Authority Fic: The Ones You Love
This fic is dedicated to the stunningly wonderful Minerva Solo aka MsSolo aka minervasolo. It is slightly too late for her birthday, but hopefully should please enough.
That or all the Authority bods on earth will want to kill me.
Disclaimer: Apollo and The Midnighter belong only to each other and Wildstorm Comics. I am a fan writing for other fans, I make no profit out of this.
Warning: The Midnighter paraphrases Juvenal badly in this one.
This Apollo/Midnighter so if you’re in the least way anti that sort of thing, The Midnighter thinks he’ll be sporting and give you a five second start before he breaks out the baseball bat with nails in it and gets educational on your ass.
Continuity: Okay, I’m sorry if the Jackson King reference screws this up. Otherwise I’ve got very little idea where this belongs save before Coup D’etat. Why don’t you tell me?
Here's the intentionally unrepresentative teaser:
I'm not spending this time out on the town, living the life of Riley, 'course if I tried, it would not really have much charm, as alcohol just tastes pretty now, and looks pretty too, if you're downing Sea breezes and Margaritas. So you expect me to drink moonshine whisky and smoke cigars? I'm not that kind of tough guy. For starters, I'm not a tough guy, I'm a bastard. Sure, the opposition are bastards, but who bastards the bastards, to quote a little Latin.
What I can definitely say is it's nothing like my last try at Authority fic.
Not x-posted anywhere, yet.
The Ones You Love
It would only happen on my day off, well theoretically my day off. It’s not as if they really exist amongst capes, in the biggest pyjama party in creation, even if you’re wearing your underpants inside your trousers, you’re not off work. The key is potentiality. Even if you’re not wearing a mask you are one. A call could go out at every time, screaming over radio-telepathy, burn-your-brain loud. Alien cod soldiers and thing from the nth dimension do not take days off. Ergo, capes and masks don’t either.
Unless you’re a little shit-for-brains, who goes out, marries a pop star who more closely resembles a two cent hooker, turns off the bug in his head and tunes out with the aid of what he sincerely hopes is heroin. Having seen enough drug pushers, in what a politician would call our “wilderness years” and what Apollo would term our “eating pizza out of trashcans, fighting and fucking years”, I know it’s never quite heroin. They cut it with cat worming tablets and oven cleaner and anything else they can get their little two-bit gangster hands on. The CIA boys are worst for that, anything to make the budget go farther and ensure that the unemployment figures stay low. So, I should just be happy that Jenny isn’t going to catch worms off the Doctor and that he’s nice and shiny clean inside, or at least cleaner than his outside.
As I said, potentiality is the key, even standing here feeling half naked without my mask and with a new haircut. Blonde, short, very military, very me; Apollo’s going to love it, love brushing his hands across it, love holding his head in his hands as he leans in to kiss me.
Apollo’s not here, I’m doing this solo, and unless I want things to get embarrassing fast, not to mention attracting a lot of attention I don’t really want, I’m going to stop thinking about him right now.
I’m not spending this time out on the town, living the life of Riley, ‘course if I tried, it would not really have much charm, as alcohol just tastes pretty now, and looks pretty too, if you’re downing Sea Breezes and Margaritas. So you expect me to drink moonshine whisky and smoke cigars? I’m not that kind of tough guy. For starters, I’m not a tough guy, I’m a bastard. Sure, the opposition are bastards, but who bastards the bastards, to quote a little Latin. I was made to be unstoppable, I’m immune to poison, and when you get down to it, that’s your little drink after work with the boys. Poison. Or anaesthetic, and I’m immune to that as well.
Sure, I can remember getting drunk, half remember anyway, a throat burning with tequila as the gang cheer me on, the blond one’s loudest. A name swims past, Straight John? He’s all America’s Sweethearts, too tall and skinny to make a footballer, but great for a soldier. Looks like he stepped out of a recruitment poster, until he turns at least, and I see the scar running down the side of his face, just missing those true-blue eyes. He should reek of apple pie, instead he reeks of stale pizza and liquor. It’s odd, remembering him, yet seeing him for the first time. Part of me wonders if he’d recognise me now, or whether he’d just see me for the first time, just like I’m seeing him.
They’re all chanting my name, a blank sound I’ve almost got used to, and various shouts of encouragement or derision. Another glass is pressed into my hand, another shot and the noise just got louder, and a lemon in the other. I look down for the salt, it’s where it’s been for the past eights shots, on a tanned chest, looking more like glitter than salt. He looks up at me, white blond hair, sun kissed, getting into his face, it’s not exactly long, but those bangs sure are not military issue, no GI-Joe this one, and a half-familiar hand sweeps up to push it out of his blue eyes.
And everything stops.
I know those eyes better than I do my own, that searing coruscating blue, flecked with gold now, but still the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. What I really recognise, though, is the smile, that sunlight smile.
And I’m back here again, desperately wanting to go back, but stuck here, in this corridor smelling of piss and stale air, looking desperately for a door back into the past. He’s always going to be my undoing, seeing him was such a surprise; you have to realise that I don’t get surprises anymore; the computer your tax dollars paid for, nestling away in my head, answers for that; and then I’m not moving with the flow, following the current of memory, but I’ve stopped and the water’s turned to ice, glass and fractured.
