No Good Deed [Pied Piper]

[swan_songs]

Canon Status: Post-Rogues Revenge.
Genre: ...Songfic?
Rating: G.
Characters: Pied Piper/Hartley Rathaway, mentioned Trickster I/James Jesse.
Pairing: None.
Warnings: Songfic, of sorts. Implied m/m unrequited (or is it?).
Notes: For the piper_trickster Halloween challenge, prompt #34--"Wicked".
Summary: Piper is alone in Iron Heights, but there's one source of

Comments

[katzedecimal]

Beautiful, beautiful work.

Damn, those puppets have become iconic, haven't they? o.O

[cygna_hime]

Thanks!

The puppets are awesome, and hilarious, and make excellent symbols. And, in this case, were deliciously appropriate for the purpose I have in mind. They're versatile like that.

[runenklinge]

god, that was beautiful^^
that remminds me of Inkheart, a book where a little girl and her father have the talent to read things and people out of books ...and to make written things real
well, I loved the book and I love this fic^^

[cygna_hime]

I admit, I'm a complete sucker for stories about artists bringing their creations to life. Or...in this case, somebody else's creations.

[hermine_ichigo]

Wonderful.

Wicked seems to be perfect for Pipster and I LOVE the musical, so this story made me happy and sad at the same time. (I thought of all the pics I had in mind while listening to the CD again and again.)

Too bad it's a one shot. *grins*

[cygna_hime]

That's why I grabbed this prompt; I couldn't resist the urge to squish them together. (Scene completely inappropriate for this fic but in my head anyway: Piper and Trickster singing "What is this Feeling?" and having a blast.)

It's a one-shot. I swear. Stop looking at me like that! No matter how entertaining the adventures of Puppet!Tricks and the ensuing, "Hey, Wally, I know you kind of hate me now, but I think I've ensouled Trickster in a hand puppet; what do I do?" would be. Really.

[vengefulacorn]

::wibble:: That was gorgeous! Moody, and very bittersweet! I like how you went all the way back to the beginning of what's now turned into a *years*-long angstfest by mentioning his parents and James (at least, I think you meant boyfriend!James-of-the-no-surname; Gah-what the heck was Waid thinking, giving him the same first name as Tricks, but never a last name!). Wonderful story! (And Yay! for puppets!)

[cygna_hime]

Thank you! Our Hartley's really had a nasty decade or so, hasn't he? (I did mean James-no-last-name...I have this deep urge to write about him and why he vanished into the mists of continuity.) Puppets make everything better, trufax.

[neotoma]

Maybe later he would find a reason to do something other than sleep. Maybe. The comforting numb blanket wrapped around his mind made it hard to care about doing anything.

Ah, clinical depression, how poisonous it is. I can believe it, considering Piper was living in his dead parents' house and generally acting like morose and creepy in Rogues' Revenge. For a while there I was worried he was on a suicide run.

They had taken away his pipes, his gadgets, anything that could be turned into an instrument, but he still had his voice, and while that wasn’t very good it was better than nothing.

I don't think you can stop Piper from making music even if you cut off his hands -- he can always whistle, and while it would take practice for him to perfect it, I bet he could figure out how to be devastating if he gave it enough effort.

Elsewhere, a puppet, body striped in blue and yellow, twitched.

Trickster is going to be annoyed, I think. Tiny, fluffy body with no feet or functional hands...sucks to be him at the moment.

but for once he

[cygna_hime]

Frankly, all things considered I'd be more worried about Hartley if he *weren't* depressed or otherwise a bit broken, after all that's happened to him. Poor baby. *hugs him*

Trickster is going to have to take what he can get. He's not in Hell being tortured for eternity, which is the important thing. And he'll get help once he finds Piper again.

The only thing that keeps Piper from being completely terrifying is that he didn't think about the whole "I can channel a force of creation; clearly, world conquest is in order" aspect. Like many of the Rogues, the power level he's written at varies--I choose to interpret that as him not really knowing what he can do. (And yet...half the things he's been doing for years like playing the flute and talking at the same time just aren't possible, if you think about it, for someone who's supposed to be non-powered. Especially the Silver Age. I'm choosing to interpret this, especially in this fic, as a metagene or similar that he just never realized he had. Because he's a doofus like that.)

[neotoma]

He's not in Hell being tortured for eternity, which is the important thing.

I can imagine Trickster making a list... "Positives: Not in Hell. Negatives: Only 8 inches tall. No feet. No fingers. No *sexual organs*. Huh, maybe I *am* in Hell."

I choose to interpret that as him not really knowing what he can do. Oh, I totally agree. He has *no* idea what his limits are, or even a hint of his potential. Part of it is that he doesn't think he's special, except in ways that say "I'm broken". But part of it is that he's living in a universe with people like Superman and Wonderwoman hanging around; it's hard to measure yourself against physical near-gods, especially when your abilities are more subtle

[cygna_hime]

"Positives: Not in Hell. Probably can guilt-trip Wally into finding someone to fix me. Can still move...somehow, talk, and bother Piper