Prompt Post - Part Four [CLOSED TO NEW PROMPTS]
THIS PART IS NOW CLOSED. YOU CAN CONTINUE POSTING FILLS, BUT PLEASE PROMPT ALL NEW THINGS HERE.
Part one here!
Part two here!
Part three here!
Feel free to reprompt posts from parts one, two, three in part four once. If you do so, I'd recommend leaving a link to your fill on the original prompt, in case somebody is tracking the first thread.
Please ( Read more... )
Cities grind to a halt, worldwide. Three schoolgirls went missing in Japan, and a boy from India. It’s enough to terrify the Western hemisphere.
Wally knows that is only a short reprieve. The Justice League has to take advantage of the lull because it won’t be long before children and adults start disappearing from inside their homes, and then all hell will break loose, and the Justice League will be helpless.
How do you protect the innocent from a threat you can’t see? How do you protect the innocent when it’s the innocent beating and maiming and killing strangers on the street because they’re terrified of losing their family?
Wally has this image in his mind of all the people the Slender Man has taken piling up in a warehouse somewhere and blowing the top off the roof as He tries to shove just one more body - oh god, not bodies, please don’t let them be bodies - in through the door. He has this image, and is sure that that’s how the League will find the missing people.
Wally’s more than a little bit afraid - just a little bit terrified - that by the time enough people get taken for that to happen, there won’t be enough League members left to stop Him.
***
The new Blue Beetle is living in the Watchtower as well, a mid-twenties Hispanic man that Wally spends little to no time with: first, because the guy’s even older than Roy, and second, because both of them are too worried about their families.
Wally sees him arguing with Batman a few times, trying to convince Batman to let his family into the Tower. Batman refuses again and again - it means too many things: compromising the safety of the Tower, the safety of the identities of the heroes living there, the sense of safety for those like Question.
But Wally can see him wavering.
(Wally never does get to see when the Blue Beetle finally stops asking.)
***
(He stops asking because even the Tower isn’t safe.)
The Slender Man’s features are completely bared in the harsh light of the Watchtower. He has no eyes, Wally sees, just slight depressions where eyes should be. He has no ear or hair, just a smooth curve of skin covered, and his mouth, when he opens it, is a dark, tongue-less hole.
Wally’s stuck somewhere between horror and fascination. Under the light, He isn’t scary, just sickening, and a little bit pitiable.
He stretches out a hand, and the gaping hole emits a soft ‘huh’, and an ‘ah’ and it’s a sad sound. And Wally thinks, he’s sad. He just wants company. (Wally thinks, he didn’t have hands before, but he’s hardly paying attention to that, because)
He beckons with that outstretched hand. Long, spindled fingers curl until the dark pointed nails at the ends scrape lightly against the pale palm. He wants to show me something, Wally knows.
(He hardly notices his feet moving.)
(He hardly notices M’gann beside him, moving beside him, in time with his step.)
Wally stretches out a hand to meet His, and feels a curl of appendage around his wrist and forearm with hardly any (bruisingly tight) pressure at all, and then he doesn’t think anything at all.
***
M’gann can feel the mental pull, the tugging at the edge of her mind. She trails off mid-sentence, following Wally’s gaze to the dark figure at the end of the hall. It’s a sickening sight, and M’gann’s sudden anger helps her to drive off whatever power It has had over her teammates.
Her teammates.
This thing took her friends, and has broken so many heroes.
This thing has terrorized millions.
This thing wants to do the same to her.
No.
No, it will not happen, she decides, even as she casts a glance over at Wally’s enraptured face. He begins to move, stretching one hand out to the grotesque figure at the end of the hall who is already reaching back.
She moves in step with Wally, stretching out one hand like he is, and pulling her walls down, falling under into His lure almost immediately. Finally, he stretches a hand out to her, and she seizes hold of it.
And then she can hardly think at all.
Reply
Ffffff the Rogues protecting Wally--! <333333;;
Excited for more! (assuming there'll be more cuz of the ?)
Reply
Reply
They float slowly down to settle on the not-earth not-cloud not-air among the others. Something tugs at her core and she feels her will to move, to look around, to take an interest in the things, the people around, fade and float away.
Around her are transparent flickers of not-cities, not-people, who are there and then gone. Memories, she understands, without thinking. There’s a small tug at the center of her mind, and then her earth-girl form melts away.
The featureless face with the gaping hole turns toward her and a hand stretches out. She feels a twinge of revulsion, and then it’s gone and her eyes flicker closed (It’s just lonely, she not-thinks, I’m safe here. Nothing can hurt me.)
With her eyes shut she can feel the cold, clammy pads of fingers against her cheek, her forehead, the lids of her eyes.
There’s another pull, a stronger one, at the center of her, and without thinking she tugs back. Instinctively, she pulls back and she realizes My wall are down. Hastily, M’gann slams them up again, and she doesn’t hear a hiss. She doesn’t hear a scream.