What the fuck was Apollo doing with a bunch of soldiers? Then again, do I really want to know? I know soldiers, squaddies, commandoes, and spies; I know people like me, and I now that a lot of things get written up as “stress relief”, and he was the only guy who wasn’t like me there, and he was letting some paid killer lick salt off his neatly waxed chest. Apollo doesn’t wax his chest, it’s hairier than mine, silver hairs against milk white skin; no hair then, just tanned skin, clearly still a sun-worshipper. I really don’t want to think about it, my vague memories of the self-dubbed Gay Team (except for Straight John, of course) pretty much scream the obvious at me, and they don’t sound pretty.
Of course, I’m not going to tell Apollo. What would I tell him? I remember my past, and you remember nothing, and in my past you were at best a complete and utter slut, who’d play games with eight soldiers of no virtue whatsoever, and at worst a rent boy, who’d play games with eight soldiers of no virtue whatsoever for pocket money.
It could just be my subconscious, but I doubt it.
That could only happen to me, or possibly any other poor fuck who got the Henry Bendix mindwipe treatment, with a spa massage and battle computer thrown in as handy extras. So I go back about my semi-legal business. I’m not stupid, I know we need boltholes in case there’s anyone scarier than us, let sunshine boy handle the house in California that he’s been bending my ear back about and would so light up his life. I’m just getting boltholes and a lot of them. This one’s a low-rent no class apartment in Twoblondes, Arizona. It’s cash in hand, briefly, then cash in pocket, and cash walking down the street. Unmarked bills, of course. An illegal sub-let definitely. Safe? Possibly.
But let’s have a hundred or two to play on the safe side, and don’t ask where I get the unmarked bills from, and don’t be stupid enough to ask why I don’t just “door” here. I did not catch two trains and a greyhound to get here, just to be confronted with stupidity. Remember, kids, stupidity can often prove fatal. In many deeply interesting and painful ways; be stupid and your Uncle Midnighter will show you.
So, I walking down the corridor, business done, lease of one luxury apartment with wall-to-wall running cockroaches secured. Of course, Apollo and I barely need it, we did fine bedding down in doorways for years, we don’t need to eat, we don’t need to sleep. All we did was try to avoid getting bored, and in some small way make a finer world. Jenny’s the problem. She eats and sleeps on a regular basis, not because she’s chosen to, as it were, and she needs somewhere that is at least halfway warm and dry.
So corridor, yellow, paint probably lead based, as per spectrum analysis, so the landlord clearly doesn’t do much maintenance, all good. No kids running round in corridor, also good. Nothing left in corridors except the occasional bullet hole, not good except that it proves that these people want to keep themselves to themselves, or at least those people not full of bullet holes for snitching on the local dealer. Risk assessment: minimal.
Loud banging noise behind the door where the shadows from numbers long-gone say twenty-nine, interesting. Female screaming and repeated banging noises. I don’t need my computer on this one, there are only really two likely scenarios, it’s either a heady S and M session, or there’s some wife/girlfriend/random female battering going on. And my money isn’t on the first choice, whips and stuff cost money, and there isn’t much of it ‘round here except in the pockets of the wannabe property mogul who rented me my nice new piece of shit apartment, with charming views over the electricity substation.
Like I said, you’re always wearing a mask, a cape, funky underpants that you just have to share with the world; even when you’re not. I could just walk by and let another asshole drive his girl to drink, or ER, or an early grave. Except I’m The Midnighter, and I’m the guy who monsters are afraid of.
I’m just going to keep Night’s Bringer Of War thing quiet, and be that nice Paul Wilder, a bunch of guys in Haight remember buying groceries, that nice Paul Wilder that the old new Weatherman cooked up for me. As such, as a secret identity it’s pretty compromised, but it’s good enough when you’re being asked questions by the local police. A nice ex-civil servant with the UN, taken early retirement, because, as you know it pays a bucket, which is why Christine and Jackson are cooped up in a little office at the top of the UN building, drinking bad coffee and typing up reports, when they could be soaking up the sun in their idyllic Caribbean villa.
So like the nice civil servant I am, I kick the door in with my nice sneakers. The hinges are cheap and give up too easy, but the door still swings in, hanging from all the locks on the other side. Security, good, I like people who take responsibility for their own security. What I do not like, are people who think it’s alright, commendable even, to kick their significant other in the face.
She’s looking at me, unsure whether I’m the second coming, or I want in on the hot wife beating action. There’s a drop of blood, ruby red, hanging from her lip like a pendant. There are bruises on her face, they’re light, greenish, like grass stains. It looks like she thinks that this is a fact of life; you meet a man, you set up home, he beats the shit out of you because the dinner’s cold. And she’s looking at me, with an expression that’s part fear, part martyr, and part “I don’t want anyone to see me like this”.
And it’s like looking into a mirror, a very old, slightly tarnished mirror. It’s brushing away the cobwebs and making me look, and this, this wasn’t something Bendix wanted to wipe away, not at all. Hell, no; he put it there. He’s in there, in there among the ghosts, among the dead people. This one’s different, not so far away, not like watching some old home movie. In this one I’m there, trapped in the moment like a fly trapped in amber.
Maybe it’s just because I’m not used to this, still adjusting to having an extra brain, ticking off probabilities in my ear; but I really can’t predict the Weatherman, I can’t. I can predict Lamplight’s pomposity; can predict what he pulls out of that lamp of his, without breaking a sweat. I can even predict the colour of Crow Jane’s nail polish.
But I can’t predict Henry Bendix, not in the least, and that frightens me. I’m not meant to fear anymore, I’m meant to be fear, I’m meant to make fucking armies piss their pants at the mention of me. I am not meant to be afraid of our boss. I am not meant to be afraid of this wonderfully stalwart man who defends the Earth without question from all threats.
But I am. And right now I am very afraid indeed.
We all know the rules, “Fraternisation amongst Stormwatch officers is an offence and ultimately punishable by death.” The Weatherman really is all heart. I know why the rule’s there, I know from experience, I’m probably the only guy on this team who can know from experience. I’m the only one with any left, and I know that’s not because the doctors had a moment of oversight, it’s because I’m the only one with experience pertinent to my new role, my new life. I mean flying powered by the rays of the sun, no one has experience of that; ditto using a mystical lamp to create helpful phantasms; ditto running at twice the speed of sound; ditto everything.
Part of me wonders, maybe Stalker has some memories, some memories at all, since if he’s half alien, he’d have always looked like that, right? I want to ask him, but I can’t, I can’t do it and be wrong, I can’t let the others know I still have memories, that I still have some traces, however small, of a past. I can’t. It won’t be right, it won’t be fair, it will be for the team. The only person who knows, besides the Weatherman, and he’s the guy giving the orders, is Apollo.
The rest of me, the larger part, the part that was desperately trying to get the computer to actually peg on Bendix, is hoping that none of the team have squealed. That the temptation of replacing the two favourite children isn’t enough to make them do it. I think they know we’re doing it, breaking the rules, putting the whole operation in jeopardy before we even start. Fuck, I should put myself on charges, being the good soldier and all. Scratch the good. From what I remember, those vague and frustrating snatches of memory, I was never good. Except in taking orders. Killing civilians isn’t good, killing children even less so, sneaking in some country’s borders and carrying out terrorist acts that somebody else is going to carry the can for really isn’t. Maybe that’s why I gave myself to Stormwatch, gave my body to the Weatherman’s labs, gave myself over and hoped they would wash away my sins. Only to find that they didn’t. I was too useful with them intact. Something about that gives me doubts about the Weatherman, but only for a moment.
What if he knows? What if he’s found out? What if he’s found out about me and Apollo? What if I’m not just due a dressing-down for screwing up on exercises? No, I’m not normally such a worrier, warrior yes, worrier no; but I’ve given him enough grounds for suspicion today, more than enough, especially if a little bird’s already been whispering in his ear, especially if he already suspects.
I was too busy covering Apollo’s back today, let the mission objectives go to hell, and pushed him away from danger, pushed him out of the path of the machine guns. I shouldn’t have turned back, should have stuck with the plan. But I prefer my lover not with more holes than a swiss cheese. I’ll have to admit, that they’re realistic for war games. Sure, I expect the bullets, it’s not like the Weatherman to mollycoddle us, but the dedication of the guys on the ground, you’d almost think we were on a real retrieval mission. And something about that sets off alarm bells too.
How can I think with this going in my head, I think I’ve almost got a whole belfry of campanologists (I half remember a very good education, or at least the sense of one) in there, ringing away. Just when I need to think clearly, have a good reason ready. And I do. I think.
Sure enough, he’s angry in that cold dangerous way of his. When asked what the fuck I thought I was doing, I already have my answer, I’m just hoping he doesn’t know military bullshit when he hears it, “Sorry, sir! Thought the rest of the team could handle it, sir! Thought that keeping the team leader intact was important to mission success and team morale!”
It seems to have worked, or maybe it hasn’t. He’s beckoning Apollo over from the rest of the team, and I almost piss my pants in relief when he turns and says nice as pie (or at least as nice as he gets), “Apollo, you’re the leader of this team, your role is to guide and discipline your men. Do it.” That’s not too bad, but he doesn’t stop, he just pauses, and that isn’t good, “Beat him. Hard. He won’t resist you, you’re his leader, he doesn’t want you hurt or killed. He won’t resist you, because I’m ordering
him not to,” and then a small smile breaks out on his face, “and I so want to see whether those new exotic carbon fibres I’ve had put into him do their job under stress.”
Fuck, it’s a test. Maybe. Or maybe he’s just fucking with us.
And Apollo’s hesitating. Fuck. Apollo, snap out of it, or he’s going to twig and then I’ll be facing something more than a couple of bruises. He’s still doing it, looking at the Weatherman like he’s grown a third head. So I do the only thing I can do, “Apollo, you’re the team leader here; you have to follow orders as much as the rest of us. And I wasn’t, I screwed up and deserve what’s coming to me.” Hopefully it will shake him out of his funk, and I kneel ready, following Bendix’s little gesture.
Harder, harder is the only thing I can think as Apollo’s fists rain into me, harder. Harder so the Weatherman doesn’t suspect, harder so the Weatherman is happy, harder so I can lose myself in the blows and go to some distant place in my mind. But I can’t. The computer tells me about every blow, pulls me back to reality, all those anti-interrogation techniques I remember so clearly are useless deadweight. So I try to do the next best thing, and try to turn every punch every kick I rock under as my ribs begin to bruise and my shoulder dislocates into a loving caress from those beautiful hands. Only that doesn’t work either, and there’s blood upon my lips, he hasn’t really aimed above the neck, so that’s very bad news indeed.
Only when Bendix gives the word does he stop. And I’m thankful. We put up a good show, I think he’s satisfied. I’m satisfied. I’m sure enough that we haven’t given ourselves away. Certain enough. He orders the rest away, Apollo’s caught on and doesn’t look back. Why does that hurt so much? So much more than the pain, the computer’s already telling me what’s wrong, as if I don’t fucking well know already, telling me in calm tones of broken bones and bleeding membranes. Broken bones, Christ, Apollo’s stronger than I thought. He must be forever holding back on me in the gym.
I’ve got other things to worry about right now. Bendix has taken my chin in his hand, is guiding my face up to look at him, and he’s doing it so very gently, like the caress I so long for from Apollo’s hands. Only this feels wrong. And I feel sick.
“You did well, my child, so very well. I’m proud of you, very proud”
I can hear the blood in my chest as I reply, “Aren’t we all your children, sir?”
“Are but you’re particularly special, particularly dear to me, but I suppose you’ll never understand,” fuck, what’s got into him, why has he turned from disciplinarian hard case into elderly grandma, I clearly look bemused enough, “yes, well, you’re never going to understand not really, but with you I have to be sure of my handiwork, be sure that my favourite boy doesn’t come to harm.”
Did I mention how Apollo and I were favourites of his, earlier, how some of the others were jealous, and I thought they’d sell us out for a moment in his esteem? Well, they wouldn’t if they’d ever seen him like this, I’m creeped-out, actually I’m fucking terrified. I’m The Midnighter now. I shouldn’t be terrified, I should be terror. But right now, I so want him to stop, to take his hand off me, to go away.
“I have to be certain, I have to be certain that you’re safe. That your capabilities are indeed as they should be. Have you got any broken bones?”
The last bit comes as an afterthought, and I nod desperately into his hand, not trusting my voice as he says, “My boy, my poor, poor boy. I shall be having words with the engineers, you know,” like they’re neighbours who let their dog chase the cat, and then he gets brisker, “but, we might as well test everything right now, I don’t think they’re going to strengthen those bones until the damage’s repaired itself, and we might as well kill two birds with one stone…”
He’s fast, faster than any human should be, and I’m slow, too much pain is dulling my senses. And there’s a needle in my arm. I didn’t notice it go in, but then I feel pain differently now. Everything’s feeling woozy, it shouldn’t. “…I might as well test all the new systems. Can’t have you falling prey to biological weaponry, can we, not sure why anyone hasn’t found a way to use this little upstart virus yet. I suppose the human immunodeficiency virus isn’t fast enough for them, and they lack the creativity to make a version that starts active like this one. I have to say I’m surprised, but it can only be a matter of time, can’t it, son, and I don’t want you going out into the world unprepared.”
They’re still staring at me, like a still life. “Bastard Beats Up His Girl” by Rembrandt or maybe Picasso. He’ll look like a freaking Picasso once I’m through with him. Except… except that won’t help at all. Hurt him too much and she’ll pity him, let him back in when he pounds on the door, after his bastard friends have put up bail for him, let him talk her out of pressing charges with his fists. Best she can get out that scenario is maybe the guy gives her a bit more pocket money for make-up to hide the bruises better.
It’s only a matter of seconds to get the bastard du jour down for the count, and he’s sleeping, or close enough, on the cigarette burn covered couch, while I have a word with the girl, of the “Don’t make me regret this by not pressing charges against him” kind. Her name is Marie, she has three kids by three different bastards; Jorge, Jason and Fifi. Every time they left her, every time she thought it was her fault, that if she had sonly been quieter and more compliant, they would have stayed.
I want to bash their freaking teeth in, and rip their dicks off, and stuff them in their mouths. I’m not sure where to stuff the teeth yet. But I’ll think of somewhere. I let the computer run that scenario, keep me nice and happy, and talk to her like the nice retired civil servant I am, while my fists are covered in his blood, and I break his nose for the sixth time, and kick him so hard in the crotch that his balls come out his ears. She talks about her kids, and I talk about my little girl, as we sit on the coffee table and wait for the cops.
Yeah, I made sure she called. It’s not that I don’t trust her, okay, actually it is, but I don’t trust anyone, not even myself. Except Apollo, possibly, and then all I can trust him to do is love me. Like she trusted them? I hope not. I really hope not.
I still don’t now why this pulled that memory out of the hat. Apollo isn’t like him, could never be like him, would never hurt me just because… I know now, what I knew then; Apollo could never hurt me, not from cruelty, but maybe from love, and I hope to hell, that he would if it could bring about the finer world that I so dream of. In so far as I ever dream. That one dream that led us to cast away our lives, our families, our homes. For nothing but masks and a finer, more perfect, more equal world.
When the cops have turned up at last, I was already ready for the question. I already knew it would come. I just waited for it like the nice, polite civil servant that I am, made the right noises talking to the cop, Officer Martinez J, blue eyes and dark hair, clearly nervous. I suppose I’d be nervous if I met a man, who’d kicked in a door armed only with his converses and knocked a guy unconscious with pin-point accuracy, and I was armed only with a gun, some pepper spray and some totally inadequate gun training. So I played nice. So the scumbag boyfriend would get to learn about sexual assault courtesy of the Arizona prison system. So Maria would learn that not every man behaves like a caveman.
I’m ready for the question. And when it comes, I already have the answer lined up in my brain, Paul Wilder from California, just passing through town, on my way to Mexico the long way. I have it all lined up, for when it comes. And it does, “Can I have your name please, sir?” and I have it all lined up, but my mouth isn’t reading from the same song sheet, and it opens up of its own accord.
And it says, “Bendix, Simon Bendix.”
Fuck.
Who else would Bendix have trusted to put in his little secret army, than his own son. His memories long gone, but still the perfect sleeper agent. Who else would he have made the most dangerous man on earth? The only person he thought he could trust absolutely, right up to the moment he found that he couldn’t, the moment he found that his favourite child had other interests than serving a guy who was clearly a nutso sadist, and had always doubted everyone save the man he loved.
Fuck. I can’t tell Apollo this either. Sometimes I wish I could be the man he is so much it hurts.
The Authority were created by Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch and are owned by Wildstorm, who are owned by DC, who are owned by Time-Warner, who have a big legal department and scare me.
That or all the Authority bods on earth will want to kill me.
Disclaimer: Apollo and The Midnighter belong only to each other and Wildstorm Comics. I am a fan writing for other fans, I make no profit out of this.
Warning: The Midnighter paraphrases Juvenal badly in this one.
This Apollo/Midnighter so if you’re in the least way anti that sort of thing, The Midnighter thinks he’ll be sporting and give you a five second start before he breaks out the baseball bat with nails in it and gets educational on your ass.
Continuity: Okay, I’m sorry if the Jackson King reference screws this up. Otherwise I’ve got very little idea where this belongs save before Coup D’etat. Why don’t you tell me?
Here's the intentionally unrepresentative teaser:
I'm not spending this time out on the town, living the life of Riley, 'course if I tried, it would not really have much charm, as alcohol just tastes pretty now, and looks pretty too, if you're downing Sea breezes and Margaritas. So you expect me to drink moonshine whisky and smoke cigars? I'm not that kind of tough guy. For starters, I'm not a tough guy, I'm a bastard. Sure, the opposition are bastards, but who bastards the bastards, to quote a little Latin.
What I can definitely say is it's nothing like my last try at Authority fic.
Not x-posted anywhere, yet.
The Ones You Love
It would only happen on my day off, well theoretically my day off. It’s not as if they really exist amongst capes, in the biggest pyjama party in creation, even if you’re wearing your underpants inside your trousers, you’re not off work. The key is potentiality. Even if you’re not wearing a mask you are one. A call could go out at every time, screaming over radio-telepathy, burn-your-brain loud. Alien cod soldiers and thing from the nth dimension do not take days off. Ergo, capes and masks don’t either.
Unless you’re a little shit-for-brains, who goes out, marries a pop star who more closely resembles a two cent hooker, turns off the bug in his head and tunes out with the aid of what he sincerely hopes is heroin. Having seen enough drug pushers, in what a politician would call our “wilderness years” and what Apollo would term our “eating pizza out of trashcans, fighting and fucking years”, I know it’s never quite heroin. They cut it with cat worming tablets and oven cleaner and anything else they can get their little two-bit gangster hands on. The CIA boys are worst for that, anything to make the budget go farther and ensure that the unemployment figures stay low. So, I should just be happy that Jenny isn’t going to catch worms off the Doctor and that he’s nice and shiny clean inside, or at least cleaner than his outside.
As I said, potentiality is the key, even standing here feeling half naked without my mask and with a new haircut. Blonde, short, very military, very me; Apollo’s going to love it, love brushing his hands across it, love holding his head in his hands as he leans in to kiss me.
Apollo’s not here, I’m doing this solo, and unless I want things to get embarrassing fast, not to mention attracting a lot of attention I don’t really want, I’m going to stop thinking about him right now.
I’m not spending this time out on the town, living the life of Riley, ‘course if I tried, it would not really have much charm, as alcohol just tastes pretty now, and looks pretty too, if you’re downing Sea Breezes and Margaritas. So you expect me to drink moonshine whisky and smoke cigars? I’m not that kind of tough guy. For starters, I’m not a tough guy, I’m a bastard. Sure, the opposition are bastards, but who bastards the bastards, to quote a little Latin. I was made to be unstoppable, I’m immune to poison, and when you get down to it, that’s your little drink after work with the boys. Poison. Or anaesthetic, and I’m immune to that as well.
Sure, I can remember getting drunk, half remember anyway, a throat burning with tequila as the gang cheer me on, the blond one’s loudest. A name swims past, Straight John? He’s all America’s Sweethearts, too tall and skinny to make a footballer, but great for a soldier. Looks like he stepped out of a recruitment poster, until he turns at least, and I see the scar running down the side of his face, just missing those true-blue eyes. He should reek of apple pie, instead he reeks of stale pizza and liquor. It’s odd, remembering him, yet seeing him for the first time. Part of me wonders if he’d recognise me now, or whether he’d just see me for the first time, just like I’m seeing him.
They’re all chanting my name, a blank sound I’ve almost got used to, and various shouts of encouragement or derision. Another glass is pressed into my hand, another shot and the noise just got louder, and a lemon in the other. I look down for the salt, it’s where it’s been for the past eights shots, on a tanned chest, looking more like glitter than salt. He looks up at me, white blond hair, sun kissed, getting into his face, it’s not exactly long, but those bangs sure are not military issue, no GI-Joe this one, and a half-familiar hand sweeps up to push it out of his blue eyes.
And everything stops.
I know those eyes better than I do my own, that searing coruscating blue, flecked with gold now, but still the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. What I really recognise, though, is the smile, that sunlight smile.
And I’m back here again, desperately wanting to go back, but stuck here, in this corridor smelling of piss and stale air, looking desperately for a door back into the past. He’s always going to be my undoing, seeing him was such a surprise; you have to realise that I don’t get surprises anymore; the computer your tax dollars paid for, nestling away in my head, answers for that; and then I’m not moving with the flow, following the current of memory, but I’ve stopped and the water’s turned to ice, glass and fractured.
What the fuck was Apollo doing with a bunch of soldiers? Then again, do I really want to know? I know soldiers, squaddies, commandoes, and spies; I know people like me, and I now that a lot of things get written up as “stress relief”, and he was the only guy who wasn’t like me there, and he was letting some paid killer lick salt off his neatly waxed chest. Apollo doesn’t wax his chest, it’s hairier than mine, silver hairs against milk white skin; no hair then, just tanned skin, clearly still a sun-worshipper. I really don’t want to think about it, my vague memories of the self-dubbed Gay Team (except for Straight John, of course) pretty much scream the obvious at me, and they don’t sound pretty.
Of course, I’m not going to tell Apollo. What would I tell him? I remember my past, and you remember nothing, and in my past you were at best a complete and utter slut, who’d play games with eight soldiers of no virtue whatsoever, and at worst a rent boy, who’d play games with eight soldiers of no virtue whatsoever for pocket money.
It could just be my subconscious, but I doubt it.
That could only happen to me, or possibly any other poor fuck who got the Henry Bendix mindwipe treatment, with a spa massage and battle computer thrown in as handy extras. So I go back about my semi-legal business. I’m not stupid, I know we need boltholes in case there’s anyone scarier than us, let sunshine boy handle the house in California that he’s been bending my ear back about and would so light up his life. I’m just getting boltholes and a lot of them. This one’s a low-rent no class apartment in Twoblondes, Arizona. It’s cash in hand, briefly, then cash in pocket, and cash walking down the street. Unmarked bills, of course. An illegal sub-let definitely. Safe? Possibly.
But let’s have a hundred or two to play on the safe side, and don’t ask where I get the unmarked bills from, and don’t be stupid enough to ask why I don’t just “door” here. I did not catch two trains and a greyhound to get here, just to be confronted with stupidity. Remember, kids, stupidity can often prove fatal. In many deeply interesting and painful ways; be stupid and your Uncle Midnighter will show you.
So, I walking down the corridor, business done, lease of one luxury apartment with wall-to-wall running cockroaches secured. Of course, Apollo and I barely need it, we did fine bedding down in doorways for years, we don’t need to eat, we don’t need to sleep. All we did was try to avoid getting bored, and in some small way make a finer world. Jenny’s the problem. She eats and sleeps on a regular basis, not because she’s chosen to, as it were, and she needs somewhere that is at least halfway warm and dry.
So corridor, yellow, paint probably lead based, as per spectrum analysis, so the landlord clearly doesn’t do much maintenance, all good. No kids running round in corridor, also good. Nothing left in corridors except the occasional bullet hole, not good except that it proves that these people want to keep themselves to themselves, or at least those people not full of bullet holes for snitching on the local dealer. Risk assessment: minimal.
Loud banging noise behind the door where the shadows from numbers long-gone say twenty-nine, interesting. Female screaming and repeated banging noises. I don’t need my computer on this one, there are only really two likely scenarios, it’s either a heady S and M session, or there’s some wife/girlfriend/random female battering going on. And my money isn’t on the first choice, whips and stuff cost money, and there isn’t much of it ‘round here except in the pockets of the wannabe property mogul who rented me my nice new piece of shit apartment, with charming views over the electricity substation.
Like I said, you’re always wearing a mask, a cape, funky underpants that you just have to share with the world; even when you’re not. I could just walk by and let another asshole drive his girl to drink, or ER, or an early grave. Except I’m The Midnighter, and I’m the guy who monsters are afraid of.
I’m just going to keep Night’s Bringer Of War thing quiet, and be that nice Paul Wilder, a bunch of guys in Haight remember buying groceries, that nice Paul Wilder that the old new Weatherman cooked up for me. As such, as a secret identity it’s pretty compromised, but it’s good enough when you’re being asked questions by the local police. A nice ex-civil servant with the UN, taken early retirement, because, as you know it pays a bucket, which is why Christine and Jackson are cooped up in a little office at the top of the UN building, drinking bad coffee and typing up reports, when they could be soaking up the sun in their idyllic Caribbean villa.
So like the nice civil servant I am, I kick the door in with my nice sneakers. The hinges are cheap and give up too easy, but the door still swings in, hanging from all the locks on the other side. Security, good, I like people who take responsibility for their own security. What I do not like, are people who think it’s alright, commendable even, to kick their significant other in the face.
She’s looking at me, unsure whether I’m the second coming, or I want in on the hot wife beating action. There’s a drop of blood, ruby red, hanging from her lip like a pendant. There are bruises on her face, they’re light, greenish, like grass stains. It looks like she thinks that this is a fact of life; you meet a man, you set up home, he beats the shit out of you because the dinner’s cold. And she’s looking at me, with an expression that’s part fear, part martyr, and part “I don’t want anyone to see me like this”.
And it’s like looking into a mirror, a very old, slightly tarnished mirror. It’s brushing away the cobwebs and making me look, and this, this wasn’t something Bendix wanted to wipe away, not at all. Hell, no; he put it there. He’s in there, in there among the ghosts, among the dead people. This one’s different, not so far away, not like watching some old home movie. In this one I’m there, trapped in the moment like a fly trapped in amber.
Maybe it’s just because I’m not used to this, still adjusting to having an extra brain, ticking off probabilities in my ear; but I really can’t predict the Weatherman, I can’t. I can predict Lamplight’s pomposity; can predict what he pulls out of that lamp of his, without breaking a sweat. I can even predict the colour of Crow Jane’s nail polish.
But I can’t predict Henry Bendix, not in the least, and that frightens me. I’m not meant to fear anymore, I’m meant to be fear, I’m meant to make fucking armies piss their pants at the mention of me. I am not meant to be afraid of our boss. I am not meant to be afraid of this wonderfully stalwart man who defends the Earth without question from all threats.
But I am. And right now I am very afraid indeed.
