Chapter 1: The Last Day
Notes:
Set during the events of Stargirl 02x01 - Summer School, Chapter One
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Six months. That’s how long it’s been since you and the Justice Society of America defeated Icicle and his Injustice Society, saving the country from mass brainwashing.
Six glorious months.
It’s almost been like a dream, to be honest. Even with the madness of cramming for finals, it’s been the most enjoyable time of your life.
Of course, some of that is down to the fact that you’ve got friends for the first time ever. Between Courtney, Beth, and Yolanda, you can’t remember the last time you were on your own for more than a few hours. It’s almost as if you’ve been making up for lost time, spending extra time with them in order to compensate for the years spent alone.
And of course, the rest of it is down to Rick. Because this is also the first time you’ve had a boyfriend, and while that’s all still new and a little awkward at times, it’s also exciting, and wonderful.
Spending time with your friends is one thing. But spending time with Rick, especially alone time, feels different. It feels...special, and secret, and safe. The two of you have been on such a journey together, even before you bring superheroics into it, and it still feels a little bit unbelievable.
That said, sometimes spending time with your friends wasn’t the best it could be. Like right now, as you find yourself wandering the streets of Blue Valley in full costume, literally looking for trouble.
You’d never pass up an opportunity to hang out with your friends. But couldn’t you like, go to the movies, or get a pizza, or something? Why did you have to wander around in the dead of night on the lookout for bad guys?
The ISA are gone. You know that. All the heavy hitters are dead or in prison, and the ones that aren’t, like the Gambler, haven’t been heard from in months.
But some people just can’t seem to let it go.
Hence the cold, and the wet, and the late nights, and the constant excuses running around in your mind in case your parents catch you coming in after dark.
You pull your costume a little tighter around you, trying to keep yourself warm against the chill. You’d spent weeks trying out different combinations of stuff to see what felt the most suitable; this is just the latest in a long line of outfits.
It’s a Blue Valley High letterman jacket with an E embroidered onto the back, thrown on over a pale blue t-shirt and workout leggings tucked into a beat-up pair of Chucks. Your eyes are uncovered, but you wear a bandana around your mouth and nose, which changes colour depending on your mood when you’re getting dress. Compared to what your friends wear out on patrol, it’s a little basic. But you chose it, and its yours.
Is it badass? Hell yes. But is it the kind of thing you want to be wearing when it’s this cold out? Not particularly. Maybe you can come up with a fur-lined version for the real winter months.
Thankfully, someone has finally had the sense to call Courtney out on the fact that nothing has happened for hours, nothing is currently happening, and nothing is going to happen any time soon.
Not quite so thankfully, that person is Rick, and he’s still a little light in the tact department.
“I beat Grundy, okay? And the Gambler's a wimp, and Cindy Burman probably got crushed with Brainwave when the dish caved in.” He’s not wrong, but there are probably better ways he could have said that. Then again, if he’s as cold and tired and uncomfortable as you feel right now, you can’t really blame him for being a little short.
“I doubt it,” Courtney says, like a dog with a bone. “And the others could-”
“What others, Court? Icicle was shattered into a thousand pieces. Dragon King is dead. Tigress and Sportsmaster, they’re locked up. The ISA are done. All of them.”
The argument continues for a moment longer, but a quick look around at the others tells you that patrol is over for the night, no matter what Courtney has to say.
The five of you head off; Courtney, Yolanda, and Beth in different directions, while you sidle up to Rick and fall into step.
Rick’s presence beside you is always reassuring, but there’s something about the added bulk of his Hourman costume that makes you feel even safer. You can defend yourself well enough – you’ve been practising with your empathic powers all semester, and you’re getting pretty good if you do say so yourself – but there’s something about having a big, (super) strong (at least for an hour at a time) man beside you that makes even the darkest night feel a little brighter.
When you’re certain that Courtney is out of earshot, you roll your eyes. “If we were out here any longer, I was going to send Court my medical bill for the frostbite in my toes.”
“You know it’s like...July, right? It’s not that cold.”
“Says the man wearing the thick leather costume.”
Rick gives you a look. “Courtney and Pat offered to make you a proper costume.”
“But then it wouldn’t be mine!” You’re trying not to pout, but you can hear some of the whine creeping into your voice despite yourself.
“I guess I’ll just have to keep you warm another way,” Rick says with a sly smile. He throws his Hourman cape over your shoulder and pulls you in close to him. You instantly feel warmer, but you’re not entirely sure it’s because of the cape.
“Can you believe her?” Rick asks, a little incredulous. “Six nights a week instead of seven? Nothing’s happening in this town. We all deserve a little more time to ourselves, right? Do we really want to spend all of our summer patrolling a town where nothing happens?”
Part of you wants to agree with him. You could definitely think of some better things to do than wander around Blue Valley after dark, even if it is with your friends. But you can also kind of see where Courtney’s coming from, even if she’s a bit...overzealous. “She’s just trying to keep us safe, you know? The ISA were right here, right under our noses, and we all missed it.”
“Mostly because we didn’t know to look for it, but I get your point.”
“I think she’s just trying to make sure we don’t slip up and get sloppy. It’d be easy to just sit back and think that our job’s done. But we’ve all got these powers, and you’ve all got legacies to uphold – isn’t it kind of our duty to do something?”
“Sure,” Rick concedes. “But if there’s nothing to do, then what’s the point?”
“She’s just trying to keep us safe.” You repeat that, not sure if it’s Rick or yourself that you’re trying to convince of it now.
“Yeah, well, I need sleep. Sleep will keep everyone safe,” Rick says, matter-of-factly. You raise a questioning eyebrow at him, and he yawns before elaborating. “Safe from me.”
You’ve seen not-enough-hours-of-sleep-Rick. It’s not pretty.
“Well then, let’s call it a night. We’ve only got one more day of class to get through. Then we’re home free.”
It’s an innocent thing to say. Of course, you had no idea at the time of how wrong you were going to turn out to be.
*****
“I saved everyone. I saved everyone in this stupid town,” Rick says, in a voice that tells you that he’s currently regretting that decision.
“Excuse me?” Miss Woods asks, understandably, since she has no idea what Rick is talking about.
“You know what?” Rick begins, and you hold your breath, not sure whether to run to him or get out of his way if he’s about to explode. But he just says, “Fail me,” and then turns and leaves the room.
“I will, Mister Harris,” Miss Woods calls after him, but he’s already gone.
It’s been a long time since you’ve felt this angry. Six months, to be precise, when you found out about the awful things that the ISA were planning to do. But now you feel it bubbling up within you again like a volcano getting ready to blow; you’re not sure if it’s entirely yours, or if some of it is run-off from Rick that you’re picking up on. Not that it matters – the way Miss Woods is treating him is ridiculously unfair.
You’re the last person left in the room; you’re not even sure Miss Woods noticed that you were there before she started laying into Rick, accusing him of cheating. But you did. You heard every word.
You want to go after him; he’s going to need to talk to someone, or he might hit something. But when you get to the threshold of the classroom, something else takes precedent. Righteous fury ignites your throat as words fall from your lips. “The way you just spoke to Rick? That was out of order.”
“I beg your pardon?” Miss Woods says, clearly taken aback by both the fact you’re still present, and that you’re talking to her with such a brutal tone.
You’ve never talked back to a teacher as long as you’ve been at Blue Valley High. But what’s the point of fighting injustices in the streets if you can’t fight them in your own life too?
“You heard me. Rick studied his ass off to pass his finals, and the fact that you didn’t even consider that he might have done well on his own? That’s just wrong.”
Miss Woods looks indignant, then ashamed in equal measure, as if she can’t quite decide whether to give ground or double down. Instead, she plays for time. “And how would you know what Mister Harris has been up to?”
“Because,” you say through gritted teeth, “Rick Tyler is my boyfriend. I know how much work he put in because I was there next to him while he studied. We did it together – me, him, and our friends. We worked hard. But sure, just write him off, why not? If hard work and studying mean you have to go to summer school, then you may as well send me right alongside him.” Your voice is calm, but there is no doubt in your mind that Miss Woods can tell you’re itching for a fight now.
She looks down at you haughtily. “So be it. You can join your little boyfriend, for rudeness if nothing else.”
You shake your head and give her the dirtiest look you can manage without being downright disrespectful, and then head off after Rick. It’s only when you leave the room that you feel your hands unclench, and the stinging in your palm where your fingers were digging in.
You wonder for a moment if this is what it feels like to be Rick all the time – to feel like the entire world is against you, to want to lash out at it all and yet knowing that nothing you hit will right the wrongs around you.
*****
The lunch bell has rung, so there’s only one place Rick will be right now. Despite everything, the thought of it brings a smile to your face.
You step out into the July afternoon air, the sun beaming down on you gently; you can barely remember what the cold of the previous night felt like while you’re under its warm rays.
Rick is sitting in your usual spot, about halfway up the bleachers around the football field. His backpack is shoved roughly between his knees and he’s pulling out some homemade sandwiches from within.
This has kind of become your spot, the two of you. Initially it was because of the sentimental value of it being the place you originally started talking. But then, once your empathic powers kicked in, it became a bit more than that.
You’ve got control of your powers, absolutely. You’re not going to go off like a ticking time bomb or anything – the altercation with Miss Woods just now was proof of that. But you’re always skimming surface emotions off people, even when you don’t mean to. Nothing deep or personal, but enough to get a general feeling of their mood. Which is fine when you’re with one other person, or in a small group, but being in a high school cafeteria packed with people is like being in a football stadium with all of the fans yelling in your ears at once, without even looking at you. It’s more than a little overwhelming, so you’ve taken to coming out here for lunch every day, just for a little peace and quiet.
Sometimes the others join you. None of the teachers seem to mind, especially now that Principal Bowin is gone. But mostly, it’s just you and Rick.
“I thought I’d find you here,” you tell him, taking a seat and pulling out some lunch of your own. You brought your own lunch now too – anything to avoid the cafeteria.
“I wasn’t hiding,” he says around a mouthful of sandwich. You can hear the accusation in his voice, but it just makes you shake your head at him.
““What was that? You can’t go around talking like that – you nearly said something that’d get us all in big trouble.” You try to sound cautionary, instead of like you’re scolding him.
Rick inflates, ready to fight, but then seems to think better of it. He takes a breath, swallows his sandwich, and sighs. “I know. I know, I should have kept my mouth shut. But she makes me so…so...”
You give him a wry smile. “Angry?”
“Okay, now you’re just being mean,” he says, but he’s smiling too.
“I gave her a good telling off though, you’ll be pleased to know. Ripped her to pieces in front of the rest of the class. All zero other people.”
Rick’s eyes go wide. “What? Are you serious?”
“No, but I did tell her she was out of line. I might have landed myself in summer school with you, but it was worth it.”
Rick takes a moment to digest that. “My hero,” he says finally. “Shame I wasn’t there to hear it.”
“Oh, it was epic,” you assure him. “The whole school will be talking about it for years.”
“I’m sure. You’re well known for cussing down teachers.”
“And here was me thinking you were the bad boy in this relationship,” you tease. He throws what remains of his sandwich at you, and you throw up your hands so you don’t get bread in your hair. “Argh! Friendly fire! Friendly fire!”
Rick grins again, clearly deciding whether to launch the rest of his lunch at you, then changes his mind and stuffs it in his mouth instead. He looks out over the football field, a wistful look in his eye as he chews.
“Thanks,” he says eventually. “For standing up for me. That’s still...a weird feeling. Knowing someone has my back, even when I’m not in the room.”
“Any time. What’s the point in having a boyfriend if you’re not going to defend his honour?”
Now it’s Rick’s turn to roll his eyes. “Oh, brother. You sound like Justin.”
“Verily.”
“Shut up, dork.”
You do, falling into a companionable silence while you finish your lunch. It’s strange, seeing the football field so empty. Even now, six months later, you can’t erase the image of it splitting in half and an enormous satellite dish emerging from the depths below it.
“I found something. In the woods,” Rick says suddenly.
You look over at him, confused. “Something?”
“I was on my way to school this morning, and I thought...I heard something. I got out of my car to investigate, and there were...footprints, near the river.”
“Are we talking like normal feet, or bigfoot feet?”
“I think it was...Grundy feet.”
He lets that sink in for a moment. You’re not quite sure what to think. The last time Rick and Grundy met wasn’t the best situation for either of them, and there’s still a lot of mixed feelings there. Grundy killed Rick’s parents. But he’d only done it because the rest of the Injustice Society had manipulated him into doing it. So...complicated.
You get the feeling that Rick is waiting to tell you more. “Did you follow them?”
“Nah. There were only a few. But I could feel...like a presence, there in the woods. I think he’s still out there. Maybe he never left.”
“Did you want to follow them?”
Rick looks over at you, as earnest as you’ve ever seen him. “No. Or at least, not for the reason you might think. I don’t want to hurt him any more. It’s silly, but...”
“Go on. You know I won’t judge.”
There’s indecision coming off of him in waves; you’re not even sure you’d need your powers to detect it.
“...I just want to make sure he’s okay. I feel like...he’s kind of my responsibility now, you know? I wasn’t even going to tell you, not yet. But I don’t like keeping secrets, not from you.”
“I’m glad you told me. You’re right – no secrets.”
“But,” he says, holding up a hand, “can we not tell the others just yet? Please? At least until I know exactly what the deal is. I don’t want Beth and Yolanda to worry, and I definitely don’t want Courtney tearing through the forest on a bad guy hunt, especially if it’s nothing.”
You’re not entirely sure what to say. You’re not a fan of keeping things from your friends, especially stuff that’s potentially Injustice Society related. But Rick doesn’t ask you for much; he seems to think that asking for anything is showing weakness, even now, and that makes your heart hurt a little whenever you’re reminded of that fact.
And it’s not an out and out lie if you don’t really know what it is you’re not telling them yet, is it?
“Alright,” you say at last. “I’ll keep quiet for now.”
“Thank you. I’m gunna investigate, and when I know what’s going on, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Do you need help? I could go with you. We did pretty well against Grundy together last time, if you recall.”
Rick beams with pride, although most of that’s aimed at you and you start to blush as your compliment backfires. “I do, actually. But I don’t think so. Not yet.”
Looking back, that day was probably when it all started to go wrong. When the world you’d so carefully curated over the last six months began to fall apart, and your perfect bubble popped and let all the darkness that was waiting just outside its protective surface rush in and drown you and your friends.
You’d thought that dealing with the Injustice Society was the worst thing you’d ever have to do. But what came coming next would test you, Rick, and the rest of the Justice Society even further than you had ever thought was possible.
Notes:
And we're back!
Chapter 2: Beware Her Power
Notes:
Set during the events of Stargirl 02x02 - Summer School, Chapter Two
Chapter Text
Practically volunteering yourself for summer school felt like such an achievement at the time. Standing up to Miss Woods, putting her in her place about Rick, it made you feel good, like you were doing the right thing.
Actually having to go to Summer School though? Nowhere near as good, and might actually make you regret doing the right thing for the first time ever.
At least you’re not alone. Courtney and Yolanda are here too, although for very different reasons than you. Court’s grades weren’t as up to scratch as she made them out to be, so she’s failed sophomore year. If you’d known she was struggling you could have included her your study sessions with Rick, but instead...here she is.
Meanwhile Yolanda’s parents thought it’d be a good idea to keep her out of trouble. They clearly have no idea what their daughter gets up to outside of school.
But the one person you actually expected to see...isn’t here. Where’s Rick?
You look around for him as you take your seat while Mr. Deisinger starts calling for attendance. You frown at the classroom door, expecting Rick to wander in nonchalantly any time now, but by the time Mr. Deisinger has reached his name, he’s still nowhere to be seen.
“Rick Harris?” the teacher asks, also looking around as if he might have somehow missed Rick in this half-empty classroom. “Rick Harris?”
“It’s Rick Tyler now, Mr. Deisinger,” you correct him, although far more gently than you had Miss Woods. Mr. Deisinger doesn’t deserve your ire just yet. “He’s...not feeling well. He told me to tell you he’d be missing class.”
Mr. Deisinger looks a little sceptical, but the earnest look on your face is enough to satisfy him for now and he moves on.
“Is he really sick?” Courtney asks, leaning over with a look of concern. “What’s up?”
You shake your head, keeping your voice low. “No, he’s fine. He’s just...not here.”
“So...where is he?” Yolanda prompts. It’s not unreasonable to expect you to know – he’s your boyfriend after all, but you shake your head again, remembering your promise.
“I don’t know,” you say, which isn’t entirely untrue. You have a pretty good feeling – he’s probably in the woods on some ill-advised Grundy hunt – but nothing concrete. So it’s not completely a lie, you tell yourself as your stomach ties itself in knots anyway.
Worrying about Rick has become something of a hobby of yours, even if it’s not one you particularly enjoy. At least this way, if you keep quiet, it’ll just be you that has to worry about him; and that’s better for everyone...right?
Summer School passes by at a crawl. Mr. Deisinger tries his hardest to make it interesting, but the fact that a) you know most of what he’s teaching and b) you don’t really need to be here anyway doesn’t do anything to make time move any quicker.
And then there’s c) the new hero that appeared in Blue Valley last night and shot up Courtney’s kitchen. Apparently Green Lantern had a daughter, and no matter how hard Mr. Deisinger tries, there’s no way he’ll ever be able to make school anywhere near as interesting as that.
*****
By the time you, Yolanda, and Courtney make it to the Pit Stop, you’re all caught up on everything Courtney knows about Jennie. Which, granted, isn’t a lot.
Beth, who didn’t have to go to summer school anyway, and Rick, who skipped out on the entire day, are already waiting for you alongside Pat and Jennie when you roll in.
You hope that meeting another superhero will be fun. It’ll be nice not to be the newest member of the team for once. But unfortunately tensions run high between Courtney and Jennie, and the two of them end up having a disagreement in the middle of the garage.
“I wouldn't be so sceptical if she would have knocked on our door last night, but she broke in!” Courtney insists.
“Because I didn’t know who stole my father’s Lantern!” Jennie says, but Courtney is still unimpressed. Extremely so, by her expression.
Jennie’s face falls. “Maybe I should just go.”
Strong emotions make you flinch, and when Jennie storms off, it’s like a slap to the face.
You instantly head after her, following Beth out the door.
“That wasn’t cool, Court,” you hear Rick say as he passes her by, hot on your heels. You’ve got some choice words for her too, but those can wait until you get Jennie back.
You, Rick, Yolanda, and Beth all emerge onto the sidewalk outside the garage only seconds after Jennie, but she’s already disappeared.
“We’ll go this way,” you say, pointing left. “You two take the opposite direction. She can’t have gone far.” Beth and Yolanda nod, and you head off on your search and retrieval mission.
“Starting to think a chill pill for Stargirl isn’t such a bad idea,” Rick says, head on a swivel as you look for your errant new friend.
“You’re not wrong. I should have said something – I could feel the tension in the room boiling up, but by the time I’d realised that the conversation was falling apart, it was too late.”
Rick shoots you a look of concern. “Hey. Don’t sweat it. Just because you know how people are feeling, doesn’t mean you need to keep everyone under control. Take it from me, sometimes a little anger isn’t such a bad thing.”
You nod. He’s right – but it doesn’t make it any easier to see your friends fight, even new friends. “It’s just weird, you know? Other than you, Court was my biggest supporter when I wanted to get in on the JSA action, and that was even before I had powers. Now along comes Jennie, who’s potentially stronger than all of us put together, and she doesn’t want to give her the time of day.”
“It’s hard for her, I think,” Rick replies. You cross the street into town proper, heading down Main Street. “Like, she’s used to being the leader. She introduced me, Beth, and Yolanda to our powers. But Jennie didn’t need her. She knew all about who she was, without Court’s help.”
“And now she’s here, saying she’s Green Lantern’s daughter, when Courtney spent all last year thinking she was related to Starman,” you realise, snapping your fingers. “God, that must feel awful for her. It’s like...like...”
“Like Jennie’s everything she wanted to be.”
“Exactly.”
“There!” Rick suddenly points across the street, and sure enough Jennie is sitting on a park bench opposite an array of flowers that the American Dream had donated to the city a few months before Jordan Mahkent brought it all down around them.
Her hands are clasped in her lap, and even from here you can feel her trying not to cry. You and Rick cross the street and approach carefully.
“Hi,” you say, also carefully, before introducing yourself. “We didn’t really get to talk back at the garage.”
“Sorry,” Jennie says, sniffing back tears. “I just had to get out of there, you know? It was all…a bit much.”
“Did you want to talk about it?” you ask her, taking a seat, perched on the edge of the bench. Rick does the same on the other side. “Courtney’s not here, she won’t hear anything.”
“The truth is, I don’t even know how I feel right now,” Jennie says, looking up at the sky and dabbing at the corners of her eyes. She’s very pretty, you think, even when she’s crying. “It’s been such a whirlwind few days, I don’t think I’ve stopped to really sort it all out, so I don’t even know where I’d start even if I did talk about it.”
Rick catches your eye and inclines his head, like he’s prompting you. “Go on.”
“Oh, uh...” You’re not really sure how to broach the subject, so you check to make sure no one is close enough to hear you and then just come out and say, “I can probably help you with that, if you want?”
Jennie raises an eyebrow. “What’d you mean?”
“My powers. I’m...empathic. I can read people’s emotions. If you like, I can try and help you sort yours out.”
The truth is, you’ve never really done anything beyond reading other people’s emotions, other than weaponising your own to fight.
But maybe you can see something that Jennie’s missed, or put them into words she hasn’t quite thought of? It’s like a forest for the trees situation – she’s so close to her own feelings that she can’t tell what they are, but an outside observer might have better luck.
Jennie considers this for a second. “Sure, why not. What have I got to lose? It’s no weirder than summoning up big green boxing gloves, I guess.” Then, after a beat, “Does it hurt?”
“Not a bit,” you reassure her. You hold out a hand, and she slides hers into it. You feel Rick reach over and place a hand on your shoulder as well, like he’s trying to lend you his strength.
You take a breath, then let the floodgates open.
For a moment, it’s like jumping into the ocean and having the water close over your head. You’re not sure which way is up, if there even is an up, and the currents that tear at you buffet you in all directions as the entire maelstrom of Jennie’s emotions crash into you at once.
But you keep your cool; you can do this. Somewhere, you can still feel Jennie’s hand in yours and Rick’s on your shoulder. With those connections in mind, you can find your focus.
In a few moments, the waters begin to calm. You can pick out the individual currents, see what makes them up, why some are hot and rushing at high speed while others are calmer, cooler, less dangerous.
You don’t get the memories that go along with the feelings; your powers don’t extend to actual mind reading. But you can piece together quite a lot from what you are able to see.
Jennie’s feeling lost – she has done her entire life. Abandoned by her father, stuck in the foster system, separated from her brother. And then, cast out into the world with nothing but a ring and a toy car to her name, trying to recover the legacy she has been denied.
Then to find out that the person looking after her father’s legacy wants nothing to do with her? That’s painful. The one tether that she’s been holding onto all this time feels like it’s been cut out from under her. She’s adrift in this ocean of emotions, and she doesn’t know which way is land.
“You’re not alone any more.” These are the first words you say as soon as you break contact with Jennie and return to the world you know. “You don’t have to face all those feelings on your own.”
“I don’t...I don’t know that that’s true,” Jennie says, although her voice is already far calmer than before, and the tears in her eyes have all but dried up. “I don’t think Courtney wants me around.”
“That’s not true,” Rick says. “She’s just...feeling her feelings. She’ll come around, we promise. What she’s going through, it’s nothing to do with you. It’s more to do with...what you represent. And that’s not your fault.”
“I thought I was alone, for a really long time,” you tell her, a sad smile coming to your lips as you reflect back. “I spent all my time on my own, even when I was surrounded by people. But then I met Courtney, and Rick, and the others, and they helped me see that I didn’t have to be alone. That there were people out there for me, even if I didn’t think there were.
“And that was before I got my powers. Courtney and the JSA, they helped me become the person I am today. There’s no reason they can’t do the same for you, if you’ll let them.”
“If you’ll let us,” Rick corrects.
You give him a smile and a nod. “Us.”
Jennie’s face is a mask of confusion as she tries to make a decision. She looks from you to Rick and back again, and you hope that your face is as earnest as your words were. Finally, she stands back up.
“Alright. One more try. I need to go back and get my Dad’s Lantern anyway. And I came all this way – I might as well see what all the fuss is about, right? You guys talk a good game. And, for what it’s worth, your powers are pretty cool – it was like you knew exactly what to say to make me feel better.”
You feel yourself blush, not sure how to take the compliment. Behind Jennie’s back, Rick catches your eye and fist-pumps in triumph, mouthing “That was awesome!” at you. It takes all your willpower not to burst out laughing and ruin all the good will you’ve just earned.
Instead, you just give him your biggest smile and lead Jennie back towards the Pit Stop and your friends.
*****
The rest of the afternoon is spent getting to know Jennie. Once she returns to the Pit Stop, you, Rick, Beth, and Yolanda try to make her feel at home, get her to tell you her story in her own words, rather than the second-hand accounts you’ve gotten from Courtney and Yolanda before.
You can feel her eagerness to impress, even without making contact. She’s not prideful, she never boasts, but she makes sure that you know she is independent, that she has never had to count on anyone in her entire life, and she isn’t about to start now – but that she wouldn’t mind having some friends she can count on.
You can also feel the anger coming off Courtney, high above you on the second floor of the Pit Stop where she and Pat are in deep conversation.
Pat Dugan is always a calm, collected man; just being near him is enough to calm you down most of the time, and you can see Courtney getting visibly less agitated as he talks her through her problems with Jennie.
Her bristling anger cools to a steady irritation, then even that is tamped away as she comes down the steps to try and join in the conversation with the rest of you. Pat meanwhile heads out to follow-up on something for Barbara.
When Courtney explains herself, you and Rick share a glance across the top of everyone’s heads. It’s very similar to what you and he had worked out earlier today. It’s nice to be right – and it’s nice to get some validation with regards to your powers. You managed to sort through Jennie’s feelings in a way that made sense, and you managed to draw the same conclusions that she and Courtney have also come to about their relationship with each other and their fathers.
Maybe you’re good at this empathic stuff after all?
You’re just thinking about how nice it is that everyone’s getting along when Courtney makes her biggest mistake so far. You know she means well – her words aren’t meant to be insulting, or belittling, but they have an undesired effect even so.
“Stop saying I have everything!” Jennie shouts suddenly. She whirls on Courtney, her eyes glowing a very familiar shade of green. The rest of you all take an instinctive step back, but to Courtney’s credit, she doesn’t move.
“I have nothing,” Jennie says, and the waves of sorrow that seep off of her are so powerful that you can barely stay upright. You grab Rick for support, but he’s so fixated on Courtney and Jennie that he doesn’t notice.
“This ring, it's supposed to do whatever you ask it to, anything at all. And all I wanted was to find my brother.”
The loneliness that you felt in Jennie’s mind suddenly comes into sharp focus. How had you missed something so obvious? She wasn’t just sad about being alone – she was sad about not having the one person in her life that would understand how she felt.
Maybe you weren’t quite as deserving of that praise as you thought.
“I thought this ring would lead me to him, not to this stupid Lantern!“
She sweeps her hand across the workbench, sending the Green Lantern clattering to the floor. It begins to flash and pulse dangerously, and the six of you look at each other in shock.
“Um, Jennie?” Rick asks, looking more than a little concerned. “What did you just do?”
That, you think, is a very good question. A better one though, is what are you supposed to do about it now?
*****
The plan is simple enough – if you can’t stop the Lantern from exploding, then you’ll get it as far away from crowds of people as possible. The Pit Stop is deserted at this time of the evening, but you don’t really relish the idea of it going off in there and destroying god-knows-what. Plus, if the explosion damaged STRIPE, then Pat would likely finish you off himself.
That’s how you find yourself running across the lawn of the American Dream towards the gazebo in the middle of the square. Rick has the Lantern firmly in his grip, his hourglass swinging out under his throat like a pendulum as he runs. He’s activated his hour of super strength, just in case.
Something tells you that you won’t need a whole hour, not the way that the Lantern is pulsing more and more frequently.
Pat Dugan, voice of reason, joins you all on the green. The first words out of his mouth aren’t a complete surprise. “What’s going on?”
“Pat, the Lantern, it’s going to-”
Beth’s explanation is interrupted by a flare of power from the Lantern. Rick drops it as if it’s red hot, and it bounces to the grass and begins to burn much brighter.
“This is all my fault!” Jennie exclaims, and now her sorrow is raging even more than before.
Pat raises his hands towards her like he’s trying to calm a raging animal. “Emotions, Jennie, remember? That’s what affects your power!”
Suddenly, Courtney’s voice rings out, and the truth behind her words is undeniable. “Jennie is the Lantern! That’s why the ring works when you put it on, because you’re charging it! You can absorb the energy, before it explodes!”
Jennie looks reluctant. All any of you want to do is turn tail and run as far away from the Lantern as you can, but you all know that it won’t help. You have to put a stop to this, right now.
“They’re right, Jennie!” you shout over the ever-increasing noise of the Lantern. “You can do this! I read your emotions, remember? I know how much pain you’re in!”
Rick shoots you a look as if to say “what are you doing?!” but you wave him away. You may have missed the obvious before, but this time, you’ve definitely got this.
You hope. And if the Lantern explodes and kills you all, then it won’t hurt to have tried, anyway.
“I saw all that pain, all that heartache, all the stuff you’ve been through. I’m sorry that I didn’t realise how much losing your brother hurt you. But you know what else I saw while I was in there? Probably the strongest person I’ve ever met.” Your voice is confident and sincere. All the things you absolutely want to sound right now.
“Rick’s got the muscle, Courtney’s got the heart. Beth’s got the brains, and Yolanda’s got the courage. But you? You’ve got the strength to keep yourself going, no matter what you’ve been through. You’ve been dealt a horrible hand in life – but you’re still here!