M’gann opens her eyes and stares at the revolting figure of the Slender Man, floating in this not-space above the bodies of the children and young adults he’s kidnapped, he’s taken. Anger surges through her and she not-shouts back at him. There’s no space for sound here but she knows the words, the outraged vitriol that spills from her, and suddenly faces are turning to look at her.
She reaches out with her mind and seizes the spools of energy drifting towards the Slender Man and pulls them into herself, feeling bigger, stronger than she has ever felt before. It strikes out at her with Its own stolen energy and she throws up a shield just in time.
Still, it shoves her back several paces, tripping her over the prone forms of children much smaller than her. Wake up! She not-yells with her mind. Wake up! See what It’s doing to you!
A baby not-squalls, not-shattering the oppressive silence of the not-space. Ahead of her now, Wally shakes his head, slowly, shoulders hunching while his head turns to look around. She can see the exact instant he returns to himself, eyes widening with shock to see her struggling against It.
M’gann! She not-hears, and she could cry but she has no time for crying - not even if its Superboy - but she not-shouts, don’t look at him! That’s how he lures you in! Anyway.
And then a hand is linking with one of hers, the weight of Superboy’s strength and stubbornness joining her will. And another, and another. Young Justice has come back to themselves first, and each and every one finds a way to touch her, to put their strength behind hers.
But it’s not enough. She can feel all of them - Superboy, Kid Flash, Kaldur, Artemis, Robin, even Roy - and it’s not enough. It has had too long to steal from too many and Its stronger than her!
Come on! She not hears, but she doesn’t recognize the voice. Another hand presses up against her shoulder, and she half glances over - risking the distraction to see a black-haired boy with pale lavender eyes holding her shoulder, and a red-haired girl holding his. Suddenly, she is not the only one pulling, stealing energy back from the Slender Man, who not-shrieks and lashes out.
The shield holds, not barely this time, M’gann’s power backed by her friends and the friends of her friends, and by the power she has taken from It already. And then there are more, the eldest of those taken organizing the youngest and pressing in around her, behind her. She can feel her spectral self grow - stronger and larger - until she is as large and as fluid in shape as the Slender Man.
With one hand, she reaches, and tears out the last of what he has stolen.
There’s no scream. There’s no final shudder of death.
He just... fades. And the not-world fades around them.
Reply
They’re hopelessly lost - out in the middle of a harvested cornfield in the middle of nowhere - and they all have to readjust to being back in real space, in real time. They rest, even Wally, trying to get back some energy while the shock fades. Some of the children start crying, and it’s so harsh after the silence of the not-space, so much harsher than usual. Nevertheless, she gathers up three of them into her arms, growing an extra set when it becomes clear that the last is a squirmer.
All around her, the teenagers and twenty-somethings are gathering up the youngest children, trying to get them to stop crying. It’s not her race, it’s not her planet, but M’gann feels a sudden affection for them - for these children who did and are still doing their best to help out.
One of the children, a three year old boys whose parents are first generation immigrants and who doesn’t speak English, screams. It’s not a terrified scream, at least. M’gann raises her head to look up at the boy, not sure what she would have done if it had been a terrified scream. He’s pointing at the sky, mouth wide in a smile, and they’re all looking up now.
It’s Superman, M’gann thinks, and can’t seem to get any farther than that. She’s so tired. That’s good, she manages, and the Superman lands, his gaze sweeping over the whole of the group, over the infants and the toddlers and the children. He looks over the teenagers and the young adults and finally his gaze comes to rest on Young Justice, and then he’s moving forward, straight towards them.
They all - except Wally, and M’gann has no energy left for worry (except for the little bit she feels anyway) - stand. They needn’t have bothered.
Superman only has eyes of Superboy and the clone is abruptly crushed in Superman’s arms, one hand pressed against the back of Superboy’s head.
‘It’s about time,’ somebody murmurs, but M’gann couldn’t say who. It could’ve been her.
***
That’s not the end of it by any means.
Superman contacts the League and then there are mentors to reassure and snacks to hand out - to keep the little ones quiet as much as to replenish their energy reserves. There are home cities to organize the children by and parents to contact and transportation to arrange. There are social workers to call, for the homeless ones and the press to deal with, eventually.
(Somewhere in there, M’gann thinks, there is a debriefing; logically, she knows there must have been, but she can’t remember it later.)
There are authorities from cities all over the world call; no less than- well, she loses count after 26 - children come up to tell Superman about the abuse they suffered before the Slender Man took them and not all of them are homeless.
Finally, there is a bed, and there is time to sleep, and if she dreams of the Slender Man, it’s hardly enough to disturb her. The last of him is locked away in her mind, and she will never let him out. He will live, because the Justice League doesn’t kill, but he’ll never take another child again.
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Captain Cold saved Wally! And Megan kicked major metaphorical butt!
Reply
Reply
This is so, so good. It's terrifying and sad and this is the best M'gann I think I've ever read, and it's a believable bad-ass, stemming from everything we've seen of her in canon!
Bravo, anon
Reply
Reply
(Also, I love your for mentioning Jaime <3)
Reply
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment