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seriousficTitle: Before You Let It Go...
Fandom: DC comics
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,633
Acknowledgments: Thanks to Tracy for betaing this and also to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lurkslikefox, both for betaing this and telling me it was her favorite thing I've written. D'awww...
Characters/Pairings: Scott/Barda, Granny Goodness
Next Part: 2/6
Summary: Scott Free makes an escape attempt and a bad first impression. By a combination of both, he ends up the slave of a humorless taskmaster by the name of Big Barda.
Escape was simple. As always. Darkseid’s students were so boorish and narrow-minded that they put up road blocks, not noticing he was flying over them. Getting away was the hard part. All of Apokolips was Darkseid: his will, his flesh, his hatred, his closing fist. But the desert, Scott hoped, was the small of his back.
Uninhabitable, even by Apokoliptian standards, it stretched across the face of Apokolips like a burn mark. Scott hid during the day, in the shade of gnarled reefs of thornfield, and moved at night. He had been gone three days and would’ve thought himself left for dead if the shrill call of Parademons in flight hadn’t woken him in the evening. They were burning the thornfields.
He broke a vial of his own blood at one end of the thornfield and belly-crawled to the other. It didn’t take long for the cry to come out. The Parademons dropped into the thornfield like man-shaped vultures. As they tore it apart, Scott ran.
The sun beat down on him until howling night winds took over, cutting him to the bone. In the dusk’s last light, he saw a far-off peak. Mountains on the horizon. All kinds of places to hide there.
He kept going until Apokolips’ brutally short night ended. In the new light, he could see the peak wasn’t part of a mountain range. It was the top of a black spike of carved rock, spearing toward the slate-gray sky like a hammer had driven it out of hell. On all sides it was bordered by miles of black desert, sometimes made up of dirt and grit with the same consistency as ash, sometimes dried-out cracks where the sun had stomped particularly hard.
Scott looked around for security measures; that ended when he heard dog soldiers baying at his heels. He forced his legs to move again.
The door was protected by a palm reader; easily hacked. The handprint that got him through didn’t look like standard-issue. The fingers were long and thin, almost delicate. It made him bunch his own hands self-consciously.
He slipped inside to find that whoever lived here, they didn’t have enough slaves to keep up with the mess being made. There were dirty dishes everywhere, elaborate spider-webs in the corners, and dried blood was the only consistent internal decorating.
Scott, who had been known to be inconstant in his own cleaning habits (he thought it easier to escape than to clean up), held his nose and made his way to the kitchen. It seemed to be mostly empty food-boxes stacked beside the burner, but upon closer examination he found the sink. He ran the water through the top of his canteen, letting the purifier do its work, then opened the lid and drank deeply.
Someone said “hai!”
Scott turned. There was no one in the kitchen. He was about to say “hello?” when he remembered that was what was said to intruders, not what intruders said.
“Hai!” the woman shouted again (it was not nearly guttural enough to be a man.) Slowly, Scott crept through the kitchen and peeked through the door.
It was a woman.
A lot of woman.
The only thing more impressive than her muscles was how perfectly in proportion they were, practically artistic in how they fit her large frame. She would never be mistaken for a swimmer or runner, but her body had the utilitarian nature of a deftly balanced blade. It made her beauty more… notable. Having to look for it, you couldn’t not see it once you found it.
His eyes took in her rippling muscles in the same instant as her bounding breasts, her gently fanning hair. His lips moved. “On Apokolips?”
Those mouthed words called for more and suddenly Scott found himself thinking of things to say to her. Then Scott heard the whipcrack of a hundred Parademon wings all flapping at once.
To hell with it, you only live once. Sometimes, not even that!
He stepped fully into the room where Barda was treating her body like a sword on an anvil, and she was forcibly ejected from the high of her work. Though she wouldn’t have thought to notice it, her work-out clothes were spare by design and flattering in practice. She crossed her arms over her chest, to Scott’s immense disappointment. “Who goes there!?”
“By ‘there’, you mean your living room, right?” Scott made a small effort to tidy himself up. “I’m your next-door neighbor. I just dropped by to borrow a cup of sugar.”
“What’s sugar?”
“So I take it you don’t have any.”
“Identify yourself!” she barked.
Scott made a show of cleaning out his ear. “Scott.”
Her arms burst into action, spinning Scott around and pinning him against the wall. “Scott Free, the escapee!”
“Not yet. Technically, I’m still a deserter, thought your faith is heartening.”
“Shut up or I’ll rip your arm out and beat you to death with it.”
“You know if you treat guests like that, no one’s gonna want to come over.”
***
Barda dragged Scott back to the front door, easily overriding all his efforts to slip free. The struggle turned several dirty dishes into dirty shards. Finally, Barda threw Scott out under the shadow of the circling Parademons. It took one look at the ravenous horde to make Barda rethink her plan. Why let them, or more likely their commander, get all the glory for his capture? And what if the dumb beasts injured him in transit? That could be blamed on Barda. Better by far to do it herself.
Her treader was not as ostentatious as some of her rank, but it was rugged and sturdy and could attain great speeds. She threw Scott in the back, being careful to secure the turret so he couldn’t use it, and started the ignition. It was a long ride to Darkseid City, and the only thing to do was listen to the radio. Glorious Godfrey was on, as he always was, telling of the glories of Darkseid.
