth.
Batman was first to orient himself, contacted the Watchtower and brought them all up in a white beam of light. The air was warm and friendly in comparison to the world they’d just left, a unusual feeling.
Once on the pad, Clark and Diana went straight for the medbay, while Batman turned to Zatanna.
“What can you tell me?”
“I think I know what she’s doing. It’s just... it’s never worked before.”
“What?”
“If a magician had a source of power strong enough, and a way to subdue their minds... well, some of the less reputable tried to use telepaths to enhance their power. Using their minds as a lens, presumably controlling them at the same time.”
“It never worked in the past.”
“In the end, either the magician died, or their victims did. It usually didn’t take very long. This means... she’s got a way.” Zatanna frowned and looked aside, adjusting her hat. “It’ll take more than just me to find a way around this.”
“Keep me informed.”
Her eyes met his somberly a moment and then she vanished with a few words and a puff of smoke.
So their magician was capturing telepaths. There had been no unusual captures of human telepaths; so far as they knew, J’onn had been her only target on Earth.
Which meant it was likely she was capturing races that had natural psionic abilities. Perhaps a part of why she might be succeeding where others had failed. And why she hadn’t put any more effort into taking Flash, too.
It would do to contact the Guardians.
Batman followed the others to the med bay, not knowing what to expect. They’d taken Flash to the room beside J’onn’s, which had begun to take on the aura of a shrine. Candle-lit and quiet.
Flash’s room, however, was crowded with doctors and heroes around the bed. And yelling.
The tranquilizer had worn off and both Clark and Diana were holding Wally down on the bed while the doctors chattered frantically about what to use on him.
“Let go of me!”
“Please calm down...”
“Get your hands off me! Stop it!”
“Wally, please...”
They managed to hook up an IV, and as Flash again slowed, he looked past the others and straight at Bruce. His voice was slurred with the drugs, but emphatic. “You left him there.”
“We didn’t have much choice.”
“Why won’t you let me go?”
“Because we need you to get him back. Not to get caught yourself. You’re being irrational.”
Clark let go of his arm, and Diana did the same, as Wally finally laid down and stopped thrashing.
“Did you make contact?” Batman asked carefully, approaching the bed guardedly.
Wally looked like he was in pain. “Yes.”
“What can you tell us?”
“They... they used to be people.”
“Zatanna told me.”
“I have to go back.”
“You can’t.” Wally winced at the words, glared at Batman. “I’m sorry, Flash.”
It was possible J’onn had tainted him with the spell he was under, by contacting him. Flash might turn on them at any moment. But they needed him; J’onn hadn’t reacted to anyone else.
Batman turned to the lead physician and whispered, “keep him sedated until I tell you otherwise. I don’t want problems.” The doctor looked suitably intimidated, and the others didn’t look as if they were like to be leaving Flash’s side anytime soon.
“You don’t understand..!”
Flash wasn’t in his right mind. So Batman left to the sound of his screaming. As if it didn’t pain him to hear the noise as the door slid shut to cut it off.
He didn’t go far. Next door, into the dim flickering light, the candles and the glowing monitors with flat, only slightly moving lines. So little to tell that he was even still alive.
J’onn wasn’t here to reply, but Bruce could imagine what he might say.
“I made a serious mistake,” Batman said. Walked up to the foot of the bed, where there were still blankets wrapped around the still body. “I should never have brought him there so hastily. I have doubts I should be leading this mission.”
Flowers had been left, all over the tables. Cards, notes. “It seems you’re not so alone anymore. What was it that Flash once called us? Two hermits with huts on our own hills, sometimes meeting in the valley? He makes things complicated. You must know that.” Batman sighed. J’onn remained still and silent. “He’s certainly causing me no end of complications at the moment. I just hope it’s worth it.”
Knowing that it was.
Wally woke up to darkness and the gentle beeping sound of his own heart on a monitor. He looked up into Shayera’s face as she squeezed his hand.
“Hi,” she said. “How do you feel?”
Come to me.
“Fine. I’m... just fine.” He was groggy, but managed to sit up without much trouble. Went for the IV and Shayera slapped his hand. “Ow!”
