Happy Boostlethon, axolotl_lan!
Title: In Our Bedroom After the War
Author: fleur_de_liz
For: axolotl_lan
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Booster/Beetle. Spoilers for Booster Gold v2, minor spoilers for Blackest Night, some violence, language
Summary:Time Masters aren’t supposed to need sleep, but Booster does. Especially when his best friend inhabits his dreams.
Notes:Thank you to doctorv and felonazcorp for your incomparable beta skills. Title and cut text are taken from a song by the band Stars.
Although Rip pilfered Marie Antoinette’s bed from Fontainebleau (and somewhere in the time stream), he never uses it. Sleep, to a Time Master, is secondary, practically irrelevant. How can one sleep, after all, when the laws of time no longer apply? When yesterday is five years into the future, and right now is three weeks into the past? A Time Master blinks, and all the possibilities of here and then and somewhen scatter like starlings, and who has time to listen to circadian rhythms when the symphony of moments is playing? The bed sits unused, sheets crisp and smelling of past and decadence.
Booster sleeps. He’s not yet a Time Master, still green and still frustrated with the constant shift of “past” and “future,” their fluidity. Like wet sand at the edge of the sea, one minute it’s solid and easily clutched in one soggy fist, the next it’s something almost liquid and dripping through the cracks between fingers. He understands that sleep is no longer a necessity, something Rip can easily shut off completely, like he did with the Supernova suit. But he doesn’t want to lose his need for sleep, to walk the world a waking zombie. Even if it does mean facing the nightmares that crawl out of the darkness behind his eyes.
The bedrooms in the Arizona bunker are small, especially compared to Rip’s. They’re not really meant to be bedrooms, really more like glorified storage closets with camp beds in them. Not even a dresser, not even a clock (though who needs a clock when Skeets can tell time, geographical position, temporal position, air temperature, and who won every baseball game from here to Metropolis?). Rip has made a few small concessions to interior design and hung some pictures on the wall, though, in some attempt to make the rooms look less like prison cells. In Michelle’s now-empty room, holo-photos from the 25th Century, family portraits thought long lost to repossession. In Booster’s room, pictures of the League, his League, and a few of the less embarrassing photos of himself and Ted. Sometimes Booster can’t bear to look at them and turns them around on the wall, then feels guilty and turns them back.
“Good night, Skeets.”
“Sir, it’s three-thirty in the afternoon,” Skeets points out, hovering over the bed, watching Booster peel off his cowl, gloves, boots.
Booster scrapes a hand across his eyes. “Not like there’s a window in here, Skeets. Besides, how long have I been awake now?”
“In real time? Thirty-seven hours and four minutes, Sir. But you have been traveling in time through most of that.”
Booster peels back the thin covers, stretches and pops his shoulders, sits at the edge of the bed, and stares at the wall. “It’s not fair.”
“What isn’t fair, Sir?” Skeets asks, already anticipating Booster’s reply. The fact that he has to pretend to be stupid. The fact that his sister left and now he’s all alone with Rip, piecing history back together by himself. The fact that Rip ate all of the Lucky Charms (vintage, from back when the marshmallows were slightly more real than they are at present). Skeets has already calculated answers for these scenarios.
Booster nods at a picture. “That I can’t save him. I’ve tried…I’ve looked for every possible opening…any waver. But I…there’s nothing. I can’t do it.” He hasn’t wanted to admit this aloud; admitting it is an admission of defeat, and when the grief continues to hang heavy on his head like a leaden shroud, it makes saying those words ache all the more.
“Perhaps, Sir…” Skeets replies slowly, his processors whirring, computing the most appropriate response. “There simply isn’t meant to be one. Mr. Kord’s original death was not in vain, and the sacrifice he made to repair the time stream allowed for your continued existence. He will always remain your friend, Sir. Nothing can ever change that.”
“…Good night, Skeets,” Booster says again, shutting off the lights and the conversation. It isn’t what he wanted to hear. He knew it wouldn’t be, but he’d hoped that Skeets would tell him some tiny, impossible odd existed, that if he wiggled just the right fragments of time, the Blue Beetle wouldn’t have to die, and he wouldn’t have to hurt. He rolls over, away from the wall and the lopsided grin he knows Ted’s smiling at him in the dark.