Scott poked his head into the wire mesh separated the front compartment from the back. “I don’t suppose you could put on any electric blues?”
“Shut up. I’m only making this trip because of you.”
“Oh, sorry, did I interrupt your busy schedule of polishing your sword?” He ducked back as her backhand swatted the mesh. “If you want to save yourself a trip, you can always drop me off here.”
“Darkseid would not approve.”
“Do you always do what Darkseid tells you?” he asked mockingly.
“Yes.”
Scott threw himself back onto the gunner’s seat. “Stupid question. So what’s your story?”
“I am Barda, a loyal soldier in Darkseid’s army.”
Scott held up his hand sarcastically to the mesh. “Pleasure.”
Twenty minutes passed. The wheels churned endlessly and their dust lazily pedaled skyward. Barda looked back to make sure Scott hadn’t escaped. He didn’t seem like the quiet type.
He was watching her, arms crossed, fingers lightly tapping his bicep.
“Stop looking at me,” she ordered.
He leaned back and watched the dust-cloud behind them.
Barda went back to the controls. Another thirty minutes to go. She turned off Glorious Godfrey.
***
Darkseid City was a desert within a desert; blasted out of the stark surface of Apokolips, the crater was cobwebbed with buildings through which squads of Parademons and Aerotroopers swarmed like honeybees. They buzzed Barda’s treader under the guise of security inspections, and she strongly considered letting her prisoner get his hands on a blast-beam just long enough to teach a few manners.
The treader went nearly vertical as it descended into the city, spikes in the treads keeping them firmly attached to the valley wall. Scott’s mop of hair hung down through the mesh as he lay on the barrier between their two compartments.
“If I owned this place and Hell, I’d rent out Darkseid City and live in Hell… only who’d want to rent this place?”
“It’s an honor to live so near to Darkseid’s power.”
He snorted and quickly jerked away from the mesh. She didn’t bother punching it.
Soon enough they were in the bay of Granny Goodness’s Orphanage. Scott was the oldest urchin there, a man in his mid-twenties while the rest were usually assigned to other training by age ten. Some, like Barda, had even received their own command by the time they reached his age. Barda climbed out of the treader as lines of urchins slowed down to observe the strange intrusion.
She opened the door to the back compartment and Scott leapt out, darting past her and making for the dark recesses of the vehicle-filled bay. Barda whipped out her Battle-Rod, fast as a rattlesnake’s fangs came out, and fired a beta-ray into the ground beside him. The blast knocked Scott into a full-size War Machine, which studiously broke his fall.
While he was still dazed, Barda picked him up and dragged him toward Granny’s office. “Look what you made me do.”
“Sorry. Force of habit,” he slurred. Barda forced his arms behind him and frog-marched him through Granny’s door.
The old hag looked up from a box of children’s shoes, her intense expression giving way to a truly sickening smile. “Scott Free. You’ve returned to your dear old granny!”
“You’re not my grandmother,” he announced. Barda got the feeling it was somewhat for her benefit.
Granny Goodness set aside the box, placing it neatly on top of a stack of similarly-sized boxes. “If I were your grandmother, I would punish you. In fact, I think I’ll punish you anyway.”
Scott thought about it. “If you were my grandmother, I’d punish myself.”
Granny pinched his cheek hard enough to leave a blazing red mark when she turned her attention to Barda. “Thank you for returning him, my dear. It’s good to know at least some of my kiddies know the importance of obeying their elders.”
“Really elder elders,” Scott added.
“Such crust!” She pinched him again, but this time his eyelid, tugging on it like a kitten with string. “I think this time, you’ll have to take a more severe punishment: Lobotomy. Such a shame, but at least all that strength will do some good in the mines.”
“You can cut as deep as you like, you won’t get my soul.”
“I’ll settle for your blood.”
“No one survives in the mines,” Barda said, surprised to find a note of concern in her voice.
“He’ll live. Oh, believe me, he’ll live a long, long time.”
Scott was getting colder by the minute, his charm eaten away to the core of defiance Apokolips couldn’t touch. “Barda? Thanks for not restraining my legs.”
Already held low to the ground, he coiled his legs and sprung up, resting his weight entirely on Barda. His legs lashed out again, this time catching Granny Goodness in the hips. She jerked back, hitting her desk with a sharp crack. Yowling, she fell over.
Barda found her shoulders shaking as she pressed Scott down onto his knees.
“What’s so funny?” Granny demanded. “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”
“Nothing, ma’am. It was just a good kick.”
“I can do better,” Scott said. “One more try?”
Granny crawled across the floor toward him. “Oh, I am going to scoop out everything colored gray in your skull! You will live and live and live to regret this!”
He screwed up his lips, considering it. Then he threw his head forward, cracking her nose.
Barda barked out a short laugh. “This one does have spunk.” She hoisted him to his feet. “It’s a shame you’re going to the mines. You could’ve been…” She paused thoughtfully.
Granny Goodness was going into histrionics. “Every bit of your brain that transmits pain, that I’ll leave intact. Everything else goes!” she threatened.
“Just so long as I forget you,” Scott said grimly.
“I’ll take him,” Barda announced.
“What?” Granny asked.
“What the hell?” Scott asked.
“I could use a slave around my household. It seems a better use for him than condemning him to life as just another Hunger Dog.”
“Wait, what?” Scott repeated.
“He’ll escape,” Granny said.
“I’ll fit him with the standard package. Expensive, but it’ll keep him home.”