“You’re Green Lantern’s daughter! He might have needed a magic ring and a funny lamp to make his creations come to life, but you don’t need any of that. All you need is faith in yourself. If you’ve got that, then I know that there’s nothing you can’t do!”
Jennie hears your words, really hears them. You can see from the look on her face that they’ve rung true. She leans forward and collects the Lantern from the ground; emerald energy is blazing out of it like laser beams now, but she holds it like it’s cool to the touch.
“You all need to get out of here,” she says. “If this doesn’t work, it…”
Courtney looks back at the rest of you with conviction. None of you move a muscle. In fact, Courtney even takes a step forward.
“We’re not going anywhere, Jennie. You can do this.”
She holds the Lantern tightly, her hands clasped over it like a crystal ball. She concentrates, and the energy spewing out of it like nuclear waste begins to recede back inside. “Yeah, I think I got this!” she says with a huge grin.
But then there’s the sound of breaking glass and the Lantern detonates. A shockwave of green energy emerges from it, sending you all flying backwards and rolling across the grass like baseballs on your way to a home run.
You check yourself – no bruises, no broken bones. A quick glance at the others tells you that they’re all okay too. Jennie saved you all from the worst of it.
For a moment, she’s nowhere to be seen, and you fear the worst. Then another green glow draws your eye.
Above you, Jennie is floating. Her face is split wide with the biggest smile you’ve ever seen, and all around her is an aura of green energy that pulses and dances in time with some unheard rhythm.
She carefully lowers herself to the ground, and as soon as her feet touch the grass the aura disappears. Her eyes glint the same green for a moment, and then it’s gone entirely.
“Wow. I...didn’t know I could do that,” she says, looking down at her hands in surprise. The Lantern is gone, but the power it held lives on in her.
The others all swarm around her, making sure she’s okay, and picking up some of the broken pieces of the Lantern to get rid of the evidence.
“I didn’t know you could do that, either,” Rick says, getting to his feet and holding out a hand to help you up.
You take it gratefully and dust grass from your knees. “I didn’t do anything though.”
“You’ve been doing it all day. I can’t believe you haven’t noticed.”
“You’re going to have to be a bit more specific.”
“I think you forget sometimes that you’ve got a power that you’ve had right from the get-go. Even before Brainwave did his little whammy on you.” Rick waves his fingers at you to illustrate his point, but you’re still not getting it.
“You missed yourself out, when you were telling Jennie who we all were. Muscle, brains, heart, strength. You though? You’re the best friend any of us could ask for,” he explains, in a tone that tells you he thinks this is the most obvious thing in the world. “All day, you’ve been making friends with Jennie. Making her feel at ease. Helping her come out of her shell. Sound familiar?”
It does. It’s exactly what you did with him.
“Does this mean I have to date Jennie now too?” you ask. “That’s how that ended up last time.”
Rick glares at you through hooded eyes. “I’m trying to be serious here, and all you have are jokes?”
“Who says I’m joking?”
“You’d better be. She might glow green, but I’m not giving you up without a fight.”
You join the others in checking on Jennie. She seems fine, thankfully. Like you, she can feel the power bubbling inside her even when she’s not using it; but she’s pretty sure she’s got it under control.
You may have made light of Rick’s words, but inside they make you feel as if you’re the one floating. You look over at the others, all smiling and laughing and congratulating Jennie on her new powers, and find yourself smiling. Rick was right – you helped do that. You helped bring everyone together today.
If you ever lose your powers, at least you know that you’ll have that friendship to fall back on.
And maybe that’s the greatest superpower of all.
Chapter 3: Darkness On The Edge Of Town
Notes:
Set during the events of Stargirl 02x03 - Summer School, Chapter Three
Chapter Text
It’s hard to gauge the mood at the Pit Stop the following morning. Emotions are running high, none of them entirely make sense – and that’s just yours.
Jennie is gone. You’d thought, after all you went through yesterday, that she might stick around, but according to Courtney she was gone by the time the Dugan-Whitmore household woke up.
It’s a shame, you think. There’s a lot Jennie could teach you all, and a lot she could learn from you all too. But she’s used to being on her own – and at least this time, it’s her choice. She knows where you all are, and something tells you that this isn’t the last time you’ll see her.
Then there’s the bigger problem at hand – one of the Injustice Society’s old members, The Shade, seems to have arrived in town. Pat and Barbara have already seen him, but they’re not sure exactly what he’s after just yet. Courtney meanwhile is practically vibrating at finally having a new enemy to fight.
Plus, Rick’s still MIA. He’d texted you earlier that morning; now that he’s finally managed to get his car up and running, he usually picks you up before school or JSA meetings. You kind of miss not having that extra time to walk with him in the mornings, but it is nice not to have to get up quite so early any more. Today though, he’d said that he couldn’t make it – he had an errand to run first.
You didn’t need any clarification to know that he was heading right into the woods on his Grundy hunt. You hope he’s being careful. You hope he’s being safe. As much as he can take care of himself, Grundy is a whole other animal compared to the other villains you’ve faced – there’s always going to be that personal connection for Rick, even if he doesn’t want to kill him any more, and that makes any interaction they have unpredictable at best.
But you’re giving him his space, letting him deal with it his way. He’s his own person, you can’t just tell him what to do. You can tell him that you think he’s being foolish, but that probably won’t help the situation much; he’ll likely just double down. No, you have to just let this run its course, and be there for him whatever happens, the same way he would be for you.
“You’re late, Rick.” Pat’s voice snaps you out of your thoughts as Rick finally wanders into the garage. He’s not bleeding, or limping, or showing any signs of having been in a fight – so there’s that, at least.
“Sorry. I had to...feed the dog,” he says lamely.
Thankfully, Pat doesn’t push any further, although Yolanda does ask, “When did you get a dog?”
Rick pretends not to hear her, taking up position on the staircase where you’re all sitting. You sidle up to him and give him a knowing look, but he stares studiously forward at Pat and doesn’t initially acknowledge that you’re there. You’re about to get grumpy when you feel his hand on yours, and then all is (almost) forgiven.
The briefing goes about as well as can be expected. The Shade manipulates and travels through shadows, and he’s impossibly old, which makes him very, very clever. With an enemy like that, no one really knows where to start.
You’re almost about to suggest just leaving him alone; he might just be here by coincidence, and antagonising him could just create a problem where there doesn’t need to be one. But then Pat reveals the fate of the original Doctor Mid-Nite at The Shade’s hands, and the anger that explodes from Beth nearly knocks you backwards.
“Doctor Mid-Nite’s the only one of the JSA that we haven’t gotten justice for,” she says, in a voice uncharacteristically hard for her.
The conversation goes on for a little longer, but it all boils down to the fact that you can’t find The Shade, and even if you can, the only thing that could apparently hurt him is Courtney’s Cosmic Staff, which doesn’t fill you with confidence.
Unfortunately, that’s about all the time you have for now. You, Courtney, and Yolanda all have summer school, and you have to get there on time.
As you make for the door, you pull Rick aside for a second. He smiles for the first time that morning, just a slight quirk of his mouth. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself. Are you coming to class today, or am I making more excuses for you?”
Rick rubs the back of his neck, avoiding your eyes the way he does when he knows what he’s about to say will annoy you. “Well...”
You roll your eyes. “Sure, fine. But I can’t keep this up, Rick. I can only cover for you for so long – Yolanda and Courtney are already suspicious.”
“You know what I’m doing,” he says, his voice a hushed whisper now as he looks over at the others to check if they’re listening. “I have to...feed the dog.”
“Promise me you’re going to tell everyone what’s going on. I don’t like lying to them, and now with The Shade in town...we can’t have secrets, especially ones that could punch us to death.”
Rick bites his lip, indecisive. “I know. Soon, I promise. I’m close, I’m sure I am. Just give me a few more days.”
You give him a stern look, but he smiles so easily that you already know he’s won. “Fine. Fine! But soon, alright?”
“Soon.” Then he hugs you goodbye, his strong arms looping around you, and for a moment all the worries vanish, like Rick’s body is a bulwark against them. Which of course, can’t last.
The pair of you go your separate ways – you, towards the high school, and him back towards the woods. You know you’re going to worry about him, it’s impossible not to. Even with super strength, he’s not invincible. And now that there’s another supervillain in town, it feels like you’re going to be doing a lot more worrying very soon.
*****
It’s amazing how much can change in a day. This morning, you were worried about Grundy and The Shade. Now, you’ve got Mike Dugan and a seemingly omnipotent magical genie pen to add to the collection!
The idea of Mike joining in your adventures isn’t an easy one to digest. You can see both sides of the argument; Thunderbolt seems like an invaluable, if overly complicated, ally in the fight for justice. And if he and Mike are linked, then you can’t really have one without the other. Plus, if The Shade is as powerful as Pat says he is, then you’re going to need all the help you can get.
But Mike’s also a child. You’re not even sure how old he is, you should probably find that out, but you know he’s younger than all of you. He shouldn’t be anywhere near the level of danger that you and your friends find yourself in on a stunningly regular basis.
Case in point – you’re now walking through the darkened streets of Blue Valley on your way to the late William Zarick’s house. The Shade is apparently holed up in The Wizard’s old home, at least according to Thunderbolt.
You’re very thankful that most people in Blue Valley don’t wander around after dark. The sight of the five of you in costume wandering the streets, especially this far away from Halloween, would take a lot of explaining otherwise.
Courtney’s still buzzing, glad to be back in action. Yolanda and Beth are quiet, reserved. They’ve both got a lot on their minds these days. You make a note to try and talk to them about it, when you’re not dealing with your own drama for five minutes.
You and Rick bring up the rear, holding back just a little so you can get some privacy.
“I’m glad Mike’s staying back at the garage,” you whisper to Rick so that Courtney can’t hear. You don’t really want to agree with her, especially after the whole Jennie incident. You’re not sure if you’ve entirely forgiven her for that just yet. But in this case, you think she’s got a point.
Rick’s kind of bouncing as he walks; his hour of strength has started, and he always gets a little antsy when it first kicks in. “He’s got a good heart. He means well.”
“Yeah, but even if he’s going to be part of the team, taking him right into the lion’s den on his first mission’s probably not the best idea.”
“You did the same thing though. You didn’t even have powers, and we had you running around with us in the ISA’s base.”
“I mean, one of those times was because I got kidnapped, to be fair,” you point out, but Rick just waves it off.
“You know what I mean. Kid’s got a genie. Even if it’s a bit...weird, that’s more than you had when you were with us to start with.”
“...Point.” You don’t want to concede, but he’s right. You’d conveniently forgotten about your earliest adventures with the JSA. But you were still older than Mike is now. It’s still better for him to be somewhere safe. Right?
You wish you were somewhere safe too, as soon as you reach the Zarick house. Any house is creepy at night, but this one is especially so. You’re not exactly sure how The Shade’s powers work, and that doesn’t help stop your mind from seeing threatening shapes in every little patch of darkness.
Everything is sheeted up or covered over, ghosts of the previous occupants belongings. The poor Zarick family lost so much to the ISA. It almost feels like you’re walking over their grave.
Somehow that horrible feeling doesn’t lessen when you come across The Shade himself. He’s seated at the end of a long banquet table, tea and biscuits set out for you all, and a smug expression on his face. He’s decked out in a dark suit and top hat, with a gentleman’s cane in his grip. When he speaks, it’s with the kind of English accent you’d only expect to hear in period dramas these days.
“Oh my,” he says, genuinely amused. “Quite the assembly. I do hope I have enough biscuits.”
There’s another flare of anger from Beth as The Shade suggests talking out your problems instead of the usual superheroic throwdown.
“You murdered Doctor Mid-Nite!” she snaps. “You don’t deserve the genteel approach!” She takes a few steps forward, but thankfully Rick is there to hold her back.
The Shade’s face darkens immediately at the mention of Doctor McNider. “My dear young lady – and I mean this in the nicest possible way – you don’t know what you’re talking about. Now, sit. I implore you.”
Something tells you that he’s not going to take no for an answer.
Usually you can read moods pretty easily, even without meaning to. Everyone gives off ambient feelings, even if they’re trying hard to keep them a secret. You can feel the caution, the excitement, and the healthy dose of fear coming off of your friends, for example. (That last one might be yours.)
But The Shade is less of a closed book, and more one that has been slammed shut and locked tight. You can’t tell what he’s feeling at all, aside from the smug look on his face. He’s like a pool of water, calm and still, totally in control of himself.
And cold. So very, very cold. You wonder what it’d feel like if you touched him, tried to get into his head the way you had with Jennie. Her ocean of emotions had been scary, but the very thought of being alone in the deep, dark sea of The Shade sends a shiver down your spine.
Even so, even with him holding everything back, you get the feeling that he’s not telling you everything. Yes, he’s being deliberately cryptic, trying to warn you all away from his plans, but that’s only going to make you all the more likely to interfere.
What is it with adults and not understanding how teenagers’ brains work?
It’s clear after a few minutes of strained conversation that neither your friends nor The Shade are willing to give any ground. He won’t tell you what he’s doing here, and Courtney isn’t about to just let him walk around her town without being accountable.
Although the idea of a centuries-old supervillain reporting to a teenage girl with a glowing stick is kind of funny, if you think about it from a certain angle.
“Just to reassure you,” The Shade continues, “I have no dark design on Blue Valley. Stay out of my way, and I’ll be gone before you know it.”
“Why are you here?” Courtney insists.
“Young lady, I am not being coy. It’s just better that none of you know. Now please, try the tea.”
It seems that the conversation is over, one way or another. You’re not sure whether to do as The Shade asks, or if you’re all just going to get up and leave.
You don’t have a chance to find out, because that’s when everything goes wrong.
Mike Dugan, bless his heart, bursts through the door with his little notepad, ready to unleash Thunderbolt’s full power on The Shade. It’s then that you realise just how completely outclassed you all are against him.
With just a flick of the wrist and a few angry twitches of his mouth, The Shade’s powers are unleashed. Tendrils of shadow lash out from the corners of the room like the tentacles of some eldritch monster, and within moments all of you are pinned or otherwise incapacitated.
Even Courtney, who Pat had assured would be able to deal some damage against The Shade with her Cosmic Staff, isn’t able to do anything against him.
You find yourself trapped against the carpet. You vaguely remember standing up and aiming a ball of energy (probably powered by your absolute terror, you’re not ashamed to admit) at The Shade, but then the whole world turned upside down and all you can see now is the ceiling.
The touch of his shadows is like despair incarnate. You’re not sure if it overloads your empathic abilities or negates them entirely, but all you can feel is cold, hard nothing, like you’ll never be able to feel anything close to an emotion again.
The threat in The Shade’s final words isn’t hidden at all – this is smallest demonstration of his power, and he has no qualms against using more if he has to.
“I’ll say it for the last time – stay out of my way.”
Then he’s gone. The Shade vanishes into the very shadows he commands, the tendrils recede, and you’re leaning against the banquet table, trying to steady yourself on your feet.
Mike’s going to be okay, thankfully; the backlash from Thunderbolt’s recoil just knocked him unconscious. No one else has taken any damage, other than being a little shaken.
In fact, everyone’s pretty much fine. It’s strange – if The Shade wanted to hurt you, to kill you, then he could have. There’s no denying that he’s far more powerful than the rest of you, especially in a house full of shadows like this. In retrospect, facing him here in a place that he could so easily draw power from was probably a mistake.
But he didn’t do anything like that. Aside from knocking Mike unconscious, which might not have even been intentional, everyone is totally fine.
So if he could have dealt with you all so easily, then...why didn’t he?
That thought plagues your mind all the way back to the Pit Stop. Pat and Courtney are taking Mike home – no doubt to deal with the wrath of Barbara. Yolanda’s got to get back before her parents realise she’s gone.
Rick and Beth are going back to the garage though. You don’t really feel like being alone tonight, and your parents won’t mind if you’re out a little late, so you decide to go with them.
“You guys okay?” you ask, turning onto another darkened street. You can’t help but check the dimly lit corners for The Shade, even though you know he’s not going to be there. “That was rough.”
“I don’t like enemies I can’t hit,” Rick says through gritted teeth. “And I definitely don’t like smarmy assholes who think they’re better than me. Next time, I’m gunna follow through on my threat and make him eat china.”
Beth’s quiet, again. Her goggles are clutched in her hands rather than nestled in her hair. “I feel like...I like Chuck down. The real Chuck, I mean. Doctor McNider. The Shade was right there, and we didn’t even get any answers.”
“We’ll get another chance,” you say, not quite sure why you know that. “He’s not going to leave until he’s done what he wants to do, whatever that is. I doubt we’ve seen the last of him.”
“Next time, I’m going to shove that cane of his so far up his-” Rick begins, warming to the idea of physical bodily harm, but you shake your head at him.
“I don’t think that’ll help, somehow.”
“Might make me feel better though.” Rick’s voice is about a millimetre away from being a pout.
The three of you enter the Pit Stop. The first thing you do is reach for the light switch, banishing all of the shadows immediately. Your heart, which you hadn’t even noticed was pounding at a mile a minute since you first saw The Shade, finally begins to slow down.
Rick and Beth begin to shrug out of their costumes and back into their civilian clothes. You spot one of the squashy couches in the corner though, and head straight towards it.
“I’m just gunna lay down for a second,” you tell them. Now that you’re somewhere familiar, it feels like all the adrenaline that had been coursing through you has fled, leaving you a deflated balloon animal with limbs full of lead.
Rick and Beth say something, probably checking to see if you’re okay, but as soon as your head hits the armrest, you’re gone.
*****
You open your eyes, and you’re somewhere new. Somewhere you’ve never been before. The wind is rushing past you at high speed, and you look down to see that you’re high above Blue Valley, free from the protection of the buildings.
You’re not cold though. You don’t feel much of anything at all, almost like you’re a ghost.
You’re dreaming, clearly. You know that much without really thinking about it. You look around, getting your bearings – you’re on the roof of the American Dream building, where Courtney and Icicle had their climactic final battle six months ago.
And you’re not alone.
Standing in the darkness, an empty jewellery box in his grip and his cane under one arm, is The Shade.
He doesn’t seem like he did before. He’s not as confident, not as cocky, almost as if the disguise has dropped now that he thinks he’s alone. The shadows lick at the soles of his feet, making it seem like he’s standing in a pool of ink that shifts with the wind and his movements.
“He’s going to kill those children,” he says in a hushed whisper to himself. He snaps the jewellery box shut with a crack, and you gasp despite yourself.
Then he turns and looks right at you.
You’re dreaming. He can’t see you. This isn’t even real.
Is it?
“Ah. Hello again,” he says conversationally, as if finding a random teenager floating next to him in the middle of the night is the most normal thing he could imagine. “Did you not learn your lesson the first time we met?”
“You can see me?” you squeak.
“Quite. You’re a little...hazy around the edges. Some kind of astral projection, I presume? Or...no, you’re the empath, aren’t you?” He inclines his hat, almost impressed. “I could feel you earlier, probing around at the corners of my mind. A valiant attempt for one so untrained. So...you’re dreaming.”
“We just want to keep our town safe,” you tell him, not acknowledging what he’s saying since you don’t want to talk about things you don’t understand yet. And you’re not sure how long this will last.
“And as I said, I have no intention of getting in the way of that. So long as you stay out of my way in return.”
“If you just tell us why you’re here, what you’re looking for...maybe we could help each other?” It’s worth a try – it’s about the only thing none of you suggested before Mike rushed in and ruined the conversation earlier.
The Shade looks mildly amused. “You know not what you’re saying. If you knew the danger you were in, you wouldn’t want anything to do with me, or what I’m looking for.”
“But if it’s happening here, where we live, don’t we have a right to know?”
The Shade looks at you like he’s sizing you up, and finding you a little bigger than he’d initially thought. “I admire your courage, little empath.” Shadows seep up from the ground and begin to cover him, he’s teleporting away. “But if you believe nothing else that I have told you, then believe this – if you knew the true reason why I was here, you would surely never sleep again.”
And then your eyes snap open, and the dream fades like a shadow under the first rays of the dawn sun.
Chapter 4: Vindication
Notes:
Set during the events of Stargirl 02x04 – Summer School – Chapter Four
Chapter Text
It seems that crises come in threes. Not only are Grundy and The Shade back in town, but now something called Eclipso is on the horizon as well.
An errant message from Beth’s goggles, a sealed file in Chuck’s system with its name on, plus confirmation from Pat and Courtney’s paper JSA files, tells you all you need to know – Eclipso, whoever or whatever it is, is bad news.
Given the way The Shade was acting the night before in your dream, you’re pretty sure that he’s worried about Eclipso too. Whether that’s because it’s going to interfere with his own plans or for some other reason you’re not quite sure just yet, but it’s definitely going to the top of your trouble list.
You’re keeping your dream to yourself for now. You’re not even sure it was entirely real; empathy’s one kind of power, but visiting people in dreams? That’s a new one, and there’s not really any link between the two...is there? Maybe because you couldn’t make an emotional connection with The Shade when you met in person, your mind reached out and made one while you were dreaming instead?
Actual metahuman powers are weird. It’s hard, not really having anyone on the team to talk to about them – all of the others’ abilities come from equipment or items of power; not that that makes them any less impressive, but it’s just not the same.
It’s times like these that make you miss Henry even more than you already do. He might have made some terrible jokes or being a little mean, but you’d have been able to talk to him about all this. You could have worked out your burgeoning powers together.
There’s something else on your mind today too, mixed in with all of the superheroic worries. It seems so mundane compared to everything else, but it means just as much to you, if not more – today’s the day Rick is retaking Miss Woods’ algebra test.
You’ve dipped out of summer school class early to check up on him. Mr Deisinger probably won’t even notice you’re gone. And you know Miss Woods will mark the test right in front of Rick, so it’s not like it’ll take too long to find out the result anyway. You can be back before the bell rings.
You press yourself up against the outside of the classroom. You can hear Miss Woods thinking, the sound of her pen as she scribbles notes on the test paper. You manoeuvre over to the opposite side of the hallway to try and get a better look.
“You may as well come in here, rather than lurking outside like some classroom ghoul,” Miss Woods says without looking up.
That woman’s hearing is a metahuman power in itself if you’ve ever seen one. You gulp, a little embarrassed, then slide into the classroom and take a seat on the nearest desk.
Rick looks over at you. You look sheepish. “I just...wanted to see how you did.” He tries to give you a happy smile, but it mostly comes out as a grimace.
He seems different today, a far cry from the last time you and he were alone in a room with Miss Woods. His shoulders are slumped, and he’s fidgeting with his hands, not sure whether to make eye contact with the teacher or not.
It’s not often that you’d call Rick meek or resigned, but that’s kind of the only way to describe it. Maybe...defeated? Like he knows that whatever he does, it won’t be good enough, and he’s almost given up trying to prove anything. You ache to reach out to him, to see how he’s really feeling, but you keep your hands to yourself and remain quiet; you’re not even really meant to be here, after all.
But he’s done it again. Another perfect score.
“I told you,” he says softly, backpack clasped in his hands before him like a child. “I studied.”
Miss Woods looks almost contrite, and she calls Rick back before he can leave the room. “I’m sorry I doubted you. It’s just…”
“What everyone does,” Rick says, in the smallest voice you’ve ever heard him use. “It’s okay.”
But it’s not, and it shouldn’t be.
He leaves the room without waiting for you, and you’re about to head off after him when Miss Woods calls you back too.
“Twice in one day is unexpected, but I believe I owe you an apology as well,” she says, in what’s a surprisingly sincere voice. “I am sorry.”
You wait, not really sure what to say.
“It’s not often that students call teachers out. Maybe it should happen more often, especially when we’re in the wrong. We think we know best, but really, we know just about as much as you do,” she admits with a weak smile. This might be the most human a teacher has ever appeared to be, and some of your teachers turned out to be actual supervillains so that’s saying something. “I’m not proud of myself. But I am proud of you – and of Mister Tyler. You both worked hard, and stood up for what you believed in. That’s not something we can teach, no matter how much we want to.”
“You probably should have said that to him,” you point out.
“Yes,” she replies, a faraway look in her eyes. “Yes, you’re right, I should have. I don’t suppose you could pass on the message for me?”
You nod, still not sure what else to say.
“And you can tell him that he doesn’t have to go to summer school any more, either. I get the feeling he probably hasn’t anyway, but now at least he won’t get in trouble for it, so there’s that.”
“I’ll let him know.”
“And neither do you,” she adds as you turn to leave again. “You don’t have to go either. You were only there because I was punishing you, and that seems even more unfair given the circumstances.”
At last, you find the words that have been eluding you. “Thank you,” you begin, relatively calmly. But then you feel the steel edging into your voice. “Maybe try not to do it again?”
“I beg your pardon?” she asks. She’s not angry this time, only confused.
“Underestimating people, making assumptions. Rick’s not who you think he is. He’s not who anyone thinks he is. And he deserves more than to just be written off because of who he was in the past. People change. And sometimes, they just show you who they really are underneath.”
“You’re very wise, for a teenager. We adults could probably learn a few things from you, rather than the other way around.”
There’s nothing else left to say. And you’re not sure that, if you did say anything else, you’d be able to stop yourself from shouting at her. She doesn’t deserve that, not really. She’s at least been decent enough to apologise and own up to her mistake. There’s not much else you can expect from her.
Maybe it’s because you were the first person who really saw the real Rick, but having everyone expect him to be one way when you know he’s the opposite doesn’t sit right with you. You know who he is, deep down. Maybe it’s time that the rest of Blue Valley started getting to know him too.
*****
You catch up with Rick in the parking lot. He’d only come to school to take the test, and now he’s off somewhere else.
He looks up in surprise when you arrive. “What’re you doing here? Don’t you have to get back to class?”
“Not any more,” you say brightly. You tell him the good news and he looks taken aback, but happily so.
“That’s great. I mean, I wasn’t going to go anyway, but still…And if you don’t have to go, then maybe we can spend a little more time together. That’d be good, right?”
“That’s what summer is for,” you confirm. “So, where are you off to? Now that I’m free I can come with, if you want.”
Rick shrugs. “Court wants me to look through some old books, see what we can find out about Eclipso.”
“Ooh, old musty books. So romantic. Just how I want to spend my time.”
Rick opens the car door and slides into the drivers’ seat. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”
You hop into the passenger side and shut the door behind you. “Where you go, I go,” you tell him. “Hourman and Empath ride again.”
He puts the car into gear and takes off out of the parking lot. He’s quiet for a second, focusing on the road. Then he looks over and says, “I’m sorry I put you in that position. That you felt like you needed to stick up for me. I’m usually good enough at doing that myself.”
“Hey, no, it’s fine. I didn’t mind. You’re good with the punching. I’m good with words. We can protect each other; we just have different ways of doing it.”
He mulls that over for a minute, then shrugs. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s still weird, you know? Having someone have my back.”
“You’re not alone, Rick. Even if we weren’t dating, we’d still be friends. Court, Yolanda, and Beth? I’m here for all of them. But you,” you lean over and kiss him on the cheek, careful not to distract him from the road. “You get a special place in my heart, and on my list of people to worry about.”
Rick smiles under the touch of your lips. “As long as I’m the only one you’re actually dating.”
“Well...” you tease, but Rick just shakes his head in resignation.
“If I have to beat up the entire population of Blue Valley to keep you, I absolutely will,” he says, and you know he both means it and can follow through on his threat.
He might find it a little odd, having someone ready to fight for him at the drop of a hat. But for you, it’s a welcome feeling – one that you hope never fades away.
*****
Unfortunately, the rest of the afternoon is kind of fruitless. After hours of mulling through old texts, joined by Beth, and Courtney (once summer school let out), you don’t really have much to show for it.
It’s more than you knew before, which is a small comfort. But the stories of Bruce Gordon and Diablo Island aren’t doing much to shed light on the mysterious Black Diamond or its links to Eclipso. And then there’s The Shade – how does he tie into all this? If anything, you’re even more confused on that point than you were before.
At least you’re all together now. You’ve taken a research break to head to the diner where Yolanda is working a few nights a week, so you can recap everything for her. Now though, the afternoon is wearing into evening and it looks like there’s nothing else you can do on this front for tonight.
You’re all heading your separate ways. Courtney wants to stop off at an old book store in town to see if there’s anything there that could help out. Yolanda’s got her shift to finish. And Beth’s going to try, once again, to reboot Chuck.
Rick meanwhile needs to “feed the dog”.
“Have you seen it?” Beth asks, finishing off her milkshake. “Is it cute? I bet it’s cute.”
“Uh...” you look at Rick for help, but his eyes just grow wide and he shrugs his shoulders so minutely that you wouldn’t have even noticed if you weren’t looking right at him.
“Not…yet?” you say, entirely unconvincingly.
Beth’s eyebrows crease together in confusion. “But...don’t you go to Rick’s house all the time?”
“Yeah...but...” you cast around for an excuse, then realise that the best lies are the ones closest to the truth. “He’s kind of...wild, at the moment. So it’s mostly just Rick that deals with him. Even his uncle doesn’t pay him much attention.”
“Oh.” Beth looks a little sad at the prospect, but at least her curiosity’s sated for now. “Well, once he’s a little friendlier, you’ll have to introduce him to us.”
“Absolutely,” Rick says, taking his massive burger order from Yolanda with one hand and yours with the other, dragging you out the door before Beth can think of anything else to ask you. “See you later, Beth.”
“Oh, bye!” she calls. “Say hi to your dog for me!”
The diner door bell jingles as the door closes behind you. You shoot Rick an amused look. “If we’re going to lie to people, we need to be on the same page about it!”
“I wasn’t expecting so many questions!” he complains, balancing the burgers on the roof of his car as he fumbles with his keys.
“Have you met Beth? She’s literally made of questions. If you cut her, she bleeds question marks.”
“That’s a neat trick.”
“Not the point!”
You jump into the car, now balancing the burgers on your lap as Rick takes off towards the woods.
“You want me to drop you somewhere? Home’s a bit of a trek, but I can swing pretty close by if you want.” He shifts gears, looking over his shoulder as the traffic lights turn red.
You take a deep breath, then ask, as nonchalantly as you can manage, “I was thinking I could...come with you this time? Meet your...dog?”
Rick looks over at you, a hard glare on his face. You can see the wheels ticking behind his eyes as he weighs up the pros and cons of this scenario.
“You’re not going to take no for an answer, are you?” he says eventually as the lights turn green and he pulls away.
“Nope.”
“Then I’m not even going to bother arguing with you.”
“You’re learning, Mister Tyler.”
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t let it go to your head. And don’t eat those fries, they’re for Grundy.”
You pause with a hand in the neck of the closest brown bag. Rick’s not even looking at you, but somehow he knew what you were doing.
Maybe he’s starting to know you just as well as you know him.
*****
You’ve not really been into the Blue Valley woods, not properly. You went on a camping trip once with your parents, but none of you had particularly enjoyed it, especially once your mom fell in the river and had to be fished out by her armpits, so you’ve not been back since.
Even with a complete lack of familiarity with the place though, you can tell that something is off. There’s an ominousness in the air, like a wolf just out of view waiting to pounce, or a hidden camera staring at you from one of the tree trunks.
The leaves are all beautiful shades of brown and orange, and they litter the dirt floor like it’s already Fall. It has been unseasonably cold lately; maybe it’s Jordan Mahkent’s final revenge from beyond the grave.
It’d almost be romantic, trudging through the bare trees with Rick, if not for that oppressive presence somewhere in the distance.
“So how does this usually work?” you ask. Rick’s head shakes back and forth like a metronome, constantly vigilant for signs of Grundy. He points at a pile of food wrappers near a stream, likely detritus left behind by inconsiderate campers.
Or by one giant grey monster man who doesn’t know what a trash can is.
“I just kind of leave stuff here, and he eats it, and then I clear up next time.” He leans down and begins grabbing trash, emptying one of the burger bags and using it as a makeshift trash bag. “I’m hoping he’ll get comfortable enough with me to come out and say hi at some point.”
An idea hits you then, and you hand him the other burger bags. “Let me try something?”
“Sure. Just don’t do anything that might scare him away, or I’ll be starting from scratch next time.”
You cross your heart. “Promise.” You sit on a nearby tree stump and close your eyes, focusing your powers.
You can feel your own heart, thudding in its usual rhythm. You can feel the love you have for Rick, and the concern for his safety.
A little further out, you can feel Rick himself. He’s worried for Grundy, and a little excited. There’s also a steady thrum of affection around him, which you notice a lot more when you and he are alone together. And he’s also still sad, about how everything went down at the school, about being underestimated.
You push further out still. There are birds in the trees, squirrels in the leaves, and a family of hedgehogs curled up in one of the tree trunks a few feet away. Their emotions are all basic, less complex than yours and Rick’s, but they’re there.
And then, somewhere on the periphery of your powers, you feel something else. Something simple, something confused. Something hungry.
Something familiar.
“It’s him,” you say, your eyes snapping open. “It is Grundy. I can feel him out there.”
“You’re sure?” Rick’s finished tidying up, and has arranged the rest of the fresh burgers in a pile. “Definitely?”
“Yeah. It feels like...it’s hard to explain. But I know what his mind feels like, how his feelings work, from when we fought him in the tunnels. It’s exactly the same feeling.”
Rick’s face lights up like a kid on Christmas. “That’s...great. Really great.”
“Is it?” you ask him, suddenly a little worried by the emotions that are coming off of him in waves. Relief, something close to happiness, with an undercurrent of...is that guilt?
“Sure. It means I’m not just feeding wild animals or something,” he says, shoving his hands into his pockets against the cold.
You don’t want to say these next words, but if you don’t bring this up now while there’s still time, then it’ll only get harder. “You know you can’t keep doing this, right? You can’t just feed him like he’s a pet.”
Rick’s happiness turns into a frown. “What d’you mean? I’m not keeping him. I’m just...making sure he’s okay.”
“But it’s more than that, isn’t it? You want him to come out. Maybe you want him to come back with you? You don’t owe him anything, Rick. You don’t have anything to feel guilty about.”
“Stop it.” Rick’s face is a mask of anger now, anger that you haven’t seen in a very long time. “Stop doing that.”
“What?”
“Stop psychoanalysing me. Just because you can read my emotions or whatever, it doesn’t give you the right to tell me how I’m feeling, or how to process them. I’m just trying to do something good for someone who’s never had anything good happen in their life.”
Hearing him say that out loud hits it home for you. “You’re trying to do for him what the JSA have done for you,” you say before you can stop yourself.
“Stop it.”
“Rick, no, I’m sorry, I didn’t-” you begin, but he’s already shaking his head and walking back up the trail towards his car.
“Let’s just go. Bringing you out here was a bad idea.”
“But-” You hurry after him, but he’s not stopping. Even when you fall in step beside him, any attempts to make conversation fall on deaf ears.
He drives you home in complete silence, his hands tight around the steering wheel and his cheekbones flaring as he grits his teeth with anger.
Before, he might have yelled at you. Might have chewed you out, or punched things, or thrown stuff. He might have even left you here, made you walk home. But now, he just seethes in silence.
You’re not sure if that’s better, or far, far worse.
You’ve always been sensitive to the feelings of others, and you’d thought that, now you’ve become a true empath, it’d only get easier to keep the peace.
But this silent car ride makes you think, for the first time since you got these miraculous powers, that it might actually be better if you didn’t have them at all.
Chapter 5: Stormy Skies, Stormy Heart
Summary:
Set during the events of Stargirl 02x05 – Summer School – Chapter Five
Chapter Text
This feels like the longest you’ve gone without speaking to Rick since you became friends. After the cold shoulder yesterday, the two of you haven’t spoken in almost twelve hours, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but considering how often you normally text or see each other in person it feels like forever.
You don’t want to be one of those stereotypical pining partners, so you do your best not to mope around the house, but every time your phone lights up with a notification your heart leaps into your chest and you feel yourself hoping against hope that it’s him.
You’re also trying not to be the one to make the first move. You’ve spent long enough chasing after Rick when he goes off in one of his tantrums, and this time, you’re going to be strong and resilient and all those other positive qualities that you’ve always wanted to be. Which starts with not being the one to extend an olive branch.
Are you being stubborn? Probably. Is Rick more stubborn than you? Absolutely. So is this destined to fail? More than likely. But you’re going to stick to your guns for as long as you can manage.
You’re not really sure what to do with yourself now. You’d planned on having to go to summer school, which would have filled the majority of your day, and then spending time with Rick afterwards. That was how you’d thought you’d be spending pretty much the rest of your summer this time yesterday. How quickly things change.
Now, you can’t go to summer school. There’s no reason for you to be there, and hanging around in school when you don’t have to is the absolute rock bottom, and you’re not quite there just yet. You can’t go to Rick’s either, for obvious reasons. Which leaves you at a bit of a loss.
When your phone pings again and you manage to swallow your heart back down into your chest, you’re super grateful to find Pat calling you to the Pit Stop. Apparently he and Beth have some stuff that needs researching again – at this point, you’ll take musty old books over wandering around the house waiting for something to happen.
As you walk through town, you pull your jacket tighter around you. The skies are a horrible grey, and the threat of rain hangs over you like the Sword of Damocles. The stormy weather doesn’t help your already stormy mood.
You try and remember what you used to do before the JSA, before Rick, but you struggle. It’s like your life before was a big, bland, drab nothing that you can barely recall. If everything after the day you found out about superheroes is technicolor, then everything before that is the grainiest of black and white, like the Wizard Of Oz.
But you must have done something, right? It’s just that everything since then has been so exciting, so new, so different, that everything else pales in comparison. You weren’t boring, were you? Surely you were just...like everyone else. But you’re not like everyone else any more. So how can you be expected to go back to being that way?
Not for the first time, the irony that you can read and understand everyone’s emotions but your own isn’t lost on you.
When you arrive at the Pit Stop, you have a few seconds of sweet relief at having other people to talk to rather than being lost in your own head. And then Rick arrives shortly after you, and the mood in the room drops to even colder than it is outside. He glances up at you as he enters but then his eyes dart away immediately, unable to maintain contact. You reach out a hand, your mouth half-open with half-formed thoughts on your lips, but they blow away like smoke when he breezes past you and sits down.
“Guys, hey. What’s going on?” he asks, interrupting Pat and Beth mid-disagreement.
Beth thinks she might have heard the real Doctor Mid-Nite through her goggles, which is insane if it’s true – having another member of the JSA, a full-fledged member (no offence, Pat) on hand, would be so helpful, especially one who has faced off with The Shade and Eclipso before.
But that’ll have to be put on hold, because the strange weather patterns are apparently more than just meteorological mysteries – they could be heralding the arrival of Eclipso himself. Which, as Pat points out, is the more pressing issue right now.
You try and get into research mode, you really try. You’ve seen enough episodes of Buffy to know that this kind of thing is important – you can’t save the day if you don’t know what it is you’re facing – but Pat’s warning leaves its mark on your mind like creepy fingers pressed against a rain-lashed window.
Eclipso can make you see things, hear things. Things you fear. Things you want.
And what do you want? What do you fear? Which of those is the harder question to answer?
You thought you knew what you wanted – to be a hero, to be with Rick, to be with your friends in the JSA. Today has called those wants into question though – if you can’t have those things, then what do you want? Are you even able to want anything other than what you can’t have?
But then you used to think you couldn’t have Rick. And, with a little effort, you’d managed to make that work. At least, until now.
So maybe that’s what you fear. Getting what you want, and then losing it all? Or maybe, knowing that what you had was so ephemeral, so fleeting, that maybe you hadn’t really had it at all in the first place?
These dark thoughts circle through your mind at breakneck speed, round and around and around. Want. Fear. Want. Fear. Want. Fear. Until at last you slam the book that you’re reading closed with a dissatisfied grumble and a puff of dust, slam your stool out from the table and walk outside into the rain.
Rick looks up, then back down just as quickly without saying a word. Beth calls after you, to make sure you’re alright, but you just wave her off. “I just need a break, that’s all.”
The rain lashes down onto the Pit Stop overhang like machine gun fire, rat-a-tatting in irregular beats like the chaos in your mind.
You start to pace back and forth, waiting for someone to come out and get you. You’d thought Beth might have followed you, but if she was going to she’d have been out here like a shot already.
Or maybe, if you dared to hope, Rick might be the one to come out and see if you’re okay. You’re not entirely sure if you want him to or not. If he does, who’s to say it won’t devolve into another argument? But if he doesn’t, what does that say about the state of your relationship?
Is this what it’s going to be like every time you have a fight now? Are the foundations you’ve built so flimsy that they’ll collapse after one disagreement? You thought you’d gotten past all this. But aren’t relationships meant to be give and take? They can’t be all sunshine and roses all the time, surely.
But why not?
You throw your hands up in annoyance – at yourself, at Rick, at the weather, at Eclipso and The Shade, at all of it, and yell out into the uncommon darkness. It’s not that late in the day, but it’s almost pitch black around you, and the sound seems to hit the darkness like a wall and reverberate back at you.
“Uh, you okay?” asks a voice, and you spin, suddenly embarrassed, to see Yolanda raising an eyebrow at you. “Am I interrupting something?”
You close your eyes, wishing that you could just disappear for a moment, reset the situation. Unfortunately, that’s not one of your powers.
“Yeah, fine. I just...have a lot on my mind right now.”
Yolanda gives you an understanding look, a small smile. “I know the feeling. I don’t think I’m entirely over everything we dealt with last time we had to fight some bad guys. What I did to Brainwave...it’s like a weight around my neck sometimes. And now we’ve got something even bigger to worry about too.”
“You think we could ask Eclipso and The Shade to come back in six months or so, when we’re feeling better?”
This time Yolanda’s smile manages to reach her eyes. “Worth a try I guess. We can ask them next time we see them. You coming back in?”
The look on your face as you glance inside must reveal something, because Yolanda’s next question cuts straight to the quick. “Did something happen with you and Rick? You guys okay?”
“That obvious, huh?” You shrug a little, trying to make light of it. “We had...a fight last night. We haven’t really talked today. It’s been super awkward in there – he won’t talk to me, I don’t want to talk to him, so poor Beth’s been stuck in the middle of us both like a marriage councillor. Either that or we’re all sitting in this awkward silence, which I think might actually be worse because all these horrible thoughts just keep spinning around in my head. I just needed a second to myself.”
“And to yell at the sky.”
“And to yell at the sky, yeah.”
“I get it. Sometimes getting angry is all you can do, even when you know it’s not going to help.”
“Being with Rick’s taught me that before. But it’s a lesson that’s sometimes easy to forget.”
“Come on,” Yolanda says, linking arms with you. “Let’s get in there and break the ice. We’ll get to the bottom of this together – Beth and I can be mediators while you and Rick hash it out.”
“Wait, where’s Court?” You look around as if she might be hiding on the Pit Stop forecourt somewhere, but she’s nowhere to be seen.
Yolanda rolls her eyes. “She went to see Cameron.”
“Cameron...Mahkent? Like, Baby Icicle Cameron?” Your eyes grow wide – you know Courtney’s had a thing for him for a while, but you’d thought that knowing his dad was the leader of the ISA would have put a dampener on that relationship before it started.
Apparently not.
Cam’s a good guy, at least from what you’ve seen. He’s quiet, keeps to himself, mostly like you. In another life, you two might have been friends. But...he’s also Icicle’s son. So maybe a little caution isn’t out of the question? Or are you now just judging him for the sins of his father?
Unfortunately there’s little time to consider any of this in detail. Beth pokes her head out of the Pit Stop, smiling at Yolanda in greeting and then shooting you both a concerned glance.
“Everything okay?” Yolanda asks, when Beth’s face doesn’t change from her concerned expression.
“Not...exactly. We think Eclipso’s here. Like, right here, in Blue Valley. Right now.”
You look between your friends then nod, pushing all your concerns and relationship worries to the back of your mind where you can deal with them later, after you stop the world from ending.
Again.
*****
So much for not having to set foot inside Blue Valley High for the rest of the summer. Roaming the empty halls in the darkness invokes a completely different kind of anxiety compared to when they’re crammed full of people, all their emotions yelling at you at once. It’s no less horrible, just a different brand.
You’re in costume once again. Stargirl, Wildcat, Doctor Mid-Nite, and Hourman spread out around you, on alert for something, anything out of the ordinary.
Rick’s still avoiding your eyes. He’s made a point of standing on the opposite side of the group, so you can’t read anything off of him. That makes you feel awful all over again, but then you snap yourself back to the matter at hand, wandering the eerie halls of the high school.
No matter how creepy the hallways are though, they pale in comparison to the art room. It looks like a bomb has gone off, a bomb loaded with paint of all shades and colours. The walls, ceiling, and floor are all coated in wet paint, and you have to be careful not to lose your footing.
“What the hell happened in here?” Rick asks, looking around.
“Where’s Mister Deisinger?” Beth wonders.
You all spread out, looking for clues, which is difficult when the entire room looks like a bomb site. You find yourself, through no conscious thought of your own, beside Rick as he takes a canvass from an easel. It’s a diamond, all painted in black. There’s another one behind it, and one daubed onto the very wall itself behind you.
And then suddenly you feel it. There’s a shift in the air, like a change in pressure before a storm, and you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that Eclipso is here.
Waves of panic start to radiate from your teammates, not to mention from you yourself. It’s almost unbearable, and it takes all your self-control not to bolt for the door straight away – not that it matters, because the door slams shut of its own accord, trapping you all inside as the lights begin to flicker and a strange wind blows up out of nowhere.
Darkness itself seems to seep from the paintings around the room – four sharp sides, and a swirling centre that seems to shift and move under your gaze. They’re just facsimiles of the Black Diamond, but they feel real, and they feel evil.
You didn’t think evil was an emotion, at least not in terms of how your powers work. You’d read the emotions of the Injustice Society members before; they’d felt determined, fanatical, even insane at times, but none of them had felt like this.
So dark, so empty. There’s no other way to describe it. The emotions pouring out of these pictures just feel wrong...dark...awful...evil.
Then the paint starts climbing the walls and all your self-control dissipates and it’s like a thousand people yelling in your mind at once, the most overwhelming flood of emotions that you’ve ever felt.
Beth tries the door, but somehow it’s locked. You wave to Rick, pointing. “Rick, the door!”
He doesn’t hesitate, shouting “Beth, move!” before lashing out with a fist and sending the art room door flying across the hallway.
The hallway is somehow even worse.
Locker doors fly around like someone has unleashed a storm inside the building. Paper and textbooks, gym clothes and stationery fly past you like razor blades, and you raise your hands over your head in terror.
You’ve never felt so out of your depth. Even in the heat of battle, even when faced with the might of Solomon Grundy or Sportmaster, you never felt completely outclassed like this. But this is on a whole other level compared to them.
Then the voice begins to speak to you.
It’s the most awful voice you’ve ever heard. Dark and rough, gritty and grim, like acid being poured directly into your ears, making your brain fizzle and pop with fear.
Which makes the words it says to you even more horrible.
“Ah, the empath,” it whispers, and you know without knowing how that this is the voice of the Black Diamond, of Eclipso himself. “The empath who has no idea how they feel. How...delicious.”
You stumble down the hall, barely aware of your friends around you. No doubt they’re hearing Eclipso’s voice for themselves, no doubt he’s telling them awful secrets as well, but you can’t save them if you can’t even save yourself.
“And what were you, before you were Empath?” Eclipso asks. A locker swings open nearby, and a painted portrait of the JSA that you don’t ever remember posing for stares back up at you. All of your friends are in full costume, smiling, happy. “What would you be, without them, without Empath?”
There’s a tearing noise, and the portrait begins to split, taking you away from your friends. Your picture flutters off down the corridor to join the other storm detritus, fading back into obscurity.
“No! They wouldn’t do that! They’d never leave me! They’re my friends!”
“Ah, but you’re only there because of Rick, aren’t you? If you hadn’t been intent on being with him, then you’d never have found out their secrets.”
Another locker swings open, and this time the picture shows just you and Rick, in your civilian clothes, arms around each other with looks of unconcealed love in your eyes.
“But even that’s not built to last, is it? How can it be, when he’s always so angry, and you’re always so self-righteous? You’re already losing him – maybe he’s already lost.”
A bucket of paint blows past in the storm, splashing against the picture. Paint runs down the locker, and you find yourself on your knees, clawing at it with your fingers, desperate to see Rick’s smiling face again.
But the paper is blank beneath it. Rick’s gone. You’re gone. Everything’s gone, as if it never existed in the first place.
Eclipso’s voice sounds again, bringing all your fears to light. “Who are you, when you’re not with Rick? What is your role, if you’re not helping the JSA? Will you just fade to nothing, if your friends and your boyfriend abandon you? Do you even have an identity of your own without them to tell you what it is?”
“Shut up! Shut up, it’s not true! Rick loves me! My friends love me! We’re stronger than you, our bonds are stronger than you!” Your voice is hoarse, strangled, as you yell at the top of your lungs, and the words quaver as they join the sounds of the storm, swallowed up and inconsequential, just like you.
The others are still here. You can see Beth on her knees, clutching at a picture of her parents, split right down the middle. Yolanda claws at lockers with pictures of Brainwave and Henry Jr. on them, trying to slash them out of her memory. And Rick pounds his fists into some more, over and over, trying to hammer images of Grundy and his own screaming face into pulp.
You’ve never felt so much despair, so much helplessness, so much sorrow. For all your powers, none of you are strong enough to stop Eclipso. He’s reached into your mind to pluck out the things that will hurt you the most. And he’s chosen correctly.
Just as soon as it started, it’s over. The hallway is back to normal, although the lockers still bear the damage from Rick and Yolanda’s attacks. The pictures are gone, the voice of Eclipso a distant memory.
You head around the corner, trying to find the only one of the team still missing, only to see Stargirl leaning over a paint-soaked Mister Deisinger.
He’ll be alright, thankfully. Whatever Eclipso was trying to do, however he got here, he’s gone now.
You’ve never wanted to get out of school more than you do right now.
*****
The five of you somehow find yourselves back at the Pit Stop. None of you really remember getting there, or divesting yourselves of your superhero costumes. You’re all sitting together, and yet somehow infinitely far apart. To say that you’re still reeling would be an understatement.
Pat confirms what you were all already feared – Eclipso is getting stronger.
He offers to give everyone a ride home, then he heads downstairs to get everything ready. Courtney, Yolanda, and Beth follow quickly after him, but Rick remains seated.
You also stand, then look back at him. His shoulders are tight, like he wants to fold into himself and disappear. There’s a distant, far-off look in his eyes.
You sit down next to him. When he doesn’t get up and move away, you put your arm around him and pull him towards you into a hug. He doesn’t resist, doesn’t reciprocate, but he does seem to relax a little, like a hedgehog unfolding once it realises danger has passed.
“I want to ask if you’re okay, but if you’re feeling anything like I am, then I know you’re not.”
He murmurs against you, words too quiet and jumbled to hear. He nuzzles into you a little more, then speaks a little louder, and yet still so quiet that you’re almost not sure he spoke at all. “Just hold me.”
You do. You pull him close against you, feeling his warmth, feeling the tautness of his body against yours, more tension than man. He doesn’t move, doesn’t cry or shout or rage, just lays against your side, taking comfort in your presence. It’s perhaps the most vulnerable you’ve ever seen him do.
“I’m so sorry, Rick,” you whisper into his back, unable to help yourself. “You were right. I shouldn’t use my powers like I did. Your emotions are yours. I don’t get to use them against you, or tell you what they mean. I promise, I’ll work harder to keep my powers under wraps. You should never feel like you’re on the back foot when you’re with me, like I know something about you that you don’t.”
Rick turns a little in your arms so that he’s looking up at you. There are dark circles under his eyes, although you’re not sure if they’re from lack of sleep, the battle with Eclipso, or something else. When he speaks his voice is croaky and tough, like he hasn’t used it in hours. “You were right, though. What you said. You were only telling me things I already knew. I just...didn’t want to acknowledge them, like it’d make the thoughts real if I did.
“It’s easier to pretend I haven’t thought things through, than have to face the consequences. Pretend that I’m still hard-headed, impulsive Rick Harris, when that couldn’t be further from the truth. Thanks to you.”
At least some of what he’s said is true. He’s not that Rick Harris any more, not at all. Rick Tyler is thoughtful, reflective, and deeper than anyone knows or gives him credit for. But whether that’s entirely because of you, you’re not sure. The others deserve their share of the thanks for that as well, as does Rick himself.
“So I’m sorry, too. I hated the last day, not talking to you, not seeing you. It was the second worst day of my life, even before Eclipso got into my head. I don’t ever want to feel like this again.”
“Neither do I,” you tell him, and he at last returns your embrace, his strong arms wrapping around you, holding you tight to him like he never wants to let you go, like you might fly away into Eclipso’s storm if he does.
“So, we’re okay?”
“We’re okay,” he confirms. You both stay there for a moment, quiet and still even as the storm continues to rage around you outside the building, the pair of you safe for a moment in the eye of it all.
“Did you want to talk about what he said to you? Eclipso, I mean?”
“Not...not right now.” Rick squeezes you a little tighter, like he’s flinching away from the pain. “It’s still too raw. Tomorrow, maybe. We will talk about it, I promise.”
“Whatever you want,” you tell him with a nod and another squeeze of your own. A little time to process probably isn’t the worst thing, you think.
“Kids? You comin’?” shouts Pat suddenly, making you both jump. “Still got room in the van.”
You look over at Rick, and he nods ever-so-slightly. You feel yourself smile for the first time in twenty four hours, but what feels like an eternity. After Eclipso, you didn’t think you were ever going to smile again.
“Thanks Pat, but I think we’ve already got a ride.”
“Suit yourself. Lock up when you leave, okay?”
Eclipso’s words may still haunt your dreams, rattling around in your head like unwanted ghosts. But that’s all they are – words. He can say whatever he wants, taunt you with whatever he wants. You know the truth – your relationship with Rick, with the other members of the JSA, don’t define you. And they’re stronger than anything he can throw at you. He may think a few taunts and scary pictures are enough to break you, but you’re all a lot stronger than he gives you credit for. And if he comes at you again, you’ll be ready for him.
And, you think, taking Rick’s hand as you head down the stairs towards his car, you won’t be alone, either.
Chapter 6: One For Another
Notes:
Set during the events of Stargirl 02x06 – Summer School – Chapter Six
Chapter Text
Silver linings, you think. Focus on the silver linings. Sure, the Black Diamond’s definitely somewhere in Blue Valley, and no doubt in the wrong hands. Sure, Eclipso’s influence is growing, and poor Mister Deisinger is in psychiatric care. And neither you nor your friends know what to do about any of those things.
But summer school’s cancelled. So there’s that, at least.
Not that it means anything to you any more, really – thanks to Rick’s second successful perfect score on Miss Woods’ test and her apology, school’s now the farthest thing from your mind, which leaves it free to worry incessantly about everything else instead.
The others all have something to occupy their minds today. Courtney and Pat are returning to the art room to see if there’s anything you missed the night before (and to tidy up a little). Yolanda’s picked up an extra shift at the diner, and Beth’s got her own family issues to deal with.
Which leaves your mind spinning, and nothing much you can do to stop it.
You find yourself walking the familiar route to Rick’s house; you’ve not had to walk it for a while since he got his car up and running, but your feet make the trip without being told to, as if your heart knows where to take you when you’re feeling anxious even if your mind doesn’t.
You find Rick with his head under the hood, sleeves rolled up and grease all over his face. It’d be adorable if it wasn’t so gross. Engine oil isn’t sexy, unfortunately.
“You look like you just went ten rounds with a tar monster,” you quip, throwing a rag at him.
He snatches it out of the air with a grin. “I hope I look like I won, at least.” He drags the rag over his face and it comes away black.
“Just know that I’m not kissing you until you’ve had a proper wash.”
Rick hangs his head, defeated, then pulls the hood down and climbs into the driver’s seat to turn the key. The engine roars to life and he nods in satisfaction.
“Sounds perfect,” you say, as if you know anything about cars at all. To you, it sounds exactly like it did before.
Rick clambers back out of the car and shuts the door with a thump before taking up a seat on the now-closed hood and wiping his arms on the rag. “What brings you out to my neck of the woods? Not that I’m sad to see you.”
“I don’t really know,” you admit. “I thought maybe we could talk. Maybe we should talk.”
Rick’s calm expression turns grave. “About yesterday.” It’s not a question.
You take up position next to him, shoulders just barely touching. The view from here is kinda pretty – the sun’s just about coming up over the treeline, casting everything in a beautiful orange glow. It’s so serene, so different from the reality that Blue Valley is currently facing.
“It’s weird,” Rick says, voice low, almost sad. “But when I’m working on this car, when I’m up to my elbows in grease and my temper’s flaring because I can’t get the damn carburettor to work properly, and my hair’s in my eyes...I never feel closer to my dad than I do then.”
You lean your head over until you’re on his shoulder, carefully avoiding the patches of grease he’s missed on his t-shirt. “He’d be proud of you, you know? Not just for fixing his car – for being Hourman, for saving Blue Valley. For being the hero, the man you are now.”
He doesn’t look down at you, but his voice is now barely more than a whisper, like he’s ashamed to ask. “How can you know that?”
“Because I’m proud of you. And if he loved you anywhere near as much as I do, which I’m sure he did, he would be too.”
Rick’s quiet again, and the pair of you gaze out over the trees for a few minutes, just letting that sentiment sink in. You feel Rick take a sharp breath, as if he’s trying to keep himself from crying. You pretend not to notice.
“So, what did you see?” he asks finally, an edge of strain in his voice, like he’s physically opening a can of worms he doesn’t want to open.
You don’t want to tell him. You don’t want to admit your weakness to anyone, least of all him. But if you can’t be vulnerable around Rick, then who can you be? “You all left me. The team deserted me. You broke up with me. I was all alone again, like I was before.”
Rick tenses immediately, but he doesn’t say anything. You know he wants to jump to his defence, to say that he’d never do that, but he keeps it in; he knows you’re not done talking yet.
“That wasn’t the worst part though; it was like...I’d managed to find myself, define myself against all of you. I was a hero, a partner, a friend. But if you took that all away...I was nothing.
“And I know that’s all crap. I know I’m my own person, I don’t need to define myself by how others see me. But it all felt so...real. Like in that moment, there was no way that anything else could ever be more true than what Eclipso was saying.”
“I know what you mean.” Rick’s words are like cinderblocks, dropping from his lips and landing on the ground with enormous thuds. “It was the same for me.
“He showed me Grundy. And he showed me...me. The darkest parts of me. The anger. The hate. The...the me that I never want to be again.”
His hands are tight on the hood of the car, you can see his fingers blanching as the blood runs out of them.
“And right then, all I felt was that...he was right. Like the only true thing in the world wasn’t that the sky was blue or the sun would rise, it was that I was...a monster. An animal. Something dark, and twisted, and wrong.”
You let that sit for a beat; he already knows how you feel about that, you’ve talked about it at length before. “And how do you feel now?”
He shivers almost involuntarily. It’s a chilly morning, especially for July, but it’s not because of the cold.
“I know he’s wrong. That he was just using all the horrible parts of me to make me feel bad, to make me vulnerable. But...and this is the really scary part...even knowing that, knowing that it isn’t true, I don’t know that I’d be able to convince myself otherwise if he did it to me again.
“Like, in my heart and in my head I know the truth. I’m not a monster, or an animal, or anything like that. I know I have a darkness in me, but I can control it. I know all that.
“I know that I’m loved, and I can love in return. How could anyone love anything like what Eclipso said I am? You’re living proof that he’s wrong.” He looks over at you for the first time, and his eyes are sparkling, his lip just slightly quivering. He takes your hand and looks away, wiping his eyes when he thinks you’re not looking.
“But even knowing all that, if he told me it again...I think I’d still believe it.”