We all know the rules, “Fraternisation amongst Stormwatch officers is an offence and ultimately punishable by death.” The Weatherman really is all heart. I know why the rule’s there, I know from experience, I’m probably the only guy on this team who can know from experience. I’m the only one with any left, and I know that’s not because the doctors had a moment of oversight, it’s because I’m the only one with experience pertinent to my new role, my new life. I mean flying powered by the rays of the sun, no one has experience of that; ditto using a mystical lamp to create helpful phantasms; ditto running at twice the speed of sound; ditto everything.
Part of me wonders, maybe Stalker has some memories, some memories at all, since if he’s half alien, he’d have always looked like that, right? I want to ask him, but I can’t, I can’t do it and be wrong, I can’t let the others know I still have memories, that I still have some traces, however small, of a past. I can’t. It won’t be right, it won’t be fair, it will be for the team. The only person who knows, besides the Weatherman, and he’s the guy giving the orders, is Apollo.
The rest of me, the larger part, the part that was desperately trying to get the computer to actually peg on Bendix, is hoping that none of the team have squealed. That the temptation of replacing the two favourite children isn’t enough to make them do it. I think they know we’re doing it, breaking the rules, putting the whole operation in jeopardy before we even start. Fuck, I should put myself on charges, being the good soldier and all. Scratch the good. From what I remember, those vague and frustrating snatches of memory, I was never good. Except in taking orders. Killing civilians isn’t good, killing children even less so, sneaking in some country’s borders and carrying out terrorist acts that somebody else is going to carry the can for really isn’t. Maybe that’s why I gave myself to Stormwatch, gave my body to the Weatherman’s labs, gave myself over and hoped they would wash away my sins. Only to find that they didn’t. I was too useful with them intact. Something about that gives me doubts about the Weatherman, but only for a moment.
What if he knows? What if he’s found out? What if he’s found out about me and Apollo? What if I’m not just due a dressing-down for screwing up on exercises? No, I’m not normally such a worrier, warrior yes, worrier no; but I’ve given him enough grounds for suspicion today, more than enough, especially if a little bird’s already been whispering in his ear, especially if he already suspects.
I was too busy covering Apollo’s back today, let the mission objectives go to hell, and pushed him away from danger, pushed him out of the path of the machine guns. I shouldn’t have turned back, should have stuck with the plan. But I prefer my lover not with more holes than a swiss cheese. I’ll have to admit, that they’re realistic for war games. Sure, I expect the bullets, it’s not like the Weatherman to mollycoddle us, but the dedication of the guys on the ground, you’d almost think we were on a real retrieval mission. And something about that sets off alarm bells too.
How can I think with this going in my head, I think I’ve almost got a whole belfry of campanologists (I half remember a very good education, or at least the sense of one) in there, ringing away. Just when I need to think clearly, have a good reason ready. And I do. I think.
Sure enough, he’s angry in that cold dangerous way of his. When asked what the fuck I thought I was doing, I already have my answer, I’m just hoping he doesn’t know military bullshit when he hears it, “Sorry, sir! Thought the rest of the team could handle it, sir! Thought that keeping the team leader intact was important to mission success and team morale!”
It seems to have worked, or maybe it hasn’t. He’s beckoning Apollo over from the rest of the team, and I almost piss my pants in relief when he turns and says nice as pie (or at least as nice as he gets), “Apollo, you’re the leader of this team, your role is to guide and discipline your men. Do it.” That’s not too bad, but he doesn’t stop, he just pauses, and that isn’t good, “Beat him. Hard. He won’t resist you, you’re his leader, he doesn’t want you hurt or killed. He won’t resist you, because I’m ordering
him not to,” and then a small smile breaks out on his face, “and I so want to see whether those new exotic carbon fibres I’ve had put into him do their job under stress.”
Fuck, it’s a test. Maybe. Or maybe he’s just fucking with us.
And Apollo’s hesitating. Fuck. Apollo, snap out of it, or he’s going to twig and then I’ll be facing something more than a couple of bruises. He’s still doing it, looking at the Weatherman like he’s grown a third head. So I do the only thing I can do, “Apollo, you’re the team leader here; you have to follow orders as much as the rest of us. And I wasn’t, I screwed up and deserve what’s coming to me.” Hopefully it will shake him out of his funk, and I kneel ready, following Bendix’s little gesture.
Harder, harder is the only thing I can think as Apollo’s fists rain into me, harder. Harder so the Weatherman doesn’t suspect, harder so the Weatherman is happy, harder so I can lose myself in the blows and go to some distant place in my mind. But I can’t. The computer tells me about every blow, pulls me back to reality, all those anti-interrogation techniques I remember so clearly are useless deadweight. So I try to do the next best thing, and try to turn every punch every kick I rock under as my ribs begin to bruise and my shoulder dislocates into a loving caress from those beautiful hands. Only that doesn’t work either, and there’s blood upon my lips, he hasn’t really aimed above the neck, so that’s very bad news indeed.
Only when Bendix gives the word does he stop. And I’m thankful. We put up a good show, I think he’s satisfied. I’m satisfied. I’m sure enough that we haven’t given ourselves away. Certain enough. He orders the rest away, Apollo’s caught on and doesn’t look back. Why does that hurt so much? So much more than the pain, the computer’s already telling me what’s wrong, as if I don’t fucking well know already, telling me in calm tones of broken bones and bleeding membranes. Broken bones, Christ, Apollo’s stronger than I thought. He must be forever holding back on me in the gym.
I’ve got other things to worry about right now. Bendix has taken my chin in his hand, is guiding my face up to look at him, and he’s doing it so very gently, like the caress I so long for from Apollo’s hands. Only this feels wrong. And I feel sick.