“Fine.” Granny crawled back toward her desk. “He’s your problem now.”
“Seriously, what?” Scott said.
***
Scott was fitted with manacles and a gag for the ride home. Barda didn’t remove the gag until they were at her homestead.
“Okay, wait a minute, I get that you feel sorry for me…”
“I don’t feel sorry for you,” Barda said as she led him inside by the manacles. “Why would I feel sorry for an obnoxious, cowardly deserter? I just hate to see Darkseid’s resources being squandered.”
“I’m not a resource.”
“You’re my resource now.”
Barda noted a message had arrived by pneumatic mail. She pulled the cylinder from its tube, fighting the brief pull of the vacuum, and read it. New orders. Her mouth got as close as it ever got to a smile.
“I’m needed on the front.” She undid one of Scott’s manacles and then attached the free end to the pneumatic tube. “You wait here for the binders to install your bomb. Don’t worry, they’ll show themselves in.”
Scott tugged at the chain holding him like a leash. “How do I go to the bathroom?”
Barda rolled her eyes, picked up a dead houseplant someone had gotten her as a housewarming present, poured the dirt and wilted plant out, and set the empty pot down at his feet.
Scott looked at her. “And I was just about to thank you for saving my life.”
“This is only until I find out a way to get rid of you… unless you’d like to swear allegiance to Darkseid now and get it over with.”
“I’d rather have my arms ripped out of their sockets.”
“Save it for when I get home.” She went to the kitchen and came back with a slab of beef she dumped at his feet as well. “Don’t wait up.”
***
The campaign against Tamaran was an arduous one. Their army was hardened by decades of warfare against Gordanians and other slavers. Just establishing a beachhead on one of the outer moons had taken days of fighting. Thanks to damnable New Genesis, Tamaran had anti-boomtube shielding, and thanks to thrice-damnable Earth, the Teen Titans were bolstering defenses against Apokoliptian Special Forces. One of them scourged the flesh to Barda’s bone with a golden lasso.
Barda hated Amazons almost as much as Earth and Izaya’s cult.
The problem with being a good warrior was that if you got good enough, you were too valuable to be lost. As soon as Tamaran VI was secured, Barda was forced back through a Boomtube to Apokolips. Another tooth-grinder was that Darkseid’s Elite lived in the lap of luxury, away from their troops. Barda hated all the opulence. She was sure it would make her weak. Already she was feeling tired. Although that might just have been the blood loss.
***
There were only two breaks from the monotony that was Barda’s property. The first was patches of thornfield, skin disorders which erupted from below the surface. The second was the scar from various vehicles wheeling to and from the house. It was this scar that the treader reopened as it delivered Barda home.
The treader plowed down the hills, treads and legs working in eerie concert, leaving a miles-tall column of dust in its wake. Barda’s own personal volcanic eruption. The cloud lingered to be battered by the wind before dissipating like it had never been there at all.
Barda staggered through the front door to find everything just as she’d left it. Damaged, discarded armor covering the floor; spray-painted target on the wall covered with bullet holes; Scott.
Barda stopped, backed up. Scott Free was in her kitchen, doing her dishes. He looked up at her. “You ever hear of a dishwasher?”
“Eh?”
“How about bacterial infection? I know the food here is slop, but living like a slob isn’t helping.”
Barda stared at him. He’d turned one of her capes into an apron and was wearing a set of her gloves as he scrubbed his way through a stack of dirty dishes. Barda hadn’t known how many there were until they towered over her.
“Alright, I don’t care what you’re doing, just do it quietly.”
He nodded, mimed zipping his lips.
***
Scott was still there when she woke up, his long, much-patched scavenger coat lying on the couch with his breeches and tunic. He was only wearing the lower half of his union suit; he was knitting closed a hole in the upper half when she walked out of her bedroom. There was a fresh scar along his side, tapering down across his back and abdomen. He pulled his union suit all the way on, buttoning it as he glanced at her self-consciously.
The carpet was cleared of debris and soft when her bare feet padded across it. “How did the operation go?”
He grabbed up his old clothes and dumped them into the laundry chute, to the army of Lowies that worked in the massive underground steam press. “Bomb’s inside me. I run, it goes off. Smart, in a sadistic sort of way. But then, this is Apokolips.”
“Yes, it is.” She looked over at the pneumatic tube. The flowerpot laid shattered next to it, along with the empty manacles. “How did you…”
“Trade secret.”
He grabbed her hand suddenly, face switching from smug grin to concern far too quickly for Barda’s liking.
“Did I say you could touch me?”
“You’re hurt.”
Barda jerked her hand away, forcing his eyes from the crusted blood of her wound. “I’ll heal.”
“You need a doctor.”
“If I were a weakling like you, perhaps…”
Scott bit his lip. “The sooner you heal, the sooner you can get back to the battle?”
She took a good long look at him. He wasn’t like any Lowly she’d seen. There was hair, cropped as it was by the inevitable shaving he was given whenever he was captured, and his eyes weren’t misted over by opiates in the food cubes. They were a vivid, warm shade of brown, the kind of color she thought she’d only see on New Genesis. Seeing it in an Apokoliptian setting made her uncomfortable.
“I won’t go to a doctor. They’ll think me weak.”
“There aren’t any doctors worth a damn on this rock anyway. Just requisition some localized anesthesia and a medical kit, I’ll handle the rest.”
“Anesthesia?” Her voice grew cold. “You think I fear pain?”
“I’d hate to cause you any, whether you fear it or not.”
He was like that. The medicine came and, under his watchful eyes, she rolled up her sleeve to fully display the grisly wound. He puckered his lips with distaste, then smeared some deaden-cream onto his glove before shoving the jar into the pocket. Then he began working it into her damaged flesh.
The pain soon passed, giving way to the discomforting-in-its-own-way null of the anesthesia, and he began treatment. The wound was magical: Not quite acid, not quite radiation, but some of the worst of both. Scott sprayed the wound over with synthetic flesh, hardened it with his breath (which Barda felt despite the numbness, a sort of jangle across her nerves), then began to dispel the lingering magic. He worked his fingertips gently across new flesh and old, satisfied only when he saw new hair grow out of the pale skin. A little embarrassed by how absorbed he’d been in the procedure, he worked her sleeve back down over her arm. Now the jagged hole in it showed only clear skin.
“How’d you do that?” Barda asked, keeping the amazement out of her voice.
“I did one whole tour of duty. Medic.”
“I wouldn’t figure anyone would make allowance for your,” she spat the word, “pacifism.”
“They didn’t. It’s just no one trusted me with a weapon.” He touched her skin through the hole in her armor, apparently testing it for something. Barda felt his touch as the deaden-cream wore off. It was pleasant, which merited it a place on a small list. “I kinda have a thing for escaping death. Doesn’t have to be me doing it. Helps if it’s not, in fact.”
Barda took hold of the hand that was still touching her. He colored instantly, as if it were evidence of some deadly crime she were holding up between them. She didn’t let go.
“You dispelled magic. That’s a rare talent. Normally I’d call on one of the witches to do it.”
“Yeah, well, they’re more of a rhymes-with-witches than anything else.” He pulled his hand away. She let him. “I suppose you’d better go. War’s not going to win itself.”
“No.” She stood, brushing her hand over her sleeve as if she were dusting something off it. “Stay out of trouble or I’ll hunt you down myself.”
He tossed off a rather impudent salute when she left him, seated on his haunches in her living room. She let him get away with it. Allowances had to be made, after all.
***
She remembered landing on Tamaran VI as being pleasant. The air was cool and strong, perfume-scented. Their intelligence said it should’ve been a cold wasteland, but the Tamaranians had persistently terraformed it until it was a tropical paradise.
At least, it had been.
The beachhead grew out of it like a cancer, a quarry-sized crater filled with Apokoliptian bunker-beetles where Barda’s army marshaled. She didn’t dwell on how the sky was now the color of something sick and the ground crunched with burnt foliage. She just took the spaceport. That was her mission and she always fulfilled her mission.
The Amazon was there, cutting through the Parademons much like Barda would cut through Tamaranians. She had the kind of sunny, vivacious body that Scott would probably take up with if he ever did manage to escape. Barda’s healed arm felt stronger than ever. She bloodied the girl with her Battle-Rod, smiling as she did it.
They didn’t take the planet, retreating at the last minute. Part of great Darkseid’s master plan. They’d fulfilled some shadow-objective and now the Tamaranians could wait for anti-life like everyone else.
She took one last look at the moon before she left. All the smoke in the air made her arm throb. She couldn’t see the hole in her armor through all the blood covering her, but she rubbed the skin under it anyway. The jungle would heal. For some reason, that thought brought her some comfort.
***
“It was glorious!” Barda said with an enthusiasm Scott had never seen before. “We swooped in on them from all side, riders at their flank, Parademons from the skies, ramming through their defenses like they were tissue--“
“How many died?” Scott asked quietly.
She sneered and returned to cleaning her weapons; she didn’t trust anyone else with them, especially not Scott. “Who cares what you think?”
***
The next morning, Scott prepared breakfast as a proper slave should. But he also sat down across from her as she ate it.
“What was that singing?”
Barda felt a brief tingle of fear travel down her spine. “What singing?”
“At night, oh-three-hundred hours to oh, let’s say five hundred hours? Not Darkseid song, but very quiet, watery…” His hands grasped at the air like he could pluck the proper metaphor out of it, stumble across some hand signal for it. In this one aspect, Barda knew better than him what it was like to try to describe a color when you’d lived your life between black and white. “Beautiful.” He glanced at her. “You do know what that word means, right?”
Barda ripped a mouthful off the slab of pink meat she’d been hacking at. “It’s none of your concern. Don’t go looking for it or—“ She held her fist up and opened it quickly, Female Fury hand-code for an incendiary device… or an explosion.
“I get the picture,” Scott snapped. His lips became a flat line, his eyes low. “I’ve had nightmares about the picture.”
He projected such an intense aura of melancholy in that moment that Barda wanted to beat the sadness away from him, somehow rip and tear at it to free him back to being the odd man who hummed for no other reason than to hum as he cleaned up after her. But instead a harsh thunk from the pneumatic tube signaled new orders.
“Have fun killing people,” he said as she went to get the letter.
“I will,” she shot back.
“Be careful,” he said, completely derailing the bickering.
“That too.”
Next part.
Fandom: DC comics
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,633
Acknowledgments: Thanks to Tracy for betaing this and also to
lurkslikefox, both for betaing this and telling me it was her favorite thing I've written. D'awww...Characters/Pairings: Scott/Barda, Granny Goodness
Next Part: 2/6
Summary: Scott Free makes an escape attempt and a bad first impression. By a combination of both, he ends up the slave of a humorless taskmaster by the name of Big Barda.
