batarella:

Jason Todd is lost in an unknown realm light years away from Earth.

With not much hope to find his way back, his only companion is a cruel alien cyborg from the enemy fleet,  one he’ll have to get along with to survive.

A/N:  I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S OVER. THIS SERIES TOOK ME THE LONGEST TIME BUT I WAS SO SO PASSIONATE ABOUT THIS TO EVEN MIND. THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH FOR READING AND I LOVE YOU

WORDS: 18000
WARNINGS:GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF VIOLENCE, MIND CONTROL, BRAINWASH, MEMORY LOSS, NSFW SEXUAL CONTENT

MASTERLIST

—–

Like the headlights that blind as death holds them to his face, the eyes that stared at him were as cold and empty as any blank red bulb. As they glowered like a sniper’s scope, she was gone. N/N lied through her teeth with her last words. Her humanity detached itself from its already weak ties; her face was as deathly as a gun’s smoking muzzle, ready to place a bullet between the eyes that crossed her.

Keep reading

Jason Todd is lost in an unknown realm light years away from Earth.

With not much hope to find his way back, his only companion is a cruel alien cyborg from the enemy fleet,  one he’ll have to get along with to survive.

A/N:  I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S OVER. THIS SERIES TOOK ME THE LONGEST TIME BUT I WAS SO SO PASSIONATE ABOUT THIS TO EVEN MIND. THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH FOR READING AND I LOVE YOU

WORDS: 18000
WARNINGS:GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF VIOLENCE, MIND CONTROL, BRAINWASH, MEMORY LOSS, NSFW SEXUAL CONTENT

MASTERLIST

—–

Like the headlights that blind as death holds them to his face, the eyes that stared at him were as cold and empty as any blank red bulb. As they glowered like a sniper’s scope, she was gone. N/N lied through her teeth with her last words. Her humanity detached itself from its already weak ties; her face was as deathly as a gun’s smoking muzzle, ready to place a bullet between the eyes that crossed her.

Or crossed Z’arr. She had no thoughts. She had no feelings of anguish, vengeance, or anger. She was a machine powered by the hands of another, a robotic puppet no different from a remote-controlled toy truck. An android.

“Are you in the mood for a show?” Z’arr asked his men. They cackled in response and one of them clubbed the back of Jason’s head with his pipe of an arm.

All it took was a tap on Z’arr’s wrist, a control display that completely rid his precious N/N of her own mind.

A Kryptonian. And no other.

The machinery that held her arms opened, and before the rest of them could even hear the smoke exhaust, N/N obliterated the glass with her fists and leapt for the weakened Jason.

His back couldn’t possibly have broken that many walls on its own, but N/N held him by the shoulders, pushed without the aid of the wind to fly. With gravity being a feeble force no match for her strength, she threw Jason four rooms down.

Had his heart found its way to his head?

Because it was throbbing like one, like fists rattling a steel cage with an agitated gorilla calling for help.

But the blood had reached his eye sockets. For so long, all he could see was the red that spilled from his hairline; the stinging iron that would not leave his tongue. His back should have been in pieces. Perhaps it was, and that his flesh had the cruelty to hold itself together while none of his bones were intact.

He coughed a mouthful of blood. Around him, cyborgs were fleeing out of the food room. Some stayed, watched as if entertained. Some in horror. It was no different from the nosy crowds back at home.

Something grabbed him by the collar on his back, lifting him up so he hung like he was in the gallows. Jason clawed relentlessly at the static tightening in his neck, then he laid eyes on N/N who held him up like he weighed the same as feathers.

Her cold, red eyes. Nothing terrified him more. And she wanted him to have a slow fall into death’s arms, when he could feel his life being torn from his lungs. Jason reached for her arms, her shoulders. “N/N…”

Nothing. That was no longer her name.

“Please-“

It should have been a bullet that hit his chest, but nothing sliced his skin. Instead, it was her fist-with the might of an elephant’s foot leaving a crater on soil. The back of his head soon met a wall.

The shooting pains in his ribs stretched to every nerve stubborn enough to hold on. Already, N/N was in front of him, her feet not even touching the ground as she flew, then she held Jason by the neck to the wall.

“N/N,” he cried, “please. Please, it’s me…”

One hit to his ribs. Another to his face. The words only seemed to agitate her more. He couldn’t tell what was in his lips-if it was blood, sweat, tears, or all three. His jaw had broken by the third hit.

“Enough talking!” Cyborg voices echoed from outside. “Fight back, earthling!”

His body was skidding across the floor. Each time he rolled over his back, his bones punctured further into his lungs.

“He’s not even hitting back!”

“Is he crying?!”

More blood left his mouth. As his arms struggled to hold him above ground so it wouldn’t further shatter his bones, N/N slammed her foot against his back and for once, his screams were all to be heard. His vocal chords had distorted and he couldn’t even recognize his own cries.

Only once did he have this many bones broken before.

Just once.

That night.

But this time, it was worse. Because what gouged through his throat to rip his soul out was no one he hated. It was N/N. N/N.She was doing this to him.

This wasn’t her. This wasn’t her. This wasn’t her.

With the side of his face cementing itself to the cracking ground, he could move only his eyes. There was a wall in front of him: a wall tainted with his blood.

Still, his heart, granted with too many chances at life, would not easily slip away. His eyes trailed up to his assailant, a beautiful cyborg with the hands that once held him so gently, now watched his face distort as her foot dug further into his spine.

No pain was greater than having both the mind and body shatter all at once.

“Enough.”

A push of a button.

That was all it took.

N/N stopped and stepped away. She was as stiff as an object, a piece of machinery, standing still and upright just as Z’arr approached them from behind.

“What’s another assessment, earthling? It is the test before we’d bother to replace your parts.”

The Martian did not kneel to his side and only looked down on him like he was dead pest on the ground.

“You’re a stubborn one. We can work with that,” he turned to his me. “Take him back to his cell.”

That night, the pain could not lull him to sleep like it tends to. Everything was silent. Everything was deafening.

—–

She shattered all ten of his ribs.

More than that, he was sure. He couldn’t, quite literally, lift even a finger.

His breaths were counted. Even with shards of his own bones puncturing his lungs, he forced himself to breathe. Every time he did, it was like driving a knife further down his chest.

Nothing had ever been so broken within him that he wished death would just waltz in invited, but he wasn’t allowed that. Not this time.

N/N broke him.

N/Ndid this to him.

But it wasn’t her.

But it was her.

Always. She’d always been so capable of being so cruel. How was this any different from how she treated him the first time they met?

If only she were as capable at the Watchtower or at the deserts as she was now, he wouldn’t have died differently than in the pitiful state he was in.

One dose of their magical serum wasn’t enough. They had to come in and inject him twice for anything to work. Apparently, they never had a recruit with as much damage from an assessment as he did.

They never had N/N for a torturer either.

Days after, or perhaps it had only been hours, Jason had healed. The pain was still there, of course. And even when it no longer hurt to breathe, it hurt to still exist, to live.

From within his cell, he could only sit and watch as they did the same atrocities to Roy as they did him. Only less, since he was no Lazarus-enhanced earthling. But he was strong all the same and they deemed him worthy for a few parts. His eyes and arms especially. The better to shoot arrows with, dear.

When they left Roy with the serum snapping his bones back into place, he had the strength to look up to his friend. He should be furious, screaming at him for even having the heart to just sit and watch. Hell, Jason didn’t even have the decency to look away.

But he was just as quiet.

Even he knew Jason was long gone, even with all the wounds healed and fixed. He was shattered and no serum could ever fix that. This test wasn’t to see if their bodies were capable. It was to rid them of their humanity and hope.

He was only sorry he couldn’t save Roy, like all the other times their shenanigans were only saved by the strike of luck. Roy stared at Jason for the whole of the night. He accepted this. They’d accepted death. If only it was the same as dying, it would have been okay.

His Red Hood helmet disturbed the darkness with a beeping red light, as it did when it received a message from its transmitters. He didn’t hold it up to his head, but he at least had the strength to listen.

“JASON. IT’S ME, ORA. WE’RE GONNA GET YOU OUT. YOU AND ROY KEEP YOURSELVES ALIVE UNTIL WE-“

Deleted the message before it even finished. This was delusion at this point.

As if it wasn’t her doing, Jason closed his eyes and let the last lingering memories of N/N and her smile bring him that momentary peace. It lasted the night, almost as if her arms were close around his shoulders.

By the end of it, there were other hands that grabbed him, leading Jason out of his cell. There was no saving him. There was no saving this.

They made the hallways as narrow, cold, and empty as possible as if they purposely wanted their hope to further become ash. They held his arms behind his back, as if it were needed when Jason hadn’t the strength to even speak.

They passed a room where the cyborgs stood eerily still, without the mind to at least twitch.

A cyborg with the face of a beautiful blue-skinned alien was being rid of her arms, replaced with the same as the Brainiac’s androids. Beside her was one who’d already gone too far to be saved, a friend of hers that no longer had a face, but a cold, empty skull he’d seen far too many times. Soon enough, they’ll be supply for Brainiac’s next invasion.

He couldn’t understand the thin cyborg-with the same built as a grasshopper-holding a holographic clipboard. From the looks of Jason’s anatomy projected above the screen, they were replacing a whole lot of him, more than they should. His arms, already so large, looked double its size. The cybernetic replacements for his thighs looked deadly enough to snap three necks at a time. His brain would be completely ripped from his skull and his chest no different from a steel shell of a machine’s engine. His handsome face would be no more, and instead by a faceless plate of metal with two slits for eyes and a mouth nothing more than a dent. It looked exactly like the Red Hood.

His heart: a cold piece of fuel, like the battery of a ship.

His hands, most of all, no longer looked to be of a human’s. In place of fingers, palms that flushed red of his blood, he had blasters out of his wrists; guns like the ones Bruce repeatedly told him not to use. Karma was not just a bitch. She was sadistic, too.

A tank. Of course. They wanted to build him to be a tank. Like N/N.  

He all but rolled his eyes.

The room they took him in had a pod where he’d lie down. They strapped the large man to the bed, even when he showed no restraint. Above him was a blinding white light: the last he’d ever see with the eyes he had now.

He always did think he had pretty eyes. Blue. Like the dust clouds of a nebula on the black skies.

Jason closed them, wanting the feel of his fluttering eyelids to last. Then he let the dreams play out: the dreams of home. The visions were peaceful, gentle.

He thought those visions would stop when they’d drill a screw into his skull.

But it stopped when no other than a sudden flash of fire that scorched the room in black, dispersing ash. Then there were the shrieks of frantic pigs, or the horrified cries of birds.

His eyes shot open when the fire hit too close to his face. Once more, his blood was pumping like it only took then for anything to wake him. He struggled with the shackles but couldn’t move. The fire killed more of his captors. The only one who lived was the grasshopper who put up no fight and instead, curled at the corners of the room begging Ora to spare him.

She did, thankfully. Ora shed her disguise as one of Jason’s guards and sighed as her mohawk almost touched the ceiling. “We don’t have much time,” she said, already throwing Jason his helmet and weapons. “We’ll get you out of here.”

Was this that very delusion?

Should he take it?

The Fleet did an awful good job making sure there was none of that, even when hope was being served on a shiny platter with a bib around his neck.

Ora tore the shackles apart. “Come on-“

“Are you sure?” Jason asked. If it were any other case, they’d already be out the door. This was the days of mental torture talking. “We can’t get out of this-“

“Aya has Roy. A ship is waiting for us. Let’s go-“

“Why are you helping me?”

Ora shook him by the shoulders.

“N/N made me promise. That enough of a reason for you?”

N/N.

N/N.

No prison cell could keep her down.

Or at least, stop her from saving Jason one last time.

Ora didn’t wait for Jason to object. She sped out the door, shooting fire out of her hands at anything that moved. The alarm blared through every speaker in the Station, and already, he could hear the many cyborgs coming in from the ceiling, the corners, even the floor.

“Ora,” Jason pleaded when his legs grew too weak, “N/N is too strong-“

“I know you’re afraid of her,” Ora held Jason by the waist, “we all are. There’s no one in this ship with half her strength.”

“I wasn’t going to say I was afraid, but that was reassuring.”

“Let’s just hope we don’t have to run into her.”

When her fire could no longer melt the steel, they ran by foot out of the food room for the hangars. The walls suddenly broke down at the might of a Mace of the strongest metal.

Aya shielded herself from the flying debris with her gigantic metal wings. At her side, strapped like a babe, was Roy shooting arrows at incoming cyborgs they didn’t even see.

He raised a hand to Jason like a salute. Then Jason grabbed his guns from his hips.

Roy jumped to his side and they paved their dangerous ways into the rubble. Soon enough, the ruckus would reach the Captain and they couldn’t afford to allow them the time. Aya grabbed them both by the collars, Ora used her fire to free their path, and Jason and Roy shot at anything that even moved. The androids for Brainiac, the cyborgs that looked still too similar to him, all crowded to stop them.

But they reached the hangar, thankfully, after breaking down several walls. The ship couldn’t possibly have lasted, and the floor quaking beneath them only sealed that. Finally, as if a rush of air was there to greet them, they reached the main deck where the plasma ceilings distorted the vast, open skies; the stars singing their misses for Jason as he realized it’d been days since he last saw them.

Ora started for a ship that would have immediately left the terminal. It was then. Hope. As easily as it’d left him, his soul rushed to every ends of his body until there could only be that haste to save themselves.

That ship, however, did not even get to say its finalities. Hope had a little setback as everyone with a sense stood stiff in helpless fear.

N/N shot from the sky, or wherever she came from, with her red, unblinking eyes much like the burn of a star. Her feet landed on the ship itself and it posed no fight nor chance against her weight. The whole ship broke down beneath her; not even with a dent or a crater. It exploded like a canon shot through the whole of it until it was nothing but ash and flying debris, fire catching like a warm, dramatic welcome.

N/N,the Cyborg, grabbed what was left of the ship and tossed it until it drifted out into the vacuum. Like waves parting for a terrifying deity, the fire subsided and the other cyborgs, a whole army of them, stood at the side.

Earthlings stood no chance. That wasn’t a question.

Tamaranians and Thanagarians could. They were strong by themselves.

But against a Kryptonian?

Perhaps not even the Justice League could easily get out of this, like they hadn’t when the whole team went against Clark.

Silence.

Like death in space.

Like the stars that made no sound.

Or the hovering asteroids that wouldn’t whisper even as it collided with its own brethren.

Ora shot what she could out of her palms. But the flames were subtle. Scared.She was so terrified of her own friend, she couldn’t even hold the sweat from extinguishing her own flames.

Aya was no different. Perhaps out of everyone, she feared N/N the most. The largest, most capable being out of the ones on his side, the mace on her hand was shaking like something quaked her.

Jason and Roy. The supposed helpless earthlings. They should be afraid. For what was left out of their lives, they should at least anticipate what would come.

The glowing red eyes had set them as targets. N/N stood unmoving, arms stretched and ready to pounce like a waiting lioness. Her feet looked unshaken even with the ground beyond repairs beneath her.

Help her. Save her.

The voice that echoed, he hoped to ignore.

At Z’arr’s unspoken command, N/N tore through the winds like a bullet shot out of a large gun.

He wasn’t spared the warning of at least having seenher move. The next thing he knew, Jason was pinned to the wall several yards away. His back tore a crater once again, but the pain thankfully didn’t have to last. As he stared at N/N’s eyes, bright enough that it hurt to look, there was nothing but blankness. Not N/N. M-812

Aya’s mace reverberated through the whole part of the ship. The impact was so large, so loud, the clang of metal sounded the same as a ship crashing on cold grounds. To the side of her head, finally, something was strong enough to throw N/N off her stance.

Then her aim was set on Aya, a grit showing that it at least hurt. N/N and Aya pounced at each other like two panthers at a brawl from opposite ends of the ship. No wind stood a chance in their way.

Jason fell but he didn’t wait for the rest to come for him. Not with the cyborgs and half-done androids coming for them. Ignoring everything in him that shattered, he shot at anyone and anything, hiding behind a large cart that’d been thrown to its side.

Roy was at the other side of the hangar, shooting at the bots that flew over his head. Some of the arrows struck just the right place for it to come crashing to the floor. The others that missed, he sadly could no longer retrieve when it escaped out of the plasma walls and out drifting into space.

He could last like this. He could survive the thousands of cyborgs. With a blaster or two and a best friend who stuck to his side, they could last.

But what happened above them was infinitely more interesting.

Aya’s wings shot her miles above the plasma threshold. Holding her throat, N/N did not scream. The wings that flapped like a hawk caught in a storm blurred what they could make out of the scene. The shards where the feathers should have been were terrifying. They pounced for N/N’s skin, but none could pierce it. Aya flew them both further to the sky as N/N thrashed in her hold. When Aya threw her off, immediately she clubbed her with the mace to her head before N/N could recover.

Unfortunately, it was all she could manage. Aya couldn’t keep up with N/N as she narrowly drifted and swerved away from the mace.

Aya was too slow. When she lunged herself forward, N/N threw herself to grab the Thanagarian by the shoulders, squeezing until the metal crushed beneath her fingers. Then she spun, fast enough for a whirlwind to appear even in a vacuum. Aya was thrown back to the ship with an impact that engulfed a part of it in flames.

Ora had only just held off an army of androids from her tail when she looked up, knowing she was the next target.

Up.

Up.

N/N.

She hovered like a star and shone like one.

Like the Kryptonians Jason knew before her, she was flying over the ship. To no force that could pull her to the grounds. To no wind that could stand in her way; like a deity, like a god who saved, only she wasn’t. She floated above their heads, fixating her aim on Ora.

Ora thrusted herself up like a rocket. A blast was enough to hold her off, for a while, but N/N escaped the dark flames unscathed without even her skin twitching from the burn. The red from her eyes shone through the ash and she soar from yards up the ground like a failing comet, a light trailing behind her as she dove, and grabbed Ora by the throat.

They disappeared beneath the ship’s deck, destroyed as they shot down stories below and obliterating everything in their way. Past the floors, breaking at each impact of Ora’s back; the hole on the ground was enough to quake the whole ship, and for how large it was underneath, it took minutes long before they exploded out of the hull below.

Somehow, Ora lived through that. She was fleeing back up to the heights above the Station, even with it slow to collapse possibly into two halved pieces. Her shots of fire did no damage and her punches couldn’t make even a dent.

When N/N threw her miles from where they hovered, Ora propelled herself with powerful thrusters bursting past the lack of light. And with that built strength and speed, she pushed N/N off her steady hover until her back ultimately met with Aya’s mace.

The Earthlings on the hangar, surviving with whatever thread of a life they could helplessly hold onto, would soon run out of ammo and arrows. Thankfully, they’d put up a fight against the relatively weakercyborgs. If Jason had the sense to be sarcastic, he’d joke about being the baby. When Roy rushed to his side of the cart to hide with him, however, he beat him to that.

“How does it feel not being the big guns for once?” Roy screamed.

“It’s a fucking treat!”

The battle above to the stars and the one below it was the kind of chaos that shouldn’t have lasted as long as it did.

When N/N had her attention set on Aya, she flew them away from the ship to the stars none of them could see.

Then Ora fell to their side, shielding Jason and Roy before the cart that protected them lost its stretch of life. They rose from their place on the ground.

“The lower decks!” Ora cried through the screams. “Get the Mother Box!”

“What?!”

Ora overheated an android just before it would have come for Jason.

“The Mother Box! He can save N/N!”

She didn’t need to say more.

Jason and Roy might as well have held hands when they paved their way through the unforgiving crowd of debris, laser blasts, and even limbs thrown to their direction. He shot his blaster, praying the ammo wouldn’t die until they’d reached inside the ship, and Roy used the last of his arrows and even picked up stray rods from the ground to shoot at the cyborgs.

Through the hole N/N made on the main deck, Roy stuck an arrow to the floor, fashioned a rope to its end as quick as a boy scout tying a knot, and they suspended themselves down to the collapsing floors and slabs that was almost falling out of their beams. Just before someone cut the ropes, they fell to the lower deck and they rolled to extinguish the fire on their clothes.

“Do you know where we’re going?”

“Just run!”

More tailed them. Some flew. Some crawled like insects. One thing was for sure: too many of them were after a couple of earthlings supposedly posing as no threat. They blindly shot behind them, but as they reached a hallway that curved corners like a maze, not a lot of them could keep up.

When one android grabbed Jason by the foot, Roy had blown up its head with an arrow that short circuited its brain, frying the rest of its body until it was limp on the floor. Another jumped for Roy, and with Jason being larger, he kneed the cyborg to the stomach, shot its head with a blast between the eyes.

A large door at the farthest end of the hallway; probably meant to hold a prized prisoner.

As he should be.

And it was open. Someone was inside.

The incoming mob was growing. Only instead of actual pitchforks being thrown their way, their hands morphed into steel shards like the ends of a knife and they pounced for the earthlings’ flesh. “Hide!” Roy screamed, and they rushed behind the door, bolted it shut before a hand would have grabbed their throats.  

Jason didn’t know if locking the door would be any help without thinking of how the fuck they were going to get out of that place.

But it was the least of their worries when the silence overcame the conundrum. Jason tapped on Roy’s shoulder to calm him. He was not calm. None of them should be calm. But they were quiet, unlike their beating hearts.

Captain Z’arr hovered like a ghost. His face, sharp as if his chin could cut steel, was as unmoving as his glare on them. His eyes were red, but they didn’t glow like lights. They were blank and dark. And in his hand, the damned scepter with a shred of Kryptonite encased near the tip.

Roy drew an arrow from his quiver, only having so much left behind, before Jason held out an arm to stop him.

Behind Z’arr was the very answer to this discourse: the bright, blinding beacon that so suddenly filled Jason with the needed hope.

It was all so tragic.Of course, the Fleet of cyborgs would want him. A Cyborg that could change bank numbers at just a thought, who had a connection to every artificial intelligence or anything with a circuit board in the universe.

Whose physical strength was just the tip, the verytip, of what he could do.

Perhaps the King of all Cyborgs.

Victor Stone had grown thin and worn. Whatever horrors they’d put him through, months after he was last seen, it’d taken its horrific toll. He posed a fight, that was certain, but he was alive. He was intact.

He was asleep, stuck to the wall with his arms outstretched like the Vitruvian Man.

Had they rid him of his humanity? Of his mind? Had they already done their damage enough that saving him would only risk the whole universe?  

His face, bruised from unspeakable horrors, did not answer. But it moved as if to take a breath. Cyborgs didn’t have to breathe if they weren’t programmed to.

They could save him still.

Z’arr hovered to them, and the wall stopped Roy and Jason from backing up any further.

“We might be pretty fucking useless out there,” Jason gulped, “but I wouldn’t underestimate us against you.”

The Martian did not laugh. “I would not underestimate me either, earthling,” he grinned. “You might know of my kind-“

“Yourkind, who you were supposed to fight with for your own planet,” he shot at him.

Z’arr took no liking to his knowledge of his history. “Watch your tongue.”

“Or what?”

“Iam the Captain of this Fleet-“

“And you are a weakling who sucks up to superiors by sacrificing his own men. And you’ve done it twice.”

Z’arr shot a shard of metal he got from God knows where at their direction, and it bounced off the steel door before Roy and Jason separated.

“You do not know of what you speak-“

“I know exactly what I speak.”

Roy, at the other side of the cell’s holding, hid behind the crates and desks while Z’arr shot another slab of metal at Jason.

“You betray the Green Martians,” Jason shot with his blaster, “and now you betray the Fleet-“

Z’arr flew to where he thought Jason hid, but the asshole somehow made it to the ceiling, and he jumped for Z’arr with a knife to his shoulder. Z’arr shrieked before he pried it out, but Jason already hid somewhere he couldn’t see.

“First the White Martians, now Brainiac? Is you being a suck up ever going to stop?”

“Enough!”

Z’arr swung his Kryptonite scepter at Jason as if the rock had any effect on him.

“Face it. You’re no Captain.”

Blasters shot for Z’arr’s shoulder. His ear-piercing shriek almost threw him off.

“Iamthe Captain.”

“A Captain leads his army to war,” Jason said, “All you do is throw your loyalty around because you can’t protect yourself, even at the cost of your own men.” Another knife thrown at Z’arr’s shoulder. This was too easy. “You’re the biggest coward in the galaxy, Z’arr.”

That surely set him off.

The Martian cried but no longer to fight the pain. None of the crates could hold him, and as Jason managed to lift one over his shoulders, throwing it at Z’arr’s direction, it merely passed through his body as if he were made of air. Right. Martian. Almost forgot they could do that.

Z’arr grabbed him by the shoulders, pinned Jason’s body to the wall just at Victor’s side. His punches were strong, though none he hasn’t already seen. Jason grabbed his fists, twisted it enough to make him lose his hold. He struggled. He shook. It was enough.