“Leave it alone. I don’t want you going crazy on me again,” she chided. “We’re all very worried.”
“Well, you should be. A witch turned J’onn into her prized guard dog and we didn’t do a damned thing.”
“We’re...”
Beloved...
“Working on it. I know.” Wally turned away and frowned at the wall.
Shayera tugged a little on his hand. “Hey, at least we know where he is. That’s progress.”
Wally snorted. “Yeah. Great.”
He couldn’t stand to sit here any longer. Took his hand away and pulled out the needle before Shayera could stop him, a look of alarm on her face.
“Wally..!”
He left without letting her finish whatever protest she wanted to make.
Wally knew what he had to do. The only thing he could possibly be doing.
I’m waiting.
The technician didn’t dare argue with him about being transported down to the surface, and he was gone before the others were alerted. Which was good. Alarms only went off as he was already dematerializing.
His head start was slim, but he didn’t need one to begin with. Seconds to his destination, the pit was dark.
Stars were overhead, twinkling merrily at the lone figure standing on the edge of the abyss.
“When we get out of this, we’re so going on vacation.”
Fear traveled down Wally’s fingers, but he didn’t shake, and he didn’t hesitate. Together they’d overcome death. They could do it again. The others didn’t understand.
No force in the universe could keep them apart.
I’m here.
The portal wouldn’t open now; it’s magic was drained away, with only traces that it had ever been there.
And the remaining bits of destruction in San Francisco that had yet to be cleaned up.
But what the others didn’t find, as they arrived at Wally’s heels just moments too late, was an innocuous granite rock laying on the ground beside many others that weren’t ground so smooth.
At some point during their brief battle, Wally had dropped it on the other side. How it came to be here, Batman could only guess. He considered the dormant stone, then picked the rock up, and carried it back to the plane for further testing.
He should have put more security on the room. It seemed unlikely that Flash would have put together anything of a clear plan, but there were a few things that Batman could see him trying to do by this.
Perhaps Flash was trying to shake J’onn out of the spell. To find the way to do it and make his way back. Or perhaps he was merely willing to do anything to be with his other half.
“I’ll have to address this to them at the next meeting,” he grumbled, then fired up the engines.
Bruce didn’t know if Wally had a plan; so had to assume he didn’t.
And hope to be wrong.
no subject
on 2007-09-22 10:07 am (UTC)no subject
on 2007-09-22 04:07 pm (UTC)I know what you mean about J'onn. I was like that, too, for quite a while before I got... reformed. ::laughs::
It's great to hear you like my work. Of course friending me is okay. I hope you'll find other stuff you like, too. :D
no subject
on 2007-09-23 02:23 am (UTC)Can't wait for the next part! I want to see Wally super-speed-kick her ass and save his Martian damsel.
no subject
on 2007-09-23 06:29 pm (UTC)Thank you! I'm already crackin' on it. But as to what happens... ;)
Nice...
on 2007-09-23 07:22 pm (UTC)Re: Nice...
on 2007-09-23 09:09 pm (UTC)I like to have fun with twists. Sometimes a little too much... XD
Re: Nice...
on 2007-09-23 09:17 pm (UTC)No such thing. :D *carefully nudges her twist filled fics back under the bed.*
no subject
on 2007-09-26 12:37 pm (UTC)Where's the rest of it?
*gets the shakes until the next installment*
And it's all your fault that I can even *see* Wally/J'onn as a pairing.
*shakes head*
no subject
on 2007-09-26 08:35 pm (UTC)The rest of it is... coming. I have to figure something out first. You know. It would help if my bird would get off my keyboard for five minutes to let me type. XD22ewwweeee5g
no subject
on 2007-09-27 01:11 pm (UTC)It's very rare so use it sparingly.
no subject
on 2007-09-27 08:28 pm (UTC)::cough:: But, er, yeah, don't do that. Then I'd have nobody to give me kisses when I got home from work. :(
no subject
on 2007-09-30 03:49 am (UTC)*snickers*
I'll try to restrain myself from killing Dove then. lol
no subject
on 2007-12-27 03:20 am (UTC)(And so Bruce at the end!)
no subject
on 2007-12-27 01:14 pm (UTC)Not enough hours in the day. ::sigh::