Chapter Text
FRAGILE THINGS
ONE
Ted Kord had always liked a challenge.
His love of puzzles was, at its heart, the reason he’d become an inventor; his interest in figuring out how to make machines work had lent itself naturally to engineering, and a (fruitless) desire to force the universe to make sense had led him to theoretical mathematics. To him, a challenge meant finally solving the professor’s bonus equation, or completing the circuitry that would power a solar battery. Later in life, a challenge had meant leaping out into the cold Chicago air on a skywire, the wind buffeting his goggles as he dove after a troop of bank robbers to dispense justice. Much later in life, it meant struggling to keep breathing through the blood in his mouth as he was smashed into the side of a car by a homicidal space alien.
Much, much later in life, it meant not falling asleep in a board meeting.
These days, however, a challenge meant a mid-morning visit from a persistent best friend who assumed that the word ‘no’ was an invitation for open debate.
“C’mon, just this once.”
“That’s what you said last time.” Ted saved the completed budget report to his desktop, pointedly not looking over his shoulder where his friend was floating four feet off the ground. “I hate it when you do that.”
Booster flipped upside down. With his blond hair dangling from the boxy opening of his cowl, he looked like a very tan Chia Pet. “Let’s go already; we’re losing time. Can I catch a ride in the Bug? I flew all the way from DC, and boy, are my arms------”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence. And could you please come through the lobby like a normal person? Angie’s going to start thinking you don’t like her. Booster Gold squeezing his shiny tights through my office window isn’t doing any favors for the whole secret identity thing either.”
“So? You’re retired anyway.”
Ted cupped a hand to his ear. “What’s that? Did you just admit that I’m retired?”
Booster floated over the desk and stole Ted’s overflowing inbox tray, a few papers fluttering to the floor. “We need the Blue Beetle.”
“I’m not the Blue Beetle anymore. Jaime is, and he’s doing a great job, and you should give him a call right now.” Ted made a grab for the tray, but Booster bobbed just out of reach. “Give me that! Seriously, if I don’t get those done today, Mel is going to roast me alive and serve me with a side of horseradish.” He made a diversionary lunge and then snuck the other arm around to goose Booster, who squealed and dropped the tray into Ted’s waiting hands. “Thank you.”
“I know you’ve been helping Jaime out,” Booster accused, rubbing his tush as he drifted back down to the floor. “You’re sort of the Blue Beetle.”
“Fine, I’m Blue Sort-of Beetle. How about you call the Beetle who doesn’t require a disclaimer?”
“I don’t want Jaime.”
“Why?”
“Because this job is above his pay grade. Fire says these androids are supposed to be super strong, and he might get hurt. You wouldn’t want that on your conscience, would you? For this, we need some powerhouses, like you.”
“Jaime has the Scarab and a near-indestructible exoskeleton. I have PPE and a leotard.”
Booster made finger-guns at him. “Your brain is a powerhouse.”
“Yes, but my brain isn’t going to suplex an android. What’s the real reason?”
“I just told you,” Booster said, way too defensively.
“Uh-huh.”
Booster started shuffling his feet. “Fine. I don’t want to call Jaime because I owe him money.”
Ted blinked at him. “Did you hit up a child for cash?”
“He’s seventeen!”
“Oh my God.”
“It was only forty bucks,” Booster protested. “I’ll pay him back. Things are just tight right now -- you know how it is. I’ve got a new deal in the pipes.”
“You always do,” Ted sighed. After making a mental note to transfer some funds into Booster’s checking account and to have a talk with Jaime about shameless moochers, he logged off the server. “Here’s a deal for you, good only for today: I’ll put on the goggles if you promise not to solicit loans from people who can’t legally vote.”
Booster beamed. “Deal!”
Here was the thing: Ted wasn’t the wide-eyed kid he’d been once, striving (and failing) to live up to Dan’s legacy. Ted excelled at a lot of things -- complex mathematics, mechanical engineering, computer programming, whipping up a mean spreadsheet -- but superheroics wasn’t one of them. He’d leapt eagerly into the world of crime-fighting, and the world of crime-fighting had spat him right back out with a new appreciation for lab work and a heart condition. Nobody except Booster had been devastated when he’d announced his retirement. Certainly no one in the Justice League had asked him to reconsider.