Escape was simple. As always. Darkseid’s students were so boorish and narrow-minded that they put up road blocks, not noticing he was flying over them. Getting away was the hard part. All of Apokolips was Darkseid: his will, his flesh, his hatred, his closing fist. But the desert, Scott hoped, was the small of his back.
Uninhabitable, even by Apokoliptian standards, it stretched across the face of Apokolips like a burn mark. Scott hid during the day, in the shade of gnarled reefs of thornfield, and moved at night. He had been gone three days and would’ve thought himself left for dead if the shrill call of Parademons in flight hadn’t woken him in the evening. They were burning the thornfields.
He broke a vial of his own blood at one end of the thornfield and belly-crawled to the other. It didn’t take long for the cry to come out. The Parademons dropped into the thornfield like man-shaped vultures. As they tore it apart, Scott ran.
The sun beat down on him until howling night winds took over, cutting him to the bone. In the dusk’s last light, he saw a far-off peak. Mountains on the horizon. All kinds of places to hide there.
He kept going until Apokolips’ brutally short night ended. In the new light, he could see the peak wasn’t part of a mountain range. It was the top of a black spike of carved rock, spearing toward the slate-gray sky like a hammer had driven it out of hell. On all sides it was bordered by miles of black desert, sometimes made up of dirt and grit with the same consistency as ash, sometimes dried-out cracks where the sun had stomped particularly hard.
Scott looked around for security measures; that ended when he heard dog soldiers baying at his heels. He forced his legs to move again.
The door was protected by a palm reader; easily hacked. The handprint that got him through didn’t look like standard-issue. The fingers were long and thin, almost delicate. It made him bunch his own hands self-consciously.
He slipped inside to find that whoever lived here, they didn’t have enough slaves to keep up with the mess being made. There were dirty dishes everywhere, elaborate spider-webs in the corners, and dried blood was the only consistent internal decorating.
Scott, who had been known to be inconstant in his own cleaning habits (he thought it easier to escape than to clean up), held his nose and made his way to the kitchen. It seemed to be mostly empty food-boxes stacked beside the burner, but upon closer examination he found the sink. He ran the water through the top of his canteen, letting the purifier do its work, then opened the lid and drank deeply.
Someone said “hai!”
Scott turned. There was no one in the kitchen. He was about to say “hello?” when he remembered that was what was said to intruders, not what intruders said.
“Hai!” the woman shouted again (it was not nearly guttural enough to be a man.) Slowly, Scott crept through the kitchen and peeked through the door.
It was a woman.
A lot of woman.
The only thing more impressive than her muscles was how perfectly in proportion they were, practically artistic in how they fit her large frame. She would never be mistaken for a swimmer or runner, but her body had the utilitarian nature of a deftly balanced blade. It made her beauty more… notable. Having to look for it, you couldn’t not see it once you found it.
His eyes took in her rippling muscles in the same instant as her bounding breasts, her gently fanning hair. His lips moved. “On Apokolips?”
Those mouthed words called for more and suddenly Scott found himself thinking of things to say to her. Then Scott heard the whipcrack of a hundred Parademon wings all flapping at once.
To hell with it, you only live once. Sometimes, not even that!
He stepped fully into the room where Barda was treating her body like a sword on an anvil, and she was forcibly ejected from the high of her work. Though she wouldn’t have thought to notice it, her work-out clothes were spare by design and flattering in practice. She crossed her arms over her chest, to Scott’s immense disappointment. “Who goes there!?”
“By ‘there’, you mean your living room, right?” Scott made a small effort to tidy himself up. “I’m your next-door neighbor. I just dropped by to borrow a cup of sugar.”
“What’s sugar?”
“So I take it you don’t have any.”
“Identify yourself!” she barked.
Scott made a show of cleaning out his ear. “Scott.”
Her arms burst into action, spinning Scott around and pinning him against the wall. “Scott Free, the escapee!”
“Not yet. Technically, I’m still a deserter, thought your faith is heartening.”
“Shut up or I’ll rip your arm out and beat you to death with it.”
“You know if you treat guests like that, no one’s gonna want to come over.”
***
Barda dragged Scott back to the front door, easily overriding all his efforts to slip free. The struggle turned several dirty dishes into dirty shards. Finally, Barda threw Scott out under the shadow of the circling Parademons. It took one look at the ravenous horde to make Barda rethink her plan. Why let them, or more likely their commander, get all the glory for his capture? And what if the dumb beasts injured him in transit? That could be blamed on Barda. Better by far to do it herself.
Her treader was not as ostentatious as some of her rank, but it was rugged and sturdy and could attain great speeds. She threw Scott in the back, being careful to secure the turret so he couldn’t use it, and started the ignition. It was a long ride to Darkseid City, and the only thing to do was listen to the radio. Glorious Godfrey was on, as he always was, telling of the glories of Darkseid.
Scott poked his head into the wire mesh separated the front compartment from the back. “I don’t suppose you could put on any electric blues?”
“Shut up. I’m only making this trip because of you.”
“Oh, sorry, did I interrupt your busy schedule of polishing your sword?” He ducked back as her backhand swatted the mesh. “If you want to save yourself a trip, you can always drop me off here.”
“Darkseid would not approve.”
“Do you always do what Darkseid tells you?” he asked mockingly.
“Yes.”
Scott threw himself back onto the gunner’s seat. “Stupid question. So what’s your story?”
“I am Barda, a loyal soldier in Darkseid’s army.”
Scott held up his hand sarcastically to the mesh. “Pleasure.”
Twenty minutes passed. The wheels churned endlessly and their dust lazily pedaled skyward. Barda looked back to make sure Scott hadn’t escaped. He didn’t seem like the quiet type.
He was watching her, arms crossed, fingers lightly tapping his bicep.
“Stop looking at me,” she ordered.
He leaned back and watched the dust-cloud behind them.
Barda went back to the controls. Another thirty minutes to go. She turned off Glorious Godfrey.
***
Darkseid City was a desert within a desert; blasted out of the stark surface of Apokolips, the crater was cobwebbed with buildings through which squads of Parademons and Aerotroopers swarmed like honeybees. They buzzed Barda’s treader under the guise of security inspections, and she strongly considered letting her prisoner get his hands on a blast-beam just long enough to teach a few manners.
The treader went nearly vertical as it descended into the city, spikes in the treads keeping them firmly attached to the valley wall. Scott’s mop of hair hung down through the mesh as he lay on the barrier between their two compartments.
“If I owned this place and Hell, I’d rent out Darkseid City and live in Hell… only who’d want to rent this place?”
“It’s an honor to live so near to Darkseid’s power.”
He snorted and quickly jerked away from the mesh. She didn’t bother punching it.
Soon enough they were in the bay of Granny Goodness’s Orphanage. Scott was the oldest urchin there, a man in his mid-twenties while the rest were usually assigned to other training by age ten. Some, like Barda, had even received their own command by the time they reached his age. Barda climbed out of the treader as lines of urchins slowed down to observe the strange intrusion.
She opened the door to the back compartment and Scott leapt out, darting past her and making for the dark recesses of the vehicle-filled bay. Barda whipped out her Battle-Rod, fast as a rattlesnake’s fangs came out, and fired a beta-ray into the ground beside him. The blast knocked Scott into a full-size War Machine, which studiously broke his fall.
While he was still dazed, Barda picked him up and dragged him toward Granny’s office. “Look what you made me do.”
“Sorry. Force of habit,” he slurred. Barda forced his arms behind him and frog-marched him through Granny’s door.
The old hag looked up from a box of children’s shoes, her intense expression giving way to a truly sickening smile. “Scott Free. You’ve returned to your dear old granny!”
“You’re not my grandmother,” he announced. Barda got the feeling it was somewhat for her benefit.
Granny Goodness set aside the box, placing it neatly on top of a stack of similarly-sized boxes. “If I were your grandmother, I would punish you. In fact, I think I’ll punish you anyway.”
Scott thought about it. “If you were my grandmother, I’d punish myself.”
Granny pinched his cheek hard enough to leave a blazing red mark when she turned her attention to Barda. “Thank you for returning him, my dear. It’s good to know at least some of my kiddies know the importance of obeying their elders.”
“Really elder elders,” Scott added.
“Such crust!” She pinched him again, but this time his eyelid, tugging on it like a kitten with string. “I think this time, you’ll have to take a more severe punishment: Lobotomy. Such a shame, but at least all that strength will do some good in the mines.”
“You can cut as deep as you like, you won’t get my soul.”
“I’ll settle for your blood.”
“No one survives in the mines,” Barda said, surprised to find a note of concern in her voice.
“He’ll live. Oh, believe me, he’ll live a long, long time.”
Scott was getting colder by the minute, his charm eaten away to the core of defiance Apokolips couldn’t touch. “Barda? Thanks for not restraining my legs.”
Already held low to the ground, he coiled his legs and sprung up, resting his weight entirely on Barda. His legs lashed out again, this time catching Granny Goodness in the hips. She jerked back, hitting her desk with a sharp crack. Yowling, she fell over.
Barda found her shoulders shaking as she pressed Scott down onto his knees.
“What’s so funny?” Granny demanded. “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”
“Nothing, ma’am. It was just a good kick.”
“I can do better,” Scott said. “One more try?”
Granny crawled across the floor toward him. “Oh, I am going to scoop out everything colored gray in your skull! You will live and live and live to regret this!”
He screwed up his lips, considering it. Then he threw his head forward, cracking her nose.
Barda barked out a short laugh. “This one does have spunk.” She hoisted him to his feet. “It’s a shame you’re going to the mines. You could’ve been…” She paused thoughtfully.
Granny Goodness was going into histrionics. “Every bit of your brain that transmits pain, that I’ll leave intact. Everything else goes!” she threatened.
“Just so long as I forget you,” Scott said grimly.
“I’ll take him,” Barda announced.
“What?” Granny asked.
“What the hell?” Scott asked.
“I could use a slave around my household. It seems a better use for him than condemning him to life as just another Hunger Dog.”
“Wait, what?” Scott repeated.
“He’ll escape,” Granny said.
“I’ll fit him with the standard package. Expensive, but it’ll keep him home.”
“Fine.” Granny crawled back toward her desk. “He’s your problem now.”
“Seriously, what?” Scott said.
***
Scott was fitted with manacles and a gag for the ride home. Barda didn’t remove the gag until they were at her homestead.