“You are of no worth, a brat owned by that annoyance of an earthling, the Batman,” Z’arr growled, “do not underestimate me.”

“I think I overestimatedyou.”

“Have you always been this much talk, you insect?” his static voice eerily crept to his ear. When Jason grabbed him by the throat, he snarled back.

“My guy, that’s the point.”

Z’arr looked at him quizzically amidst their struggle for power.

“You know what the Batman taught me?” Jason grinned, “Keep your enemies talking.”

The realization hit him like a brick.

Roy had unknowingly placed bombs all over the walls and crates that scattered around Z’arr. All it took was for Jason to kick him to the ground, brace for cover, then Roy shot at the trigger. At the slightest impact of the arrow’s tip to a bomb that wasn’t even an inch in size, the whole side of the wall exploded into bursting flames: the one thing Z’arr could not stand.

He disappeared into the cloud of smoke and the flares too bright for them to see through. Maybe he perished, burnt to a crisp. It sounded that way when his shrieks were as painful to hear as a knife being driven into their drums. When the explosion subsided and the room was covered in debris, their first instinct was to rush to Victor.

“You alright?” Jason asked Roy.

“I’m fine. How do we wake him up?”

Any wrong touch could be lethal to Victor.

What they did to the holding cell, however, didn’t afford them the chance to find out. There was a lever, much like the throttle for a ship, that was pushed way up on the control panel. The rest of it were buttons he no longer understood. That red lever looked to be the obvious answer.

Without warning, Jason pulled that lever down.

The tubes that held Vic to the wall exhausted open, with month-old smoke spewing out of the many cracks. Only a tube that clawed itself to the back of his head held onto Vic. He fell to the ground, the rest of him thankfully unhurt, but he was cold and unconscious.

“Come on, Vic, wake up.”

“We got company.”

The door burst open at last with a whole mob coming for them. “Cover us,” he told Roy.

The tube to his head. That was what reprogrammed N/N.

But Vic was a Mother Box. They couldn’t have possibly reprogrammed him so easily.

It was a stretch that could go horribly wrong, and none would forgive him even himself. But there wasn’t the time, and the rest of the cyborg army was getting too much for the archer to handle.

With his bare hands, Jason pried the tube from Vic’s skull, its claw shooting sparks when it finally detached.

Vic gasped for breath like he’d been held to the ocean for months, the air to his lungs bringing color back to his skin which had grown so noticeably lifeless.

Shit.

Shit.

Vic shot up to his feet and threw Jason to the wall. Roy ran for cover.

It wasn’t Vic. It was his armor’s defense system.

The mob of cyborgs stood stiff at the sight of the Mother Box. Mindlessly, Vic’s first instinct was to fire at anything that posed a threat.

As long as they didn’t move, they’d be fine. “Roy, hide!”

They took cover behind the crates. All he could see was this blinding beacon out of Vic’s machine arm that tore through every shape of matter that stood its way. Some escaped, leaped from its way before the shot would have completely burnt their bodies to ash. Vic did not stop until none of the mob was left behind.

When it subsided into smoke, there was silence.

Jason and Roy peaked from over the crates and Vic had fallen to the floor, grabbing his head. “Vic-“

Victor aimed his arm at them, instinctively anxious. They raised their hands to surrender and with a voice the friendliest it could be, something Vic could recognize, Jason hummed.

“It’s us. Jason. Roy Harper. You know us.”

“Stay away-“

“Jason Todd.” He tried reaching out but Vic only kept with his aim.

“It’s us. You’re Victor Stone.”

Another throb in his head threw him off his stance. Vic fell forward, clawing at his skull like it was gnawing at his bones. His screams were as low as whispers, but spoke the same pain. When Jason rushed to grab him by the shoulders, Vic no longer threw him away.

“It’s us. We’re here to help. Please, Victor.”

When Jason held his head, as if it were any help to ease him, Vic met his eyes.

“Jason. It’s me. Jason.”

His eyes. His beautiful blue eyes. They spoke to Victor when they had him in their hold. Perhaps it was a reminder of the oceanic blue of Earth, or the homely gaze of welcoming arms.

“J-Jason?”

“Yes.”

He hugged Victor. He never hugged him before. But it was the first of what he needed.

“Jason…”

“What did they do to you, Vic?”

“I-I was…” he choked, perhaps still contemplating if he spoke at all, “t-they took me, did all these tests…”

“Do you remember anything?”

“I remember everything.”

When his voice dipped into that recognizable depth, he knew it won’t be long before they had their friend back

“We need your help.”

“Jason, we have to go,” Roy said when he looked out of what was left of the door. Jason reached for Vic’s arm. “I can walk,” he insisted, pulling himself on his feet.

“I hope you can do more than that, pal.”

When Roy and Vic headed out the door, Jason set his eyes on the Kryptonite scepter left unmoving amid the debris.

And every voice of reason begged him to take it, if their lives meant anything to him at all.

If they meant more to him than N/N.

But it wasn’t N/N anymore.

That thing could kill her.

She’d never forgive him.

He’ll never forgive himself.

They didn’t need it. They had Vic.

But Vic was no Kryptonian.

He couldn’t face N/N alone and win. No one can.

And a voice, the only one he both wished to hear and begged to forget, was echoing into the walls in his head, with the ringing that deafened him and the trembling grounds that pushed him.

Bruce.

Only Bruce had ever singlehandedly faced a Kryptonian and won.

A powerless earthling.

And all that plagued his mind was just that.

How did Bruce do it?

He didn’t have to be Bruce. Not just yet.

But the part of him that wasBruce, a product of fighting years of desperately trying not to be, grabbed the scepter and strapped it to his back.

It at least didn’t take too long for them to rush back out to the halls, past the corridors they’d blown up and the remains of fallen cyborgs left on the ground. Cyborg grabbed them both with his arms and flew them up to the surface.

They suddenly wished they hadn’t.

There was too much blood, the engineered blue that spilled on the floor, for anyone to have survived.

Aya laid close to lifelessness in the midst of the fiery debris, without a muscle twitching or moving her mace away from being horribly stretched behind her back. A crate weighed on top of her so she couldn’t heal or even move.

Ora’s screams were horrific before they were finally silenced. Where she laid: a crater the size of a meteorite’s impact on hard soil. Her own flames burnt her, with her arms pinned to the sides of her body and a steel slab that hugged her like a python. Only N/N’s hands could have possibly molded the steel to bend that way.

They should have cowered away like any sane man would, but they only took a step back when N/N slammed herself on the ship’s deck once again.

Her red eyes fixed on them, and her head tilted as if it was curious.

On Vic, of course. Her sensors were probably going nuts at the sight of the Mother Box.

Vic’s defense system was quick to act. When his arm molded into an impressive blaster the size of a tank’s machine gun, the beams that shot out of him were enough to throw N/N across the hangar. She crashed to the wall.

And even when it barely made a dent on her skin, it was enough for her systems to react.

N/N flew like a bullet aiming for Victor’s head. The beams, at least, had the sense to keep shooting quick enough before she would have crashed him. N/N came to a screeching halt, swerved before the blast hit her. And when she was all but hovering over them to avoid every blast that came her way.

But the blasts couldn’t hold N/N for too long. She pounced at Vic like a speeding hawk and grabbed him by the shoulders, dragging him across the metal grounds to scrape it with his body until a long trail marked the main deck. She threw Cyborg for the plasma walls possibly knowing he couldn’t breathe in space.

But he saved himself with his thrusters just before his head crossed the threshold. Vic flew back on safer grounds, firing his beams to keep N/N at bay.

Vic had no chance of getting close enough to N/N’s head, rid her of Z’arr’s control without possibly dying himself.

Perhaps Ora was in that same delusion that N/N still could be saved.

How do you save someone when she was that very thing they were fighting against?

She was a weapon, built to go after anything that posed a threat.

Jason held the scepter, gripped on it tight until his fingers were worn, then he shot the last of his blasters at N/N’s head. It only bounced against her skin, but it caught her attention.

When she set her eyes, her sensors,on Jason, the blank look on her face was much like a recalibrating machine.

With this plan of his, or the lack of it at least, he had to remember this wasn’t N/Nhe faced.

The Kryptonian Cyborg eyed the scepter and he could have sworn he heard a hiss out of her lips. The first instinct of any programmed machine was to destroy the biggest threat in its way.

What bigger threat was there, other than the only piece of matter in the galaxies that could ever pierce a Kryptonian’s flesh?

Her head turned for a crate. Quickly, N/N flew for one and grabbed it over her shoulders, tossing it at Jason’s direction before he could even move to avoid it. He couldn’t, and it shattered above him. He lost his grip on the scepter and when the crate broke, N/N grabbed for his throat and flew Jason to the closest wall to pin him against it.

She could not touch that scepter if she didn’t want the Kryptonite to burn her. She could only kill the one that held it.  

She flew them far away from the Kryptonite before it could possibly weaken her, and her hand no longer felt the throb of blood beating through her veins. Like a steel rod was being pushed to his throat, it shouldn’t have been long before his neck breaks like shards of glass against a boot.

But he wasn’t dead just yet.

That second was all that mattered.

This.

This time, he had to fight back.

He was Jason Todd.

He died.

He lived again.

And if there was one thing not a lot of people knew,

It was how this was not the first time he ever broke a Kryptonian’s hold.

No earthling should have done it. Hell, he could feel every eye on him twitch, staring widely at the scene so unbelievably true.

His hands were shaking.

But they pried N/N’s indestructiblehands from being wrapped around his throat, and as the air shot back up to his head, he only grew stronger. It was quick, a flash one would have missed in a blink.

Jason pushed himself off N/N’s grip and ducked before her fist landed on the wall.

It shouldn’t have happened.

But it happened.

Jason was back on his feet. A voice called out from afar. Roy.

His friend tossed him the scepter.

N/N’s face couldn’t physically distort to look mortified, but she no longer pounced so easily. Not when Jason had the scepter.

With that little shred of Kryptonite, he could end this.

He could end her.

She would have wanted him to.

How did Bruce do it?

How did Bruce defeat Clark all those years ago?

With his undying wit, the immovable willpower to subdue his loved ones when needed, and a pound of Kryptonite.  

N/N was gritting. She couldn’t feelanything, but even then, she looked furious.

But when she jumped for Jason, all it took was a swing of his scepter and already, she was thrown yards across the ground.

Jason held it close enough until she was crawling, shielding her eyes from the Kryptonite’s glow.

He had to be Bruce this time.

Of all times, it had to be now.

Now. To N/N.

This was not the N/N he survived with, kissed, held, and made love to. This was a thoughtless android who’d kill him at any moment’s hesitation. It was no different from their first brawls. ThatN/N, he needed to subdue. He could do it now. Suppress everything else that happened after.

Tears drenched his face. Was this how it was supposed to end?

Any contact with the rock was lethal. If she doesn’t live through this-

Do it, Jason, Bruce screamed.

“I’m sorry…”

The scepter stabbed N/N by the shoulder. Only then, even when her mind couldn’t possibly have allowed her to feel pain, her screams were the deafening cries of help he wanted desperately to come aid. But he was there to cause it, to draw more of it. The Kryptonite glowed until the light couldn’t allow them to see through their own cries, and when he couldn’t shield it with his arms, Jason lifted the scepter up, lifting N/N along with it impaling deeper into her arm.

She grabbed its hilt, her stubborn, willful spirit still there despite the reprogramming that shouldn’t have allowed her the thought. And when she caught Jason’s tear-flooded eyes, fighting through her screams, he knew there was no going back.

Even when she loses, she does not accept defeat.

So there was a trace of her left after all. Only N/N would have used the last stretch of her strength to spit at her killer’s face.

With wide eyes, Jason saw the end of him. N/N blew onto the scepter and a deathly crawl of icy frost formed where her breath blew like a storm’s wind.

And he couldn’t move fast enough before her freeze breath reached Jason’s hand.

Screaming at the ice that tore through his flesh, N/N crushed the scepter’s staff with the last of her strength, and a string of destruction crept to where he could no longer move. Just as she did, only then did Vic finally get close enough to her, his hand like a claw as it sunk deep into N/N’s skull.

Jason couldn’t feel a thing. Not at first. The ice was enough to subdue the pain.

But once he laid eyes on his frozen hand that’d shattered into pieces, torn from his wrist like it was so easily detached, all the excruciating pain surged in an instant’s wave.  

But he couldn’t fall out of consciousness, not when everything was screaming at him like this.

With his hand gone, the pain felt eternal.