Still, it wasn’t like he’d wept over it. At thirty-nine years old, he had a company to wrangle and inventions to invent, and there just wasn’t a place in his life for running around in spandex. When he’d gotten word that Jaime Reyes had been selected by the Scarab and it actually worked for him, Ted had been relieved. It was a convenient excuse for giving up his emergency on-call status, and he’d settled happily into the role of mentor. At first it was because he felt responsible for this poor teenager, who hadn’t asked for powers or wanted the duty of being the Blue Beetle, but soon it had become about something more. Jaime was disgustingly lovable, and some nights Ted lay awake in bed, wracking his brains for gadgets that would keep the kid safer. He might have made for a terrible hero, but Jaime would be something special someday.
Which was why it was doubly absurd that Booster had strong-armed him into dusting off the Bug and squeezing himself into the azure pajamas. (They still fit and were even a tad loose, a fact that Ted was prepared to milk for all it was worth the next time Mel got on his case about sneaking a bagel at shareholder meetings.) Within the hour they were on their way to the projected location of the big bad of the day, and Booster gave him the usual rundown: mad scientist, world domination, dangerous bulletproof robot, etcetera etcetera.
“I still can’t believe you guys went with ‘The Justice Corps’,” Ted said, flicking off the Bug’s fog lights as they descended from the cloud cover over Gotham. “It sounds like a cheap Chinese knock-off. That has to be some kind of copyright infringement.”
“Max’s lawyers didn’t raise any objections. We’re good.”
“Until you get slapped with a lawsuit from the Justice League and the Guardians of the Universe.”
“Well, you refused to join the team, so you don’t get a say in what we call ourselves,” Booster retorted.
“I didn’t join the team because I’m retired. Oh, there’s Beatriz. Hit the comm switch, would you, Boost? I need to know where she wants me to land.”
Ted didn’t have to turn his head to know that Booster was smirking at him. “So you kept our comm frequency? That doesn’t sound like the behavior of a respectable retiree.”
“I invented those comms. Don’t let it get to your head.”
Bea, the appointed leader of this motley new team, directed them toward a busy city block in Gotham’s upscale market district. Ted could see plumes of smoke rising from a few empty, burned-out cars, but other than that, the crowd in the street seemed reasonably calm. Gothamites tended to be a sturdy breed of people -- you had to be when there was a non-zero chance that your coffee break would be interrupted by some putz with homicidal tendencies and a stupid themed gimmick.
Speaking of which. . . . .
“Bea, did anyone let Batman know about this? This is kind of his turf.”
“Are you kidding?” Fire exclaimed. “We’re trying to make a name for ourselves here! The last thing we need is him swooping in to steal our win away from us. Booster, I need you. We’re trying to herd the android into a more defensible area, and it has lasers. Strong ones. Beetle, can you work crowd control? The cops aren’t out yet, and it’s getting ugly down there.”
Ted located a suitable patch of airspace over the crowd and set course for it, cranking open the front hatch. “Aye, aye, Cap’n.”
Booster took a second to make sure his hair was coiffed and camera-ready before diving out the hatch. Ted watched the blur of gold zip around the side of a skyscraper and then set the Bug on hover mode. “Well, old girl,” he muttered, tugging his cowl and goggles into place, “looks like we’re ignoring doctor’s orders today.”
Although Ted would rather eat paint than admit it, it was exhilarating to leap into the air on his trusty skywire, the world a marvelous whirl of color and sound as the distant figures below grew larger and more distinct.
Some enterprising soul had started to throw up hasty barricades, but the crowd was bottlenecked between one block and the next as people fled the nearby shops. The line of congested cars and buses were pushing through the street stubbornly, and although Ted couldn’t blame them for wanting to get the hell out of Dodge, it was creating the potential for someone to get seriously hurt if the crowd started panicking. From his vantage point, he took a quick note of the way the nearest alleys intersected before diving into the fray.
Ted couldn’t exactly lay claim to being an imposing authority figure, but a guy dangling from a giant coleoptera-shaped airship tended to get attention. Tapping into the Bug’s loudspeaker, he began the task of redirecting the crowd into the alleyways, eventually aided by the arrival of the local police. With the crowd density thinned back to acceptable levels, Ted focused on the few looky loos who wanted to stay and watch the show.
“C’mon, guys,” he said, shooing a group of teenagers away from the wreckage. “It’s an active situation and it’s not safe. You can check out the footage on the news tonight.”
There was the expected grumbling, but one kid narrowed his eyes at him suspiciously. “Wait a sec, which one are you?”
The blonde next to him jabbed him in the side. “Are you dumb, Chad? That’s the Blue Beetle.”