“Okay, wait a minute, I get that you feel sorry for me…”
“I don’t feel sorry for you,” Barda said as she led him inside by the manacles. “Why would I feel sorry for an obnoxious, cowardly deserter? I just hate to see Darkseid’s resources being squandered.”
“I’m not a resource.”
“You’re my resource now.”
Barda noted a message had arrived by pneumatic mail. She pulled the cylinder from its tube, fighting the brief pull of the vacuum, and read it. New orders. Her mouth got as close as it ever got to a smile.
“I’m needed on the front.” She undid one of Scott’s manacles and then attached the free end to the pneumatic tube. “You wait here for the binders to install your bomb. Don’t worry, they’ll show themselves in.”
Scott tugged at the chain holding him like a leash. “How do I go to the bathroom?”
Barda rolled her eyes, picked up a dead houseplant someone had gotten her as a housewarming present, poured the dirt and wilted plant out, and set the empty pot down at his feet.
Scott looked at her. “And I was just about to thank you for saving my life.”
“This is only until I find out a way to get rid of you… unless you’d like to swear allegiance to Darkseid now and get it over with.”
“I’d rather have my arms ripped out of their sockets.”
“Save it for when I get home.” She went to the kitchen and came back with a slab of beef she dumped at his feet as well. “Don’t wait up.”
***
The campaign against Tamaran was an arduous one. Their army was hardened by decades of warfare against Gordanians and other slavers. Just establishing a beachhead on one of the outer moons had taken days of fighting. Thanks to damnable New Genesis, Tamaran had anti-boomtube shielding, and thanks to thrice-damnable Earth, the Teen Titans were bolstering defenses against Apokoliptian Special Forces. One of them scourged the flesh to Barda’s bone with a golden lasso.
Barda hated Amazons almost as much as Earth and Izaya’s cult.
The problem with being a good warrior was that if you got good enough, you were too valuable to be lost. As soon as Tamaran VI was secured, Barda was forced back through a Boomtube to Apokolips. Another tooth-grinder was that Darkseid’s Elite lived in the lap of luxury, away from their troops. Barda hated all the opulence. She was sure it would make her weak. Already she was feeling tired. Although that might just have been the blood loss.
***
There were only two breaks from the monotony that was Barda’s property. The first was patches of thornfield, skin disorders which erupted from below the surface. The second was the scar from various vehicles wheeling to and from the house. It was this scar that the treader reopened as it delivered Barda home.
The treader plowed down the hills, treads and legs working in eerie concert, leaving a miles-tall column of dust in its wake. Barda’s own personal volcanic eruption. The cloud lingered to be battered by the wind before dissipating like it had never been there at all.
Barda staggered through the front door to find everything just as she’d left it. Damaged, discarded armor covering the floor; spray-painted target on the wall covered with bullet holes; Scott.
Barda stopped, backed up. Scott Free was in her kitchen, doing her dishes. He looked up at her. “You ever hear of a dishwasher?”
“Eh?”
“How about bacterial infection? I know the food here is slop, but living like a slob isn’t helping.”
Barda stared at him. He’d turned one of her capes into an apron and was wearing a set of her gloves as he scrubbed his way through a stack of dirty dishes. Barda hadn’t known how many there were until they towered over her.
“Alright, I don’t care what you’re doing, just do it quietly.”
He nodded, mimed zipping his lips.
***
Scott was still there when she woke up, his long, much-patched scavenger coat lying on the couch with his breeches and tunic. He was only wearing the lower half of his union suit; he was knitting closed a hole in the upper half when she walked out of her bedroom. There was a fresh scar along his side, tapering down across his back and abdomen. He pulled his union suit all the way on, buttoning it as he glanced at her self-consciously.
The carpet was cleared of debris and soft when her bare feet padded across it. “How did the operation go?”
He grabbed up his old clothes and dumped them into the laundry chute, to the army of Lowies that worked in the massive underground steam press. “Bomb’s inside me. I run, it goes off. Smart, in a sadistic sort of way. But then, this is Apokolips.”
“Yes, it is.” She looked over at the pneumatic tube. The flowerpot laid shattered next to it, along with the empty manacles. “How did you…”
“Trade secret.”
He grabbed her hand suddenly, face switching from smug grin to concern far too quickly for Barda’s liking.
“Did I say you could touch me?”
“You’re hurt.”
Barda jerked her hand away, forcing his eyes from the crusted blood of her wound. “I’ll heal.”
“You need a doctor.”
“If I were a weakling like you, perhaps…”
Scott bit his lip. “The sooner you heal, the sooner you can get back to the battle?”
She took a good long look at him. He wasn’t like any Lowly she’d seen. There was hair, cropped as it was by the inevitable shaving he was given whenever he was captured, and his eyes weren’t misted over by opiates in the food cubes. They were a vivid, warm shade of brown, the kind of color she thought she’d only see on New Genesis. Seeing it in an Apokoliptian setting made her uncomfortable.
“I won’t go to a doctor. They’ll think me weak.”
“There aren’t any doctors worth a damn on this rock anyway. Just requisition some localized anesthesia and a medical kit, I’ll handle the rest.”
“Anesthesia?” Her voice grew cold. “You think I fear pain?”
“I’d hate to cause you any, whether you fear it or not.”