You squeeze his hand, your heart aching. You’ve been doing your best to keep your powers in check, not to let his ambient feelings affect you, but with his hand in yours you can’t help but feel how horrible that thought makes him feel, how weak – and you know how much he hates appearing weak.
“I’m not going to tell you that Eclipso’s wrong,” you say, smiling tightly to hold back your own tears. “You don’t need me to say that when you already know it’s true. And you know that I love you. If you remember that, even when Eclipso’s whispering in your ear, then he’ll have no hold over you. Keep that in your mind, me telling you how much I love you, and nothing he’ll ever say will be able to affect you again.”
Rick sniffs a little, squeezes out a small smile in return, but it doesn’t touch his eyes which are still leaking despite his best efforts. When he speaks, his words are jagged around the edges, like he’s hammered them out of glass.
“And you do the same. Remember that I love you. That the rest of the team loves you. That we’ll never leave you, no matter what happens. You never have to worry about what you’ll be without us, because that’ll never happen.”
You nod tightly, unable to respond for fear of joining him in his tears. It’s cathartic, to have shared these thoughts and feelings. Keeping them bottled up wouldn’t have helped anyone; even if you’d thought you’d processed them, it’s clear after speaking them aloud that they’re still affecting you. They will, you expect, until Eclipso is finally defeated.
But for now you can sit with Rick and watch the sunrise, holding each other up with your bodies and keeping your darkest fears at bay with the light of the love you have for one another.
At least until Beth calls and tells Rick that he’s late to pick her up. That’s a bit of a mood killer, to be honest.
“Guess we’d better go see what all the fuss is about,” you say, trying to act cheerful even though the grey cloud of your last conversation still hovers over you as a reminder of what you’ve been through.
Rick dashes back into the house to rinse his face and change his shirt. You slide into the passenger seat to wait for him, and he’s back before you even have time to debate whether to try the radio.
“Alright, let’s get this show on the road,” he says, turning the key and closing his eyes to enjoy the purr of his engine as you pull out of the driveway.
“Do I need to give you two some space?” You pat the dashboard as you tease.
Rick just rolls his eyes and shifts gear.
*****
The Pit Stop is usually a mess during the day. As fastidious and careful as Pat is, the nature of a mechanic’s shop is that it’s going to get messy – you’ve seen as much in Rick’s home garage, and the Pit Stop is just that on a bigger scale. It’s always neat and tidy at night and first thing in the morning, but during the day, it can be a bit of a sight.
The state of it when you wander in with Rick today though is something else entirely.
STRIPE has been completely totalled. All the good work Pat and Mike have been doing to fix the robot up has gone up in smoke; wires are draped all over the place, while the robot’s head isn’t even attached to the rest of its body. It’s going to take a long time to fix – but that’s not the real worry. It’s not so much the fact that STRIPE’s wrecked, as who did it.
Everyone has a theory, and together they paint a bloody picture – it seems that the Injustice Society’s children are out for revenge.
Yolanda met Isaac Bowin at work, where he’d threatened her. Meanwhile Artemis Crock confronted Beth outside the American Dream. Both of them seemed to know more than they should about the Justice Society, which doesn’t bode well. But it’s Rick who has the best, and scariest, idea.
“Cindy Burman is behind this,” he says with conviction. “I’d bet you anything.”
“What makes you say that? Have you seen her?” Yolanda asks. Beth already has her phone out to text Courtney your ideas.
“Nah. But it just fits, doesn’t it? She’s the only one of our unfinished business that could be behind this. Gambler’s too big of a coward, even if he could bring himself to recruit kids. And if Sportsmaster and Tigress were going to do anything, they’d have made a move when they were here a few days ago. Cindy’s the only one not accounted for.”
“We never did find a body,” you add, and Rick nods in agreement.
“See? It has to be her. She’s just been biding her time, making sure she can hit us where it hurts.” He spins on the spot, indicating the mess that is the Pit Stop.
You cast your mind back to the last time you saw her; she and Courtney fought during the final battle with the Injustice Society. And before that, she’d been taunting you from the cage next door when you were both trapped inside her father’s cells. And even before that, when you’d thought she was just a normal teenager...she’d been awful then. Vindictive. Hateful. Full of darkness that’d make even The Shade jealous.
The more you think about it, the more it makes sense. Rick’s right – it has to be her.
“Uh, guys? We’ve got a problem,” Beth says, holding up her phone. There’s a massive text from Courtney, telling you all about her conversation with, surprise surprise, Cindy Burman.
She’s back. She’s got other villains on her side. And, worst of all, she’s captured Mike.
“I’m not right about a lot,” Rick says, shaking his head, “so of course when I am, it’s about something horrible.”
“Suit up, guys,” Yolanda says, her jaw already set and ready for a fight. “It’s time we put this bitch in her place once and for all.”
*****
Chaos is the only way to describe what’s going on in the school cafeteria right now. Absolute, total, utter chaos.
Cindy Burman, Isaac Bowin, and Artemis Crock had all been ready to meet you when you arrived. Even though they were outnumbered, they were cocky, ready to fight, and ready to win.
According to them, you’re all responsible for the deaths of their parents. And they’re here for payback.
Now, technically, Tigress killed Principal Bowin. Sir Justin, the Shining Knight, killed the Dragon King. And Tigress and Sportsmaster were caught trying to escape from the Injustice Society tunnels when they started collapsing around you all.
But the facts don’t seem to mean much to these guys, and instead, as expected, a battle has broken out.
Now Yolanda dances between the columns of the room, her Wildcat agility keeping her one step ahead of Isaac’s super-powered violin blasts. Cindy and Stargirl are going head to head, staff to arm-spike. And Hourman and Artemis have smashed through a wall and disappeared entirely, though the sounds of their vicious fight are impossible to miss. Even Beth has run off – you’d heard her whisper Mike’s name under her breath as she left, so hopefully she’ll be able to get him out of harm’s way before anything else horrible happens to him.
Which leaves you smack-bang in the middle of the school cafeteria, not sure what to do with yourself, while your friends fight for their lives around you.
You toss a few pot-shots into the fray, but they all go wide. The battle is moving too fast for you to really follow it, too many people moving at once. Your fear for your friends and your indignation at being accused of putting these misguided kids on the path they’re on make good fuel for your projectiles, but they’re not much use if they don’t connect.
Everyone seems to be so wrapped up in their own fights that they’re not taking much notice of you, which gives you an idea. It’s dangerous, of course. But no more dangerous than being in the middle of the fight already is.
You cautiously sneak under one of the cafeteria tables and sit crossed legged. Against all your better survival instincts, you close your eyes, and reach out with your mind.
The emotional landscape of the battle is as you’d expect. The overwhelming feeling is rage, mostly from Cindy, Isaac, and Artemis. Rick too burns hot with it, but that’s more because of the heat of battle than because of actual hatred – Cindy, Isaac, and Artemis’s anger comes from a deep place, where their perceived wrongs have mutated into a dark desire for vengeance.
Yolanda is more cautious, as if she’s holding back a little – the memory of her last encounter with Brainwave is no doubt in the front of her mind as it has been for months. Isaac doesn’t deserve to die, and she’s keeping herself in check to ensure she doesn’t cross a line you have no doubt she would never cross again unless she had to.
A few doors away, you can feel Beth and Mike. Beth is relieved, having found Mike unharmed, but he’s more annoyed than anything else; after having the power of the Thunderbolt in his hand, he’s now been reduced to a damsel in distress. That’s got to be a hard comedown to deal with.
You snap your focus back to Cindy, Artemis, and Isaac. You’ve never tried this before, and while now isn’t a particularly good time to experiment with your powers, you’re not really able to do much else.
You feel their rage, their anger, their hatred. It burns hot in their souls, powering their movements as they attack, feint, attack again, all with murder on their minds.
You reach out and try to tame that flame of anger, try to temper it, turn it down, tamp it out entirely if you can. You’re not sure if that’s something you can do – reading emotions and controlling them are two very different powers. But it doesn’t hurt to try. Maybe you can defuse this fight before it goes too far.
But before you can establish if it’s working or not, you feel darkness invade your mind. It’s like daggers of ice jammed into your temples, a despair you’ve felt only once before flooding through you unbidden, threatening to drown you in its dark waters until there’s nothing left of you but overwhelming sadness.
It feels like the Eye of Sauron has just turned to face you, as if this awful presence made of pure evil has decided to finally give you, the tiny gnat buzzing around its surface, its full attention.
Then comes a voice, a terrible, awful voice. “Ah. You.”
It’s coming from Cindy Burman. More specifically, from the Black Diamond she’s wearing around her throat. Eclipso knows you’re here.
Your eyes snap open and you hurry back to the others, banging your head on the table in your haste to climb out from beneath it.
Hourman and Doctor Mid-Nite, Stargirl and Wildcat, and even Mike fan out beside you. A few feet away, Cindy, Isaac, and Artemis face off against you once again.
You open your mouth, desperate to warn not just your friends but your enemies of the impending danger that threatens to swallow you all whole.
Then Cindy pulls the Black Diamond out from behind her breastplate, and the entire world goes dark.
*****
Injustice 2.0 is no more.
Isaac is dead. Poor, misunderstood Isaac Bowin is gone, absorbed by Eclipso. Cindy Burman was dragged down into a pit of pure darkness. Who knows if she’s still alive? And Artemis has fled into the night.
Somehow, the rest of you survived. Cindy turned the full might of the Black Diamond on you, but you all managed to walk away.
Probably because of The Shade. His last minute rescue, a triumphant appearance in the middle of the melee with a tip of his hat and a sly wink in your direction, should have been the turning point. With his command over shadows and the power of Stargirl’s Cosmic Staff, the Black Diamond was shattered to pieces.
Which turned out to be exactly what Eclipso wanted. His prison destroyed, and his freedom assured.
You’re not even sure how you’d describe him. Physically, he was tall, broad, clothed in purple and black, with pale white skin like the dark side of the moon. His eyes were like two pinpricks of darkness, ready to devour you without a second thought.
But his presence defied all reason. Where The Shade had been emotionally cold, locked down under a blanket of shadows, Eclipso was just...a void. Trying to read his emotions was like staring into a black hole; it would take and take and take from you, and you would receive nothing in return.
Now, you sit in the Pit Stop with Yolanda, Beth, and Rick, all trying to process what you just experienced. Courtney and Mike have headed to the hospital to see Pat and Barbara, to catch them up on what happened. And The Shade himself is nowhere to be found.
You hope he’s okay. You’d known from the beginning that he wasn’t all bad and, despite your run-ins, you know he hadn’t really meant you any harm. He’d come to your aid when you needed him the most – if he got hurt because of that, or if something even more terrible happened to him...it didn’t bear thinking about.
Beth finishes examining Rick with her goggles. Eclipso threw him across the room with such force that he managed to crack a rib even while Rick’s hour of super strength was active – even Grundy hadn’t managed to do that, and you’d thought he was the strongest thing any of you would ever have to face.
“I’ll live,” Rick grunts, but you see him wince as he moves.
The discussion turns to Eclipso’s motivations, his powers, what he did to poor Isaac, and the doubt in the room becomes almost palpable, like a film of uncertainty placed over you all.
Eclipso devoured Isaac. He had darkness in his heart, and it made him vulnerable. That little weakness was enough for Eclipso to suck him dry.
Rick and Yolanda look terrified at the thought. Both of them have darkness inside that they’re grappling with. Does that make them vulnerable to him too? Could he do to them what he did to Isaac?
And, an even worse thought – do you stand any chance of stopping him if he tries?
Chapter 7: The Superhero's Quandary
Summary:
Set after the events of Stargirl 01x13 – Stars and STRIPE Part Two, and during the events of Stargirl 02x07 – Summer School – Chapter Seven
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
“There’s something I have to tell you.”
Those are never good words to start a conversation with. They almost always end with someone in tears. And given that you and Yolanda have hardly ever had the occasion or the inclination to talk to each other privately, you know something really must be up.
You’re friends, sure. But you’re not close friends, not compared to the others in the JSA. You both know it, and you’re both okay with it – you can’t be close to everyone the same way you are with Rick, or with Courtney. Courtney’s Yolanda’s best friend – so either whatever Yolanda is about to tell you is a secret about Court, or it’s something Court already knows.
It’s been a couple of days since you defeated the Injustice Society. You’ve been riding high on the victory, enjoying the fact that you not only stopped the bad guys but survived to tell the tale. But you know not everyone’s been feeling the same way; Yolanda’s been struggling – she’d had a terrible darkness about her back at the football field the last time you saw her. But you’d thought it was just post-battle blues. Clearly, it’s something more than that.
You’ve met her at the diner on Main Street. The four of you have been here a few times before, but again, never just you and Yolanda. The waitress is bustling around making sure everyone’s orders are in hand, and the other patrons aren’t paying you any attention. Even so, you make sure your voice is hushed when you ask her, “What’s up?”
“Look, I...I know we’re not like mega-close or anything. But I need to get this off my chest, and I feel like you’re my best bet.” Her words are stammered, snapped off from a brittle block of ice.
You feel a little unsure already. “I’m not really...I’m not like a therapist, or anything. Are you sure Courtney, or Beth wouldn’t be better for this?”
Yolanda shakes her head sadly. She has the end of one of her ponytails in her hands, twisting and untwisting it nervously. “Court already knows. I told her first. But the others...I don’t think they’d understand. Not like you do.”
Cautiously, you reach out with your powers. They’re still new and a bit unwieldy, but you do your best to focus them on Yolanda, to see how she feels. Disappointment, guilt and shame pour off of her like smoke from a raging fire. You try not to let the results of your sneaky inquiries show on your face.
“Whatever it is, I’m here for you,” you tell her. “We’re teammates, and we’re friends. You can tell me anything.”
Yolanda takes a breath, looking around to see if anyone’s listening. She bites her lower lip, like she’s not sure whether to let her words escape from her mouth or not. “In..in the tunnels, when we were fighting...you know I found Brainwave, right?”
“Yeah, you said. He was crushed when the tunnels started to collapse.”
“That’s...not the whole story though. He...he made himself look like Henry. He tried to trick me. But it...it didn’t work. I knew what he was trying to do. So I...I took my claws, and I...” She holds her hand up in front of her with a look that says she’s not entirely sure that it’s hers, then flexes her fingers and draws them across horizontally. The implication is obvious.
“Yolanda, you...you killed him?” you say, so quiet you’re not even sure if you said the words at all.
She nods, unable to say the words herself. “I...I want to say I didn’t have a choice. But I didn’t have to. And I didn’t have to stand there and watch him die either. I stood there while he bled out, and-” She’s rambling, her voice rising and tears climbing to the corners of her eyes, ready to make the leap.
You grab her hand, both to calm her down and to give her something to focus on – the contact between you. “Hey. Yolanda, it’s okay. If you hadn’t, he would have killed you. Brainwave killed Henry – there’s no telling what he would have done to you if you’d fallen for his tricks.”
She breathes heavily, dry sobs racking her body. You glance around the room, but no one in the diner is paying either of you any attention.
“I told Court. She said the same thing. But it just doesn’t...doesn’t feel right. Thou shall not kill, you know?” Her eyes are pleading, begging for absolution that you cannot give.
“Thou shall not kill,” you repeat back. “But thou also have the right to defend thou-self. We all know how far gone Brainwave was. He was evil, Yolanda. Through and through. Someone who killed their own son in the heartless way that he did was never going to find redemption. The world’s better off without him in it.”
Yolanda closes her eyes, nodding tightly. “Rationally, I know that. I know what you’re saying. But then the rest of me says that I’m no better than he is. That’s why I wanted to tell you, to confess to you – I thought, with your powers, you could tell me…” She looks up, and the tears are flowing freely now, her make-up streaking down her face. “Am I a bad person? Am I evil too?”
Reaching out, you grab Yolanda’s other hand and clasp them together. Physical contact increases the amount of emotion that you can read from another person, and the sorrow that floods across that connection is almost enough to drown you. You can’t imagine how overwhelmed Yolanda must feel, having to deal with this all the time.
“Yolanda, listen to me. I don’t know a lot about you, or your religion, or even just good and evil in general. But I know this, with all my heart and soul – you’re not a bad person. The fact that you’re even asking the question tells me that you’re not – a bad person, someone as bad as Brainwave was, wouldn’t care about killing other people. You did a bad thing, for a good reason. That doesn’t make you evil – it makes you human.”
She blinks back a few more tears, then a small smile somehow manages to break out against her will. “Thank you. I think...that helps, a little.”
“And I didn’t even need my powers for that,” you quip, and her smile grows wider.
“I...I’m gunna go, I think.” She collects her bag and stands up, already halfway out of the booth. “Sorry, I know we already ordered. But thank you for this. For listening to me. And for what you said.”
“Anytime. Like I said – we’re friends.”
She smiles again, but this one’s pained, like the act of doing so stabs her in the heart. “I’ll...I’ll see you around.”
She’s gone before you can reply, the diner doorbell chiming to announce her exit. You watch her sweep along Main Street, her bag clutched against her chest like a stuffed animal. Every step she takes, her face falls further and further.
“Oh, where’s your friend?” the waitress asks as she returns with your milkshakes.
“She...had to go,” you say absently, watching Yolanda’s retreat until she disappears beyond the diner window and out of sight.
“Well, I hope everything’s okay hun.” The waitress gives you a genuine look of concern, then pats you on the shoulder and bustles away.
Yolanda’s long gone now, but her presence and the fallout from the bombshell that she has dropped on you lingers. You blink a few times, your mind now racing with a new set of worries. “Yeah, I hope so too.”
*****
That meeting in the diner replays over and over in your mind as Rick pulls his car up to Courtney’s house. She’s called you all here – Yolanda has something to say, and you have a horrible feeling that you know what it is.
“You have any idea what this is about?” Rick asks as the car comes to a stop, like he’s reading your mind.
You shake your head slightly, still lost in thought. “No, not a clue.”
If he knows you’re lying, he doesn’t say anything. The two of you make your way up the path and into the Dugan-Whitmore residence.
Yolanda’s been off for months. Even after confessing her sin to you, and to Court, and probably her priest, you know that the weight of her act has been sitting heavy on her shoulders. A problem shared is a problem halved, but if the problem is this big, then maybe halving it doesn’t make any difference.
You’ve tried to talk to her about it a few times in the months since, but she’s never really seemed inclined to share anything more than she did that day at the diner. There’s not much more you could say to her anyway, other than reassuring her of what you’ve already told her – she’s a good person, and what she did was the right thing in the moment.
Now you’ll have to see how everyone else handles her revelation.
Inside, Courtney and Yolanda are on the sofa. Rick hovers in the doorway, while Beth takes up position in one of the armchairs. You hang back, not sure where to stand.
Yolanda looks down, her hands on the back of her neck, her elbows on her knees. At Courtney’s encouragement, she draws herself up and tries to begin. “I ki-” she manages, before faltering. She closes her eyes so that she doesn’t have to see any of your reactions, then tries again. “I killed Brainwave.”
Beth and Rick are understandably confused. You keep quiet as they question Yolanda further, trying to get to the truth. She explains herself as best she can without breaking; it’s all oddly familiar.
Rick is the first to respond in solidarity. “Well...I would have killed Brainwave too, if I had the chance.”
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like solidarity is what Yolanda is after. Her eyes narrow as she regards Rick with something like disdain. “Then why didn’t you kill Solomon Grundy?”
“...My hour was up.” Rick keeps eye contact; in this moment, he’s a very good liar.
Yolanda is having none of it though. “Was it? Or did you just let Grundy go because you couldn’t do it? Because you’re a better person than me.”
“Yolanda. You did what you had to do, for our team. Right Beth?” Rick motions over his shoulder, but Beth doesn’t say anything. You all turn towards her, and Rick tries again. “Beth?”
But Beth just shrugs her tiny shoulders, her eyes wide behind her round glasses. “I don’t know,” she squeaks. “I’m sorry.”
That’s enough for Yolanda. She stands up, indignant, and begins to berate you all. She talks about how none of you have the killer instinct, how none of you are capable of killing Eclipso, and that she’ll do it – because she doesn’t want any of you to feel like she does right now.
It’s heartbreaking to hear her voice cracking as she speaks, and her words are like punches to the gut. The Injustice Society were one thing – they could be put in jail like normal criminals. But Eclipso is something more, something supernatural, something inhuman. Maybe killing him really is the only way to be rid of him.
When Yolanda’s done, no one knows what to say. She leaves without another word, and although Courtney goes after her, you hear the door slam. A few seconds later. Courtney wanders back in with her hands at her sides, shaking her head sadly. “Well, that could have gone better.”
Beth leaves soon after. She’s shaken by the whole ordeal, but when you reach out a hand to stop her, she just says “I need a minute to process”, and then disappears out the door too.
Rick grabs his car keys from the coffee table with a shrug. “You want a lift home?” His voice is oddly passive, emotionless. Very unlike him.
“Sure,” you reply cautiously. As you pass Courtney on your way out, you grab her by the shoulder. “It’s okay, Court. Yolanda will be alright. We’re all looking out for her.”
“Yeah, I know. She just...seemed so sad. Like her whole world was over.”
“We’ll just have to make sure she knows that it’s not.” You give her a small smile and follow after Rick. “Text me if you want to talk,” you call over your shoulder as the front door closes.
The pair of you walk silently back to his car. He gets in and starts the engine, but when you get into the passenger seat, he doesn’t put his foot down.
You sit in silence for a moment, waiting. You know what he’s going to say before he says it. A few seconds later, over the sound of the engine idling, he says, “You knew.”
There’s no point denying it, not that it sounded like an accusation. “Yeah. Yolanda told me a little bit after the last fight with the ISA.”
Rick’s still looking forward out of the windscreen. “You knew, all this time, and you didn’t tell me?”
“She never told me not to tell anyone,” you begin. “But it’s not really something you should hear from someone else. I got the feeling she didn’t want me to tell anyone else, so I kept my mouth shut.”
“I thought we didn’t have any more secrets between us.”
“This wasn’t my secret to tell, Rick. The same way I haven’t told anyone about what you’re up to in the woods.”
“That’s not...” Rick starts, but his denial dies in his throat.
“It is the same. Maybe not on the same level, sure. But you don’t want me to tell everyone else, so I haven’t. I’m keeping your secret, the same way I’ve kept Yolanda’s, and how I’d keep Beth’s or Court’s if they told me any. We said no more secrets between us, but that doesn’t necessarily mean no more secrets at all.”
A few months ago, Rick might have exploded at that. Fancy words to dress up the fact you’ve not been truthful, that you’ve been keeping things from him. But Rick’s not the same as he was before, nowhere near. Instead, he grips the steering wheel, his knuckles white, for a few minutes longer. He doesn’t say anything, but you can see from the clench of his jaw that he’s not entirely pleased.
The tension drains out of him though, slowly, very slowly. His shoulders lower, his jaw relaxes until his cheekbones are no longer stark against his skin, and he releases the steering wheel one finger at a time. When he turns to face you, there’s both pride and sadness in his expression.
“I’m sorry that we all keep dumping stuff on you. You shouldn’t have to keep all our secrets for us.”
Nowhere near the reaction you’d expected. Once more a testament to how far Rick has come. You smile at him, then reach out and take his hand, feeling the tension in his fingers as he flexes them to release the built-up pressure.
“I’d do anything for my friends. Whatever burdens you need me to carry, I can do it.”
“But you shouldn’t have to.”
“There’s a lot of things we shouldn’t have to do. We’re in high school, Rick. We shouldn’t be having conversations about whether or not we can kill supervillains to save the world. But that’s what we have to deal with, because no one else can. If we don’t stop Eclipso, no one will. The old JSA aren’t here any more – it’s up to us now.”
Rick sighs, his shoulders drooping lower than ever before in resignation. “I know. I know.”
“What Yolanda said...I think she was right. About not being able to kill Eclipso.”
Rick raises an eyebrow. “You don’t think I could do it?”
“That’s not what I mean.” You’re quiet for a second, putting your thoughts in order. “Being able to take a life...I think it’s something that you can only really know if you’re capable of when you’re in the moment. No matter how much you think about it, you’ll never know if you can do it until you have to.
“I think...I think it breaks something in you, having to do it. Something that maybe can’t be fixed again. Look at Yolanda. She did it, she broke that part of herself to save us, to avenge Henry, and to put a stop to Brainwave. And I don’t know if that’s something everyone is capable of.”
“If it means protecting the people I care about, then I think I could,” Rick says. “I could have killed Grundy – but I didn’t, because he didn’t deserve it. But if it came down to me or Eclipso, if it was kill him or lose you, or the others...then I think I could.”
You won’t admit this to Rick, but you think he could too. Not because of the darkness in him, or the rage, but because of the protectiveness. Because he’s come so far, because he has even more to lose than ever before. And if killing Eclipso would keep him from going back to who he used to be, to stop him from losing everything he’s fought so hard to gain, then you think he’d definitely be able to do it.
And somewhere deep within your soul, that idea resonates with you too. The idea of taking a life makes you feel physically ill – but losing Rick, losing your friends in the JSA, would be a mortal wound you’d never recover from. And you’d do anything to stop that from happening – even, if it came to it, taking a life.
But all you say out loud, as Rick finally puts the car in gear and drives away is, “I hope we never have to find out.”
“I hope that whenever I get around to telling everyone about Grundy, it goes better than that just did,” he replies. He hasn’t let go of your hand this entire time.
“Well, Yolanda had Court to support her through it. And I’ll be right there by your side when it’s your turn. You won’t have to do it alone. You never have to do anything alone, not any more.”
Rick smiles at you, then brings your hand to his lips and kisses it, his touch warm and tender as always.
Yes, you think. That feeling you get when he touches you...that’s almost certainly worth killing for.
*****
Help me. Help me. Help me.
You sit bolt upright, but you’re no longer in bed. You’re in costume, on cold, hard ground that seems to be pitch black rock and yet somehow slips and slides as you watch it, like it’s made of living shadows.
You get to your feet, scared that if you stay in one spot for too long the shadows will coalesce around you and harden, rooting you to the spot, or pull you down into their surface like poor Cindy Burman.
The voice calls for you again, echoing, everywhere and nowhere at once, like the very land itself is calling out.
Help me. Help me. Help me!
“Hello? Where are you? I’m here, tell me where you are, I’ll come find you!”
All around you is darkness, like fog made of shadows, swirling and twisting like a hurricane. Shapes loom up at you out of nowhere, buildings you don’t recognise, a carousel, a lighthouse, a pair of identical houses that you’ve never seen before and yet feel like they’re part of your memory even so. They fade as quickly as they come, sinking back into the blackness like they’re dropping below the surface of a dark pool of water.
Help me. Help me! Help me!
“I can’t, I can’t find you! Tell me where you are!”
You start to run, picking a random direction, hoping that the voice will sound louder or quieter depending on how close you’re getting to the person in trouble.
The voice echoes, sounding at once further away and closer all at once, not to mention more and more insistent, like their time is running out.
Help me! Help me! Help me!
You stop, trying to focus your powers, reaching out like you did at the cafeteria, trying to reach into the dark and find the source of the voice.
The effect is immediate. It’s like putting your finger in a plug socket – your entire body spasms and rocks, at once feeling constricted and totally out of control. Your powers feed back on you, and all you can feel is darkness and void, the complete absence of emotion.
You snap awake, the bed covers tangled over you like a poacher’s net. You struggle out of them, sweating like you’ve been running for miles without a break, but your mind is laser focused on your realisation.
You’ve only ever felt that kind of response from your powers once before – back at the Zarick House, when you tried to touch a mind that was closed off to you, swathed in shadows.
Somewhere out there, The Shade is in trouble. And he needs your help.
Notes:
Full disclosure - I hadn't realised that the rest of the JSA didn't know about what Yolanda did until this point in the series. Luckily, I hadn't written anything in the earlier chapters that contradicted that other than the reader character knowing, hence the flashback scene here to establish how and why the reader knows. The problems of writing something as the series is still airing, I suppose!
Chapter 8: Hour's End
Chapter Text
It’s kind of amazing how only a few short weeks ago you’d thought life was dangerously close to being boring. Even the fact that you’d become a superhero felt a little pedestrian, since you hadn’t had anything to fight. Comparing that to how overwhelmed with worry you’re feeling now, you kind of wish you could go back and tell your naive past self how stupid you were to wish all that away.
They say hindsight is 20/20, but this is taking it a little too far.
Your mind hasn’t stopped racing for what feels like forever. There’s some new problem to deal with everywhere you look, and no sooner do you deal with one than another rears its ugly head and forces you to deal with that instead. And all the while Eclipso is out there somewhere, probably laughing as he watches you and your friends scrabbling around treating the symptoms and not having time to deal with the disease.
The Shade, wherever he is, needs help. The original Doctor Mid-Nite might be trapped somewhere, also in need of rescue. Courtney’s Cosmic Staff, the one thing that stands a chance against Eclipso, is still dim and faded. Artemis Crock is on the loose, probably planning yet more revenge. And to top it all off, Yolanda has quit the team. Courtney texted you all the bad news last night, but you still can’t quite believe it. You hope she can come back from this, can work through her problems and return to the fold. But you have no idea how long that will take, if it happens at all, and it’s come at the absolute worst possible time. Being down a hero might just be the last piece of luggage on the Buckeroo that is your life, and now everything is dangerously close to being flung off into the ether as you collapse to the ground.
So you’re doing the one thing you know how to do right now – you’re walking up the wooded path towards Rick’s house. Two heads are better than one, and maybe together you’ll be able to come up with a solution to at least one of your many, many problems. It may be the Fourth Of July, but as much as you want to just kick back and spend it with Rick, none of your problems have taken the day off so you can’t either.
You’re so lost in thought that you almost miss the sight of his car parked by the side of the road. You’re still a little way out from his house, and there are no flat tyres or anything; he must have parked it there himself. He’s probably out in the woods feeding Grundy, you reason. You lean up against the passenger door and cross your arms, waiting for him.