The guy scowled, elbowing her right back. “How was I supposed to know? I thought Blue Beetle had wings. And he doesn’t look like such a pussy on TV.”
Wow, rude.
A plume of green flame streaked overhead, and Fire’s voice rang in his ear. “Shake a leg, Beetle! We’ve pushed the robot toward the southeast corner of the block. There’s a park there. Fewer buildings. We need you, pronto.”
After making sure that his impolite stragglers had crossed the barricade, Ted hopped on the skywire and cranked himself back into the Bug, following Fire’s trail to a large civic park. He could see Guy leading a one-man assault on the android directly, though it didn’t seem to have much of an effect -- it appeared to have some kind of energy shield that was blocking the Lantern ring, in addition to the red lasers it was spitting at everyone. Ice and Booster were weaving around them, distracting the android from zeroing in on Guy, but they didn’t seem able to do much more than play keepaway.
Fire appeared abruptly in front of Ted, floating next to one of the Bug’s round windows. “Run some scans, would you? I want to know what this thing is made of. We haven’t been able to put a dent in it.”
“One Polaroid from the forward scanners, coming up.” Ted waited impatiently for the main computer to spit out its results. He hadn’t forgotten how little he enjoyed running analyses in active combat; the longer his equipment took, the more dangerous the situation became for any teammates. Those lasers were no joke. Through the window, he could see them tearing into concrete like it was cotton. The panel beeped, and Ted hurried to make sense of what sparse results the long-range scanners could give him. He reached out to toggle the display onto the wide screen, but his hands had gone unsteady, and it took him two tries to get it right.
God, I’m out of practice.
Guy hollered. Ted jerked his gaze away from the keyboard long enough to see the android tag Booster and Ice, beams driving into the ground and blowing superheated rubble across the grass. Ted’s breath caught, horrified, but Tora and Booster promptly emerged from the debris cloud, encased in Booster’s shield.
“Crap, are you guys okay?”
Booster’s voice crackled in his ear reassuringly. “All good, Blue.”
“Hurry it up,” Guy snapped.
“Okay. Okay. Tin Man here is giving off a ton of energy. Probably solar-powered, because I’m not seeing any internal convection coils. I can’t give you an exact composition without a core sample, but I don’t think it’s invulnerable, since it would make that kind of heavy shielding redundant.” He rubbed his knuckles against eyes that had suddenly gone blurry. “Ice, if I brought down the shield, could you freeze the battery casing? Thick enough ice might cut off the direct sunlight long enough to drain the power reserves and prevent it from recharging. Judging from the thermal scans, the battery compartment is located where the left shoulder blade would be.”
“I can do that,” Ice said.
“You’d have to sustain it,” Ted warned her. “There’s no telling what the battery life is like.”
“We could drop the android in that pond. Then Ice could freeze the whole thing,” Booster suggested.
“Boost, you never cease to amaze me. I like his plan, Fire -- if there are any gaps or flaws in the casing, flooding them with water would increase the odds of breaking internal mechanisms when the ice expands.”
“Good idea,” Fire said. “Color me impressed.”
“Sure, you’re all frickin’ geniuses. What about the shield, smarty?” Guy demanded, blocking a laser blast with a giant green tennis racket.
“The shield seems to be ionized plasma, or at least something very similar.” Ionized plasma would require an intense amount of heat before its molecular structure began to break down, and they certainly had heat on hand. Adding enough pressure would be the sticking point. “Bea, I’ve had a thought: what’s your projectile range these days?”
“Thirty-two feet is my best. Any further and the heat starts to wane.”
Ted pulled up the weapons array panel, flicking through the settings. “To break this kind of field, we need intense heat and intense pressure. If I get into position directly above Tin Man, I can use the Bug’s compressed air blaster while you concentrate your fire into the airflow.”
Booster laughed delightedly. “You’re making a giant flamethrower!”
Ted grinned. “That’s the idea.”
“Sounds like a plan to me, baby,” Fire declared. “Booster, Ice, keep this sucker occupied until we’re ready and then get the hell out of the way. Gardner, get ready to grab the robot and dump him in the pond as soon as those shields are down. Booster, you’ll fly Ice over to the pond so she can do her thing. Everyone got it?”
The Bug’s aft rudders folded out as she began a rapid ascent, Fire streaking alongside. Cold sweat was gathering, tacky, on Ted’s forehead and upper lip; he swiped it away impatiently. Cripes, he really was out of practice if a little G-force was getting to him.