He was like that. The medicine came and, under his watchful eyes, she rolled up her sleeve to fully display the grisly wound. He puckered his lips with distaste, then smeared some deaden-cream onto his glove before shoving the jar into the pocket. Then he began working it into her damaged flesh.
The pain soon passed, giving way to the discomforting-in-its-own-way null of the anesthesia, and he began treatment. The wound was magical: Not quite acid, not quite radiation, but some of the worst of both. Scott sprayed the wound over with synthetic flesh, hardened it with his breath (which Barda felt despite the numbness, a sort of jangle across her nerves), then began to dispel the lingering magic. He worked his fingertips gently across new flesh and old, satisfied only when he saw new hair grow out of the pale skin. A little embarrassed by how absorbed he’d been in the procedure, he worked her sleeve back down over her arm. Now the jagged hole in it showed only clear skin.
“How’d you do that?” Barda asked, keeping the amazement out of her voice.
“I did one whole tour of duty. Medic.”
“I wouldn’t figure anyone would make allowance for your,” she spat the word, “pacifism.”
“They didn’t. It’s just no one trusted me with a weapon.” He touched her skin through the hole in her armor, apparently testing it for something. Barda felt his touch as the deaden-cream wore off. It was pleasant, which merited it a place on a small list. “I kinda have a thing for escaping death. Doesn’t have to be me doing it. Helps if it’s not, in fact.”
Barda took hold of the hand that was still touching her. He colored instantly, as if it were evidence of some deadly crime she were holding up between them. She didn’t let go.
“You dispelled magic. That’s a rare talent. Normally I’d call on one of the witches to do it.”
“Yeah, well, they’re more of a rhymes-with-witches than anything else.” He pulled his hand away. She let him. “I suppose you’d better go. War’s not going to win itself.”
“No.” She stood, brushing her hand over her sleeve as if she were dusting something off it. “Stay out of trouble or I’ll hunt you down myself.”
He tossed off a rather impudent salute when she left him, seated on his haunches in her living room. She let him get away with it. Allowances had to be made, after all.
***
She remembered landing on Tamaran VI as being pleasant. The air was cool and strong, perfume-scented. Their intelligence said it should’ve been a cold wasteland, but the Tamaranians had persistently terraformed it until it was a tropical paradise.
At least, it had been.
The beachhead grew out of it like a cancer, a quarry-sized crater filled with Apokoliptian bunker-beetles where Barda’s army marshaled. She didn’t dwell on how the sky was now the color of something sick and the ground crunched with burnt foliage. She just took the spaceport. That was her mission and she always fulfilled her mission.
The Amazon was there, cutting through the Parademons much like Barda would cut through Tamaranians. She had the kind of sunny, vivacious body that Scott would probably take up with if he ever did manage to escape. Barda’s healed arm felt stronger than ever. She bloodied the girl with her Battle-Rod, smiling as she did it.
They didn’t take the planet, retreating at the last minute. Part of great Darkseid’s master plan. They’d fulfilled some shadow-objective and now the Tamaranians could wait for anti-life like everyone else.
She took one last look at the moon before she left. All the smoke in the air made her arm throb. She couldn’t see the hole in her armor through all the blood covering her, but she rubbed the skin under it anyway. The jungle would heal. For some reason, that thought brought her some comfort.
***
“It was glorious!” Barda said with an enthusiasm Scott had never seen before. “We swooped in on them from all side, riders at their flank, Parademons from the skies, ramming through their defenses like they were tissue--“
“How many died?” Scott asked quietly.
She sneered and returned to cleaning her weapons; she didn’t trust anyone else with them, especially not Scott. “Who cares what you think?”
***
The next morning, Scott prepared breakfast as a proper slave should. But he also sat down across from her as she ate it.
“What was that singing?”
Barda felt a brief tingle of fear travel down her spine. “What singing?”
“At night, oh-three-hundred hours to oh, let’s say five hundred hours? Not Darkseid song, but very quiet, watery…” His hands grasped at the air like he could pluck the proper metaphor out of it, stumble across some hand signal for it. In this one aspect, Barda knew better than him what it was like to try to describe a color when you’d lived your life between black and white. “Beautiful.” He glanced at her. “You do know what that word means, right?”
Barda ripped a mouthful off the slab of pink meat she’d been hacking at. “It’s none of your concern. Don’t go looking for it or—“ She held her fist up and opened it quickly, Female Fury hand-code for an incendiary device… or an explosion.
“I get the picture,” Scott snapped. His lips became a flat line, his eyes low. “I’ve had nightmares about the picture.”
He projected such an intense aura of melancholy in that moment that Barda wanted to beat the sadness away from him, somehow rip and tear at it to free him back to being the odd man who hummed for no other reason than to hum as he cleaned up after her. But instead a harsh thunk from the pneumatic tube signaled new orders.
“Have fun killing people,” he said as she went to get the letter.
“I will,” she shot back.
“Be careful,” he said, completely derailing the bickering.
“That too.”
Next part.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-01-12 05:42 pm (UTC)That is all.
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Date: 2009-01-12 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-12 08:51 pm (UTC)Also, happy birthday!
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Date: 2009-01-12 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-20 08:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 04:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 05:07 am (UTC)And now I'm discussing the sex life of superheroes. I think I need to get off the web for a while.
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Date: 2009-01-18 08:20 pm (UTC)Well, if one of them were distracted...
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Date: 2009-01-19 07:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-18 03:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-18 03:34 pm (UTC)