The alternative is wandering into the woods in search of him, which doesn’t sound too appealing even in broad daylight.
It only takes a few minutes before you see Rick coming towards you out of the trees. There’s a big smile fighting to be seen on his lips, and it manages to at last break through when he sees you by his car.
“I don’t take hitchhikers,” he says by way of greeting. “No idea where you’ve been.”
“Rude. Who says I’d want you to pick me up? You might be one of those dangerous murderer types,” you quip, but you’re grinning at him too. His good mood is infectious, and not just because you can feel the happiness radiating off him like a nuclear reactor. “What’s got you so happy?”
Rick considers this for a second, plunging his hands deep into his pockets. He avoids your eyes for a moment, composing his thoughts. Then, three simple words. “I saw him.”
“Saw who?” you ask, although you already have a sneaking suspicion.
“Grundy.” Rick shrugs, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “I saw Grundy. Just now. I was right.”
“And is he...okay?” you venture, not really sure what to say next.
“Yeah, he seems fine actually. He probably had a better day than I’ve had.” There’s scorn in his voice now, and it hurts you to hear it – it also temporarily distracts you from the Grundy of it all.
“What happened? You can tell me. If you want, I mean.”
Rick considers for a moment, then shrugs again. “Miss Woods came to my house.”
Your hackles raise automatically at the mention of her name, still not having truly forgiven her for her mistreatment of Rick. “What did she want?”
“No,” Rick says, raising a hand to calm you down. “No, it’s not like that. She wanted to help me. She had like, pamphlets and stuff, for college, and like loans and grants you can get, to help pay for it. It was...actually kind of thoughtful of her.” He looks wistful, like the idea of college had never really crossed his mind until that point.
“I sense a ‘but’ coming.”
“More like an ass. My uncle got hold of them, tossed them all over. Gave her a chewing out. Then he said...he said...” Rick’s face is screwing up even as he forms his words, like they’re poison in his mouth. “He said I’d end up in jail before I went to college.”
Rick’s the one with the anger issues out of the two of you, but hearing that, it takes all your willpower not to march up the road to Rick’s house and slug his uncle in the jaw. Instead your hands clench at your side, and you fight to keep yourself under control. “That’s...he’s such a dick. I can’t believe he’d say that to you.”
“It’s fine,” Rick says in a tone that says he absolutely doesn’t believe what he just said in the slightest. “It’s not true, he was just trying to hurt me. It’s what he does. Knocks me down, because he knows I’ll always get back up. And I’ll end up better than him in the end.”
“That’s the spirit. You can do anything you put your mind to – if you want to go to college, we’ll get you there. I can out-pamphlet Miss Woods without even trying, I’m sure.”
That implacable smile breaks through Rick’s hazy outlook like the sun from behind a storm cloud. “I knew you’d say that. Thanks. It’s...something to think about, once this whole Eclipso mess is behind us.”
“Then what happened?” you prompt, getting back to the matter at hand. “With Grundy?”
“Well, I was kinda pissed, after that. So I grabbed a big bag of apples and went out into the woods. I had a...bit of a breakdown. Yelled a lot. Punched a tree. Just a normal punch, not an Hourman one,” he adds hastily when he sees your face, “And he just...came out to see me. We sat on a log. He gave me an apple. He listened while I ranted. It was...kinda nice, actually?”
“You sound surprised.”
“I didn’t really expect talking to a giant grey monster I’d almost beaten to death to feel...therapeutic, I guess? I don’t even know if he understood what I was saying, but it was just nice to get it all off my chest.”
He’s come over to the car by this point, and he’s leaning up against it beside you. You move a little closer, your arms barely touching. “You know you can always talk to me, right? You don’t have to bottle it in just to talk to Grundy.”
“Yeah, I know. But it’s...different. When we talk, it’s to work out what to do next, how to fix things. Solutions. Sometimes I just want to vent, you know? I don’t want to fix anything, I just want to yell about it for a bit. Having someone who won’t answer works really well for that.”
“That makes sense.” You’d be lying if you said you didn’t feel a little jealous of Grundy for stealing your alone time with Rick, but if it makes Rick feel better then you’re all for it. He knows you’re here if he needs you, which is the main thing.
At that point, Rick opens the car door and slides into the driver’s seat. He clicks the key in the ignition and the radio blares to life.
“Happy 4th of July, Blue Valley. Now, be careful with your celebrations tonight because we've had reports of another bear sighting earlier today, this time a little closer to town. You ask me, I agree with our callers – we can't take any chances, folks.
“You know, it's one thing to break into the Taco Whiz and Waffle World, but, hey, I've got kids that play in those woods. So a big thanks to the Blue Valley Hunters Association who have volunteered to get out there and kill that bear! They've requested everyone who's willing and able to join in on the hunt. I don't know about you folks, but I'm gonna grab my shotgun and get me a bear!”
Rick’s out of the car immediately – you can tell from the harried expression on his face that he’s made the same connection you have. Grundy’s in trouble, and if someone doesn’t warn him, he’s going to be on the wrong end of a hunter’s rifle very, very soon.
“Rick!” you shout as he begins to pound away through the leaves. He looks back over your shoulder as if he’d forgotten you were there. “Rick, wait! We can’t do this on our own! We should call for help, call the others!”
He slows to a stop, but you can tell that he wants to run again, like a caged animal sensing freedom. “But they don’t know about Grundy. They won’t get it. They’ll want to hurt him too.”
“Pat then. Call Pat. If anyone will understand, it’s him.”
Rick bites his lip for a second, indecisive, but then he draws his phone out of his pocket. “Alright, I’ll call. But we have to get going, we can’t afford to wait for him to get here. Grundy might not...he might not make it that long.”
“Or he might kill a hunter if they come to shoot him,” you reason. “Either way, we have to be the ones to find him first. Between the two of us, we can make him understand what’s going on, get him somewhere safe.”
On any other occasion Rick might argue, might fight to keep you here and out of danger. But there’s no time for that, not right now. He shakes his head then waves a hand, indicating for you to follow as he heads further into the woods.
He puts his phone to his ear. “Pat. Grundy needs our help.”
*****
Blue Valley woods is usually much lusher at this time of year. Most of the trees are already unseasonably skeletal, gnarled branches clawing at the sky as if trying to drag the sun back into place from wherever it’s hiding.
Visibility is pretty good, as a result. You can see between the trees easily, and most of the land out here is flat and unobstructed. Which begs the question, how can one giant grey monster man be so hard to find?
Then again, he’s managed to stay out of sight this long, so maybe he’s stealthier than you’re giving him credit for.
This idea only seems more viable when a pair of hunters sneak up on you and Rick out of nowhere. One of them puts a hand on Rick’s shoulder and he spins on the spot, hands raised and ready to fight in an instant.
“Whoa, Rick! Stand down, it’s just people!”
The two men are very much worse for wear. One of them is barely standing, draped over the other’s shoulder and fading in and out of consciousness. He looks like he’s been hit by a ten tonne truck. Or Solomon Grundy’s fist.
“What happened?” Rick asks, lowering his defences.
“Something hit him. And it wasn’t no bear. And now, worse, a girl’s gone missin’!”
“What?” Rick’s face is falling, like ice melting before an avalanche.
“Ten year old. Disappeared from her family’s horse farm, just the other side of the stream.” The hunter gets more animated now, pointing a finger in Rick’s face. “We need to kill whatever’s out here.”
“No!” Rick says, though it sounds more like a plea than a demand. “I’ll find her, I’ll make sure she’s safe. He wouldn’t hurt her!”
Rick’s off and running before the hunters have even finished what they’re saying. You turn to give them an apologetic look, but they’re gone already – these woods are strangely good for disappearing into.
You set off after Rick again, your lungs already burning. Adrenaline keeps you moving, but you’re not sure how much longer you can keep up this pace. “Rick, hold up!”
“I can’t, we can’t!” he shouts back, showing no signs of stopping or even slowing down. “Grundy needs our help!”
“Does he?” you ask, and that at least manages to make him stop.
“What are you saying?”
“Nothing. I’m just bringing up the possibility that, if those guys are telling the truth...maybe Grundy doesn’t need help. Maybe it’s everyone else who needs protection from him.”
Rick shakes his head with enough force to alter reality. “He wouldn’t. Not unprovoked. He’s like...like a child. He doesn’t understand what’s going on, he just...needs our help. He might look scary, but I think deep down, he just needs...”
“A friend,” you finish for him. You know how much that hits home, both for him and for you. You sigh, then take a deep breath. “Okay, we’ll keep going. We’ll find Grundy. And then...then we’ll see what we have to do next.”
Rick isn’t entirely satisfied with that, you can tell from the tight line of his mouth, but he doesn’t have time to argue. You set off again, that familiar burning in your lungs returning almost instantly.
Part of you wants to stop again and ask more questions – find if there’s a deeper meaning as to why this is so important to Rick, perhaps make him face something he hasn’t been able to bring himself to face. But then, you realise, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make any difference why it’s important to him – it just is. And if it’s important to him, then it’s important to you. And you’ll do everything you can to help him.
*****
You’ve seen dead bodies before, at least in passing. You saw the Dragon King, run through by Sir Justin. You saw what was left of Icicle once Mike ran him down. But those are nothing compared to the sight of the dead little girl lying in the stream, her eyes closed, river water running either side of her body like caring hands. She’s so quiet, so peaceful, as if she’s merely sleeping peacefully and not sleeping to the point where she’ll never wake up again.
Looming over her, hands covered in blood and face downcast, is the hulking form of Solomon Grundy. He seems to know that something is wrong, even if he’s not sure entirely what. At the sound of your approach he looks back, and guilt crosses his face like a slap when he sees Rick.
“Grundy? Grundy, are you okay?” Rick asks carefully, but the creature either can’t or doesn’t know how to answer.
“Rick…” you say quietly, as Grundy turns back towards the stream. He hasn’t seen the body yet, too concerned with Grundy’s well-being, but you can see the disappointment on his face as he notices it at last.
Rick’s chest starts to heave, his breaths short and sharp. “No…” he sighs, and there’s more sorrow in that one word than you’ve ever heard before. He points at the girl and asks Grundy, point blank, “Did you kill her?”
Grundy doesn’t answer, doesn’t even turn back. Rick tries again, infusing his words with all the pent-up rage born of what has turned out to be an exercise in futility. “Did. You. Kill her?”
This time Grundy spins, but again he doesn’t speak. He roars in Rick’s face and you think for a moment that he’s going to attack. You draw on Rick’s disappointment and form two small balls of energy in the palms of your hand just in case, but Rick bellows back at the creature with just as much power. “You damn monster!”
Grundy turns and runs, fleeing into the woods first on foot and then by jumping higher than the trees and away.
Rick’s reeling, and you try to hold out a hand for him to take so that he can steady himself. “Rick, Rick I’m so sorry. I know you wanted him to be better, but this isn’t your fault. You didn’t kill this girl – he did.”
Rick says nothing, but he bats away your hand and pulls away. Before you can stop him, before you can say anything, he’s running after Grundy, his hour of strength and stamina affording him far more energy than you could ever have.
This time if Rick catches Grundy, you know what the inevitable conclusion will be. There’ll be no last minute save, no change of heart, no realisations that will save his life. If Rick catches him again, Grundy will die at his hand.
Sure enough, his voice echoes through the trees at that moment, a solemn vow. “I’m gunna kill you, Grundy!”
Your conversation with Rick the previous day flashes through your mind again – how you didn’t think anyone could be sure they were capable of killing someone else until they had to – and it chills you to your core.
You can’t let Rick do this. You’ve seen what it’s done to Yolanda, and there’s no way you could let Rick do that to himself. What she did was necessary – but this...this wasn’t the right way. You’re supposed to be superheroes – you’re not judge, not jury, and definitely not executioner. And that’s what this will be, if Rick catches Grundy – an execution. You have to stop him, save him from himself, no matter what.
You’re about to run after him, sucking in another gulp of air and readying yourself to run even faster than before when the sound of footsteps behind you gives you pause. Pat and Courtney come hurrying out of the trees towards you, panic and confusion painted on their faces.
“Rick, Rick wait!” Courtney shouts, but he’s already gone. She and Pat pull up short, also panting hard. You’re happy to see the Cosmic Staff in Courtney’s grip, even if it is dull and grey right now. You have a feeling that you might need it soon.
“Pat, Court, am I glad to see you! We have to stop Rick, before he does something he’ll regret. You’ll help me, right?”
But Courtney’s shaking, her eyes filmed with tears as she sees the little girl in the stream. Pat gives her a look, then wades out into the shallows to retrieve her. He lays the corpse at your feet; her skin is sallow and grey, not unlike Grundy’s himself.
When the corpse’s eyes snap open, Courtney and Pat leap back in terror. There’s the sound of childish laughter, irritating giggles that send a chill through your entire body.
It’s meant to be disorienting, but that, coupled with the body’s disappearance, are the metaphorical penny dropping. You and Court share a look – you’ve both come to the same conclusion, and together you say the word.
“Eclipso.”
You were so wrapped up in your thoughts, in trying to keep Rick calm, in trying to help Grundy and not suffocate on your own lungs that you hadn’t realised the obvious; those hunters that you met earlier, the little girl who had been lying before you, and even the Solomon Grundy that had been standing here with blood-soaked hands – none of them had had emotions to read. They weren’t real.
“This is all fake,” you say, your voice like a funeral bell. “This is all Eclipso.” Your feet start moving of their own accord, quicker than Pat or Courtney as you start putting together the pieces of Eclipso’s plan. “We have to go, we have to stop him!”
“Stop who?” Courtney asks, but she and Pat are already running beside you, their questions thankfully not getting in the way of the urgency of the situation. “Grundy?”
“Not Grundy. I don’t think Grundy was ever really here,” you breath, arms swinging and legs pounding faster than ever. “No, we have to stop Rick!”
*****
The sound of fireworks overhead drowns out the sound of Rick’s punches as they land with immense force. Colours bathe you all in a kaleidoscope, but no amount of beauty can mask the horrific scene before you.
To Rick’s eyes, he’s pummelling Solomon Grundy in retaliation for what the creature did to the poor girl in the stream. But in reality none of that is true, and Rick is actually beating his uncle to death.
You’re not sure why Eclipso’s visions no longer affect you and the others. Perhaps because you’ve already worked out that they’re not real, so he isn’t bothering to try. Or perhaps it’s because it hurts you more to see Rick like this.
Matt Harris is a horrible human being, but he doesn’t deserve this. And Rick doesn’t deserve to have to face the guilt of having killed his last surviving family member.
You reach out with your powers, trying to emulate what you did in the school cafeteria, trying to soothe Rick’s raging emotions, but it’s like trying to put your hand into the heart of a star. His anger, his fury, is so strong that it won’t let you even get close enough to make contact. You can’t stop him like that, and there’s no telling what will happen if you try and get close enough to grab him physically.
Courtney and Pat are trying the old-fashioned way, yelling at him in turn, trying to get through to him with words.
“Rick, stop!” Courtney shouts.
“You don’t know what you’re doing!” Pat adds, “That’s not Grundy!”
But it’s not enough. He won’t stop, not while he’s trapped in Eclipso’s hallucinations. He raises a fist over ‘Grundy’s’ head, ready to land the killing blow.
“Courtney, you have to stop him! No matter what it takes!” you shout, motioning to Rick. The look of horror on her face is devastating, but she raises the Cosmic Staff without hesitation.
It bucks in her hands, energy pulsing through its dark surface like the last bit of toothpaste in the tube. A blast of cosmic power emerges from the end and rockets into Rick, shoving him back from his uncle. He tumbles into the grass, end over end, but he’s not hurt. His hour of strength is still active, so he’ll be fine.
At least physically. When he pushes himself back to his feet and sees what he’s done, the state that his uncle is in, you can almost see his heart breaking inside his chest. The burning rage that surrounded him like a cloak is gone, and now he’s draped in a sheet of guilt and regret.
You ache to go to him. All you want to do is wrap him in your arms and take him away from all this, but you know that that’s not an option.
Pat heads towards Matt Harris. You take a step towards Rick, then flinch back as he tears the hourglass from his neck and slams it into the ground. Sand scatters everywhere, pieces of metal and plastic shattering on impact. He looks up, his eyes fixed on yours, trying to communicate everything he’s feeling at once across the widening void between you.
His eyes remain locked on yours, but neither of you move until the police arrive to take him away. You’re not sure who called them – Pat, maybe? Everything has been such a blur. The officer cuffs Rick and pushes him towards the squad car; Rick doesn’t resist. As he passes you, you throw your arms around him and give him the tightest hug imaginable, trying to hold him in place to stop the world from moving in the inevitable direction that you can’t seem to stop it from going.
“I love you,” you whisper, one hand on his cheek, the other in his hand. “I love you, and we’ll fix this. I swear.”
The officer pulls you away gently. Rick doesn’t react. Silent tears stream down his face as he gets into the car. Just before the door closes, he looks over at the ambulance that has arrived to take his uncle away and says just three words.
“He was right.”
All that progress Rick has made. All that work he has put in to become the man he is today – to step out of his uncle’s shadow, to embrace his legacy as Hourman, to push past his anger issues and become better than he was. All of that is gone, erased in an instant by Eclipso’s dark machinations. You feel your own heart breaking on Rick’s behalf, but you know that how you feel must pale in comparison to the depths of despair he must be in now.
Pat and Courtney offer you a ride. They’re going to follow, see if there’s anything they can do, but you can’t bring yourself to move any further. Their comfort is a dull roar in your ear, the sentiment only really sinking in thanks to your powers, the words themselves lost entirely.
You don’t know how long you stand there in the dark. The lights of the ambulance and the squad car fade into the night, but you can’t help but stare at the place where you last saw them, where Rick disappeared, perhaps never to be seen again. The fireworks keep popping overhead like a cruel joke.
At last, you start to move. You take a few steps down the trail on auto-pilot, heading towards home, when you hear a clink under your feet. You bend down and see Rick’s car keys in the mud; they must have fallen out while he was fighting. You dust the dirt off and put them in your pocket, holding them so tightly that you can feel the metal biting into your hand. But you don’t care. This may be the closest thing you’re going to get to Rick for a long time, and that physical pain will keep you focused on the emotional trauma that is Eclipso’s stock in trade.
A few paces further away, you feel another presence. If your mind wasn’t so awash with your own feelings you might have felt it before, but at last it gives you pause. It’s familiar, but it’s the last thing you expected to sense out here.
You step towards the darkness that envelops the old silo near Rick’s house. It’s broken from disuse, and a small brick wall to one side blocks a large hole from the view of the road. A shape looms large within it. You should feel scared, but one glimpse of the shape’s emotional aura tells you that you don’t need to be afraid.
Solomon Grundy coalesces out of the darkness. His hands are clean of blood, and his face is sad and drooping. He looks down at you, perhaps sensing a kinship, a shared sorrow.
“Hey, big guy.”
Grundy grunts a greeting, then looks over your shoulder towards the trail out of the woods. In a deep bass, like the plop of a pebble dropped into a well from a great height, he speaks one solitary word. “Friend.”
“Yeah, Rick’s had to go away. It’s not your fault, don’t worry. You didn’t do anything wrong.” You try to impress this upon him with your powers and your words, but the emotion is too complicated for Grundy to grasp, and he somehow just manages to look sadder. When you stand up straight and clench your fists again however, he seems to perk up, sensing your new resolve. “Don’t worry though. We’re going to get him back.”
This was Eclipso’s plan, after all. He preyed on Rick’s weaknesses, got into his head and made him see exactly what he needed him to see to find himself in this terrible, seemingly-hopeless situation.
And in the process, he’s hurt you too. He’s taken Rick away, put him beyond your reach, and made you watch as he loses everything he’s fought so hard for.
Eclipso is awful. He’s worse than anything you’ve faced before. He’s pure evil. And he must be stopped, whatever it takes.
He may think he’s got the upper hand. The Justice Society is down two members, and there’s no doubt that morale will be at its lowest point so far. But he’s also made a terrible mistake. Targetting your friends is one thing. That hurts them, and it hurts you, it’s true.
But by going after Rick, he’s come for your heart, and that will be his first and last mistake.
Chapter 9: Total Eclipso The Heart
Notes:
Set during the events of Stargirl 02x09 – Summer School – Chapter Nine
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Sleep can’t take you, no matter how hard it tries. Every time you close your eyes, all you can see is Rick’s downcast face, hear his final words to you as the squad car door closed and took him away.
“He was right.”
The tears stopped coming eventually, but it feels like they’ve eroded a path down your cheeks, twin scars for all to see whenever they look at you.
Pat texts you at some point, just to let you know that he and Courtney have gotten home safe. The police didn’t let them see Rick since they weren’t family, but they were assured that he was alright. Medics checked him over, bandaged his wounds, but he hasn’t said a word since he got there. By the time the sun rises, you know that he’ll be locked up for good.
You rack your brain, trying to remember if Crusher Crock is being held locally too, but you can’t recall for the life of you. Rick’s already in enough trouble, he doesn’t need to be trapped in the same place as Sportmaster on top of everything else.
You make a mental note to feed Grundy; you left him alone the night before after promising to be back to visit while Rick’s...indisposed. The big grey guy didn’t really seem to understand, but he’d lumbered away back into the trees with what looked like a wave, so you think he’ll be okay for now. You only have enough space in your brain to worry about so many people at once, and Rick is taking up like 99% of that real estate right now.
At last the day dawns, but the sunlight is weak and watery, like the sun is in a different dimension to the rest of the world. You clamber out of bed, fall into the shower and into some clothes. Luckily, by the time you get downstairs for breakfast everyone else has already left for the day, so you don’t have to handle any of their awkward questions. You’re not sure if Rick’s arrest will have made the morning news, but the last thing you want to do is relive last night again if you don’t have to.
You’re half-heartedly spooning cereal into your mouth when your phone pings. It’s Pat again, with an update. You pick up the phone, read the short message, and then have to resist the urge to throw the device across the room in anger.
Rick’s hearing has been cancelled.
A severe weather warning has brought Blue Valley basically to a stop, meaning that the lawyers and judges and whoever else needs to be present to decide Rick’s fate are all hiding in their houses waiting for it to pass. In the meantime, your boyfriend is languishing in jail for a crime he didn’t mean to commit.
You ball your fists under the table, feeling your face contort with impotent rage. There’s nothing you can do to make this go any faster, to make this easier on Rick. You can’t exactly drag all the lawyers and whoever to where they need to go. All you can do is your least favourite thing in the world – wait and see.
That lasts all of about twenty minutes. You pace the house, listening to the sound of the wind howling outside before a new resolve grips you. You find your jacket from the night before and draw out Rick’s car keys.
You vaguely remember driving his car back to your house. You’ve got a licence, but you’ve never had the cash for a car yourself, so it was actually the first time you’d driven anything other than a test vehicle. Rick had never offered to let you drive it before; it’s his pride and joy, so that’s no real surprise. But taking it away from his uncle’s house had felt right, like you were rescuing some part of him, and now it’s parked on your driveway where you can keep it safe and ready for Rick to collect once he’s free.
Now it can be your salvation – it can take you to the jail, and you can see Rick face to face. You could walk, but if the storm warning is to be believed, the car will be a much safer, and quicker, way to go. You can be there and back before the first drops of rain start to fall.
Ignoring the voice in your head replaying the weather warning from the local news you climb into the car, feeling alien in the driver’s seat. Despite being as old as Rick’s father it has a new car smell, as if all of Rick’s work on it has revitalised and rejuvenated it into its former self. For a moment you look over at the passenger seat and think you can see Rick smiling encouragingly at you, but you blink and he’s gone.
You slide the key into the ignition easily. “Hold on, Rick. I’ll be there soon.”
*****
“No visitors.” The prison guard slams the visitors log shut, nearly flattening your fingers in the process.
“What? Why not?” You try not to sound desperate, but you know you’re going to fail before you even open your mouth.
The guard runs a finger down the clipboard in his hand, then turns it towards you. A greasy thumbprint smudge indicates Rick’s name. Rick Tyler – too dangerous to allow visitors at this time.
“What? That’s ridiculous! Rick’s not dangerous! He wouldn’t hurt me, you have to let me see him!”
The guard just shakes his head. “Not a chance. Rules is rules for a reason. Come back after his hearing, maybe they’ll have bumped him down a category. But for now, no visitors. Didn’t you hear what he did to his uncle? Kid beat the crap out of him so hard, his face looked like pulled pork after a barbecue.” He guffaws stupidly, and you’re glad that there’s a panel of glass between you to keep you from reaching over and slapping him.
You stomp your foot impotently and head back to Rick’s car. You slide inside, not sure what to do with yourself now. This had been your last hope.
Maybe...maybe you can go see Courtney and Pat, and work on a plan? Maybe they’ll know something? Or Barbara, she has legal knowledge and what-not – she might not be a lawyer, but surely she’ll know something you can do to help Rick?
You’re clutching at straws, but it’s not like you have any other ideas. And the alternative is doing nothing.
You’re about to turn the key in the ignition again when there’s an enormous flash of light, followed almost immediately by a humongous boom of thunder. There’s a beat where nothing happens, and you can hear your heart pounding in your chest from the shock. Then the heavens open and sheets of rain fall directly down around you like panes of glass, shattering into brutal raindrops as they strike the ground around you.
Instantly the windscreen is drenched and the road begins to flood – there’s no way you can drive in this.
You slam your head into the steering wheel in despair. “Can’t go forward, can’t go back. What am I supposed to do now?”
The sound of the rain on the roof of the car is like a firing squad trying to finish you off. You can only stomach it for about five minutes before you yank the keys from the ignition, throw open the door and flee back into the prison again. The rain feels like ice cubes being hurled at your back, and you’re soaked through as soon as you set one foot outside.
You’re panting heavily when you come to a stop inside the prison again, even though it’s only a trip of a few feet. The ice cold temperature and the high velocity of the rain has made it feel like a journey of a hundred times as far.
“I know, I know, no visitors,” you say without looking back at the guard, pulling off your jacket and wringing it out on the welcome mat. “But I can’t get home just yet, and I can’t sit in my car. I’ll just sit here quietly till the rain stops.”
There’s no answer, and you turn around to see that the guard is no longer at his desk. There’s no ‘back in five minutes’ sign or anything.
In fact, there’s no one around at all. There had been a few other people in the waiting area just a few minutes ago, but it’s totally vacant now – maybe they’ve all gone in to see their loved ones already?
You take a few steps forward, peering into the prison proper. The metal detector doesn’t flash, even though you’ve still got Rick’s keys clutched tightly in your hand.
“Hello? Is anyone here?”
The hallway beyond the waiting room is grey and empty, just like the waiting room itself. There are no prisoners, no guards, not even a solitary security camera to be seen.
Daring grips your heart – if there’s no one around, maybe you can find Rick, even if just for a moment. Surely the penalty for breaking into a prison is less than it is for breaking out? And you can always use the old ‘I was looking for the bathroom’ excuse if you get caught.
Daring is replaced by indecision – this is dangerous, and stupid, and not what a superhero should do. But it’s also possibly the only chance you’ll get to see Rick for who knows how long?
You make up your mind and march into the prison proper. Your head is on a swivel as you head deeper in, acutely aware that a guard or a prisoner could see you at any moment.
What feels like miles of grey prison corridor stretch out before you. Some of them lead to cells, which are all conspicuously empty. Some lead to other areas of the prison, like the recreation room, or the exercise yard. Everything’s totally barren though, there isn’t a soul in sight.
Do prisons have assemblies, like schools? Maybe the warden has called everyone together for an announcement. The wild idea that he’s introducing Rick to the prison population like a foreign exchange student makes you laugh for a moment, but the noise feels louder than should be possible and you clam your mouth shut almost immediately.
You check your watch, but the rain has gotten inside it and it’s now too fogged up with water to read the time. You check your pocket, but you must have left your phone in Rick’s car. You have no idea how long you’ve been walking these empty corridors. It could be minutes, it could be hours, but eventually you turn a corner and come to a stop.
There’s a person with their back to you, standing in the middle of an empty room. Around them are piles of orange fabric – it looks like a laundry hurricane. The person, a man presumably, seems fuzzy and indistinct, like he’s out of focus with the rest of the world.
“Hello? Is someone there? I think I got turned around on the way to the visitors’ bathroom.”
No response. You take a few steps closer, repeating yourself. “Hello?”
The person turns, and their outline seems to shimmer and shake. Only when you’re too close for it to matter do you realise that the fabric on the floor isn’t laundry at all – piles upon piles of inmates lie there instead. They’re all beaten and bloody, arms and legs and necks bent at unnatural angles. Some of them are still twitching even as blood pools around them, sticking them all together like some gigantic flesh golem.
And in the middle of it all, now as clear as day with an outline so sharp it looks like he’s been drawn in permanent marker, is Hourman.
Rick is in full costume, padded boots and gloves, heavy cape, his hourglass, somehow intact, hanging over his heart. Sand drops slowly through it, signalling that his hour of strength has only just been activated.
“Ri-Hourman?” you call, managing to stop yourself from outing him just in time. “What’s going on? What happened here?”
Rick’s hands move up his body, tucking his fingers into the sides of his hood. He draws it down slowly, slowly, and you feel the breath leave your body as his face is revealed.
His skin is grey and lifeless, hanging limp upon his skull. His eyes are two black pits that lead only to a neverending abyss. There is no recognition there, no sign that he knows who you are, nothing at all. He grunts loudly, savage, animalistic.
One of the inmates at his feet tries to struggle back upright, but Rick’s foot lashes out with a bone-crunching crack, and he moves no more.
“Rick? Rick, what’s going on? What happened to you?” Your voice is small, saturated with disbelief.
Rick just roars, an inhuman sound that he should never be able to make in a million years.
Then the monster that was once Rick Tyler begins to bound towards you, blood on his fists and murder in his impossibly black eyes.
*****
You never thought, even with all the madness that has befallen you in your short life, that you would ever run from Rick. Even when he has been at his angriest, even when he’s shouted and screamed at you to leave, you’ve never fled from him like this, never feared for your life.