Like the stars burned beneath his skin. There was no finger for him to reach the sky with. Nothing he could writhe and shake to show just how terrified he was. He looked up, at the unending stars splattered like paint. How he used to watch them like a marvel. Now, they faced him in death.

Turning to his side, he was so suddenly drawn to N/N’s screams that echoed out into the chasms.

She was on her knees, crying both from the Kryptonite still lodged into her flesh and Vic’s claw on her skull, rewiring her brain once more. It was belittling, going against everything she’d fought relentlessly against for years. She wanted so badly to have a mind of her own, and she couldn’t even have that.

This had to happen.

Vic held on for the most of it. When it was done, when the light out of her eyes finally was rid of the blank red so at loss of life, her screams came to a halt. Vic released the claw from her head and she fell limp on the ground.

Someone so strong never looked so helpless. So innocent. Not a trace of fury etched on her face.

Even when he just had his whole hand frozen off, and his blood pooling all over the ground, Jason was already crawling to her body. His tears were never so painful to sting his eyes. His good hand reached for her, helplessly. He could barely sit upright, but that was what he did.

Jason crawled to her side with his whole body like hauling a sack. Crying her name in a whisper only he could hear, his pleas were inaudible. Her name, repeatedly out of his lips, was like a prayer. Roy held Victor off from rushing to help Jason. No one can help him.

His senses slowly came rushing. Or what was left of them, at least.

Jason dug through her flesh with his fingers, crying at the obvious pain that would have caused her and the lack of screams, the lack of color on her beautiful lips. He grabbed the shards of Kryptonite that had dug itself deep into her shoulder and he tossed every trace of it far away, past the plasma walls so they may be lost into space.

Every trace of it. Every rock.

When it slowly started to heal, his breaths slowed. His whole body wanted to just fall. Jason held her face, his tears falling onto N/N’s bloodstained cheeks. The loss of blood out of his hand would soon take its toll. As it long should have.

Jason pressed his forehead on N/N’s, begging that she wake. “Please… Please… N/N… Don’t die on me, Tiger…”

Roy kicked the last of the Kryptonite far off into space.

Then her beautiful, soft lips flushed a faint red.

Her cheeks rose with color. And her chest rose as her lungs filled.

When her eyes opened, no longer did a cruel gaze of red light stare back at him.

It was her. Hereyes.

And they stared at Jason like she’d seen the first of a star’s shine. With it, a trace of confusion. Reprogramming rids her of her memories.

She didn’t know who he was anymore.

But she was alive. She was N/N.

The blood loss didn’t allow him the time to revel. Everything had grown dark before he could speak.

—–

The man that held her fell to the floor before she could say anything.

His hand was gone, soiling the metal grounds with his blood. A red-haired earthling rushed to him at the instant, and the many cyborgs that circled them watched her stand as if she was an unfolding scene to witness. And it was.

Thousands of heartbeats surrounded her. She could hear everything. Seeeverything. And every single heart was frantic at the sight of her like they were afraid. They twitched when she moved and their hearts sped faster.

Her fists tightened, ready to pounce at any wrong slight of hand.

There was a cyborg, one that looked different from the rest, that spoke to her through voices that echoed only in her mind. His skin was dark, with half a face left of what used to be his flesh. An earthling, or he used to be one. His voice, only she could hear, was soothing.

Curiously, N/N took a step to the cyborg.

‘We are not the enemy,’ he whispered to her.

She was right to be skeptical.

But his heartbeat was steady. He had one, beneath all the steel. There was no trace of a lie. Like flashing scenes that took its time to gradually come to her senses, he helped her remember.

There was a bright yellow sun.

Tears. There were tears that seeped out of her. Until there wasn’t.

Everything was red. It was all she could see.

Then there was a man, a cruel man with a cruel mind she could read. That very mind was what spoke to her. A man with green skin, red eyes. And for a while, his was the only voice she could hear.

And it told her to do so much she didn’t want to do. The first order he gave was to take the life of the earthling on the ground, then of the other cyborgs like her, of everything that was a threat to him.

‘He is the enemy,’ the cyborg spoke again. ‘He tortured me, too.’

Torture.

It only lasted days-the resurfacing memories only a handful.

But she could tell there was more to it.

She looked down and the floor faded from sight. Everything was transparent, like the hearts beneath the steel. Her x-ray vision saw past the many layers down to the ship’s hull, searching for that one, frantic heartbeat of a coward running for his life.

When she caught that very heartbeat, she shot herself into the ground, breaking through those borders like a blast out of a gun. Everything broke to her touch, fragile to hold; nothing was comparable to her might.

There.The heartbeat. A coward’s heartbeat hoping none could see him. He was rushing for a ship. Not this time.

Every wall in her way broke against her fist. With speeds blurring the matter that couldn’t keep up with her sight, she tore through the ship’s innards until she reached the secret hangar.

And the man, the Captain, was hiding by the crates, shaking like a lone pup. He posed no fight even with him thrashing like a child in her hold, when she grabbed him by his cloak’s collar to fly them both miles away from the Station.

Where no eyes could see, where only the twinkling lights from faraway stars could witness her doing, she floated into the airless chasm and looked to the skies for the nearest fiery sun.

The Captain figured what she was doing long after she’d flown them another few million miles for a star, a shining yellow with dangerous flares reaching for this man’s skin to burn it. He pleaded, but no sound could come out of his mouth, not when they were here.

She could only remember so much.

But his eyes were as dark as they were desperate.

They told stories; his voice was the same that’d ordered her mind as if it weren’t her own. They told of years, decades, centuriesof torment over people like her. They no longer could hide themselves. The truth wanted to come out by itself.

They told of cruelty.

That was enough of a reason.

He mouthed his pleas to her, gasping for breath when she held him by the neck.

The coward was as good as dead, floating into deep space so helplessly. But he looked into hereyes, and his only bore fear. As if the Martian Captain always knew he’d be staring at them when he dies.

Powerful, blinding beams of red light shot out of her eyes the same as the flaring blasts of the star. It burned the Captain’s flesh that withered away into ash, and the force pushed and threw him into the star’s even more scorching flames. Her heat vision did not stop until his body was no longer to be seen, when it was long lost into the star’s burning core, and the last of his life was nothing more than drifting ash.

There was so much hate, her own cruelties. She woke up and already, the blackness in her soul was the first of the slow-moving thoughts; so much fury she couldn’t even remember. Her eyes had grown dark, even against such a blinding sun.

The beams out of her eyes finally came to a slow halt.

Then there was a second of peace.

Peace.

With the stars and clouds, the flares that colored the black plane of unending space and hummed a song. No star, even with such a fiery core, could hold that much quietness. It went against everything in her heart that screamed from behind the metal bars of a cage.

How could she remember what they were, even when she had no memory of seeing one before?

She was drifting, floating. The stars had no end no matter where she faced and turned her head. It was a garden, limitless. Some stretched their arms to reach for their brothers, light rays of all colors. Some were clustered in clouds in the deepest shades of lavender petals. Some had drifted from the crowds like they wanted their light to show for themselves.

They called for her to calm, whispering for her heart to slow and her thoughts to rest from such a race.

Then she was tired.

Even with such strength, she fell limp.

Then her eyes were too heavy.

So she closed them, listened to the star’s humming of the song only they knew the melody of. Sometimes, when they wanted to, she heard a note play out like they sung. Everything was quiet and black. She didn’t feel the pair of arms that took her away.

—–

It didn’t take much to wake him.

Perhaps it had been days of staring at the shadows beneath his eyelids, counting the hours of the overhead bulbs coming to a dim. He didn’t count them literally. He just knew it’d been a while. The voices changed, too. And the feel of hands that often turned his arm around.

It started when the shadows burned red, the way it did when closed eyes looked up at fluorescents. Then came the feeling of his toes and fingers that wriggled and twitched, his lips that chapped, his chest that hurt after every breath.

Finally, when breathing wasn’t too much of a pain, Jason opened his eyes.

On top of his bedside, his Red Hood helmet watched him wake.

The quietness was eerie. Somehow his head made up an ever-playing note from a key he didn’t know where from. The infirmary was a busy room, but that time, no one had anything to speak of. Not even his friend, Roy, asleep on a thin chair just at his cot’s side. When Jason sat up, already, Roy was awake.

“Thank fuck, Todd,” he gasped when the surprise died down. “Thought you were actuallydead this time.”

“My seat in hell’s been long overdue, but I’m not taking it anytime soon.”

“Spare me the death jokes,” Roy gently slapped his shoulder. “How are you feeling?”

“Good.”

“You’ve been conscious?”

“Barely. But nothing hurts too much anymo-“

He should have figured why the passing wind on his left hand wasn’t as gentle on his right. But it didn’t take until he actually saw his own fingers for it to sink in.

“Yeah, uhm,” Roy gulped, “your hand-“

“I know. I remember.”

It looked impressive.

A cybernetic hand. Skin-like touch feedback. Stainless black steel and rods that folded when he stretched his fingers.

“Looks cool though,” Roy said.

“You’d say that if it weren’t you.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I blew up her arm once before. We’re even now.”

The cycling debt finally stops.

Really. Don’t apologize. He’ll have to deal with a lot of sorry’s and pitiful looks possibly for the rest of his life. But he was more looking forward to the children gawping at how awesome his robot hand was.

Soft, feathery sheets against his fingers were all the same. He ran his new hand over the surface until it warmed.

“Where’s Vic?”

Roy pointed to a few beds behind them. Vic was sitting upright, talking to the Fleet surgeon with a bag held to his head. He smiled and waved at Jason when their eyes met.

“And N/N?”

Roy didn’t look too worried, at least. Better than what was worst. “Can you walk?”

Jason stretched out his toes and followed his friend down the hallways the Fleet already had repaired. “Ora’s leading the Fleet for now,” Roy told him. “We’re safe here.”

“What happened to N/N?”

They had to go to the Station’s lower decks, through many doors before they got to a holding area with a glass window, and behind that window was a prison cell for a very specific prisoner.

A red sun prison; that had to be what glowed from a compacted star they contained just above the glass dome. No one else was inside, and even outside the dome, it was locked.  

But they could see what went on inside.

And she was there. N/N. She looked calm, quiet, peaceful. Sitting upright on the floor with her back against the glass. To just run to her, hold her; it would have been too easy.

“They said she gets more violent when she recovers from reprogramming.”

“She’s always violent,” Jason snorted.

“Yeah, this time she almost killed a hundred guards when they tried to contain her. The place is lined with lead, so she can’t even see or hear out of these walls.”

“She’s just confused. And afraid.”

He couldn’t look away. Not from her glowing eyes. This time, full of life, full of feeling, even with it being darkness. But distant.

“She can’t remember a thing…”

When he said that, it only cemented what he wanted so badly to slip from his mind. “She was so afraid this would happen again,” Jason longingly whispered, hoping she was listening.

Roy slapped his shoulder. “Well, you’re in luck. It won’t last. She’ll remember you.  She’ll remember everything soon.”

He was about to scowl at his friend’s delusional attempt to comfort him before Roy grabbed him by the shoulders.

“Ora told me to tell you. You know how N/N can record everything she sees?” Roy stuck his finger to Jason’s head. “Turns out that Martian dude was a secret hoarder because he just took out the recorded memories from her head so she could be his puppet, but he never got rid of any of them. It’s all stored in the archives they found days ago. Why else do you think Z’arr knew so much about her that nobody else did?”

The soul in him must have gone for a time, because something filled his body like a cold gust of a storm.

“Don’t play with me, Harper.”

“I’m not.”

They didn’t know. They didn’t know what this meant to her; how this changes everything.

How much her eyes stepped out from the shadows as each day they spent together passed.

Her past. Her identity. What she longed to know.

And to think that could be brought back? After the many dark days he sulked in a scratchy infirmary cot, pretending to be unconscious? Because the thought of N/N forgetting everything was so hard to even think about?

Jason was already reaching for her, and even that he didn’t notice. When his palm cooled against the glass, her voice was all he could hear. ‘I could never forget you.’

She said it so reassuringly, like there had never been anything more of a truth.

Just as Jason couldn’t forget her. Not even after decades worth of his antics.

They didn’t know what he and N/N made, what they went through, and promised to remember; when they were alone, the silences and bickers, the stars that watched them and the journey of a lifetime.

But.

Maybe she can have all that.

Without him.

“What if,” Jason whispered, “what if she doesn’t have to…”

What if she can remember the smiles, but not who was behind it?

There was that rage he recognized from the first time they met, the rage that came with fear. But her heart wasn’t hurt, not like how it was going to be.

‘Don’t forget me.’

‘I wish I could.’

What heartaches was she spared from? How many tubs of tears ceased now that Jason wasn’t so much as a distant memory?

She can remember everything else; the journey, the stars, their discoveries. Just not him.

Ora walked into the waiting cell. In her hands, a holographic clipboard. N/N’s anatomy was on display with letters he couldn’t recognize.

“Roy must have told you the news by now. I think we can transfer her recorded memories by today-“

“Can you leave out a few things?” Jason interjected. “Like choose the memories to give back to her?”

“Of course,” Ora said.

“Don’t let her remember me.”

He might as well have told them he wanted to jump out the window. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Jason turned to Ora. “Leave out as many recordings you have of me. That’s only four months. She wouldn’t miss it.”

“Yes, she will,” Ora exclaimed. “You don’t get to decide what she wants to remember.”

“She won’t want to remember me if she doesn’t even know.”

Roy felt no differently. “You’re being delusional, Todd.”

“I’m not.”

The sight of her alone, unknowing. There was that slight of innocence he didn’t want stripped away.

She was right all those weeks ago. It should have just been one night. It should have been less, much less than that.

“We’re finally going home, Harper,” he held his friend’s arm, “and I’m never gonna see her again.”

Roy’s face fell. He always understood.

“I just don’t want her to get hurt anymore…”

This could be salvation. From him.From how scared she was of getting hurt; how long he had to wait before she finally gave in against what she thought she wanted.

And he knew for a fact that N/N once wished Jason never should have happened.

There will never be a greater length of pain. But at least it would all be on him. This could be his turn to save her.

“Can I talk to her?” Jason said, holding back the flooding throb in his throat. “Just to say goodbye.”

She wasn’t stable. She was a machine being contained before she tears the whole place apart.

But it was an act of pity, a charity case with it a risk of his own life. Ora opened the gates to let him pass. Hesitantly, Jason stepped in with his heart tucked away, frozen stiff when almost immediately, N/N watched him move like a hawk.

He wasn’t anything more to her than a potential threat. He had to be careful.

N/N walked slowly to the glass like a defensive lioness. Even with no weapons, she looked dangerous. Her eyes were darker now that they were hooded, like she wanted the shadows on them. He never realized she did that on purpose to look even more threatening.

Jason hoped the glass between them was thicker than it looked. Through the filtered audio, her voice echoed out a speaker at the side.

“Let me out of here.”

“I’m not one of them,” Jason shakily gulped. “I’m not the staff.”

She eyed his robot hand but didn’t question it. Jason tried to ignore the coldness in her voice that stabbed him wi

Jason Todd is lost in an unknown realm light years away from Earth.

With not much hope to find his way back, his only companion is a cruel alien cyborg from the enemy fleet,  one he’ll have to get along with to survive.

A/N:  THE BIGGEST REVEAL OF ALL. WE’RE ONLY ONE CHAPTER AWAY FROM FINALLY FINISHING THIS SERIES

WORDS: 9532
WARNINGS: GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF VIOLENCE

MASTERLIST

—–

“This is for no bounty. Z’arr made a deal with Atrocitous that if we find her, he’ll give us two cyborgs for the Corps’ in return.”

The table made no fight against his raging fist and the hologram of the Red Lantern faded at the destructive impact.

“You cannot seriously believe such treason.”

His unchanging frown only solidified his dug grave. The old man would jump at the first chance of letting him go.No matter what the Lieutenant had done, it all boiled down to what she was.

The General eyed Z’arr with the same disgust the minute he stepped into the Fleet’s open gates: with enough reasonable distrust for a man no one should have let in.

“This Fleet would be nothingwithout me-“

“It would be many things,” the General hummed, “but not nothing.”

“No matter what I do-“

“Do not sound so pathetic,CaptainZ’arr.”

Another slam against the already dented table.

The General made no wince at his violence. Instead, his calm voice sounded regretful. “I threatened to reprogram the Lieutenant-“

“Then stay true to your threats else your whole crew thinks you’re weak,” Z’arr growled, “if it were any other crew member, you wouldn’t be so merciful.”

“It is not mercy, Captain. Just like it is not sentiment.”

“Not sentiment!?” he stuck his finger in front of the old man’s face. “Any saneleader without delusionwould have already put her out.”

“Do not be so cowardly as to challenge a man who cannot even stand to defend himself-“

“I’m not challenging-“

That disgust had long gone. It was beyond that now. There was no escape against that dreadful look. The General moved his chair to watch the flames of a star flare towards the ship’s wide windows.

If only the General could even walk,if he wasn’t too old to be out on the field, if he wasn’t so obsessed with cybernetic parts being put to better use, Z’arr didn’t know what he already would have done to this bastard.

Actually.

He did.

The General continued to watch him through his reflection.

“I brought you the Mother Box,” Z’arr gritted. “No other Captain has done that.”

“The Mother Box was not the mission.”

“If you wanted the Alpha Target and not the Mother Box then why won’t you grant the reprogramming-“

“Because I thought youcould be trusted to train the Lieutenant enough to take the Target without it.”

His fault.

The Lieutenant’s incapability was hisfault.

He cannot escape that.

“You are dismissed, Z’arr,” the General said. “Do not bother returning.”

Z’arr’s hand shifted into the sharp edge of a broken glass shard. He made sure his steps were as quiet as the screams would be muffled.

—–

The stories almost never ventured out of their home galaxies. But if it weren’t for the distance-or the sheer impossibility of realizing how intergalactic clouds and mists would be so different-the adventures would reach a billion lightyears away.

This time, every planet in the cosmos was calling out to them, yearning for their stories to be made.

His hands were even softer when they were against her body’s metal plating. Against her skin, leaving red burns at his finger’s trails, it should have been the same. But when Jason squeezed her shoulder, (where a steel shell covered her collarbone) the foreign touch was so gentle, it felt infinitely softer.

Everything was. Even the scruffy stubble that tickled her neck. She fell into that but didn’t close her eyes. Instead, she let the lights reflect into them like they were glass. When peace was at reach, manifested into a garden of lights so subtle yet so bright, the mind takes that rest as well. This was the peaceful rest she needed after years of unending torments.

Jealous that she was leaning her side against the Pod’s window and not him, Jason’s circling arms no longer allowed her the space for distance. Then his legs on either side of her tightened as well. As if she was a star’s gravity, he was stuck. She didn’t seem to mind.

His finger left from brushing against the window to tickling her bare collarbone. “You’re not cold?” His voice vibrated into N/N’s ear.

“No,” she breathed back, and Jason started pulling the blanket off their naked bodies. She stopped him with a cold gaze over her shoulder.

Jason nibbled on her ear, pulling just enough to make her gasp. N/N let her head fall, ridding itself of its weights on Jason’s shoulder as if he was the gravity she couldn’t pull herself out of. “Look,” she whispered again, the tip of her finger pointing out the glass they leaned against.

Falling meteors, or as Jason liked to call them: shooting stars. So many of them. Their tails flashed an unending white, painting the dark skies like a silk brush. They watched the scene as if they were children laughing on the streets or meadows. She’d seen meteors fall before. Seen them too many times.

But this was the first, if she were to count at all, that she saw stars fall and felt the pull in them so great, she wanted to fall with them.

N/N tightened her arms around Jason’s, pulled the blanket closer to trap more of his warmth. A kiss to his forearm made him exhale slowly into her ear. Perhaps then, she could finally sleep. She couldn’t bring herself to do even that when every second her eyes were closed was a second missed from seeing him.

—–

It was a question too simple to ask.

She was right about it better off as a night and nothing more, to put this all to a stop whilst it wasn’t already so late. Whenever that was, Jason thought, he couldn’t even tell. It wasn’t a sudden moment at a particular day that changed everything. It was a slow burning of a wick, one that turned into a fire so hot no wind could put it out.

He wanted to be selfish enough to ask her again, even when he already knew of what would come.

The only comfort was hoping she wanted to ask that same, that she wanted to be with him but couldn’t ask of so much. Jason wasn’t sure if he wanted her to say it.

Because he didn’t trust himself not to say yes.

Come with me, was all she had to say, and after the tempting thoughts and unrealistic dreams, he might drop everything he’s ever known just to let himself soar into this new, mesmerizing blue flame so tantalizing and beautiful. Even when N/N wouldn’t do the same for him, there was a chance he would.

So he hoped N/N wouldn’t ask him, and she was probably hoping the same.

Jason let his attention fall on her face from the stars. “You’re star-gazing,” he whispered.

She didn’t have an answer to that except for a subtle kiss to his fingers; the tips of them so they’d get a glimpse of her tongue. Slowly, Jason took her hand and held it to his cheek, which she caressed as soft as she would a feather.

Come with me.

Three words that could change so much. It was terrifying to even think about.

But that wasn’t to be.

“Promise me one thing,” he said instead. A gentle hum from her lips escaped to his arm’s flesh. His hand trailed down her chest, her breast, her stomach to calm her further. “Don’t forget about me.”

N/N stopped with her gentle touches around his skin. Turning, as if she were afraid, their eyes met and they were silent.

Breathlessly, Jason leaned in to close the distance between their lips. Just softly, barely a kiss, but it was something to fill in that painful silence.

She could have just said yes,gave him that security to cushion the fall.

But what N/N said instead was infinitely more painful.

“I wish I could…”

Maybe it should have just been one night, even less if only they knew when to stop.

They should have saved themselves before the impact was too much of a crater.

The frustrations out of her broken voice were none he could console with more breathless kisses. But he could distract her from them. At least, for the moments that passed, that was exactly what they’d done.

Distracting themselves from the inevitable, only to make the inevitable more terrifying.

Jason kissed the silence away, all throughout the ever-darkening days.

—–

“It’s safe. Come over when you can.”

The inevitable had come.

The end. The blissful, triumphant end they’ve waited too long for.

N/N chose to drive the ship. It was the only way she could do this without any plaguing doubts to stop her. At the passenger seat was Roy. Behind him Jason hid himself in the cockpit’s corners. He hadn’t said a word since Ora sent the signal.

They came to the coveted ship that could take them thousands of lightyears at the time it takes them to blink. Finally, Jason will get home. And she’ll be rid of the guilt that dogged her each time she delayed it.

It was a steel magnificence. The ship was more of a station; the size of a dwarf planet if the flat-planet-believers that lived in it were the smart ones. It extended for miles, enough for cars and smaller ships to drive over it just to get to each end. At one was the cockpit, the control room for maneuvering the whole vessel, and the rest was a flat plane where the smaller ships landed. Plasma walls and plasma ceilings housed over its surface, like a bubble of oxygen that separated it from the empty vacuums.

“It looks like an aircraft carrier,” Roy said, marveling over the ship’s grandeur. A ship the size of their own lowered itself on the station’s hangar. The Fleet’s Head Station was, indeed, comparable to a large boat, and it floated like one despite there being no solid ground or ocean to hold it up. From the tip of its sharp nose, it extended to its backside where the powerful thrusters the size of small houses were stationed, with enough fuel power to drive that ship lightyears in a second.

Perhaps that would be the last ‘wow’out of either of them. And for a first, it wasn’t from Jason.

Jason, instead, left the cockpit to pick up his things at the cargo. When they hovered close enough to the terminals, the traffic enforcers called for them to land. They paved way for the Dragonfly, making its final descent onto the station’s surface before its overdue retirement at the closest junkyard. When it landed, the air escaping its joints like an old man coughing out the phlegm from his throat, N/N held its wheel tight to thank it for its last ride.

She left the room and caught Jason holding his helmet.

“We’re here,” she told him. Roy was nearby with his quiver, catching N/N’s eye and pretending not to notice the tension.

N/N held his helmet over Jason’s hands when she felt his tight grip. The anger was no longer there. It was something else. It wasn’t a sudden loss, or something that slapped him without warning. He had days to prepare for this; still he acted as if it wasn’t.

“I guess this is goodbye.”

Jason’s way of cushioning the pain-when for the last days they did none but worsen it-was to stretch out his hand for her to shake. That, and a forced indifference from his blank face: one she could smell the lies out of.

“It doesn’t have to be,” she gently said to him, hoping it brought comfort. “I’ll be there to drop you off on Earth.”

“And you think that’s a good idea?”

No. None of this was.

“It’s too late for that.”

N/N cold breath fogged the helmet’s surface, and she wiped it off with her thumb. Jason held it tighter, closed the distance between them. “How long does it take to get there?”

He dug his nails into her knuckles. “Could be just a day of warp drive. It’s two million lightyears away.”

When Jason’s eyes fell so low the blue in them was shadowed over, N/N soothed his cheek and he held it tighter so she couldn’t let go too soon.

And he held it still, even as he shook off the frown and looked over at the ceiling, the exhaust pipes on the walls, the jammed doors, the table with a chessboard, and the open Transport Pod with discarded blankets on the floor.

“I’m gonna miss this metal shitbag,” Jason sighed at the Dragonfly, placing a kiss on N/N’s fingers.

Then on her lips, where she felt the softest. His kisses trailed on her cheeks, her eyelids, and so delicately did his lips leave its unseen marks. N/N held his waist so he couldn’t step away just yet, and he didn’t. Even as the Dragonfly’s doors finally dilated open, welcoming them into the beginning of the end, Jason couldn’t stop kissing her, like every kiss was his last. It was no longer silent. They were no longer alone.

But they could have drifted off into the clouds and stars. When he pulled away, hesitant and afraid that it wouldn’t happen again, N/N pressed her forehead just above his nose just to make that warmth last.

And it will last. Forever.

Before long it was time to go. This is what they’ve worked tirelessly for. This was the finish line. They won.

——

The cyborgs that helped with the landing gear watched the two earthlings descend from the ramp. A few followed close by with guns to their chests, standing especially close to Jason. It completely passed him how he had the balls to walk into that place when the last time they saw him, Jason set a whole ship on fire. None of them hid their dirty looks as they walked down the hangar. He didn’t mind them, at least. No one’s stuck their foot in his mouth just yet.

They reached the dilating doors into the ship’s waiting area. The terminal beamed with life, where winged androids hovered over their heads the same as a hummingbird, weapons of the kind of technology he couldn’t dream about, and ships that flew between balconies compact enough to be a marvel.

Further in, there was a training hall. Hundreds of cyborgs, divided into their kinds, stood in countless rows unmoving as if they were inanimate. They held their guns to their chests and moved quickly to their commander’s orders in front.

Another room had their intelligence working on a cyborg’s missing limb, rewiring a new arm onto his shoulder without him feeling bothered at all by the lasers and sharp blades.

They passed by the food room, where cyborgs looking familiar enough to be earthlings couldn’t ignore Jason just as he couldn’t them. They watched him and waved. One of them smiled at him.

He once expected the worst out of these people with the impression that they were the enemy against the League, that these guys were nothing more than people kidnapped from their homes, rewired until their senses left their bodies enough to be controlled, and thrown out into the field as quickly as they were brought in.

How these people must have reacted when they heard Z’arr was finally gone, that this was an end of an age of torture, the beginning of a revolt, painted them in a new light. These were people N/N was staying for, the reason why she wouldn’t be with him.

But they looked fine. They looked capable enough. They didn’t need N/N like she said they would.

When they reached the elevator, his knuckles brushed against N/N’s again hoping that it would bring him back wishing to fly so high. She welcomed it with a light tickle against his thumb, but it did nothing to warm his guilt that he should be feeling ecstatic but didn’t, that he was selfish enough to even ask.

When the people vacated the elevator, leaving just them, Jason pulled N/N’s hand to stop her.

“Come to Earth with me.”

The frustrated huff out of her hurt, of course, but he couldn’t miss the double take on his eyes that must have meant more than she let on.

“Jason, not now.”

“Please.”

“Lieutenant M-812.”

A mistake nonetheless. N/N shrugged off his hand and scowled at him low enough that he couldn’t hear. There was no pulling her back, or asking her when they were surrounded by a barrage of guards the minute they walked out of the elevators. The voice that called out to them came from the General, sitting at the center of the control room where a long table was at the middle. Beyond it were the glass walls that overlooked the stars, and the control panels before it looking infinitely more complicated than the ones at the Dragonfly.

The General looked the same as the man he saw at the hologram a few months back. He could not walk, it seemed, even with his legs replaced with steel. His hands were of the same, gripping the arm rests tightly, yet unmoving even with his friendly face welcoming them into the room. That face, now that he could see clearer, belonged to a specie at least relatively close to an earthling. He had thin, white hair on different places over his head; wrinkled skin that folded with his smile. N/N bowed to him, and Jason and Roy awkwardly followed her lead, but the General just waved them away.

“You look well, Lieutenant,” he said kindly. He sounded just like any other old man he’d met when they weren’t Ra’s al Ghul.

Beside him were Aya and Ora, standing guard with their backs upright and smiling at N/N, but they didn’t speak.

“I don’t know how to thank you, General.”

He tried to wave that off again, but N/N didn’t stop.

“I thought you’d stay true to your promise. It means everything that you gave me a second chance.”

“I did not anticipate Z’arr to be such a fool, or that you would be the one to let me know.”

“I think everyone would have anticipated Z’arr to be a fool.”

No one laughed. Not even Ora and Aya. The General, instead, sneered at her with a smile too bright to be welcoming.

The General eyed the two earthlings. Two guards held them by the elbow.

“You don’t have to worry about them General,” N/N said. “They’re with me.”

“They are earthlings.”

“They helped me get here.”

“You heard the lady,” Roy insisted, but as he pulled on his arm he instead hissed when the guard twisted it over his back.

“We can never be too certain,” the General hummed, drumming his fingers over the arm rest. “They are earthlings after all.”

N/N backed away when the General sat up, calling for the guards to send them both to the prison cells.

“General-“

“You, too, Lieutenant. Perhaps it would be best if we keep you contained. Just for now. We don’t know what corrupted your wiring.” The General waved for more guards to hold her. “Lieutenant J-910 told me of an encounter with a witch-“

“I’m fine,” N/N shook off the guards. “She fixed me.”

Then the General stood up from his seat.

Apparently, he wasn’t supposed to.

It should have just been from being with her for too long, in an enclosed space with no one else to come in contact with. But if it were possible, it was her stiffened limbs fueling itself with a rageful outburst. It was visible. It was a marvel; like she was the sun and her anger was the flares that circled her.

Staring wide eyed at the General like she wanted to drive every sharp nail down his wrinkled skin, N/N jumped for the General’s torso, only to be deflected by an army of guards throwing her against the wall.

It dented behind her, and she should have been able to pick herself up with no damage.

But almost every gun in the room was pointed at N/N. One was stuck right against her head. Two were held against Jason’s back; another pair at Roy’s.

Fading in out of thin air were two White Martians distorting from cyborg guards into their horrendous true forms, holding guns against Ora and Aya’s backs the whole time.

And the General, as any of them should have smelled, was no old man.

It was terrifying to witness: how Martians could just shift from humans, people you knew, into who they truly were. And what made it so chilling, or one of them at least, was how they managed to disguise even their voice, their little eye shifts, their hand movements, and their breathing.

Z’arr shed off the General’s skin like a snake, floating a ghostly hover towards N/N who couldn’t twitch if she didn’t want her brains blown out in a second.

Faced with the bitter descent of failure, N/N eyed Z’arr like she never wanted to pull someone’s guts out of his mouth more. Reflected onto her eyes were the years of torture, manipulation, literal control like she was so senseless.

But as Z’arr leaned forward, N/N grabbed the gun to her head, felt the blast deflect her skin like it was a strong as the steel on her shoulder. As every blaster in the room focused fire on her, none of which was strong enough to pierce her, she threw two guards over her shoulders to their direction to free Jason and Roy from the guards’ hold.

—–

The room filled up with smoke awfully quickly. Ora. She set one of the guards on fire. The blasters were all over the place. This was nothing the earthlings could handle. They’d die in a minute.

N/N fought through the smoke, grabbed one cyborg’s arm and twisted it over to his back until it detached. She used that as a weapon, slamming through anything that came her way until she got to Jason and Roy. Ora and Aya freed themselves as well. “Get out of here!” they cried to her. And though she couldn’t see, the fire from her hands paved way for them to escape.

Z’arr’s shrieks were horrific to witness as he shielded himself from the fire, with the White Martians that held them obliterated into ash. But before Ora could turn her fire to the Captain, she was held down by more than one strike to the head.

When they got to the elevators, hurriedly shutting the door with her brute strength, N/N slammed the controls until the whole capsule fell many stories below. Ultimately, it hit the ground, almost destroying the whole cell.

“Are you okay?” she coughed, but she couldn’t wait to make sure. N/N tossed them guns and hope for the best, tearing through the elevator’s doors and slamming it with her foot when it wouldn’t budge. At the hangar, thankfully, they arrived first, but it wasn’t until they got out into the open terminals when the guards turned up. The cockpit was still on fire when they ran for the Dragonfly once more. The blasters started firing, but no longer were they aiming for N/N.

They aimed at the earthlings, knowing they had no steel skin to shield them.

So she did that herself. Running in front of their bodies, N/N blocked every blast coming their way like it didn’t at least prick her. They were painful still, even when it wasn’t enough to be lethal. They bounced off her flesh like they were rubber and she had to hold out her hand just so it wouldn’t hit her face.

Roy was nimbler, more accurate with his shots. An arrow hit one of the generators and it was no accident that it blew up just seconds after it hit. It blew off a hoard of guards, but some who’d been standing still turned their attention to them. Every single one of them had weapons to their hips.

Thankfully, they reached the ship, storming into the Dragonfly that awaited them for one last flight. She just hoped this was another they could run from.

But as they got to the cockpit, bringing it to life that painfully took its sweet time settling in, N/N pulled on the thrusters to bring the vessel levitating into the air while Jason and Roy fought for the passenger seat.

She fired at the fighter ships they launched as they arrived at the hangar. The cyborgs against them scowled when their blasts, the glowing green of the Green Lantern Battery’s fuel, shot through the plasma walls and onto a ship coming their way.

Hooks started flying at them. The cyborgs that could fly thrusted themselves onto the Dragonfly like moths, and the hooks that stuck to them already broke parts of its shell. It almost threw them off their seats when the ropes tightened, and N/N fired at anything the ship could aim at.

“Come on,” she grunted, pulling on the throttle far beyond what the ship could have handled. It shouldn’t have held up at all, especially when she pulled further until the thrusters’ flares burned everything that stood behind them. But the hooks could only grab onto the thin crust over the Dragonfly’s body, and when the shell’s poor life finally gave out, ridding the metal plates from its insides, the hooks tore the ship’s skin apart and they could once again fly away.

Fighter jets were coming, blocking every pathway so they couldn’t go on warp drive without obliterating their ship. Jason and Roy handled the blasters, sharing the only passenger seat with their asses on the edges. “Hold on tight!” N/N cried, and the ship whirled in a circle over two others, just narrowly giving them a concussion on each side of their skulls.

Five ships were swarming them, with the ones in front swerving away at their dangerous descents and sudden drifts. When one was coming their way, facing them head on without a plan on a last-minute dodge, N/N turned the wheel until the Dragonfly spun in loops. Jason and Roy, two very large men, dented almost every space in the cockpit with them flying like two ragdolls.

“You alright there?” she yelled. She saw Roy give her a shaky thumbs up from the floor.

Another two ships coming. There was no way they could go on warp drive with them right in front of their noses. She fired like the Dragonfly could never run out of ammo, and the green blasts were enough to throw off the ships from their course, but another pair would just come to take their place.

One. A blast reached one of them too slow to move out of the way. It exploded at the impact and N/N flew the ship over its debris. More were coming, and Jason and Roy helped with the targets. Roy was especially useful at that, destroying three ships in the same minute just before they would have deliberately crashed themselves into their noses.

“These guys on suicide missions now?” Jason scowled.

“Bet Z’arr has them doing that against their will.”

And it was certain. They didn’t even have to be conscious for any of that.

They soared like a fearless hawk with outstretched wings and a hum that spoke even into space. As it roamed past the station’s surfaces, dodging them too narrowly to be safe, every move, every second threw them at the direction of death.

The Dragonfly once again was spinning, like a whirlpool lost in the deep, unknowing ocean. It had no straight path to follow nor could it possibly follow one that existed. Until their heads had lost all sense of what was upright, and their stomachs forcibly mutilated by the constantly rotating view in front of their windows, Jason and Roy managed to strap one single seatbelt over their large bodies and concentrated fire at the incoming jets.

“You think we can go on warp now?” Jason blasted a ship, swerving away just before its wing would have crashed into the window.

“We can try.”

The fuel built up like it wanted their anticipating stomachs to shake. There was that hard ringing their ears couldn’t ignore no matter how much it hurt; a sharp, shrill cry like it came from a human. When the ships that came after then were kept in control, the blank space was there for them to tear its fabric with their noses. Never has silence been so appealing to hear.