“You did well, my child, so very well. I’m proud of you, very proud”
I can hear the blood in my chest as I reply, “Aren’t we all your children, sir?”
“Are but you’re particularly special, particularly dear to me, but I suppose you’ll never understand,” fuck, what’s got into him, why has he turned from disciplinarian hard case into elderly grandma, I clearly look bemused enough, “yes, well, you’re never going to understand not really, but with you I have to be sure of my handiwork, be sure that my favourite boy doesn’t come to harm.”
Did I mention how Apollo and I were favourites of his, earlier, how some of the others were jealous, and I thought they’d sell us out for a moment in his esteem? Well, they wouldn’t if they’d ever seen him like this, I’m creeped-out, actually I’m fucking terrified. I’m The Midnighter now. I shouldn’t be terrified, I should be terror. But right now, I so want him to stop, to take his hand off me, to go away.
“I have to be certain, I have to be certain that you’re safe. That your capabilities are indeed as they should be. Have you got any broken bones?”
The last bit comes as an afterthought, and I nod desperately into his hand, not trusting my voice as he says, “My boy, my poor, poor boy. I shall be having words with the engineers, you know,” like they’re neighbours who let their dog chase the cat, and then he gets brisker, “but, we might as well test everything right now, I don’t think they’re going to strengthen those bones until the damage’s repaired itself, and we might as well kill two birds with one stone…”
He’s fast, faster than any human should be, and I’m slow, too much pain is dulling my senses. And there’s a needle in my arm. I didn’t notice it go in, but then I feel pain differently now. Everything’s feeling woozy, it shouldn’t. “…I might as well test all the new systems. Can’t have you falling prey to biological weaponry, can we, not sure why anyone hasn’t found a way to use this little upstart virus yet. I suppose the human immunodeficiency virus isn’t fast enough for them, and they lack the creativity to make a version that starts active like this one. I have to say I’m surprised, but it can only be a matter of time, can’t it, son, and I don’t want you going out into the world unprepared.”
They’re still staring at me, like a still life. “Bastard Beats Up His Girl” by Rembrandt or maybe Picasso. He’ll look like a freaking Picasso once I’m through with him. Except… except that won’t help at all. Hurt him too much and she’ll pity him, let him back in when he pounds on the door, after his bastard friends have put up bail for him, let him talk her out of pressing charges with his fists. Best she can get out that scenario is maybe the guy gives her a bit more pocket money for make-up to hide the bruises better.
It’s only a matter of seconds to get the bastard du jour down for the count, and he’s sleeping, or close enough, on the cigarette burn covered couch, while I have a word with the girl, of the “Don’t make me regret this by not pressing charges against him” kind. Her name is Marie, she has three kids by three different bastards; Jorge, Jason and Fifi. Every time they left her, every time she thought it was her fault, that if she had sonly been quieter and more compliant, they would have stayed.
I want to bash their freaking teeth in, and rip their dicks off, and stuff them in their mouths. I’m not sure where to stuff the teeth yet. But I’ll think of somewhere. I let the computer run that scenario, keep me nice and happy, and talk to her like the nice retired civil servant I am, while my fists are covered in his blood, and I break his nose for the sixth time, and kick him so hard in the crotch that his balls come out his ears. She talks about her kids, and I talk about my little girl, as we sit on the coffee table and wait for the cops.
Yeah, I made sure she called. It’s not that I don’t trust her, okay, actually it is, but I don’t trust anyone, not even myself. Except Apollo, possibly, and then all I can trust him to do is love me. Like she trusted them? I hope not. I really hope not.
I still don’t now why this pulled that memory out of the hat. Apollo isn’t like him, could never be like him, would never hurt me just because… I know now, what I knew then; Apollo could never hurt me, not from cruelty, but maybe from love, and I hope to hell, that he would if it could bring about the finer world that I so dream of. In so far as I ever dream. That one dream that led us to cast away our lives, our families, our homes. For nothing but masks and a finer, more perfect, more equal world.
When the cops have turned up at last, I was already ready for the question. I already knew it would come. I just waited for it like the nice, polite civil servant that I am, made the right noises talking to the cop, Officer Martinez J, blue eyes and dark hair, clearly nervous. I suppose I’d be nervous if I met a man, who’d kicked in a door armed only with his converses and knocked a guy unconscious with pin-point accuracy, and I was armed only with a gun, some pepper spray and some totally inadequate gun training. So I played nice. So the scumbag boyfriend would get to learn about sexual assault courtesy of the Arizona prison system. So Maria would learn that not every man behaves like a caveman.
I’m ready for the question. And when it comes, I already have the answer lined up in my brain, Paul Wilder from California, just passing through town, on my way to Mexico the long way. I have it all lined up, for when it comes. And it does, “Can I have your name please, sir?” and I have it all lined up, but my mouth isn’t reading from the same song sheet, and it opens up of its own accord.
And it says, “Bendix, Simon Bendix.”
Fuck.
Who else would Bendix have trusted to put in his little secret army, than his own son. His memories long gone, but still the perfect sleeper agent. Who else would he have made the most dangerous man on earth? The only person he thought he could trust absolutely, right up to the moment he found that he couldn’t, the moment he found that his favourite child had other interests than serving a guy who was clearly a nutso sadist, and had always doubted everyone save the man he loved.
Fuck. I can’t tell Apollo this either. Sometimes I wish I could be the man he is so much it hurts.
The Authority were created by Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch and are owned by Wildstorm, who are owned by DC, who are owned by Time-Warner, who have a big legal department and scare me.