| Okay, so I lied. |
[Nov. 2nd, 2007|03:06 pm] |
Scott stared at the Man in Black. He seemed familiar, not just regular familiar but a mosaic of half-memories and nostalgia. His right hand was curled around something that might have been Highfather’s wonder-staff, were it not weathered and even bent near the top. His left hand held two mother boxes, one Apokoliptian, one from New Genesis, connected by a leather thong. His face seemed most familiar, although it was impossible to discern facial features through the stony skin that covered it like a mask.
“I was hoping Barda would be home,” the Man in Black said. His voice sounded really familiar, although Scott was sure he had never met anyone who sounded so dead, so weary.
His left hand, the one holding the mother boxes, was pressed against his midsection. A mortal injury, from the blood that lead to the front porch and was even now soaking into the welcome mat.
Scott, respecting a warrior in his final moments, stepped back and gestured for the Man in Black to come in. “She’s with the…”
“Birds of Prey, I know.” The Man in Black hobbled his way inside, using the magical wonder-staff as a walking stick. “She was so excited, I remember. Her new Female Furies… a sisterhood she had been seeking ever since she came to Earth. We were so happy for her.”
Scott took the man’s hand and led him to the den, where he sat the Man in Black down in his favorite chair. The man seemed to fit there, like a puzzle piece clicking into place. He exhaled. His eyes closed and never opened.
“We?”
“I have little time left. I have to tell you the story… tell you everything. Otherwise, you’ll never understand.” His voice was thin, the last wind in winter or the last gale in a thunderstorm. Scott touched his shoulder encouragingly.
He listened as the man told him about what had almost started and what would’ve happened. He told of Barda’s death, his grief so sharp after all these years that Scott was cut upon it and bled tears. He told of his friends and family’s death, the loss of Lonar and Orion and Metron and so many others. He told of how he alone had escaped the attention of the New God killer. The tale wound back in on itself and Scott felt he was only capturing a small number of the man’s adventures, but he heard of how the man escaped his own DNA and took on that of Superboy-Prime, who he had to break out of the Green Lanterns’ prison. Then he went to New Genesis, a barren wasteland when the Godkiller was done with it, and bathed in the light of the Source Wall… taking Izaya’s inheritance as his own. That part was easy, the way the man told it.
Then he traveled to Apokolips, where life still pitifully survived. For a year his pilgrimage among the Lowlies dragged on, until he learned how to gain the same power Darkseid had possessed… the Omega Effect.
Armed with those, and the power of a million other weapons that were never meant to be wielded, he escaped the time-space continuum itself, defying the famous grandfather paradox.
Fifteen minutes ago, by both Scott and the man’s reckoning, the Man in Black had arrived from the future, stalked a man named Sleeze until he was murdered, and then killed the murderer himself. In killing him, he himself was killed.
“You’re me then,” Scott said.
“A thousand years have I walked this universe, to prevent a future that must not be. I held no illusions of surviving what had to be done. I have become a bad man, a monster… and there can’t be two of us. I just wanted to see her… one last time. But as long as I’m here…”
He took Scott’s hand, squeezed it with the last ebbs of his impossible strength.
“Take care of her. Never, ever let her go. Do you understand? She’s everything.”
“Barda’s in good hands,” Scott promised, watching as a man he could have been, must not become, dissolved into dust.
***
Barda deployed her Raichu. She had crushed her enemy (Sin). She enjoyed seeing her enemy driven before her and hearing the lamentations of her woman (Dinah). But it was not the best in life.
Her Mega-Rod made that embarrassingly catchy ring-tone and she answered it.
“Scott?”
“Barda, I’m kinda having a weird day.”
“You need me to come back?”
“No, it can wait. I just want to tell you that I love you.”
“I love you too, Scott.”
“Come home soon, okay? I’m trying out Ollie’s chili recipe.”
“And that’s an incentive to come home?”
“Hey!” Dinah squawked. “No one gets to mock Ollie’s cooking but me.”
“Hell, bring the whole crew,” Scott said, suddenly jubilant. “We’ll order pizza, make it a party.”
“I can bring the beer,” Zinda piped up.
“I’ll get Barbara out of her nest or die trying,” Helena swore.
“Alright, see you tonight.”
“It’s a date.”
Scott hung up and patted down his own grave with his shovel. There would be repercussions, of course. The timestream would no doubt be damaged by the “escaped” paradox and who knew what chaos that could bring? But with Barda at his side, he could clean it up.
With Barda, he could do anything.
Whistling, he went back inside and tried to decide what a dozen superheroines would want on their pizzas. |
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