With slow, building exhale, N/N slowly pulled on the throttle until it reached its limit. It picked up the speed, the ship realizing where it could throw itself into. It didn’t matter how far they were going or where they were headed. All there could be was that open window.

Slowly, the warp drive activated, and it never was so slow to move.

Except now, it actually was too slow.

Blasts exploded on the starboard side, coming from an incoming fighter jet facing them head on. When it crashed onto the Dragonfly’s thin shell, the warp drive distorted, destroying the many parts of its engine she didn’t have time to wish weren’t so vital. Already, before any of them could scream, the Dragonfly was blown off into the crowded debris, spinning and churning much like their chests and horrified screams.

And it wouldn’t stop, the life of the vessel slipping slowly like water leaking out of a tub. The parts of it that blew up further threw them off at speeds faster than they could have flown into. No matter how much they pushed on the wheel, the ship would not stop. Everything was as distorted as a screen that had fallen into static, dull and gray yet so loud your ears bled at the stinging ring. And the stars looked terrifying when they were flying over their heads leaving a trail at its feet, like the meteors that had fallen.

N/N grabbed onto the wheel, the seatbelt barely keeping her alive. Beside her, Jason and Roy’s belts had broken. Jason could only grab onto the seat with the tips of his fingers, and Roy had to shield his head from slamming into the ceiling.

She could wish a star with a gravity powerful enough would suck them into its core. That way, their deaths wouldn’t be so slow. They’d die instantly and they wouldn’t have the time to dwell on it.

But it stopped. The whole ship stopped so abruptly, the whiplash was almost enough to kill them.

Was she to celebrate? Was she to thank the stars that saved them? Was this even better than death?

Whatever stopped them was no ship.

It was a lone being, with hands strong enough to grab onto the Dragonfly by the nose and completely stop its spinning descent.

It had eyes, bright as any red star, and it glowed over the cold, skinless skull for a head.

——

He knew these androids weren’t right. Even with them already so lifeless, so cold, working under the controls of a cosmic supervillain, Jason knew at the moment one held him by the neck, wanting him to suffer before a slow death was something no android can be programmed to do- unless they could think for themselves.

Brainiac’s minions, supposed robots and nothing more, had a mind somehow: minds that could do evil and wanted pain.

Even more came to its aid. The ship could no longer move, laying still like a sitting duck. Two. Three. Six of them stuck their hands to stop the Dragonfly from drifting away, if it even had the strength left to twitch. They bore the same face, the same expressionless skulls that taunted them with inaudible jabs. Every side of the ship, even from the back, they stuck their hands to its shell until it dented under their palms.

Then, from under their feet, the thrusters that powered their flight activated. All the androids started pushingat the ship’s shell. The floor quacked, and the walls started to distort. Further. Further.They pushed until the walls tightened and the Dragonfly’s blasters broke against their indestructible push.

Like their arms were bullets, the androids willed on until the windows started to break. That, they could never live through.

Jason only felt sorry for Roy that he didn’t have a chance living through this, that he couldn’t do better to save him like he promised.

N/N, on the other hand, he could no longer underestimate. When this ship implodes, she could escape, break these android’s necks and use their parts to escape like he knew her to do. She could hijack the next ship that came their way. She had every chance to live through this.

Of course, the galaxy couldn’t grant him that. She couldn’t give him that.

When the cracks on the windows worsened, N/N grabbed him by the shoulders.

“Get this ship to work and fly out of here,” she coughed, squeezing him like he wasn’t delicate. “Don’t wait for me.”

“N/N!”

Of course, she didn’t wait. They’ve said their goodbyes. There was no need for more.

When N/N went up into the hatch she climbed onto all those months ago, the ship quaked when her feet pushed her into space.

She started with the android in front of the window, tearing its legs with her bare hands and throwing it to join the rest of the flying debris. She didn’t wait for it to react, only making sure that its grip on the ship was gone. When it came for her, blasting at her direction with an outstretched palm, N/N swerved over the airless void and aimed that very arm at another android.

Singlehandedly, she tore limbs off their joints, heads off their shoulders, mouths off their jaws. Only by the lack of gravity did she almost drift herself away from being hit by a blast, which landed right onto her torso before bouncing back at the android that fired it.

Jason screamed at himself for not being out there to help her, but all he could do, and worse, fail at, was trying desperately to start the ship back up. Wherever the blasts hit, and from how fast the ship spun until its parts flew off, it couldn’t even activate its display. Jason thrashed, pulled on the throttle, turned on every button N/N told him to never touch. Roy did the same, but reached out to calm Jason when his rage became too overpowering. While N/N was being beat up right in front of their eyes, he couldn’t even do as told.

“Jason, no!”

Jason ran from the cockpit, locking the broken door behind him so Roy couldn’t follow. The cargo hold was a mess, and the Transport Pod caved in and destroyed. He climbed over the bent tables and the rubble that covered most of the floor. He found the hatch eventually, having to duck before any of the stray wires could kill him. The ship shook again, with N/N’s painful cries doing nothing for comfort. He reached the hatch, finally, and climbed down to where the fuel cells were at.

Going into the defective engine room would have been suicide, and there would have been nothing he could have done to fix any of it. But there was nothing else to do. The ships would come to take them, and N/N would still die. There was nothing better to hope.

Jason jumped into the rubble, only narrowing missing a pool of electrocuted liquid he never would have survived in. He thought it was sweat pouring over his forehead, until it reached his lips and he tasted the bitter iron of his blood. It fell over his eyes, his vision distorting from this already unmanageable blur from the spinning ship into this dark, unseeable black.

He found the fuel cells and threw the hatch over his back as his hands bled from prying the metal.

And it took that long for him to whisper to everyone he’d ever known, all the people waiting for him at home, to N/N giving up her life for him once again, to Roy who never saw this coming. He pleaded that they forgive him, that this failure was something they could forget.

The Lantern Power Battery was gone, thrown off from the cell’s hold into the rubble below the floor. Everything was destroyed, beyond what Jason could sacrifice himself to fix. The cell that housed the fuel had been obliterated into plates that stuck in sharp ends, that if he’d fallen in, the shards could cut his face like any blade or broken glass.

He cried, even without any tears. He mourned his own death.

Then the ship trembled again. This time, it was too hard for even N/N to cause with just her feet.

Then the ship was moving. Flying?

No.

It was being pulled.

The hooks had reeled them back in.

More of them at the starboard side, where the blast hit the hardest. With it grabbing hold of its rods and internal parts, there was no longer any shell for the ship to shed and escape from. He couldn’t see N/N, if she were alive at all, but the ship was moving fast and Jason was being pulled to the ceiling.

He grabbed onto the sharp edges, gritting at how his life was being held by the blood that dripped from his palms.

There were voices. Roy’s. He was screaming for Jason to get out.

But the ship moved fast enough that they couldn’t fight against the air if they didn’t want it to retaliate and possibly throw them into the nearest sharp end. The hatch above the engine room was thrown out, and Roy stuck his head in, dangerously missing a stray piece of metal that flew to his eyes, and he stretched out his hand for Jason to take.

He was too far. He had to risk sticking to the ceiling if he were to let go.

The ship quaked again. It shook off a piece of the metal flooring with wrought iron bars flying to his head, and it forced him to let go of the blade he held onto. But his screams wouldn’t last when he was thrown directly into the wall, the edge of bent rod slamming against his back.

“Jason, come on!”

Stretching out his arm, Jason inched himself against the wall like it was a floor to crawl over. Closer. Closer.He touched Roy’s fingers and their hands smacked painfully against each other’s palms. Roy pulled him like his weight wasn’t more than his own.

But the Dragonfly faced its end, like it played in front of its eyes to further worsen its pain at the impact, when from out the window the incoming Fleet’s Station neared from the many hooks that pulled the Dragonfly to its cargo hold. They couldn’t possibly survive that crash. The station grew closer, bigger, until Jason could see the cyborgs’ faces awaiting their descent.

Above them, the ceiling caved in and the freezing air within the ship were torn, pulled by the massive vacuum outside of it. Roy screamed as he couldn’t pull him over the hatch.

The winds only stopped when the ship finally crossed the plasma ceiling’s threshold. Seconds before it hit the ground, Roy shot an arrow at the skylight until it hit one of the ship’s standing pillars. He held onto it, slipped when he tried grabbing Jason’s arm.

But before the Dragonfly lost its life and crashed onto the cold, unforgiving metal grounds, Roy shot another arrow at Jason’s shoulder. It held him up by the rope, suspended by nothing more but his friend’s hold just seconds before he could have died along with the ship. He could no longer even feel the pain of the arrow on his shoulder. It was numb. It wasn’t even there. Below him, the Dragonfly exploded as it hit ground, and he was only a few feet away from it.

Ultimately, the cyborgs that surrounded them pulled both Roy and Jason off from the air and onto their knees. Dozens of blasters were aimed at their heads. Unnecessarily so, since both were worn out beyond lifting a finger.

Z’arr was there to welcome them back, blank red eyes eyeing them both like pests.

It was when an android’s head was thrown at the hangar’s barren center when everything silenced, even the guards shouting into their ears. More broken limbs were shown until the cause for the brutality finally flew into the chaotic ruins.

N/N dented the floor when she crashed herself onto the hangar. Landing on her two feet, she looked unscathed. In her hand was an android’s crushed skull, dramatically thrown onto the floor in front of Z’arr.

No one spoke. No one dared to scream an order.

Every cyborg watched N/N like an ghost. Every gun was on her, still. But it was like they knew no blast could have an effect.

Her eyes were as dark as he remembered them to be. When he called her a mindless killing machine, certain that she was nothing more with how anyone could witness the face of death at the mere glimpse of her eyes. That time, he was right again. She wasa killing machine.

She did so much as look at anyone’s direction and they backed away.

Everyone was afraid of her.

Including Z’arr.

The Dragonfly that caught on fire beside her did nothing to ease that fear. Brainiac’s androids, and Z’arr’s, were ready to fire as if it would have any effect.

But that silence, as chilling as it was to drift into the emptiness of space, was enough to hold her down.

“Let them go,” she said, “and I’ll surrend-.”

The smile out of the cruel Martian was more terrifying than any black hole.

Her wager was no use. Z’arr brought out a scepter as tall as his height, and he aimed the glowing tip at N/N. Her strong defenses, her fists balled to the weights of steel, immediately faltered at the light ray’s contact with her skin.

She fell to the floor unconscious before everything blacked out.

—–

She was thrown into the prison cell for beasts: the monsters of the galaxies that most often had no sense of thought or humanity. In their eyes struck by the coldest fear, they might as well have leveled her with an animal running purely out of instinct.

Which meant she belonged there.

She would have put her in that cell. No other would have been more appropriate.

No windows. No glass to look out on the outside. No cushioned walls or cots. No control panel she could break. Sound proof. Lined with ten different kinds of metal no x-ray vision could see through. Freezing temperatures.

That, and the power of Z’arr’s new scepter stuck to the wall disabling almost every ounce of strength she had in her bones andsteel rods. Breathing was at an expense of losing a part of her lungs, and she was lucky if she could lift herself from the floor at all.

After hours of crawling, tears mixed with the ash and debris stuck to her face, she fought through the sweat in her eyes and sat against the wall.

True, unforgiving failure.

The air was thin. Cold. Her eyes weighed tons.

And it was dark. Dim, at least. Only one bulb was above her head, but the thick blanket of darkness did none to warm her and instead, covered the air with solid smoke she couldn’t see out of.

There were voices, too. But she couldn’t recognize any of them. Some whispered. Some screamed. Picking them out wouldn’t be any use. What they said didn’t matter.

That sad, little harp-the very same that played each time the stars came into view-blared through the silence as well.

Everything was too quiet. Too deafening.

Everything pointed to this.

She couldn’t even blame the darkness on failure, convincing her demons that it was her fault, her incapability, that let the chances of a new life slip from her hold. She couldn’t tell herself that it was in her hold at all, even when it was in front of her, whispering its thanks and congratulations. She couldn’t tear herself apart for falling for a ruse she had grown too soft to neglect.

She couldn’t even blame him,no matter how much that eased the case. She couldn’t tell herself that if only hedidn’t happen, none of this would.

Because Z’arr had everything planned out the minute she was pushed into the portal. Hell, maybe that was part of the plan, too. Nothing was ever to her saying. There was no out of this.

Unforgiving failure?

More like naïve delusion.

Her eyes fell to close.

If she were lucky, they’d just kill her.

But not even that was probable.