But you can tell that if Rick gets within striking distance of you right now, you will not survive.
You turn on your heel and start to run, arms and legs pumping as fast as you can force them. You don’t have much of a lead, and Rick is faster than you even when he hasn’t activated his hour of strength. All you can hope is that the winding corridors and multiple corners will slow him down long enough for you to get a safe distance away from him.
How could this have happened? Did Grundy do something to him? Or has Eclipso’s influence grown even stronger to the point that he can actually corrupt your friends?
It doesn’t matter. The how can wait until you’re not fleeing for your life.
You zoom through corridors impossibly fast, no idea where you’re going other than away. Rick’s primal screams echo around you like you’re in a cave system, making it sound like he is everywhere at once.
You skid into a wide, rectangular room. There are exits on each of the other sides, with gates hanging open. You pick one at random and head towards it, but as soon as you get close enough, someone steps out of the shadows and shuts it tight.
“No escape for you,” says Stargirl, waggling her finger as if you’re a disobedient child. “Not this time.”
“What? Court, let me out! Something’s happened to Rick, we have to get out of here!”
She just looks disappointed, but there’s something about the set of her eyes that says she always knew it would end this way. “Sorry. Can’t do that. You chose Rick – that means you have to be the one to face him.”
“Wait, Court! Courtney!” But she’s already walking away, her Cosmic Staff slung over her shoulder like a baseball bat.
There’s no time to question this, no time to think, not when Rick’s mere seconds away. You rush to the next door, but Doctor Mid-Nite’s goggles flash and it slides shut of its own accord with a snap.
“Beth, what are you doing? Rick’s going to kill me, you have to let me out!”
“I am sorry,” she says, but her voice is digitalized and completely devoid of emotion. “That does not compute. If you cannot handle something as trifling as this, then maybe you do not belong in the JSA after all.”
She also turns and walks away with a flip of her cape.
You race towards the final door, but you already know what’s going to happen. Pat closes it just a second before you can get your foot inside. “I’m sorry kiddo. You’re the bait. If we can give Rick what he wants, maybe he’ll go back to normal. If it’s a toss-up between Hourman and whoever the hell you’re supposed to be, then you know we’re always going to go with the legacy hero, right? No hard feelings?”
“Mister Dugan, open this door right now!” you hiss, but he’s already gone.
You look around, hoping that there’s another door you’ve missed, but there’s nothing. What should have been a good escape plan has potentially become a literal dead end.
Rick roars again, and this time you can tell exactly where it’s coming from. The beast that was the man you love bounds through the door you entered through, sliding to a stop. He doesn’t move any closer, as if sensing that his prey has been cornered and he need not rush any further. He tilts his head like a predator observing its prey, waiting for the right moment to strike.
You look down, and suddenly you’re in your Empath costume. Your letterman jacket is a comforting weight on your shoulders, and your favourite Chucks afford you better grip on the prison floor. Somehow the costume change doesn’t seem strange, at least compared to everything else that’s been going on, and you step towards Rick instead of trying to flee.
“Well Rick? Are you going to try and kill me?” You raise your fists like you’ve seen him do so many times. If you’re going down, then you’re going down swinging.
Rick roars again, leaping across the gap between you almost imperceptibly fast. You thrust your hands out before you, your terror solidifying into a solid wall of yellow light. Rick crashes into it and bounces off, but he’s already recovering before he hits the ground, drawing back his fist and slamming it into the wall.
Your concentration shatters and so does your protection, leaving you vulnerable again.
Rick’s fists flash towards you, and you dip and dive out of the way as fast as you can. You gather your power in your hands, fear giving way to despair as twin bolts of deep blue energy erupt forth. They strike Rick in the chest and send him end over end towards the other side of the room.
“Rick, I don’t want to hurt you – but you have to stop this, right now!” You raise your hands again, willing more energy to appear. There’s a pop, but nothing happens.
You look down at your hands in disbelief. “What? No, not now!” You search your body for your power, that reserve of energy created by your own emotions that you can always to tap into when there’s no one else around to draw from, but it’s gone dormant. There’s just a pit of dark certainty in your stomach instead – your powers are gone, and they’re never coming back.
Rick pulls himself to his feet and begins to stalk towards you again, his lips pulled back in a wolfish grin.
Without your powers, you’re exactly who you were a year ago, before Rick, before the JSA, before Empath. You’re totally helpless – and you’re going to die.
Suddenly, there’s a fizzling in the air, the sound of someone dropping Mentos into Diet Coke. There’s a burst of shadow, like the opposite of a firework, and a familiar voice echoes through your mind.
“None of this is real,” The Shade implores you. “You must push through the illusions and face your fear.”
You pant, keeping one eye on Rick as he moves towards you again. “That’s what I’m doing, isn’t it?”
“Fighting fear and facing it are two very different things, dear heart. You must face your fear head-on to break this spell. I need you to do this, you absolutely mustn’t fall here.”
“And why not?” you shout, your voice not so much edged with terror as totally submerged in it. “What makes me so special?”
“Oh, more than you could possibly know,” The Shade says, in a voice that says there is so much more he could tell you if he had the time. “But my reasons for calling on you today are purely selfish, I’m afraid – I need you to find me, if all else fails. And to do that, you need to get out of this illusion and face your fear.”
The Shade’s voice fades away as quickly as it came, but for a moment you feel like you can see the shape of a top hat and a cane in the dark smoke.
You focus on Rick again as he stalks towards you, now halfway across the room. His mouth hangs open stupidly, but his fists are ready to deal out death.
“Alright,” you say, trying to get your mind on the task at hand. “Face my fear. Face my fear. So, what is it that I’m afraid of?”
Before, it would have been your identity issues. The idea that you are only defined by your relationships with the JSA and with Rick. But you’ve already overcome those, thanks to the realisations that Rick helped you come to.
So...what do you fear now?
You already know, really. You’ve known the entire time. You didn’t want to acknowledge them, in case that made them real – but it’s a bit too late for that. They’re all here, right in front of you, clear as day.
You’ve lost your powers, the one thing you thought made you special enough to belong in the world of the JSA. You’ve lost your friends. They’ve all tossed you aside now that you don’t fit into their plans any more. And you’ve lost Rick, now that he’s regressed back to the man he was when you met him, cold and angry, locked away from the world, and even further beyond that.
But...you haven’t lost any of that, not really. Not like this. Your powers are still there, somewhere. And you haven’t lost your friends in so much as they have been taken from you, twisted and manipulated into something other than themselves.
The Courtney you know would never care if you fell in love – in fact, she’s one of the biggest supporters of you and Rick being together; she just wants you all to be happy. The Beth you know would never be so cold and calculating, not when she has the biggest heart of all of you. The Pat you know would never sacrifice his morality for the greater good, not when his morals are the compass that you and the rest of the team base your own on. And no matter how much Rick might hate himself sometimes, might fear his power or his lack of control, he would never become a heartless monster, would never hurt other people without reason, and he would definitely never turn his rage on you. He would never allow himself to become a monster.
“None of this is real.” As you repeat The Shade’s words, you know them to be true. “None of this is real!”
Rick is closer now, within striking distance. He raises his hands to attack, to strike you down with one blow, but you step within his reach instead. He roars in your face, but you don’t care. You reach up and draw his face down to yours, the same way you’ve done so many times before, and you kiss him.
There’s an explosion of pure white energy, something you haven’t felt since Brainwave activated your powers all those months ago. It rockets out of your body like a cleansing wave, blowing the illusion of the Rick monster and the prison away, leaving you in a formless void of darkness.
Standing a few feet away from you is Eclipso. He is dressed as he was the last time you saw him in the Blue Valley High cafeteria, and he is also wearing a horrible sneer. “Well. That was far more impressive than I’d expected from you,” he says in his corrosive voice.
“I get that a lot,” you shout back defiantly, raising your hands. You feel your powers once again, energy coalescing in your palms, bright red with righteous fury. “Leave me the hell alone.”
“But you’re so much fun to play with,” he says, taking a few steps towards you. “All those delicious feelings, all that confusion...you’re like a smorgasbord just waiting to be...devoured!”
In an instant he’s in your face, hands around your wrists as an impossibly long tongue snakes out of his mouth and licks across your cheek, leaving a trail of slime in its wake. You struggle against him, pushing him back, but his grip is like iron.
“It doesn’t matter what you do to me,” you shout, “it doesn’t matter what you show me. I know that the bonds I’ve made with my friends, with Rick, are stronger than anything you can come up with. You might fool us all for a little while, but you’ll never break us.”
“Oh really? I seem to recall one of your compatriots returning her little hero costume, and the one you love so very much is locked away from you forever. I can tell you from experience, that’s not enjoyable for anyone involved.”
“You don’t even have any power of your own, do you?” you spit, and a wave of panic crosses Eclipso’s face for just a moment before his sneer returns.
“You don’t know what you are talking about.” His grip on your wrists tightens painfully, but you know you’re onto something. You feel the calm overtake you, and the panic leaves your voice.
“All you do is throw our fears at us – you make us defeat ourselves. But what can you do if we’re not afraid of you any more? What kind of power will you have then?”
Eclipso snarls at you like an angry wolf, and then suddenly he’s gone.
You’re still sitting in Rick’s car, in your driveway. You never even left the house. A quick glance at your phone tells you that you’ve been out here for hours, trapped in Eclipso’s nightmare.
You should feel shaken, but instead you feel...powerful. It may have taken a little prompting from The Shade, but you beat Eclipso at his own game.
It hasn’t saved Rick. It hasn’t brought back Yolanda. It hasn’t even begun to help you solve the mystery of The Shade’s current whereabouts. And it definitely hasn’t stopped Eclipso for good. But it has shown you one very important thing – he can be beaten.
And if you can do it, if you can exorcise Eclipso from Blue Valley once and for all, then maybe, just maybe, there’s a chance that you can save everyone else too.
Notes:
I both love and dread episodes where Rick doesn't appear. It gives me some creative freedom to do stuff outside of the main plot, but it also means I have to come up with my own plots - double-edged sword much?
Also, the pun title. I'm so sorry, but I had to.
Chapter 10: Shades Of Grey
Notes:
Set during the events of Stargirl 02x10 - Summer School, Chapter Ten
Chapter Text
After the harrowing events of the previous day, it takes you a full twenty four hours to pluck up the energy to leave the house again. As much as you’re riding high from beating Eclipso at his own game, it took a mental and emotional toll; not that you want Eclipso to know that, of course. The following morning however, you’re refreshed and raring to go once again.
You hadn’t realised quite how deceptive Eclipso’s vision was. You double check with Pat before leaving, and it turns out that Rick hasn’t been transferred to an industrial prison at all – he’s still at the police station, in the holding cells there. That building you’d wandered through the day before had been entirely created by Eclipso’s magic; literally nothing you experienced was real from the second you set foot in Rick’s car.
Eclipso’s power is growing exponentially – the longer you leave him to his own devices, the stronger he is going to become, and the harder he’ll be to finally take down. If only any of you had the first clue about how to do that.
But Eclipso will have to wait, at least for a few hours. There’s something more important that you have to do, for your own sanity if nothing else. You hop into Rick’s car and make your way into town, parking up outside the police station.
“I’m here to see Rick Tyler?” you say to the kindly looking female police officer at the front desk. She’s a far cry from the horribly unhelpful imaginary old man from the day before.
The woman looks up at you with a sad expression, her entire body seeming to slump as she realises who you are. “He said you might be around at some point. I don’t really think he wants to see you.”
You feel like someone has plugged your finger into a power socket – totally paralysed, unable to move as the energy arcs up and down your body.
“But...” the woman says, with a conspiratorial glance over her shoulder at the rest of the station, “I think it’d do him some good. As long as he doesn’t get too animated, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
The lightning coursing through you vanishes in an instant. “Thank you,” you breathe. “You don’t know how much this means to me.”
She shoots you a wink, then waves you through. You make your way through the station as quickly as you can, following the signs for the holding cells while trying not to make eye contact with anyone else for fear that they might ask you to leave.
There are only three cells, and the other two are empty. There are no guards in the room but a security camera swivels back and forth in the corner of one wall, no doubt watched like a hawk by an officer at the security desk. The illusion of privacy will have to do.
You walk over to the corner cell, and the sight of Rick nearly makes you cry again.
He’s still dressed in the same clothes as he was the night he was arrested; if only you’d thought to bring him something fresh. His hair is mussed up from running his hands through it too many times, but his hands are clean, no longer bandaged or bleeding, and he looks otherwise healthy and unharmed.
He’s also asleep – there’s not much else for him to do in the cell, so it makes sense. His chest rises and falls gently, and if not for the small crease between his eyebrows you’d almost think he was dreaming peacefully in bed at home.
“Rick?” you whisper, almost reluctant to wake him. “Rick, it’s me.”
His eyelids flutter for a second, then he pushes himself up onto his elbows and sighs. “I said I didn’t want visitors.” His voice is croaky, and he rubs his eyes with the back of one hand.
“I know. But I had to see you, I’m sorry. I couldn’t bear the thought of you sitting in here all alone.”
Rick sits all the way up, perching on the end of the bed. “It’s not that I didn’t want to see you,” he sighs. “I just...I didn’t want you to see me like this.”
“This isn’t your fault, Rick. You know that – it was Eclipso, the whole thing. You thought you were protecting people from Grundy.”
“It doesn’t matter!” His voice raises, and you look around quickly, expecting a police officer to burst in and drag you away for agitating the prisoner. But Rick manages to control himself, balling his fists and staring at the floor. “It doesn’t matter. No one knows about Eclipso but us. To the outside world, it just looks like I beat the crap out of my uncle. Like I’m the stupid juvenile delinquent they all think I am.”
“We’re going to get you out of here, Rick. Pat and Barbara are working on some lawyer stuff – it’ll take a few days, but they think they can get you out on bail. Then we can deal with everything else.”
He shakes his head again. “What if this is where I’m meant to be?” he asks, unable to meet your eyes. “I know we said I’m not a monster, that I’m not what Eclipso said I was, but...look at me. Look at what I did. Maybe it’s safer for everyone if I’m just out of the way, if it’s that easy to manipulate me. I don’t want to hurt anyone else. I don’t want to hurt you.”
You ache to reach through the bars and hug him, to hold him to you and protect him from all these dark thoughts, but the bars of the cell impede your passage, keeping him locked away from you. “Don’t talk like that. You know who you are, you’re nothing like Eclipso said. You’re kind, and caring, and smart, and compassionate. You’re not a monster, and you’re not supposed to be in here. And I know you’d never hurt me, on purpose or otherwise.”
Rick gives you a baleful look, like he appreciates the sentiment even if he doesn’t believe it himself. You can feel him falling towards despair, which is exactly what Eclipso wanted.
“Your uncle’s going to be okay,” you tell him. If despair is where he’s headed, then maybe hope can claw him back the other way. “Pat called the hospital – he’s stable, he’s recovering. It’ll be a while, but you didn’t do anything you can’t come back from. And that’s not all, either...”
You tell him about your confrontation with Eclipso, about what he made you see, made you fight and feel. Then you add in what Beth had told you the day before, about her own run-in with the fear demon – how she had turned the tables on him as well, how she put him in his place.
“He’s not invincible, Rick. If we can stand up to him, we can stop him. He only has power over us as long as we let him.”
There’s a flash of something optimistic on Rick’s face, if only for a second before the melancholy reclaims him. “Maybe. But you’ve always been stronger than me – maybe not physically, but in every other way that counts. Even before your powers, you were strong. You had to be, to deal with me.”
You chuckle mirthlessly. “Your mood swings were a trial and a half,” you quip, “but they were worth suffering through to get to be with you now.”
“This is funny way to have a relationship. Long distance, even when we’re in the same room.”
You reach a hand through the bars – you’re probably not supposed to, but you don’t care. Rick takes it; it’s likely the first physical contact he’s had in days, not counting police officers shoving him around.
“Don’t lose faith, Rick. We’ll get you out of here, I promise. And in the meantime, I’ll be strong enough for the both of us. Eclipso might think he’s got us beat, but he’s in for a nasty shock.”
Rick’s quiet for a moment. He runs his finger across your knuckles absently, enjoying the touch. “I love you. You know that, right? Even through all this, even when everything else seems to be in doubt – I know that’s true. That’s how strong that love is. I know I can count on that, count on you, no matter what else happens.”
“I know. I love you, too.” You lean forward, placing your head against the cell bars. Rick takes your other hand, lays his forehead against where yours would be if not for the wall of steel keeping you apart. You stay there, the chill of the bars nothing compared to the warmth of the love that runs through you both like a completed circuit.
As much as you don’t want to, you know you have to go. You’d rather do it under your own terms than have a police officer come in and pull you away. You stand up reluctantly, Rick’s hands falling away from yours and into his lap. He looks up at you with a pained smile, but at least he’s trying.
“I’ll see you again soon. I’ll come back tomorrow, with some clothes and stuff. And I’ll feed Grundy too. You don’t have to worry about him.”
Rick’s surprised, but only for a moment. “You saw him? The real him?”
“Yeah. We had a good chat. We’re like this now.” You cross your fingers and show him. “Best buds.”
“You could make friends with a tree stump, I swear,” he says, his smile looking a little less forced. Then his forehead creases in concern again. “My car. I lost my keys, I don’t know where, but-”
You put a hand in your pocket and draw them out, dangling them between two fingers. “Got it covered. She’s in good hands for now. I’ll keep her warm till you’re ready to come back to her.”
Rick smiles gratefully. “Stay safe. Watch your back, Tell everyone...tell them I’ll see them again soon.”
“I will. Don’t lose hope, Rick. I love you.”
Then you turn and walk away, at last allowing the tears that have been building and building in your chest since the moment you saw Rick in the cell to finally burst free. You give the police officer at the front desk a very wet smile as you leave, then find yourself leaning up against the outside of the police station – you don’t even make it to your car before you have to give in. Your whole body shakes with sorrow, huge, racking sobs sending ripples up and down your bones that are almost physically painful.
You’ve seen Rick in some awful situations before, beaten, bloody, furious, devastated– but you’ve never seen him look so helpless, so hopeless before. It’s a harrowing sight, and one that you never want to see again. You have to get him out of there, no matter what it takes.
Your resolve burns bright within you, but the entire world suddenly goes dark. Tendrils of shadow emerge from the pavement, wrapping over you until you’re encased in a cocoon of pure darkness. You don’t even get a chance to scream before the world twists around you, and you feel yourself pass out.
*****
When you awaken, the world seems...wrong, somehow. Even before you open your eyes you can tell that all isn’t as it should be, but when you do look around you can’t immediately tell why.
You’re still outside the police station, collapsed on the sidewalk, but as you hastily get to your feet to avoid attracting suspicion, you realise that no one is paying you any attention anyway. In fact, they’re all walking past you as if you’re not there at all.
“Oh, sorry!” You slide out of an old lady’s way, but she doesn’t even look up at you. You catch sight of one of your hands as you wave at her, and then it all becomes clear.
You see faint wisps of darkness flitting across your skin, across your entire body, as if you’re no longer solid but instead made of TV static. You can still feel yourself – the pavement is solid beneath your feet, and you can feel the pressure of one hand on the other, but you seem insubstantial somehow, like you’re between two worlds – not entirely in shadow, but not entirely in the light either.
“What the hell is going on?” you wonder aloud, looking around. Everything else seems exactly as it should; it’s just you that’s out of place.
“Now, don’t be alarmed,” says a voice from behind you, making you jump about fifteen feet in the air. “This is all perfectly safe.”
You turn to see The Shade leaning heavily against the police station wall. He too flickers like TV static, and no one seems to be looking at him either. He has a grimace on his face and a hand clutched to his side exactly where Eclipso struck him a few days ago. His hat, cane, and glasses are nowhere to be seen, and the collar of his shirt hangs wide open. Every other time you’ve seen him he’s been the epitome of poise and composure – but right now, he looks like he’s had a very bad time at a party and wants nothing more than to go home and sleep it off for a week.
“You!” You’ve managed to recover from the scare, and now you’re feeling more indignant than anything else.
“Indeed, me.” The Shade offers you an apologetic smile. “Forgive the intrusion, but it really couldn’t be helped.”
“Did you do this? Where are we?” You gesture frantically at the wrongness of the world and your entire body. “What do you want?”
“Questions, questions. All in good time, my dear. Perhaps we could go somewhere a little calmer to chat?”
“Why don’t you just teleport us? That’s your thing, right?”
The Shade bites his tongue, his next smile far more forced. “One of my many things, yes. But I’ve been having a little...trouble, in that department if we’re being honest. That’s exactly why you’re here. But please, if I have to stay vertical for much longer I fear that I may end up collapsing in a very undignified manner.”
You’ve never seen him appear vulnerable before. Even when he was facing down Eclipso, the most dangerous threat you’ve ever had to deal with, he seemed in control (right up until it all went wrong, at least). It’s this fact that finally makes you let your guard down for a moment. You offer him your shoulder and he takes it gratefully, leaning heavily on you.
“The Pit Stop’s just around the corner – we can talk there.”
“Ah, a grubby mechanic’s garage. How splendid.” The sarcasm dripping from The Shade’s words is so palpable that you could slip on it.
“I can just drop you here and leave, if you like.”
“...Lead on.”
You’re used to people in Blue Valley not paying much attention to you, but having them actively ignoring your existence feels a little different. People don’t move out of your way, but nor do they seem at all bothered by the fact that you’re dragging a dishevelled English gentlemen down Main Street, so it’s a decent trade-off if slightly disorienting. Part of you wants to know what will happen if you walk into one of them, but the bigger part of you is scared to find out, so you just move around them as best you can.
The Pit Stop is indeed empty, and you deposit The Shade on one of the sofas. He winces as his side hits the cushions, then makes himself as comfortable as he can while also seemingly trying to make sure as little of his body is touching the old material as possible.
“We’re here,” you sigh, slightly out of breath. “Talk. What’ve you done to me?”
The Shade blinks innocently. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Look, you obviously brought me here for a reason. So don’t play coy. If you were going to hurt me, I’m sure you would have by now, so you must need me for something. You said as much, the last time we spoke.” As soon as you say that you pause, thinking back to the previous day. “...I should thank you for that, actually. You helped me see through Eclipso’s illusion.”
“Not an entirely unselfish gesture, I’m afraid. I was hoping it would earn me enough goodwill to procure some assistance from you in return?” He’s still the picture of innocence.
“Go on...”
“I assume from your research into Eclipso that you are somewhat familiar with the Shadowlands, yes?” You nod. “That’ll save some time, wonderful. Well, my powers are drawn from the Shadowlands themselves, as are Eclipso’s. It’s made us something of...unlikely rivals, I suppose you could say.”
“Is that where we are now? The Shadowlands?” You look around again, but everything seems normal enough – it’s still just you that’s out of place, and The Shade.
“Not quite. You see, when I faced off with Eclipso, he...severed my connection to my powers. I’m...stuck, for lack of a better word. I can’t access the Shadowlands, nor can I fully return to our normal dimension either. Instead, I’m...well, this.” He indicates himself with his free hand. “A shade of The Shade.”
“You’ve been working on that one for a while, haven’t you?”
“True art takes time.”
The Shade smiles wider, and you roll your eyes. “So you’ve brought me here for what, company?”
“I’m hoping that you can be the one to get me out of here, actually. If I could get to the Shadowlands directly I could heal myself, but unfortunately I don’t have a tether there to lock onto. However, if you could return me to our home dimension, at least that would be a start.”
“So, no link to the Shadowlands, but you’ve got a tether to the normal world?”
“Well, of course I do. Not that it was entirely my idea.” He looks at you as if you’re being quite stupid, and then your eyes widen in recognition.
“Me?”
“Indeed. You tried to get inside my head, but instead you ended up visiting me in your dreams, remember? Those pesky emotional powers of yours are proving to be quite helpful after all.”
“So, what – you want me to pull you back through?”
“Precisely.”
It’s not a bad plan, as plans go. Of course, you have no idea if you can do it – but if The Shade thinks you can, then you’ve no reason to doubt him. He’s been around far longer than you have, and he seems to have some experience with empaths, so he likely knows more about your powers than you. That’s not a comforting thought.
“So, assuming I can do what you’re asking,” you say, beginning to pace back and forth. “What’s in it for me?”
“I helped you against Eclipso. What more do you need? Not particularly polite, asking for more.”
“Screw polite. You’re probably the only person who knows how to stop Eclipso at this point – we need your help.”
“Has Mister Dugan failed you then? His old JSA files not enough for you?”
You shake your head, trying not to think about the revelations about the JSA that you’ve received over the last day or so. Those were some awkward conversations between you and Courtney, that’s for sure, and not anything you want to revisit right now. “We need something more. We have to get rid of him, before he takes anything else away from us.”
The Shade cocks his head with curiosity, but doesn’t press. “Ah, matters of the heart, I see. I know them well.” He taps his chin with a finger, pretending to consider. “Alright, how’s this? You pull me back into our dimension, and I’ll tell your little Stargirl how to put Eclipso back in his bottle.”
“You swear?”
“On my sister’s life.”
You have no idea if that’s a good thing or not, but it doesn’t look like you’re going to get much more from him. He seems if not trustworthy, at least honourable. So you nod and hold out a hand.
“Shake on it.”
The Shade does so, although you see the tightness around his eyes grow with pain as the movement jostles his wound even more.
“Do you want to tell me what I should be doing here? I’m not exactly good at this empath stuff, I kind of just wing it.”
“Emotion-based powers work best that way, I’ve found.” You can’t tell if he’s joking or not.
“That being said, being an emotional tether or whatever isn’t something I’ve done before.”
He inclines his head like a gracious host. “But of course. Take my hand, so that we are physically tethered as well as emotionally so. Then reach out into the world, and find an anchor point. Someone that you have intense feelings for – love, hate, whichever. Then draw yourself towards them, feel the world shift around you.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“Superpowers often are, once you stop worrying about the illusion of control. You heroes spend far too long agonising over whether you should or shouldn’t do something – a waste of potential, I assure you – so you don’t often realise just how powerful you can be.”
You give him a grumpy look, then hold out your hand again, palm up this time. The Shade takes it, grips you tightly, and it’s like putting your hand into a bucket of ice water; his emotions are a mystery, trapped behind solid walls of cold darkness.
“You’re going to have to let me in a bit,” you tell him. “If you want me to tether, or whatever, I’ll need more than just physical contact.”
The Shade’s smile turns nasty for a moment, like you’ve asked him to eat a live spider, but he steels himself. “I was afraid of that. Very well. But speak nothing of what you find to anyone – my privacy is my own.”
“I don’t want any of your dirty little secrets, Mister Swift. I just want you to help me and my friends stop that monster.”
The Shade says nothing more, but he closes his eyes and concentrates. Nothing happens for a moment, and then suddenly there’s a rush of emotions across your connection, images, faces, feelings that erupt as if a dam has been opened.
You feel how weary The Shade is after over a century of life. You feel his loves and losses, his triumphs and defeats across the ages, his flights of fancy, the depths of his commitments. You see the ISA, the original JSA, a woman that looks very similar to him, and a group of men whose masks appear to be crying. There’s a very vivid flash of the Black Diamond that almost makes you break the connection.
It’s overwhelming, feeling everything The Shade has kept inside for so long all at once, and you almost fall off your chair.
“Concentrate!” The Shade’s voice is like a dagger in the night. “Don’t lose yourself in me, find your anchor!”
Anchor. Right. That at least should be the easy part.
You reach out with your mind, pushing further than you’ve ever done before. If you weren’t in this weird between-place you’d likely not be able to do it, but the fact that every other human seems to be distant, further away, makes them easy to tune out.
In your mind’s eye, you find Rick. He’s still sitting in his prison cell, eating an apple he’s gotten from somewhere. He’s smiling, despite his situation, and that makes you smile too.
“Oh, that’s perfect,” The Shade breathes. “That’s...I haven’t felt a love that strong since...”
You shut him out, focusing entirely on Rick. He’s not like everyone else in this place; he’s far away, yes, but unlike all the others who seem to have their lights dimmed by the separation, he’s like a lighthouse, lighting your way back to him from wherever you might find yourself. There’s a moment of vertigo as the world twists again, and suddenly you’re back outside the police station.
You gasp as you fall forward onto your hands and knees. This time, a police officer stops to help you up.
“Everything okay?” he asks, one hand on your elbow to steady you. “Watch your step there!”
“Yeah, thanks. You can see me, right? I’m here?”
The officer looks confused, but he replies after a second, “Uh...sure are. You hit your head when you fell? You okay?”
“Fine, fine. Thank you, officer.” He looks reluctant, but he moves away back inside the building.
You look around, confused again. The Shade is nowhere to be seen, and you can’t feel his or Rick’s presence any more. Now that you’re back in the right dimension, the yell of everyone’s emotions is much louder, far more difficult to pick through. You shut them out and head back to Rick’s car, where your phone beeps. You know it’s from Beth without even looking thanks to the number of exclamation marks.
The Shade’s at Courtney’s! He told her how to stop Eclipso! We can use Green Lantern’s light to repair the Black Diamond, and then he’ll be trapped inside again! She and Pat are going on a road trip to find Jennie! Shade’s still in bad shape – can you come babysit with me?
At least he held up his end of the deal.
*****
The rest of the day passes without incident. You, Beth, and Barbara take turns watching The Shade as he sleeps on Courtney’s sofa. He spends most of it unconscious. There’s what appears to be a brief moment of lucidity, but then he begins babbling incoherently to Barbara.
At one point he wakes and looks at you curiously, but only once, and he doesn’t say a word. When you reach out to him with your powers, he’s a cold, unfeeling brick wall once again.
He’s not getting better, but he’s not getting any worse. At least you were able to help him this much, you think. Maybe now he’ll be on your side properly – a begrudging ally in the fight against Eclipso would be better than none at all. You allow yourself a little hope, which makes his betrayal hurt all the more when it finally comes.
Barbara is on watch, and you’re on your way back from the kitchen when you hear Beth’s voice. “The Shade lied!” she hisses, trying not to wake him. “Restoring the Diamond reconnects our world to the Shadowlands!”
“Indeed it does.” You reach Beth and Barbara just in time to see The Shade getting up from the sofa, apparently restored to full health. “Allowing me to access my powers again. And to heal. Splendid.”
“We had a deal!” you shout, gathering the energy from your betrayal into a ball to toss in his direction. “I helped you!”
“And I am thankful for that. But, as before, you still do not understand the enormity of what you’re facing. For what it’s worth though, I am so, so sorry to deceive you.” He shakes his head sadly, then disappears into the shadows like a gust of wind through a plume of smoke.
The energy ball in your hand dissipates, no longer needed. You can’t believe you fell for his tricks!
But that’s not the worst of it. Beth has more bad news to deliver. “Putting the Diamond back together, it won’t trap Eclipso...it’ll summon him.”
As Beth’s words hit you, you feel a darkness creep up your spine like someone walking over your grave. You’re not sure how, but you know something terrible has happened.
And since it was you that helped bring The Shade back to reality in the first place...it’s all your fault.
Chapter 11: Reciprocation
Notes:
Set during the events of Stargirl 02x11 – Summer School, Chapter Eleven and Stargirl 02x12 – Summer School, Chapter Twelve
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The first rays of dawn bring with it a knock at the door of the Whitmore-Dugan house. None of you want to move; the idea of having your worst fears confirmed is utterly paralysing.
You all know what will greet you when you open it. Pat, looking forlorn. Jennie, completely distraught. But to actually have to see it…
After The Shade’s departure hours ago, Barbara had frantically called Pat to warn him – by the time she got through, it was too late. Courtney was gone, sent into the same dark hell that Eclipso sent Cindy into a few short days before.
You’d thought the Justice Society couldn’t get any smaller, with Yolanda on the outs and Rick behind bars, but now you’ve lost your leader, perhaps for good.
When no one gets up to let him in, Pat uses his house keys to open the door. Pat Dugan isn’t an overly emotional person by nature; he’s very good at keeping a level head and his feelings in check, but the look on his face right now is enough to break any of you. Jennie stands off to the side with Courtney’s Cosmic Staff held tightly in her grip, its light faded to nearly nothing. She doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t have the words to express how sorry she is for falling into The Shade’s trap.
Seeing them is your breaking point. It’s all just too much, too overwhelming, too...everything. You get up from the sofa where you’ve been sitting and march out through the kitchen into the back garden. The unseasonably cold air hits you in the face like a blast from a cannon, and your throat catches as the sorrow you’ve been bottling up explodes out of you in a wave of unrestrained sobs.
This is all your fault, you think. No, you know. If you hadn’t helped The Shade, if you hadn’t brought him back into the right dimension, then he wouldn’t have been able to manipulate you all like this. You’d thought he was on your side – he’d helped you before against Eclipso, in the cafeteria, and when he pushed his way into your mind. You’d thought he was good, that he was trying to keep you all safe in his own way. But instead he’d just been selfish, trying to regain the powers he’d lost. Preying on your bleeding heart and your gullibility to get you to do what he wanted you to do.
Idiot. What an idiot you are. And now your best friend is gone, and with her any hope you ever had at stopping Eclipso.
You should go tell Rick, you think. And Yolanda too. But you’re not sure how, not sure that you can. How do you even begin to tell them that Courtney’s gone because of you? They have a right to know – but maybe it’d be better coming from someone else.
Or is that just you being selfish again, passing the buck and having someone else do your dirty work for you?
Your mind’s a mess, tendrils of despair and self-loathing lacing their way through your thoughts easily, like fault lines in the earth just waiting for that last bit of pressure to cause your mind to finally crack.
“Hey. I know it’s a silly question to ask but...are you okay?”
The sound of a voice makes you sniff, trying to force your tears back into your body. You wipe your eyes hastily and turn back towards the house, only to find Barbara there waiting for you with a look of well-practised motherly concern.
“Ms Whitmore, hi, yeah, I’m...I’m fine, I just...”
She shakes her head softly. “No, you’re not. And that’s okay. But we’ll get through this, alright? There’s...there’s still hope. We can’t lose hope – that’s not what Courtney would want, right?”
The imploring look on her face, like she wants, no, needs you to agree with her, makes you break down all over again.
“Oh, hey, no, don’t do that, come here.” Before you know it, Barbara has wrapped her arms around you and is holding you to her as if you are her child as much as Courtney is. She holds you as your body shakes involuntarily, as the sorrow you feel finds any outlet it can to burst out of you.
You’re not sure, you’re too much of a mess to use your powers right now, but something tells you that Barbara might need this just as much as you do. She needs to put on a brave face for Pat and Mike – maybe she needs to let herself feel for a minute too, and this is her way of doing just that.
The longer the hug goes on for, the more shame creeps into your mind though. You’re here, hugging Courtney’s mom, and she’s not. She can’t be any more. Because of you.
Barbara needs to know the truth, you think, as horrible as that will be to tell. You allow yourself a few more minutes of solace and then you tap her arm, signalling that she’s alright to let go. You steel yourself as best you can, and look her dead in the eye.
“Ms. Whitmore, I have to tell you something. It’s about The Shade...”
You do your best to relay what happened, how you’d seen him in your dreams, how you’d helped him get back from the limbo he’d found himself in. How it’s your fault that he was here to trick you all, and how it’s your fault that Courtney is gone.
Barbara remains stoic throughout your story, only asking a few questions here and there for clarification. When you’re done, she has the strangest look on her face.
“I don’t deserve your sympathy,” you conclude. “It’s my fault Courtney’s gone, you shouldn’t even want to look at me, let alone make me feel better. I’ll go, you never have to see me again. It’ll be better that way.”
You turn to go, but Barbara catches you by the shoulder. It’s not unkind, not angry, but it’s firm, and you have no choice but to turn back, looking at her through teary eyes.
Her strange expression has broken into a sad smile, and she shakes her head just as sadly. “You kids are growing up way too fast. All this superhero stuff isn’t good for your growing brains, you know that? It’s making you think crazy thoughts.”
You’re not sure what to say to that. You open your mouth, but no coherent thoughts come to mind. This isn’t what you expected at all – you thought she’d shout and scream, throw you off her property and never want to see you again, or seethe with quiet fury. Not this. Anything but this.
“You really think this is your fault?” she asks when she sees your shocked expression. “Really?”
“It is my fault,” you whisper. “It’s all my fault.”
“Of course it’s not!” She says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “You didn’t do any of this. Hell, it’s not even The Shade’s fault, not really. It’d be easy to blame him, sure. Or Cindy Burman, for bringing that horrible Black Diamond into our lives. But there’s only one person to blame for this, if you can even call him a person, and that’s Eclipso.”
“But-”
“No, no buts. You helped The Shade because that’s what your heart told you to do. You’re a good person, through and through, and I’m never going to blame you for helping someone in need. It’s exactly what I’d expect Courtney to do – and you know she wouldn’t blame you for this either. You’re all heroes; amazing, crazy, wonderful heroes. And I wouldn’t want you to be any other way.”
You’re still not sure what to say. You just shake your head, trying to make sense of it all. Barbara’s words wash over you like a warm bath, cleansing some of your dark thoughts like clumps of dirt clinging to your psyche. Forgiveness was the furthest thing from your mind, but being told that there’s not even anything that needs to be forgiven...it doesn’t compute at all.
“Come on,” Barbara says, extending a hand. “Let’s go back inside. No one should be alone right now – like I said, we’ll get through this together. I may not be a superhero, but I know a little about grief, and isolation just makes it worse.”
You take her hand, feeling younger than you have for a very long time as she leads you back into the house.
You’re on the threshold of the living room when Beth and Jennie come bounding down the stairs, far more excited and full of energy than you’d expect to see them given the situation.
“Courtney’s alive!” Beth shouts, and confusion sweeps over you again for the second time in as many conversations. “Courtney’s alive!”
“What? How?” You follow them into the living room. Jennie looks back at you with a shrug, but you can see the hope in her eyes.
Barbara is unable to stop herself from smiling even without any further confirmation. “See? Nothing to worry about. Now, let’s go get my daughter back.”
At this moment, you’d like absolutely nothing more.
*****
It’s not a great plan, but it’s a plan, which is more than you had a few hours ago. Beth’s connection with the original Doctor Mid-Nite through her goggles has given you all the hope you need. He’s trapped in the Shadowlands, the parallel dimension where both The Shade and Eclipso draw their powers from; he’s been there for decades, but he’s alive – and he’s with Courtney.
Now Jennie has used her Green Lantern ring to narrow down possible locations for The Shade. He’s still in Blue Valley, in one of two places. And you’re going to find him, and make him bring Courtney home.
Barbara and Pat have set off for the movie theatre. Meanwhile you, Beth, and Jennie have headed to the high school. Mike’s not entirely enthused about being left behind again, but he’s already run afoul of The Shade once – he’s not about to do it again, especially without Thunderbolt at his side.
As soon as you set foot in the cafeteria, you can feel something...off. There’s a darkness to the place that you’ve never felt before (even when it was full of hormonal teenagers). It almost feels like...Eclipso. But like a dormant form of him, like he’s very far away, or he was here a while ago but isn’t any longer. It’s a strange feeling, but you don’t mention it to the others – you can hardly explain it to yourself, let alone to them too. If it becomes relevant, then you’ll pipe up. It’s probably just leftover heeby-jeebies from the last fight you had here.
It doesn’t take long for you to find something thanks to Jennie’s ring and Beth’s goggles, but it’s a dead end. It’s not The Shade at all, just some goopy remnant left behind when Eclipso banished Cindy Burman to the Shadowlands. Jennie blasts it with her ring, leaving a scorch stain on the cafeteria floor.
Suddenly you feel a rush, like you’re being pulled in three directions at once. You’re beginning to get used to the feel of the emotional tethers you’ve made with the others, like comforting presences even when they’re not in the same room. You can’t track their locations or anything like that, but maybe, with practise…
Right now though, you feel one of your tethers reconnecting, like a warm hand taking yours and pulling you eagerly towards it. Courtney’s back, you can feel it in your bones.
That wonderful news is offset by a sharp gasp, as another tether snaps violently and you know without a shadow of a doubt that The Shade is no longer in the land of the living. Whatever Barbara and Pat have asked him to do, whatever he’s done to bring Courtney home, it was too much for his already weakened body. He’s gone.
This brings with it a conflicting set of emotions – he’s the reason Courtney and Doctor Mid-Nite were trapped in the Shadowlands in the first place. But he’s also the reason they’re back; and he helped you, in his own way, against Eclipso. You’re not sure how exactly you feel about his loss just yet.
You can worry about The Shade later, though. You’re about to relay the good news to Beth and Jennie when Beth’s goggles glow, saving you the breath. “Courtney?” she says, her face splitting into an intense smile. “She’s home! She’s home!”
The three of you share in Beth’s smile, and then you run out of the cafeteria towards the Dugan-Whitmore house without another word. Courtney’s only been gone for a day, but it feels like forever since you’ve seen your best friend.
That feeling of darkness lingers however, even as you leave the school. It’s like Eclipso is there, even though you know for certain that he isn’t. He’s subjected you to his illusions before, and you’ve been on your guard for so long now that it’d be impossible for him to fool you again. You’re not sure if what you’re feeling is true, or if it’s just the darkness clawing at the corners of your mind, trying to keep you off-balance at a time when you really need to focus. You try to push it aside – now is a time to focus on the good things, after all. The bad stuff will come again soon enough.
*****
As soon as you burst through the door you throw your arms around Courtney in the tightest hug you’ve ever given. “I was so worried,” you whisper, “don’t ever scare me like that again!”
“I’ll do my best,” she says, returning the hug with equal vigour. “And my mom told me about The Shade, what he did – how he manipulated you. And before you even try, you don’t need to apologise. It’s not necessary. I’m home, I’m safe. That’s all we need to worry about now.”
You open your eyes, catching sight of Barbara standing just behind you both. She gives you a knowing mom smile, one of those I told you so looks that you’ve never been happier to see. You smile at her, unsure of how to communicate how grateful you are not just for Courtney’s safe return but for Barbara smoothing things over before you even had a chance to.
Your friends really do know you, you realise. You’re not sure when that happened, but you’re grateful for it nonetheless.
When you break the hug however, the sight of Cindy Burman lurking in the corner of the room instantly dampens your good mood. Before you can raise an objection however, Beth gets there first.
“What is she doing here?” she asks, making no attempt to hide the outrage in her voice.
Courtney is admirably calm. “She wants to help us fight Eclipso.”
“But she-”
“Let him out in the first place?”
“And-”
“I don't trust her, either.” Courtney has clearly already thought through all this herself.
Beth gives Cindy the dirtiest look she can manage, which is quite hard considering how adorable she looks with her goggles on. “She's evil, Court.”
Cindy rolls her eyes and regards you all with unconcealed disdain. “Okay, look, Doctor Mid-Nite Junior, or whatever you're gonna call yourself now – I'm offering up a truce until Eclipso is nothing more than a stain on the ground. Let's face facts: right now, evil is relative.”
You pipe up, ready to be heard. “As much as I don’t like it, Cindy’s right. We can use all the help we can get, even if it’s help that might stab us in the back the first chance it gets.”
“Aww, thanks for the vote of confidence, Emotiony, or whatever your name is.” Cindy’s voice is as dismissive as she can make it without physically shooing you away with her hands.
“Empath,” you say through a gritted teeth smile.
“Sure. That. Whatever.” For a moment, Cindy is the same old bitchy mean girl from high school, and not a supervillain’s daughter aspiring to be a supervillain herself.
Beth still doesn’t like it. But the call’s been made. It feels like everything is coming to a head, the pot of battle getting ready to boil over and stain Blue Valley red with blood. If there’s ever been a time for reinforcements, no matter what form they take, it’s now.
Courtney decides to make one last attempt to bring Yolanda back into the fold. And when Pat says he’s going to try and do something about Rick, you’re in his passenger seat before he can even think to say no. If you can get Courtney back from another dimension entirely, then surely getting your boyfriend out of hail should be a piece of cake.
*****
“I thought we were going to the police station,” you say as Pat turns a corner in the opposite direction. “Aren’t we going to get Rick?”
“We can’t just walk in and collect him like he’s been in daycare,” Pat says, avoiding your eyes. “They’re not going to release him just because we ask nicely.”
“But-”
“I have a plan,” he says, still not looking at you. “We’re going to the hospital, so I can have a talk with Rick’s uncle. If all goes well, Rick’ll be home by sundown.”
“What aren’t you telling me, Pat?”
“What? Nothing. I’m just going to talk to him.” He won’t meet your gaze, focusing entirely on the road.
When he reaches down to grab the gear stick, your hand snaps out like a viper strike, making contact with his bare skin.
“Hey!”
It only takes a moment for you to get the impressions that you need. You don’t get exact images of course, but you can feel trepidation from Pat, like he’s going to do something he doesn’t want to do, and resolve, like he knows he has to do it even if he doesn’t want to. It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together and get coercion.
“You’re going to hurt Mister Harris.”
Pat, to his credit, doesn’t deny it. He keeps driving, but his hands are tight on the wheel like you’ve seen Rick’s so often before. When he speaks, it’s as even and calm as he can make it, but you can feel how hard it is for him to keep his cool. “Only if I have to. I’ll try the carrot. And if not, then...there’s always the stick. Rick doesn’t deserve how his uncle’s treated him all these years. Does that mean Matt deserved to be beaten within an inch of his life? No, probably not. But we need Rick, and there’s no time left to be delicate.”
Something Pat said gives you pause. Rick didn’t deserve the last eighteen years of torture at his uncle’s hand, no. But maybe there’s a way to use that to Rick’s advantage.
You tell Pat your plan. He doesn’t like it. But you’re not going to give him much of a choice.
*****
Part of you feels guilty for feeling a little vindicated when you see Matt Harris in his hospital bed, trussed up and unable to move. He’s more bandage than person right now, his face bruised and battered, his body slowly mending from the abuse that Rick doled out on him. You don’t often wish harm on people, but Matt Harris is a rare exception.
You slip into the room quietly, hovering in the corner just out of Matt’s sight while Pat tries the soft approach.
You’ve always admired Pat for how calm he can be under pressure, how much it takes to make him angry. He’s a steady river of a man, constantly flowing, and it takes a lot to knock him off course.
But you can sense the mood change in the room when Matt passes him the notepad with his response; his jaw is wired shut, so he can’t speak easily, and Pat’s sets itself just as tightly as he reads the words Matt has written on it.
You sneak a look over Pat’s shoulder, already dreading what it’ll say.
Go to hell
Your own quiet fury overtakes you, but Pat’s not entirely finished just yet. He takes the pad and sits down, like those three words warrant more contemplation before he acts.
"Rick's parents asked you to look out for him. But you did the opposite, didn't you?” His voice is low and quiet, just teetering on the edge of threatening.
"You’ve actually got a talent. You know that? You really do. It's for finding people that are weaker than you are...and taking advantage of them. Whether it's a kid, some waitress...Or your own nephew.”
He stands now, locking the door with a surreptitious click. "You're a bad guy. And whenever I've run into somebody like you, when I was growing up, back in the Army...or today...makes me remember something about myself – I got some bad in me, too." He closes the blinds, plunging the room into almost total darkness.
That’s your cue, and you step forward so Matt can see you properly for the first time. His eyes widen in recognition, but he still doesn’t say a word. “We all have bad in us, Mister Harris,” you begin. “And every day, we make a choice as to whether we give into that darkness inside, or we stand up to it and do the right thing. The good thing.”
You step to the end of his bed, leaning forward. “Can you remember the last good thing you did? The last time you chose not to give into your darker impulses? Because I bet you can’t.
“Rick though? Rick makes that choice every day. He knows how much rage is inside him, how much anger, and he pushes it aside every day so that he can be a better person. So that he can be better than the man who abused him, who treated him like dirt. The man who was supposed to protect him.”
You’re only inches from his face now, and the fear in his eyes is both wonderful and terrible to behold. It’s about time he felt a taste of his own medicine.
“But you didn’t, did you? You’ve never looked out for him. You’ve never protected him. All you’ve done is subject him to the worst parts of yourself, trying to break him into something easy to control. Do you know how that feels? Being belittled, being tortured, being forced to think so poorly of yourself that you don’t even think you’re worthy of love?”
Matt’s trembling, making weak moaning noises as best he can around his injuries, trying to shake his head. You lean in even closer, then reach out an innocuous hand to take his.
“Do you want to?”
You open the connection between you like throwing a circuit breaker. Your powers kick into overdrive, sending all the negative emotions Rick has ever felt flowing across into Matt. You wish you could give him the memories themselves, but the feelings are almost as good.
As they pass between you, you feel them cross over as if you’re experiencing them yourself from behind a glass screen. In that moment, you’re as close to Rick as you’ve ever been without touching him.
Sadness at losing two parents in one night. Not understanding why they would leave you alone like that. Hope, fleeting though it was, that your uncle would treat you like they had. The crushing of that hope as the beatings, the verbal, emotional, and physical abuse, mount over the years. The destruction of your self-confidence, in your ability to dream of anything beyond surviving yet another day. The weight of all the disdain that Blue Valley feels for you, for the little Harris boy with no past, no present, and no future. And then the anger, which begins as a small ember in the pit of your stomach, fanning into a roaring flame over the years thanks to the tornado of despair that whirls around you in every part of your life.
You give it all to Matt Harris. You take all the pain and suffering he’s inflicted on Rick over the course of his life and give it back to him in mere seconds.
When it’s over, you step back. Pat’s there to catch you, and you’re glad of it – you’re woozy on your feet. Both you and Matt are crying, but while your tears are born of anger, his are born of hate. You’re not sure if it’s hatred of you, or himself. Right now, you don’t care.
He motions for the pad, and Pat passes it back to him.
Charges dropped. Get out.
Neither you nor Pat say anything to each other until you’re back in his car. He passes you a tissue from the glove compartment, and you take it gratefully.
“I don’t like what you did back there,” he says finally. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
“Nor did I,” you admit. “I don’t think I could do it for anyone but Rick. I know the ins and outs of his feelings nearly as well as I know my own.”
“I...I can’t tell you how to use your powers. But I don’t think what you did it there was something you should do again.”
“With all due respect, it’s nothing that you weren’t going to do to him. I just hit him in the feelings, instead of in the ribs.”
“That’s not...okay, you’re not wrong. But I’m the adult. That’s not your burden to shoulder.”
“And I love Rick, Pat. If you think there’s anything I wouldn’t do to help him, then you’re wrong.”
Pat considers this for a second, wringing his hands around the steering wheel. “This conversation isn’t over. We’re going to talk about this again. But right now, we need to get Rick out of jail, and stop Eclipso.”
“At least we can agree on that.”
Notes:
I'll be taking a skip week before the next chapter - I'm still knee deep in NaNoWriMo, but I should be able to get chapter 12 out once December hits. I'm not sure if it'll be 12 or 13 chapters total, we'll see how long it all is once I've written it all!
Chapter 12: Always Darkest - Part One
Summary:
Set during the events of Stargirl 02x12 – Summer School – Chapter Twelve and Stargirl 02x13 – Summer School – Chapter Thirteen
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Rick’s been in jail for less than three days, but it feels like an eternity since you saw him last. You and Pat are waiting across the street from the police station when he steps outside, enjoying his first taste of freedom. He looks up at the sky with a hesitant smile on his face, like he’s not quite sure if he should get to enjoy it, before crossing over to meet you.
“They said my uncle dropped the charges,” Rick says without preamble. “Why?”
“No idea. I’d offer you a ride, but I think someone else wants to do that.” Pat points one car down, where you’re waiting on the hood of Rick’s car. The car keys dangle between your fingers, waiting for him to take them.
Pat doesn’t say anything else, sliding into his car and driving away.
Rick comes towards you tentatively, like a dog unsure if it’s in trouble or not. You shake the keys at him as encouragingly as you can manage, and he takes them. His fingers brush your palm just slightly as he does so, and it’s like a circuit reconnecting after aeons of disuses. Another small smile breaks out on his face, and he turns the keys over in his hands. “I thought I’d lost these.”
“You nearly did.”
“I thought I’d lost a lot more than these, too.”
“Never, Rick. Never.”
He looks up from the keys as you throw your arms around him. He presses himself against you, holding you so tightly that you feel like you might break in two, but it doesn’t matter. You’ve got three days of hugs to catch up on, and doing it all at once just leaves more time for more later. Rick smells terrible, and he’s still wearing the clothes he was arrested in (all the Eclipso madness the last few days has made it a little difficult to follow through on your promise to bring him fresh ones), but you couldn’t care less if you tried.
After a moment of hugging, you draw back slightly and nuzzle at his cheek, unkempt stubble tickling your nose as he turns his face towards yours. You find his lips with your own, kissing him with just as much force as the embrace before it. He tastes like...like coming home after a long day. A port in a storm, a safe haven amongst all the insanity.
He’s back. He’s here. He’s yours again.
“God, I’ve missed you,” he murmurs against you. “Three days is a long time.”
“You’ve got a lot to catch up on,” you whisper back. “A lot’s happened. A lot more’s about to happen. We need you, Rick. We all do.”
Rick breaks away entirely and looks at you with sad eyes. “I don’t know how much use I can be. I broke the hourglass, remember?”
“I thought you might say that. I brought you something else to help.” You motion towards the driver’s seat, then scoot around to get into the passenger side. Rick opens the door and collects his father’s journal off of the upholstery before sitting down.
“How did you get this?”
“I swung by your house on the way here. Pat and I collected all the pieces of the hourglass we could find, and I got some of the sand in a little bag. It might not be everything, but it’s a start, right?”
Rick gazes at you in wonderment. “What did I do to deserve all this?” he asks, shaking his head slightly. “I don’t get it.”
“You don’t have to understand it. You just have to know that you’ve got it, and it’s not going anywhere. I’m not going anywhere.”
Rick nods, slipping the journal into his jacket pocket and his key into the ignition. “Do you know how Pat got my uncle to drop the charges?”
You look away, trying not to appear too guilty. “Yeah. But...we’ll talk about it later, okay? When there’s not a fear demon trying to destroy us all?”
“Can’t argue with that.”
“Alright, I said we’d meet Pat at the Pit Stop. We have a battle to prepare for, and you’ve got an hourglass to repair.”
*****
It’s all hands on deck, battle stations, and all the other pre-war clichés at the Pit Stop. Zeek’s working on STRIPE like a madman, sparks flying just as often as curses, while Rick’s taken the pieces of his hourglass and his dad’s journal upstairs to try and see if he can fix it in time for the coming battle.
You know that the others are doing their part as well; all across Blue Valley, your friends are recruiting as much help as possible to face off with Eclipso one final time.
And yet here you are, sitting around and feeling useless. Your absolute least favourite feeling in the world.
You try pacing for a little while, giving everyone space to work, but eventually Zeek waves an angry hand in your direction. “Go sit down, will ya? You’re makin’ my nerves bad.”
“Sorry,” you mumble. You take off upstairs – maybe there’s something you can do to help Rick. You’re nowhere near as mechanically minded as he is, but maybe you can...offer moral support? Count screws? Anything’s better than nothing.
His workbench is covered in cogs and bolts, pieces of metal, and other components that you’ve never seen before. There seem to be far too many to have ever fit inside the tiny hourglass before. Rick is staring at them with purpose, like if he glares hard enough they might all spring to life and reassemble themselves like something out of Beauty And The Beast.
“How’s it going?” you ask tentatively, taking a seat beside him.
“It’s...not,” he admits, pushing the journal to one side and throwing both hands behind his head to stretch. “It’s all gibberish. I’m good at cars and stuff, but this...this is beyond even me. My dad was smarter than I could ever be.
“I shouldn’t have taken the hourglass for granted so much. I never thought to look into how it worked, what it was that made it special...I was just happy to have it. Even once we cracked the code last year, I never took the time to really read everything in his journal.”
“We’ve had other stuff on our minds, to be fair.” You pull the book towards you, but it makes even less sense than your algebra textbook, and somehow has more letters in it.
“We’ve had the last six months,” Rick says, and you can feel the anger rising in him. “All that time complaining about Courtney going overboard, but she was the only one of us who really nailed the superhero thing down. I bet if she was Hourman, she’d have taken the hourglass apart and put it back together again the first week she had it.”
You give him a side eye. “You think she’s taken the Cosmic Staff apart? Really?”
Rick looks shifty. “That’s different. The Staff’s...alive.”
“Not the point. I love Courtney as much as the next person, but she’s not like that. As put together as she appears, she’s just as lost as the rest of us. It’s why we all work together so well – none of us know what we’re doing, so we’re all making it up as we go along. Except maybe Pat.”
Rick rolls his eyes and takes the journal. “Once again, you’re right. I hate it when you’re right.”
“You’d think you’d be used to it by now,” you dig gently.
He smiles wryly, shaking his head. “I’ve got to try again, I know. I’ll get it right this time. I have to.”
“Can I help? I can hold things, or cheer you on, or something?”
“I wish you could,” Rick says with a sigh. “I wish it was as easy as having someone give me a hand. But this is something I have to do on my own. It’s my legacy, my dad’s mantle I’ve inherited. If I can’t fix it...”
The end of his sentence floats unsaid. “Maybe I don’t deserve to be Hourman at all.” You don’t finish it for him, you simply stand up and grip him by the shoulder. “You’ll get it. I know you will. Just let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
Rick gives you another small smile, covers your hand with his. Then he falls back into his work, flipping pages, grabbing components and sticking them together in strange configurations that look nothing like an hourglass at all.
You leave him to it, taking a walk to the nearby sofas and sitting down. You let your mind wander for a moment, feeling along each of your emotional tethers to see if you can find out how well everyone else is doing.
As soon as you open yourself up to them there’s a blast of terror from one, edged with determination and defiance. It’s Beth – she’s found Eclipso.
You don’t tell Rick. He doesn’t need the distraction. And somehow you don’t think that telling him to hurry is going to be very motivational either.
*****
A short while later there’s a loud crash from behind you. The sound shocks you from your troubled thoughts, and you turn quickly to see that Rick’s thrown the hourglass, or what remains of it, to the floor. Parts are scattered all over, and he’s now kneeling down to pick them up, his face twisted into a mask of rage. He’s furious at the hourglass for being broken, at his father for not being around to show him how it works, and at himself for breaking it in the first place.
You drop to the ground, picking pieces up for him without saying a word. You put them back on the bench carefully, and he takes his seat again. Anger, disappointment, and a feeling of impotence all blast off of him like an emotional furnace.
The only sound you can hear in that moment comes from Jakeem and Mike, who are downstairs chatting quietly to one another. They’re also stuck playing the waiting game; Thunderbolt is currently on his way back from China after a poorly worded wish from Jakeem sent him halfway across the globe for take-out. Zeek has gone back to the junkyard to recover another missing part for STRIPE, so the constant grinding of metal has died off too.
Rick’s voice is so quiet, even less than a whisper. You probably wouldn’t have heard him if not for the almost complete silence in the room. “Why do I have to be so good at breaking things?”
“You’re being too hard on yourself,” you say, but he’s already spiralling.
“I’m not, it’s true. Everything I touch turns to crap. It all falls apart. Either because I push it away, or because I hold on too tight and crush it. All I’m good for is destruction.”
You sidle up closer, wrapping an arm around him. He doesn’t resist, and you can feel the tension within him like a tightrope pulled taut. He’s barely holding it together.
“Hey, look at me.” He turns his head a little, not quite making eye contact. It’ll have to do. “I’ve driven your dad’s car, you know. I don’t know much about cars, but I do know that that one handles like a dream. It’s like...the closest I’ve ever come to flying. And that little box of metal used to be wrapped around a tree. You fixed that, you know? With your own two hands.”