Having reached the correct height, he steadied the ship and released the safety locks, dropping the air blaster from the Bug’s belly. After double-checking to make sure everyone was in position, he keyed in a command for a sustained burst that could sweep an elephant off its feet. “Fire in the hole!” He hit the release, and the sky lit up with a spectacular column of green flame.
Fire kept up her end of the bargain, burning so fiercely that Ted could hardly look at her even through two layers UV-tinted plexiglass. Ted upped the pressure slowly, not wanting to cause more collateral damage than necessary, and within a minute, a flurry of cheers chimed over the comm.
“Shields are down!” Booster crowed. “It worked! Ice, you’re up.”
Fire cut off her flame, looking a little winded, but she shot Ted a wink and dove down to rejoin the fight on the ground.
“As soon as I let up the pressure, Tin Man’s gonna be mad, guys,” Ted warned. “You’ll need to get in fast and -- uh! -----” He lurched forward, muffling a gasp in his fist. Something had reached inside his chest, squeezing hard, like it intended to rip his heart out Indiana-Jones-style. For a second, he was afraid he might barf all over his redesigned console. Blood pounded in his ears.
Oh, no. No, no no, not now.
Swallowing hard, he groped for the controls and managed to shut off the compressed air. His windows lit up with a barrage of red lights as the android took advantage of the chance for revenge.
“Bug Butt,” Guy barked, “you drunk in there? Move it!” He broke off with a grunt, and Fire had started shouting.
Ted’s chest seized again, a deep cramp under his sternum that left him dizzy and sick. He had to go to ground, fight be damned. If he didn’t land the Bug now, gravity was going to pick somewhere to land it for him, possibly on top of his friends. Ted tried to push past the crushing, pulsing pain to get out of the line of fire, but his muscles wouldn’t respond. His hands had become slow, clumsy. They slipped off the controls, and he couldn’t seem to lift them to put them back. All he could do was slump over the side of the chair and hyperventilate.
“----at’s going on? Beetle, pull up!”
“Hey! Beetle!” Guy sounded almost worried, and that’s when Ted realized that he was really in trouble.
There was an ear-splitting crash, and the Bug rocked with the force of a collision. Only the sensor-locked harness prevented Ted from being thrown through the window like a ragdoll. The Bug shuddered and wailed, her cabin rapidly filling with oily smoke.
Ted felt the ship groaning around him while he sat there uselessly, gasping, alarms shrieking as the rear engine sputtered and then failed. Freefall was a disorienting spiral, the wind buffeting hard on all sides. He’d built in failsafes for this. Why weren’t they coming on? Why----
“Ted!”
The harness dug into his sides as the Bug overturned, loose tools and instruments clattering onto the ceiling. Another wave of nausea crested as he dangled upside down, his vision narrowing to a pinprick. Oh, hell. Oh, hell, he was going to pass out.
The last thing Ted heard was a choir of voices yelling at him before the airship abruptly righted herself and his head slammed against the console.
“Mr. Kord? Mr. Kord, can you hear me? If you can, please open your eyes.”
The voice was unfamiliar, the tone somehow both patient and insistent. Ted kept his eyes shut for a moment longer, taking stock of himself the way he usually did when waking up from a spell of unconsciousness. (And really, it was a crying shame that he had a whole systems process for rebooting after being knocked out. He ought to have incorporated a helmet into his costume ages ago.)
His limbs were all present and accounted for, though he had a terrible headache and his whole torso felt bruised from collarbones to belly button. His costume was gone, and he was mostly naked, though there was the scratchy weight of a blanket tucked over his legs and lap. A monitor was beeping; something was hissing softly. There was an unmistakable hospital smell in the air: sterilizing solutions, bleach, and piped-in oxygen.
Great.
Ted peeled apart his eyelids. The lights were too bright, but he could still make out the curtained partition and its other two occupants: a young man in nurse’s scrubs and a middle-aged woman with a buzzcut and a white coat.
The woman smiled at him when their eyes met. She had a thin, severe face, and the badge clipped to her chest was straighter than a slide-rule. “Good morning, Mr. Kord. You’re at Mercy General Hospital in Gotham, and today is Friday, May 17th. My name is Dr. Muthuraja.”
Speaking felt like it might take an awful amount of effort. Ted managed a nod, wincing when the movement jarred his head in a particularly horrible way. From the corner of his eye, he noticed Booster’s favorite bomber jacket folded over the back of a chair.