Her last words, at least, should mean something. To someone that meant somethingto her.

A trembling finger tapped on her cracked wrist display, then on the button to her ear. The comms she installed for all the plundering and sneaking should still work, even with all the walls between them. It was a long shot. They might have thrown out his helmet if they hadn’t already killed him.

Jason’s voice echoed as if he was there with her, whispering into her ear, holding her hand. He was weak. The poor thing was shaking. And his heartbeat. Fuck, she can’t even hear it. Was he fed? Did they hurt him? How long has it been?

It conjured the strength to speak. “Jason?”

“Thank God, you’re alive.” He struggled to even breath, and with the grunts off his teeth, he must have been lying on the floor for too long to hurt just to sit.

Her cheeks had been rid of ash. The tears did their job wiping them off. The floor, which she couldn’t even see, was covered in splatters of her tears brown with dirt. N/N threw her head against the wall, facing the ceiling, so at least the tears couldn’t fall.

“Did they hurt you?” he asked. “What the hell was that stickhe was holding?”

“I’ll be fine,” she lied, and no doubt he could tell, “Z’arr uses that scepter all the time to weaken me.”

“Was that magic? Like the witch-“

“It doesn’t matter.”

No use tilting her head so the tears wouldn’t fall. It ended up just flooding her eye sockets.

“What about you? Did they hurt you?”

“I’ve been through worse,” he forced a laugh, and she was ready for another joke about how he died.

“Where’s Roy?”

“At the cell across me. I can see him right now. He’s conscious.”

There was no need for them to die.

Unless, of course, death would come to be preferrable.

There could only be one reason why they were spared.

Jason already passed the tests, ones she’dconducted all those months ago. A couple recruits would be a start to replace all the damage she’d done.

The tears she could no longer grasp, the finality of the crumbling world beneath her, the very consequence of what she chose to accept, was that it was him, him,who would suffer under her hand.

“I’m sorry…”

“Don’t. Please.”

He will lose his life because of her, no matter how many times she saved it.

“You called me,” Jason’s voice broke, “you have a plan. Tell me how we’re getting out of this.”

“I don’t.”

This was no longer the coldness that masked the pain. The pain had seeped through.

“We can’t get out of this.”

“You always have a plan,” Jason said, the frustrations of the pent-up rage willing through.

“Not this time.”

“N/N-“

“Please stop.”

“You lose, but you never accept defeat.”

She could no longer hear his heartbeat.

Jason was alive at a point where death was preferrable, where the only relief out of the coming consequence was how he no longer had to live through the inevitable horrors to come.

She could hear his weeps instead. N/N never saw him cry. Perhaps it was better that she didn’t.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you this time.”

He would have grabbed her, squeezed her shoulders to look straight into her eyes, pick her words apart in front of her. Only then, she had to settle for the ghost of his fingers.

“You already saved me,” he said.

She caught her trembling mouth. “I couldn’t get you home.”

“N/N…”

The harp was constant. A prolonged note that just wouldn’t stop stood in place of the distance between his words.

“You saved me enough. I’m so thankful I had my time with you.”

As she closed her eyes, the harp grew more pleasant to hear.

There was a light beneath her eyelids. She focused on that.

“And if you asked me to stay with you,” Jason whispered, “because you needed me… I think I would have said yes.”

She could never ask him of that.

“You’re insane.”

She could die with visions of peace, at least. Hearing him speak, holding his hand in her dreams, watching that would make death less of a waste.

“What would life have been like if I went to Earth with you?”

It might have been cruel, but she heard him laugh.

“I honestly have no idea,” she heard him wipe his nose from dripping snot. That vision made her laugh. “You’re unpredictable like that, Tiger.”

The last of a smile.

It faded just as quickly.

“I think I hear someone outside,” Jason said, “they just passed.”

But it was there. It existed. Moments before death, at least there was momentary peace.

Her voice, her words- how it tore her apart just hearing herself. And that peace was gone.

“I’m so glad I met you,” she cried between caught breaths.

There were murmurs from Jason insisting lies and more delusions, but no longer did she want to be a victim of that.

This was happening. There was no fighting this.

“I could never forget you…”

“N/N-”

“No matter what happens, remember that.“

“N/N!”

One. Two. Three bulbs flashing against her face.

She had no will to resist. This was the inevitable. This was what she could never escape from.

A dozen guards took her out of the chambers. In Z’arr’s hand: his scepter. She winced when he brought it closer, like a flame hovering over a feathered wing. Even the blur was too much to fight against.

The room that ends her. Walls with enough armor to withstand bombs, chains and restraints no beast could gnaw itself out of, floor cushioned so not even the plates could be used as a weapon, and of course, the tube with a claw at its end, meant to stick itself into her skull and make her as senseless as an object.

“Was this taken from a junkyard?” Z’arr snarled at the sight of her replacement arm: the one Jason had gifted her. “Get this out of my sight.”

The tore that limb apart, fixed a new, stronger one like a pipe to an exhaust.

Z’arr hummed when his knife couldn’t draw blood from her flesh.

“You’re a bit stronger than you’re supposed to be,” he shrugged.

The tip of his scepter, however, glaring its blinding light, dug through her skin like it was fabric.

Couldn’t count the seconds any longer.

The claw stuck itself to the back of her head. Already, she could feel the memories, the parts of her, slip away.

“Brainiac’s androids,” she groaned, “those were ourmen…”

Z’arr tightened the claw until she felt it sink into her brain.

“You caught on-“

“You’re working with him… with Brainiac.”

“Not quite yet.”

The restraints on her wrists pulled until the joints were close to collapsing.

Life shouldn’t have to be so slow to slip away.

“You’repathetic,Z’arr.”

Her screams easily replaced that chuckle when he pushed the sharp ends further into her skull.

“You want this to be more painful?” Z’arr pulled on the claw’s tube and forced her recorded visions into a hologram in front of her face. “Grown attached to the earthling, haven’t you, Lieutenant?”

This ends.

All of it.

All of her.

Once again.

—–

Taking the Red Hood helmet off, he cursed at it as if it was at fault.

It was the voices again. The same that passed by him.

Instinctively, he looked at Roy the moment he heard someone open his cell. Three guards. Didn’t look like they wanted to waste time. They hauled him out of the cell like a sack and Roy’s muffled screams of his name soon faded the farther he was taken.

He couldn’t even ask where. He didn’t have any reason to resist. Taking him to his death was improbable. They wouldn’t do so much for a measly execution.

But to make him watchone unfold…

He should have died.

N/N should have let him die in the bitter emptiness, frozen in space.

Jason was taken to a viewing room for a special chamber. On his knees, a guard grabbed him by the scalp so he couldn’t even look away.

N/N.N/N.

Locked like a dog with a tube to her skull, N/N was forced to her knees, arms outstretched for the thick tube capsules to restrain her arms. The light behind her was so bright, her body was but a shadow.

“You pissed me off too many times. I’ll enjoy my last stretch of torture before you’re too senseless to feel pain,” Z’arr howled. It was him. Jasonwas his last stretch of torture.

And she laid eyes on him for every last second she still could.

It’s okay, he whispered, hoping he could only bring her peace.

Z’arr’s scepter drew another scar over her forehead. Even through the glass, even with it muffled, her shrieks were most horrifying thing to witness. His scepter-the stonestuck to its heart-reeked the same green of a glittering emerald. It would hav-

No.

That can’t be it.

Z’arr left the chambers, and N/N was left lifeless hanging by her arms.

When the Martian joined him behind the safety of the glass, he pulled on a heavy throttle against the wall. The further it went down, the brighter the light source blinded them with harsh rays of light the same as the sun.

“What the hell have you done to her?”

Perhaps it would have been better if he hadn’t asked.

Perhaps he didn’t even need to.

Z’arr watched N/N lay eerily still, to be mistaken for death if he hadn’t known better.

“Nothing.”

What made it worse was how his voice sounded devoid of lies. Z’arr spoke as if he were to be respected; calm, reserved, unphased. Even when Jason wouldn’t dream of believing anything that came out of his mouth, everything else told him otherwise.

“I merely harness what she already had,” Z’arr said. “She could not be trusted to have all that strength to herself. It needed to be contained.”

It was only after when there never was any need for Z’arr to say it.

Ora’s voice echoed: ‘It’s to enhance what we are while still keeping the same biology, even when we don’t need it.’

Who was N/N?

Whatwas she?

When the red sun of the desert planet weakened her so much, the winds made her shiver and a blast was enough to tear off her arm.

When the yellow stars granted her enough strength to lift Lantern creations and ships, survive thousand-feet falls, heal at an instant, and leap as if gravity was a myth.

When a witch’s magic was a weakness enough to almost kill her.

When Ora’s fire, the same flares from bright yellow suns, restored her life and granted her the speed of winds and the flesh of indestructible steel.

When, after that, no bullet could pierce her skin.

When she could see through walls.

When her breath was sometimes so cold.

When she could hear Jason’sheartbeat.

When she was flyingand didn’t know it.

Whenallof her was as strong as steel.

“We saw what she could do for the Fleet,” Z’arr laid a hand on his shoulder. “The General wanted more of her. The Alpha Target. TheMan of Steel.”

Z’arr gave his scepter to a guard for keeping, its glowing Kryptonite for a stone heart flashing to blind him further. The flares of the yellow sun were no longer as beautiful as they were petrifying, touching her skin and fueling her with the kind of power to fear.

N/N’s once so beautiful eyes turned a blank, horrifying glare of red as they shot open, staring at the emptiness before her.

“Tell me, earthling. Did you really think you were the only ones in the galaxy with a Kryptonian?”

—–

REPROGRAMMING: SUCCESSFUL

UNIT M-812 ONLINE

HARNESSING YELLOW SUN ENERGY.

ALL VITALS TO FULL CAPACITY.

ALL ABILITIES ACTIVATED.

DETECTING POSSIBLE THREATS…

FOREIGN BODY DETECTED.

SPECIE: EARTHLING. ALL VITALS LOW.

DEFENSE SYSTEM ACTIVATED.

AWAITING ORDERS TO ATTACK.

—–

MASTERLIST

——

TAGLIST

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@jasontoddsimp@consultingkilljoywinchester​@elsenthal​
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@batgals

invisibleanonymousmonsters:

no grave can hold my body down – ½

Character:Jason Todd x Fem!Reader

Summary:It took time to get Jason Todd away from the darkness. Sometimes it felt like he was always standing at a tipping point, at risk of completely losing himself. But not when he was with her. She made him better and she would continue to make him better. 

Word Count: 5,500 

A/N:I am very new to this fandom and extremely nervous to write something for it. To clarify, I have not read any of the comics. But I’ve watched a lot of the TV and movie adaptations, and have done a lot of research. Jason is much older in this – like 30? – and therefore the rest of the BatFam is older, as well. But this takes place after Jason Todd is resurrected, but is still on rocky territory with his family. 

Jason dropped down to the fire escape of his apartment with a quietness that seemed impossible for how large he was. 

On the other side of the small fire escape, Y/N sat with a blanket over her lap, a book in her hand, and a mug of coffee balanced perfectly on the metal grates. 

“Thought I told you not to wait up for me,” Jason greeted, knowing she noticed his arrival, but just kept reading her book. His book, to be precise. 

It was almost 4AM and Jason had called it a night after taking out an entire drug cartel. It had been a lot of waiting, until it finally led up to 20 minutes of utter chaos. He left them on a silver platter for the police to arrest them and actually clean up the mess.

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invisibleanonymousmonsters:

Character:Jason Todd x Fem!Reader

Summary:It took time to get Jason Todd away from the darkness. Sometimes it felt like he was always standing at a tipping point, at risk of completely losing himself. But not when he was with her. She made him better and she would continue to make him better.

Word Count: 9,000

A/N:I know there are a lot of contradicting opinions on Jason Todd’s height. But for my own wish fulfillment, he is 6′3/6′4ish in this fic. 

Part 1

Y/N had fallen asleep after getting home from work. She had a long day and was so exhausted that she passed out as soon as she sat down on the couch. Jason had to take off her heels and drape a blanket over her.

Now he was dressed in his armored undershirt, cargo pants, leather jacket, and tactical boots. His red helmet was tucked under his arm, but he was already wearing a domino mask. If Bruce had taught him anything, it was to be prepared to a point of paranoia.

He crouched down to his knees.

Ever so gently, he brushed Y/N’s cheek.

“Y/N,” he whispered.

She stirred and winced a bit when she opened her eyes, the glare of the quiet television was suddenly harsh.

“What’s going on?” She asked, still half asleep.

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