You take one of his arms and hold his hand up in front of him. He looks at it like it’s some foreign object attached to his body, like he’s never seen it before.
“And that’s not all. You fixed yourself, too.”
“That’s not-”
“It’s exactly the same thing, Rick. Fixing a person and fixing a car might seem like different things, but they’re surprisingly similar – it’s all about knowing which parts need replacing, and which ones just need a little care.
“I know you think you’re bad news, that all you do is break stuff, but that’s not the whole story at all. You find broken things, and you fix them just as well.
“You knew there were parts of you that were broken. That’s not your fault. All that trauma, all those horrible things you endured growing up it’s no wonder some of you had to give. It’s the only way that you knew to survive. But you did the work – you fixed those parts, or at the very least put yourself on the path to recovery, and you’ve walked a hell of a long way down it. So what if you stumble, or fall backwards a little? You’ve come so much farther than even you know.
“You’ve built a life for yourself. You’re a friend, a boyfriend, a team mate. You’re a freaking superhero, for crying out loud. You did that. You. Okay, you had a little help from Courtney and the others-”
“And you,” Rick says, closing his hand over yours. You can feel the roughness of it where he’s been working, some of the glue hardening on the ends of his fingers. “I couldn’t have done any of that without you.”
“I suppose I did a little,” you admit with a shrug. “But the point is, you did that. You fixed yourself. If you think about it, the fact that hourglass is even broken at all is a testament to that.”
Rick’s brow furrows. “How do you figure?”
“Think about it. You broke the hourglass after you saw what you did to your uncle. You broke it to stop yourself from doing it again, from using its powers to hurt people. If you were broken, if you still felt all that anger that you used to have for the world, you might not have done that. You might have felt...I don’t know, justified, and kept the hourglass to hurt other people that you thought deserved it. But you didn’t. You felt ashamed, and scared, and you did the only thing you knew that would stop you from doing that, from feeling like that, again.”
“You get all that with your powers?” Rick asks, the realisation smoothing out the worry wrinkles in his forehead. “You’re getting really good at this.”
“I didn’t need my powers, Rick. I know you well enough to know how you think, and how you think about yourself. So, what do you say we cut this pity party short, and you finish off what you’re doing so we can go help our friends kick Eclipso’s ass back where it came from once and for all?”
Rick chuckles, squeezing your hand even tighter. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s do that.”
You stand up to go, but he pulls you back before you can break contact. He’s not looking at you any longer, but this time it’s guilt keeping his eyes from yours rather than shame.
“Hey, uh...I think...you should go. Join the others, I mean. I’ve still got some work to do here, but you should go help them. I’ve got this.”
“What d’you mean?”
“You know me, right? Well, I know you too. I can feel how scared you are, and I know you well enough to know that that fear isn’t just coming from you, not entirely. That’s bleed through from the others, all our friends. They’re fighting Eclipso right now, aren’t they? They need you – so you should go help.”
You consider that for a moment. Your costume’s in your bag; the others are close, you can feel it. You could do that.
But instead, you shake your head and sit back down next to Rick. “They can manage without me. I know where I’m needed. And it’s right here, with you.”
Rick looks like he’s going to argue, but the look on your face stops him cold. Instead he nods, acknowledging your decision, and hands you a soldering iron. “Hold that,” he says. “If you’re staying here, I’m taking you up on that offer of help. Then we can both get out there twice as quickly. Two heads are better than one.”
“Especially heads that know each other inside and out. What happened to this being about your dad’s legacy and stuff?”
Rick shrugs, sorting components into piles in front of him. “My dad had a team around him. He may have been Hourman, but he wasn’t alone – he was part of the JSA, just like we are. He had help, so I think I’m allowed some too.”
*****
Rick taps the finished hourglass. It looks exactly as it did before, right down to the chain links that hold it around his neck. Energy surges through it, and you both hold your breath in anticipation.
It sparks and fizzles for a moment before growing dark again.
Rick shoves his chair back. “I was so close. I don’t know what I’m missing.”
“Maybe if...” You take his dad’s journal, holding a page showing the completed hourglass up against the one he’s built, but they look exactly the same to you.
“No,” he says. It’s not angry, or even upset. It’s just resigned. “I can’t keep doing this. We’ve wasted enough time. Our friends need us, and I’m not going to sit here trying to fix my mistake like this any more. We have to get out there and fight too.”
He stands up and collects his bag. The zipper is open, and his Hourman costume is bundled on top like it’s been waiting for him this entire time.
“But...” you say carefully, stepping towards him, “without your powers…”
Rick looks back at you; again you expect anger, but there’s just resignation, and maybe just a little spark of hope in his voice. “Without being rude about it, don’t even try and talk me out of this. We’ve had this conversation before.”
Now you’re confused. “We have?”
“Yeah, we have. Only last time, it was the other way around. When we fought the ISA, you were the one without powers, right up until the end.
“You used to be the one that needed saving, that got yourself mixed up in superhero problems and had to be bailed out. But we never stopped you from coming with us, even when we...when I really wanted you to stay back. Even when you got your powers, just before that last fight? I didn’t want you to come then either – I didn’t want you to be in danger. But you had to come. You knew in your heart that that was where you needed to be, right next to us so we could all do the right thing together.”
He slings his bag over his shoulder, then reaches down and grabs yours, holding it out to you too. “Now it’s my turn. I may not have my super strength, but I have to fight.”
“You don’t stand a chance against Eclipso without your powers, though,” you say, hoping that he’ll see your bluntness for the truth that it is and not a slight on his skills.
Rick shakes his head, the edge of his mouth quirking into a smile. “You should know, there are plenty of other ways to fight that don’t involve superpowers. Hell, you and Courtney showed us all that last year.”
As heartfelt as Rick’s words are, you’re not quite sure of their meaning. “What are you getting at, Rick?”
“That power you had, even before you were Empath, even before you joined the JSA. It sounds corny, I know, but it’s friendship. It’s the power to bring us all together right when we need it most, the power to make sure we all know how much you love us, and to inspire us to do the right thing even when it’s hard.
“So I’m gunna take a leaf out of your book for a change. I’m gunna go grab a friend, and then I’m gunna go join the others. And I’d love for you to come with me, and not try and stop me, just like I didn’t try and stop you way back when.”
What are you supposed to say to that? How are you supposed to argue with him? He’s right, that’s exactly what happened, and exactly how you’d want to be treated if you were in the same position he is. It’s exactly how you were treated when you were in the same position he is.
You take your bag from him, a huge smile breaking through your defences. Pride shines through you like Jennie’s Lantern’s light. You take his hand, and give him a nod of solidarity.
“Let’s go save the world.”
Jakeem and Mike call out to you both as you flee the Pit Stop, running head first into danger, but you don’t even hear them as the door slams behind you.
Notes:
One more to go! That one's nearly written, so we should be on track for next weekend to finish off. Thanks for being patient.
Chapter 13: Always Darkest - Part Two
Notes:
Set during the events of Stargirl 02x13 – Summer School – Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Text
Last time you checked in with the others, the final battle was taking place at the American Dream. It’s funny how that building keeps ending up the centre of your world, even after Jordan Mahkent’s untimely smashing. Maybe you should just demolish the place – it’s clearly bad luck.
Not that you even make it that far. You get to Main Street, and run straight into the carnage of the battle. The entire road is a complete wreck; there are gouges in the asphalt, destroyed cars, and fires burning all over the place. It looks like something out of a bad armageddon movie set, but you know that it’s all too real.
Mike and Jakeem have joined the fight in the time it’s taken you to complete your little detour. You can see the prone form of STRIPE, just barely keeping its head up as it leans against one of the wrecked cars. Next to it, Thunderbolt’s purple lightning fizzles and cracks like a bad connection, as if he might blink out of existence at any moment.
The only thing you have to be thankful for is that Eclipso’s storm has kept the street completely clear – everyone’s huddling in their homes again, leaving the superheroes and the supervillain free to smash things without worrying about collateral damage. Property damage, yes, but at least no one’s getting hurt except the people who are choosing to be here.
Standing in the midst of all the destruction, grinning like the cat that’s got the cream, is Eclipso himself. You’ve only seen him in person a few times, but each has been more terrifying than the last. He surveys his handiwork, immensely satisfied with himself, knowing that he’s only just begun creating chaos.
He’s so powerful – he could level the entire town without breaking a sweat if he wanted to. Not for the first time, you wonder what hope you have against him. You, an empath who barely understands their powers, and Rick, currently completely powerless, are basically like motes of dust to Eclipso. No threat at all, not even an annoyance. Totally beneath his notice.
But you have to try. Your friends need you, and whatever plan they have right now, they need time to pull it off. You have to do everything you can to at least slow Eclipso down.
Eclipso turns to Jakeem, looming over him with a sense of finality. The poor kid has been drafted into a war he has no idea of how to fight – this morning he was safe, if a little confused, and now he’s about to be flattened by a demon from another dimension.
The indignity of it all balls in your stomach, and an energy sphere the colour of freshly cut grass flies from your hand. It splashes into the back of Eclipso’s head, and he turns to glare at you and Rick.
You’re both in full costume, ready to fight. Rick’s cape flares dramatically as he growls, “Hey! Creepshow! Leave. Him. Alone.”
Eclipso is less than amused. “Have you come to simply die? You have no super strength against me!”
“I still have super strength,” Rick replies with a knowing smile. “And it lasts more than an hour!”
You whistle, long and high. “That’s your cue, big guy.”
There’s a roar, and the hulking form of Solomon Grundy appears as if from nowhere. He barrels into Eclipso and sends him flying across the street, slamming into Cameron Mahkent’s mural of his late father.
The pair face off, Grundy slamming into Eclipso with everything he has, and Eclipso snaking his way around and past every blow.
You’re not even sure if Grundy understands who he’s fighting. He might not grasp the danger in the slightest. But even his simple mind can understand the idea of protecting his friends, and that’s exactly what he’s here to do.
You and Rick exchange a quick glance. This might just work after all.
Your glimmer of hope is crushed beneath Eclipso’s heel however. As Grundy recovers from a hit and rushes back in, Eclipso gathers dark vapours between his hands and thrusts them out towards Grundy like a basketball pass.
Energy rips through Grundy’s abdomen, tearing a hole big enough to see Eclipso’s sneering face through. Grundy takes another step forward, then collapses to the ground with a crash.
Eclipso doesn’t even look back as he passes his fallen foe.
The casual disregard for Grundy makes your blood boil, and your heart goes out to both your fallen friend and to Rick, who spent so long trying to convince him to be good, only for him to fall at the first hurdle.
Rick hasn’t even reached that kind of thinking just yet; instead, he’s all primal reaction. You feel his anger blind him, a flash of red so bright that you have to raise a hand to block your eyes, and hear his footsteps as he races towards Eclipso.
“No! Grundy!”
Eclipso does no more and backhands Rick across the face. He flies through the air, and you’re unable to move before the bulk of him crashes into you.
You hit the pavement hard, and you swear you can hear the little cartoon birdies flying around your head as soon as it collides with the concrete.
Your vision blurs and then dims, stars winking in and out around the edges as unconsciousness grips you.
The last thing you hear is Eclipso’s horrible voice dripping into your ears as he marches away.
“Three down...”
*****
“I am not prepared to handle this on my own!” says a voice, and you blink a few times as you come to. The world is covered in cotton wool, all soft with blurry edges. It’s almost beautiful until it resolves into the burning wreckage of downtown Blue Valley, and the pacing form of Jakeem Williams.
“Y’all gotta get up!” he’s saying, and you push yourself onto your elbows.
“I’m here, I’m awake. What’s going on?”
“Oh thank god!” Jakeem drops to his knees, helping you to your feet even though he’s shorter than you. “I thought you were dead!”
“Just...very bruised.” You check yourself over, but aside from a massive lump on the back of your head, you seem okay. To your left, Rick is also murmuring his way back to life.
He looks up, squinting. His mask has been torn free, and his hood has slid back. There’s a massive gash on his face, the most intense carpet burn you’ve ever seen. He must have caught the asphalt as he landed.
“Did we win?” he asks in a daze.
“Not yet. Come on, we have to get back to the fight.”
Between you, you and Jakeem are able to get Rick up. He’s unsteady on his feet, but as he straightens up he catches sight of Grundy’s prone body. He freezes for a second, like he’s collecting himself, and then he’s stalking towards the sounds of violence a few streets over.
“Come on,” he says without looking at either of you. “I’ve got a score to settle.”
“What are we going to do?” Jakeem asks. “Thunderbolt’s down, STRIPE’s still rebooting, and nothing either of you two can do even fazed him!”
He’s not wrong, but panicking won’t do you any favours right now. You give him the softest smile you can manage as the world crumbles around you. “We’ll think of something. But we have to get to our friends first – once we know what they need, we can work out what to do next.”
“But-”
“Look, I know this is scary. Hell, it’s scary for me too, and I can literally shoot energy from my hands. But we’re heroes, right? We’re the good guys. So, even if it’s scary, we have to do the right thing...right?”
Jakeem mulls that over for a moment, then nods, if a little reluctantly. “You’re right, I know. The whole ‘courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s doing the right thing in the face of fear’. I’ve read enough comics to know how this all goes.”
“Alright then, let’s go. Rick’s getting away.”
You grab Jakeem’s hand and drag him after Rick, falling into step with him as you march towards the battle that could decide the fate of Blue Valley, and the world.
*****
The scene in the square outside the American Dream building is like nothing you could have ever imagined. You knew that battling a fear demon would be difficult, and you’ve already seen some amazing and terrible things, but this really takes the cake.
Your friends and allies are arrayed around the fountain, staring up into the sky. There are faces you expect to see, like Yolanda, Jennie, Beth, and Charles McNider. Pat and Barbara are here too, of course. Even the sight of Cindy Burman isn’t massively surprising, although you had wondered if she might dip at the first sign of trouble. You’re happy to be proven wrong in this case.
Then there’s The Shade, top hat askew and cane gripped tightly in one hand. He’s alive. Of course he is. If you live through this, you’re going to be having some stern words with him. But he’s not the only resurrected hero in the square, and he’s not even the most surprising.
Suspended in the air above the fountain is Stargirl. One half of her face is dyed dark purple, the rest pure white, and her eyes are blazing red. Eclipso has her now, fully and completely.
That’s frightening enough, but wrestling with her, both hands on the Cosmic Staff and trying his best to wrench it from her grasp, is a man you’ve only ever seen in pictures, who has no right to be here right now, because he’s supposed to have been dead for years.
Sylvester Pemberton, the original Starman, is alive and well. And he’s here, fighting alongside you against the creature that he and the Justice Society took down so long ago.
“Is that...?” Rick asks, incredulous. “How is he here?”
“I have no idea,” you breathe.
You don’t have any idea about anything. But it doesn’t matter – Sylvester’s clearly on your side, and he needs your help. And, more importantly, so does Courtney.
“Listen kid,” Sylvester is saying, “I’m still catching up, but...if the Staff works for you, then you were chosen for a reason! Fight this monster!”
“No!” Eclipso’s voice growls, not from Courtney’s mouth but from all around you. “You are unwanted by your father! You are unworthy! You...are unloved!”
You know that’s not true. And you know in your heart that Courtney knows too. But with Eclipso’s horrible influence extending through her like rot, she’s wavering.
“Courtney! You can break free! Just be yourself, that’s all!”
Pat’s words hit Courtney like a physical force. You can see her trying to shake off Eclipso’s hold over her, wincing and trying to pull away from the Cosmic Staff.
Dark emotions threaten to overwhelm her, both her own and those conjured by Eclipso. They burst off of her like smoke, and they’ll engulf her if she can’t free herself of them.
An epiphany hits you then, like a blast from the Cosmic Staff. This is what you’re here for.
You feel one of your hands grip Rick’s, and he squeezes back without taking his eyes away from Courtney. On the other side, you feel Jakeem take a step back until he collides with you, his terror abated just a little by contact with another person.
And then you reach out with your powers, connecting to everyone in the square. All of your emotional tethers are here in one place, and you draw on them all, pulling all the friendship and love that they feel for each other and for Courtney into your chest.
It’s difficult to breathe, almost overwhelming, holding all this emotion in at once. Even though it’s positive, it’s too much for one person to hold – but you have to hold it, build it to breaking point, until you’re certain that you can’t hold any more, like the final point of anticipation before a mighty sneeze that threatens to tear your entire body asunder.
When you reach that point, when it feels like you’re going to burst apart, you push. You thrust those positive emotions along your connection with Courtney, impressing them into her mind, giving her all the power she needs to fight back.
You’ve tried this before, more than once. You tried to calm Cindy’s Injustice team during the battle in the cafeteria, you tried to calm Rick down after he’d thought Grundy had killed that little girl. Both of those times you tried to manipulate other people’s emotions, help them come around to your way of seeing things, but you’ve never been able to get it right.
Now you can see what you were missing. You can’t just make someone feel the way you want them to feel. You have to show them the way, show them why they should feel that way.
So here, as Courtney’s hope wavers, flickering like a candle in a strong breeze, you show her that she can’t give up. That everything Eclipso is saying is completely wrong.
Even if she doesn’t always believe in herself, everyone assembled here does. She’s your best friend, you leader, and the reason you’re all here fighting in the first place.
It’s like flicking a switch. You feel Courtney’s emotions tip over some imaginary breaking point, and even from here you can see her eyes widen with victory.
There’s a burst of light and darkness, and suddenly she’s in Sylvester’s arms and they’re both back on the ground. Her mind is clear of dark emotions, and her body is free of Eclipso’s influence.
Eclipso himself is thrown across the square, crashing into the steps like a sack of potatoes, smoking slightly. He doesn’t get a moment to rest before, of all things, a baseball and a hail of arrows launch into his torso.
You all turn, incredulous, to see Sportsmaster, Tigress, and Artemis all suited up and ready to join the battle. Better late than never, you suppose.
Eclipso’s still fighting, though. “I am forever,” he says, but his voice is unsure, much weaker than before even if it’s still as defiant as always. “I am not finished!”
You all crowd around him, looming over him as he has to you all before. Courtney is dead centre, and she spits his venom back at him tenfold. “Yes. You are.”
The next voice is The Shade’s, composed as always. “He is weakened! Those who command the light, I’d act quickly!”
Jennie’s ring glows brightly, and both Starman and Stargirl grip the Cosmic Staff, which flares brighter than it has in weeks.
“I wish this guy was toast!” Jakeem shouts, and Thunderbolt, newly refreshed and ready for some payback, rubs his hands together enthusiastically.
“As you wish!”
Rick nudges you, egging you on. You’re not sure where the source of your power comes from, but something inside you seems to resonate with the other energies gathering, telling you to join in.
You pull as much emotional power as you can from everyone around you; relief, determination, vindication, and yes, even a little bit of hatred, and you hold out both of your hands.
Blasts of energy strike Eclipso square in the chest. Green Lantern’s light, the energy of the Cosmic Staff, Thunderbolt’s purple magic, and a swirling rainbow of emotional energy slam into him with the force of a thousand thousand suns.
There’s another, very final explosion of light, and it’s all over.
*****
A few days later, Blue Valley looks almost unrecognisable. With Eclipso well and truly banished from the town, the sun is shining, the sky is a pure blue, and a gentle summer’s breeze blows across it all like the front of a Hallmark card.
You’ve gathered on Courtney’s front porch; it’s the first time you’ve all been together since the night you defeated Eclipso.
Everyone’s catching up on what’s been going on. Sylvester Pemberton has moved in with Courtney, promising to explain how and why he’s alive when the time is right. Charles McNider is leaving to find his wife and son.
Beth’s parents are back together, and fully support her superheroic activities – perhaps a little too enthusiastically, but they get points for trying. Yolanda’s also back, at least for now. And Jennie’s heading back out again, to continue the search for her brother.
Speaking of brothers, Mike and Jakeem are now officially Junior Members of the JSA. That should be enough to keep them both out of trouble for now, you think. You hope.
Cindy Burman meanwhile wants to join the Justice Society. That’s definitely a conversation that needs having, but maybe not today – no one wants to spoil the mood. The same can be said about the fact that the Crocks have moved in next door to Courtney. That’s just way too weird to even contemplate right now.
“I felt you, you know,” Courtney says to you during a lapse in the conversation. “When I was possessed.”
“How do you mean?”
“I felt...I don’t know, it’s hard to explain. Like, I was drowning in this lake of darkness, Eclipso’s darkness, and there was nothing stopping him from just taking me under and never letting go. All the horrible things he was saying about me, I knew they weren’t true, but I felt like they were, like even though I knew they were lies, I couldn’t stop myself believing them.”
“That’s what it’s like,” Yolanda confirms, and both Beth and Rick nod their heads too. “When he gets his claws into you. You can only believe what he wants you to believe, no matter how much you try.”
“But then I felt you all,” Courtney says, looking from you to the others and back, “like someone had thrown me a life raft. It was this warm light, and it beat back the darkness just enough for me to really believe the truth – that all my friends and family were there for me, and that Eclipso had to be stopped once and for all. And somehow I knew that the person that threw it… was you.”
She looks at you with the biggest smile on her face, and you can’t help but smile along with her. It feels nice, having someone be proud of you. “I wasn’t sure it’d work; I’ve tried it before, making people feel what I wanted them to feel, but it never took before. I think, because I had all that proof, all those people’s emotions to tap into, it made it easier. I could convince you it was true because it wasn’t just me that wanted it to be.”
“That’s amazing,” Courtney says. “Your powers are growing. Who knows what you’ll be able to do one day?”
Now you’re blushing, not used to being the centre of attention. “One thing at a time.”
“Still, that’s impressive. Who knows what would have happened if you weren’t there?” Beth puts in. “We might not all be sitting here right now if we’d lost Court to Eclipso permanently.”
“I didn’t really do anything. I just showed Court what we were all feeling. I was just like...the conduit, or something. It’s not that impressive.”
“But it is!” Courtney insists, and now you can feel your face literally burning with embarrassment.
Thankfully, someone swoops in to your rescue.
“I’ve gotta run, soon. Have some things to take care of,” Rick says. He indicates you with a nod. “We both do.”
You wave to your friends, who are still trying to compliment you and ask you about how your powers work, but you and Rick are already too far away for them to hear you.
You know that conversation isn’t over. But a brief reprieve will have to do for now.
*****
Rick puts the finishing touches on the grave mound, tamping the last of the earth down with the edge of his shovel. You’d offered to help, but he wanted to do this on his own. Instead, you’ve been watching patiently in silence as he says goodbye to his friend in the only way he knows how.
Once he’s done you go over and link arms with him, resting your head on his shoulder. Neither of you speak, just drawing comfort from one another’s presence.
“Grundy was a good friend. He didn’t deserve to die like that,” you say quietly.
“I think...he knew what he was doing. If he had to go out, at least he went out on his own terms, making his own decisions, and not because the Injustice Society or anyone else was manipulating him.” Rick’s voice is resigned, and more than a little sad.
Even though the sun is high in the sky, there’s a now-familiar burst of darkness nearby and The Shade walks out of the trees.
“Ironic, isn’t it?” he says by way of a greeting. “The beast that killed your parents, you now mourn.”
Rick is equally as polite. “What do you want?”
You give The Shade a small smile and a shrug of the shoulders. He fires off a wink at you, just out of Rick’s line of sight. “To tell you to stop brooding. Grundy has a habit of coming back. You just have bury him at the right place, at the right time.”
That’s interesting. You’d thought Grundy was some kind of zombie from the way he looked, but you’d never imagined that he’d be able to come back again, especially from a wound as large as he’d sustained. But if there’s a chance...
“I take it you’ll tell me what that means, before you leave town?” Rick asks him, a little less defensively now.
“Leave, my dear boy?” The Shade looks mildly amused by the idea. “Well, yes, your tea is rather ghastly, but your young people are so very intriguing. No, I’m not going anywhere. I’ve taken rather a liking to Blue Valley.”
“Just stay out of our way,” Rick says, “unless you’re actually going to be helpful for a change.”
“I’m always helpful,” The Shade says, one hand on his chest in mock indignation. “In my own way. But I will do as you ask, Mr. Tyler. Farewell...for now.”
“And to you,” he says, at last turning his attention your way, “I believe I owe you my most profound apology of all.” He doffs his hat and bows low, like the old fashioned gentleman that he is.
“You don’t have to. I get it. You trade in secrets and keeping to yourself. I’d have preferred that you didn’t lie to me, but it all worked out in the end.”
“Still,” he says, straightening back up, “I am sorry. It’s taken a far younger generation to teach me what I should have learned a long time ago – or perhaps, what I should never have forgotten in the first place; only being out for one’s self leaves you very lonely. There’s nothing wrong with reaching out and asking for help, when one needs it.
“And shadows, while dark, aren’t just for darkness. For what casts the darkest shadow, but the brightest light?”
As he says this, he winks at you as if you have any idea what he means. You smile back, trying not to look too dumbfounded.
“Now, if I’m to be sticking around, I do believe I have some lodging to acquire. I can’t exactly hole up in the old Zarrick House forever, can I? It’s like living in a mausoleum.” He shudders theatrically. “Oh, and one more thing...”
A business card appears in his hand with a flourish; it’s just like the one he gave Barbara. “If you need someone to give you a hand with your powers, then I’m your man. Not right now, of course – I see you’re both busy. But...when the time is right.”
You take the card, which now reads “Richard Swift – Part-time antiques dealer, part-time superhero consultant” in very curvy calligraphy. There are no contact details, no phone number or address. Presumably they’ll appear when you need them.
“Thank you, Mr. Swift. For everything.”
“Goodbye for now, my...friends,” he says, almost bemused at himself as the word passes his lips. Then he doffs his hat again, and disappears in another burst of shadows as if he had never been there in the first place.
You and Rick stare at the spot for a moment before he speaks. “That guy is so weird.”
“So weird,” you agree. “But...I kind of like him.”
“Me too, now that you mention it. And something he said, reminded me of something we need to talk about.”
Your heart drops in your chest just a little. You’ve known this was coming, but that doesn’t make it any easier to stomach.
“My uncle. What you did, at the hospital, to get him to drop the charges.”
You want to ask him what he means, but there’s no use denying it. Pat likely told him what happened, or at least some version of the truth. You sigh and find a nearby tree stump to sit on, before telling him what happened in your own words.
“...I know it wasn’t right. I know it’s not the way I’m meant to use my powers, making people feel all those horrible things. But we needed you, I needed you, and it was the only way to get you back. I swore to Pat that I wouldn’t do it again, but...if it’s too much, if I’ve gone too far, then...I understand if you don’t want to see me any more.”
You let that hang in the air for a moment, looking down, away from Rick.
There’s a beat of silence, then he steps forward, his feet poking into your field of vision. He rests his hands on either side of your face and points it up at him. You’re surprised to see that he’s smiling.
“I get it,” he says simply. “You did a bad thing, for a good reason. I’m not going to pretend I’m glad about it, but it is what it is. You told me once that worrying about being a good person is a sign that you are one, no matter what. And the fact that you told me what you did, and that you know that it wasn’t the right thing to do, tells me everything I need to know.
“If Eclipso taught us anything, it’s that we’ve all got darkness in us, whether we like it or not. It’s what we do with that darkness, whether we give in to it and let it rule us, or keep it in check and use it to our advantage, that defines who we really are.”
You get to your feet, Rick’s hands not leaving your face the entire time.
“And besides,” he says with a grin, “I’ve got the whole ‘dark and broody’ thing covered in this relationship, you’ll have to get your own thing.”
You smile, tears of happiness springing forth from your eyes as you close the gap between you and kiss him. It’s a beautiful kiss, one that’s been a long time coming. You can’t remember the last time you were able to enjoy a kiss, when the world wasn’t in danger or your friends weren’t in trouble. But this, with the sun on your face and your hands in Rick’s hair, feels like the kiss of a perfect storybook ending.
You know this isn’t over, not really. Stories like this never truly end. But this feels like the end of a chapter at least, and the future is a bright, blank page just waiting to be written.
Your powers are growing, changing, – and so are you. You’re going to need as much help as you can to control them, and to keep yourself on the right path as you become the hero you want to be.
But you’ve got people you can turn to; your friends in the Justice Society, and even the enigmatic Richard Swift, are all in your corner. They won’t let you go too far astray.
And that’s not all that’s changing. Your relationship with Rick is changing too, and for the first time ever you feel like you’re on even footing. You both understand each other more than ever before, true partners in superheroics and in love.
You both have your issues to work out, but together, it feels like there’s nothing you can’t do. Defeating Eclipso has shown you that at the end of the day, love and friendship really can conquer all.
Things in Blue Valley are going to be very different now – while the JSA’s ranks keep expanding, there are frenemies on the prowl as well, like Cindy Burman and the Crocks next door. They’ll need to be watched extremely closely. You like to believe in redemption, of course – but that doesn’t mean there won’t be problems along the way, and it’d be foolish to give them the complete benefit of the doubt all at once. They’ll need to earn your trust, if that’s the future that they want.
And there’s something else nagging at you as well, some unfinished business that you feel like you should be able to remember but keeps disappearing from your mind every time you look for it. It’s dark, almost pitch black, like...obsidian.
Not that it matters. Whatever life, or supervillains, or fear demons from another dimension want to throw at you, you’ll face it head on. With your friends, with the love of your life, and with justice at your side.
No, this isn’t an ending, not at all. It’s just a…
To Be Continued.
jojorivera951 on Chapter 1 Fri 17 Sep 2021 04:50PM UTC
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Richasa (Guest) on Chapter 5 Sun 10 Oct 2021 07:18AM UTC
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Lemmerman on Chapter 5 Mon 11 Oct 2021 10:05PM UTC
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mvrdocktodd on Chapter 7 Mon 25 Oct 2021 01:26AM UTC
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Lemmerman on Chapter 7 Tue 26 Oct 2021 11:20AM UTC
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jojorivera951 on Chapter 13 Tue 07 Feb 2023 10:21AM UTC
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Lemmerman on Chapter 13 Tue 07 Feb 2023 08:37PM UTC
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