“Are you in pain? Can you tell me where the pain is? Deshawn, please bring Mr. Kord some ice chips. Mr. Kord, lift your right hand and point to where you’re experiencing pain.”
Ted obeyed, and the next few minutes were a bit of a blur. Someone lowered the lights and another nurse came in to inject something into the IV port in his hand. After a while Nurse Deshawn returned with the ice chips and helped Ted slip one into his mouth, which he realized felt bruised and raw, and as dry as the Sahara. The cold worked its magic, and Dr. Muthuraja pulled up a chair to sit next to him.
“How’s your pain? Better?’
His temples still twinged if he even thought about shifting position, but the overall throbbing had quieted to a dull ache. Ted made a flapping gesture with his hand, hoping it conveyed gratitude.
“Do you remember coming to the hospital?”
“No,” Ted finally managed. He sounded like a frog that chain-smoked and drank nothing but Black Velvet.
“You were brought to us by ambulance three hours ago,” Dr. Muthuraja began, brisk but sympathetic. “You suffered a cardiac event that resulted in an accident. Fortunately, you were wearing your seatbelt, but you did sustain some injuries and lost consciousness, and you were intubated on scene. After your arrival in the emergency room, you had a minor episode of arrhythmia, but you’ve stabilized quite nicely.”
“Nuh?”
“You had a heart attack, Mr. Kord.”
Another one. Ted swallowed thickly. His head felt stuffed, and it all seemed unreal. Dimly, he knew he ought to be panicking, but he was too tired and sore for a nervous breakdown right now.
Maybe later.
He un-stuck his tongue from the bottom of his mouth and said, with some difficulty, “‘Kay. Dunno what to do with that.”
The nurse re-taping his IV gave his arm a commiserating sort of pat. There, there.
“We can discuss your options later,” the doctor replied. “There are some tests I’d like to run before we consider a treatment plan, and we need a clearer picture of your cardiac history. For the moment, we’re passively monitoring until we have an available bed for you, so sleep if you can, but I’d prefer that you not eat or drink until we rule a few things out. The ice chips are fine.”
That detail poked the tiny corner of Ted’s mind that was still working on a full battery. “‘Cause I need surgery?”
“We won’t know whether this is an isolated incident or something that will need more immediate intervention until we run some tests. It’s just a precaution at this point. I like to keep all of our options open.”
After a little more back-and-forth with the nurse, Dr. Muthuraja left; once he’d pointed out the call button, Nurse Deshawn did too. Ted drifted for a while, absently listening to the muted thrum of a busy hospital. He couldn’t focus on anything more complex than the steady drip of the IV bag, thoughts sliding out of his brain before they could really register. He couldn’t sleep either, a sense of sharp unease startling him back awake every time he started to slide into unconsciousness.
An indeterminate amount of time later, the long curtains were yanked apart, fluorescent light and noise from the larger room spilling in.
“You’re awake!” Booster exclaimed. He was wearing civvies, and his hair was damp and unstyled. A big bruise darkened one side of his face and he looked pale beneath his tan, but otherwise he seemed unhurt.
A wave of relief swept over Ted. He tried to grin, but he must not have been making the face he meant to make, because Booster suddenly looked sort of funny.
“You’re on the good drugs, huh?” he said.
“Mmmm.”
There was a backpack slung over Booster’s shoulder; he slipped it off, hooking his other hand under the chair to drag it closer to Ted’s cot. He sat down, propping his elbows on the thin mattress. “How’re you feeling, Blue?”
“How many?” was all Ted’s exhausted brain could come up with in reply.
Bless him, Booster knew what he meant. “Nobody got hurt but you. Long story short: you got tossed around a lot, but the safety kicked in and triggered the emergency brake and then Guy guided the Bug down, and Tora got really mad and froze the bot solid. You were right, it was solar-powered. The others are on clean-up duty right now.”
“‘Kay.” Ted took a breath through his mouth and winced when it scraped against his tender windpipe. With a familiar presence standing guard, he thought he might finally be able to rest. “Y’good?”
He felt a warm weight smooth back his hair -- Booster’s hand. “I’m good, man, seriously. Everyone’s good.”
There were plenty of other questions Ted wanted answers to, but his eyelids kept slipping shut, like there were tiny barbells attached to them.
“Ted?”
“M’gonna sleep.”
Booster smiled at him, but it wasn’t a very good effort, and Ted would have told him so if he wasn’t already halfway to the land of nod. “Sure, that’s the idea. Sleep tight, bedbug.”
Ted did.