Booster blinks slowly, and the world dissolves into white mist, like a low rolling fog. Walls snap up around him, thick and familiar, the Embassy he’d spent so much time in. At the same time, it’s not the Embassy he remembers, twisted by sleep. Booster looks around, finds himself standing in one of the hallways, faintly recognizes it as the one they ran down, pursued by the mouse Ted had accidentally grown to enormous proportions. He can’t remember the way back to his room, and isn’t sure if he should bother asking J’onn. He starts walking, passing closed doors and pictures that seem to move inside their frames. Booster gets the impression he’s being followed, but he never sees anyone when he looks over his shoulder.
“…I think I’m lost,” he mutters, trying a door and finding it locked tightly.
The corridor turns sharply, and Booster wonders if it’s going to become an Escher painting of upside-down stairwells and doorways that lead to nowhere. Instead, it is an unchanging continuation of the same hall. Booster gets the distinct impression that he’s wandered into the Twilight Zone. He checks his wrists for blasters, in case he finds himself in the middle of an alien melee, and discovers only fine blond hairs.
“Don’t go that way.”
Booster turns around, but there’s no one there to whisper in his ear. When he turns again, the corridor is changed, the tiled floor black and white, patterned like a checkerboard. The walls are no longer the Embassy’s, but cold stone and expanding outward every minute that seems to pass. Booster can’t tell if he’s even still walking or just being floated along by an invisible force, like a helium balloon being gently pulled along by its string.
The corridor has widened out into a big, empty room, roiling with mist, the checkerboard floor spreading out under Booster’s feet. He can’t hear his own footsteps, even though he’s wearing his boots. The room seems more familiar now, familiar and unpleasant. Booster can’t take another step, the force pulling him along now tethering him to the floor, dragging him down to his knees. He can’t hear any footsteps, but somehow he knows someone is coming. When Maxwell Lord walks in, all leather gloves and black shirt and handgun, it’s not as much of a surprise as it should be, but Booster whines softly in his throat nonetheless.
“Well, this is completely unexpected,” he says, regarding Booster in the same way one regards a cockroach skittering across the table at one’s favorite restaurant. “I had my money on Batman or the Beetle…actually, I was pulling for Ted…but you? Well, I’m surprised, quite honestly. After all, if you can’t even die properly, how the hell can you be the one to figure out all this?”
Booster swallows and tries to speak, but all that comes out is a strangled whine. He feels like there’s a lead weight hanging around his neck, keeping him from moving, and there’s still the nagging sensation that someone is standing right behind him. He can’t even look to see if it’s true.
“I should’ve known. You were such a failure in the League; I should’ve known you’d suck at dying too. I thought blowing up you and the house around you was perfectly sufficient, but clearly I was mistaken,” Max continues, playing with the gun in his hands. “I can only hope a more…low-tech method will do the job.” He jams the cartridge into the chamber and cocks the gun, leveling it at Booster’s head. “This time, die and stay dead. I don’t want you Boostering up anything else.”
Booster winces before the gun even goes off, and when it does, the sound is far more muted than he expected. He looks up, surprised to find himself still very much alive, and more surprised to find a blue-gloved hand clenched around the bullet, blood blooming across the material and staining it purple, dripping onto the checkerboard floor. The smoke from the gun hangs in the air, suspended like cumulus clouds, not moving, and neither is Max.
“Always wanted to do that,” Ted says, dropping the bullet. He glances over his shoulder and grins at Booster, wholly unconcerned about his bloody hand. “Told you not to come this way.”
Standing slowly, the weight lifted from his neck, Booster tries to speak again. “…Ted…”
“Really, Boost, dying my death is just…you don’t deserve it. Besides, I don’t think Max ever talked like that. Too scholarly. Come on, we need a change of venue.” He holds out his bloodied hand, the palm of his glove ripped, exposing the wound like a stigmata.
“Ted, your hand…” Booster replies slowly, his voice sounding foreign in his own ears.
He shakes his head, light sparkling off the curved surface of his amber goggles. “Aw, don’t worry about it. It’s just a flesh wound. Here, hang on.” He knocks the gun out of Max’s hands and makes a motion like he’s stabbing Max with a pin. Ted laughs as Max pops like a soap bubble, vanishing into the mist. “Always wanted to do that too. C’mon, Booster.”
Booster takes his hand, the two of them walking through a door Booster hadn’t noticed, or maybe it was the one he’d come through in the first place. It opens onto an aisle in a grocery store Booster isn’t sure he’s ever seen before. Ted just smiles at him and perches on one of the shelves like a blue-clad Cheshire Cat, shoving aside the water crackers and the cheese nips. He looks so at ease, cowl off, swinging his legs slightly like a fidgety young boy.
“Should you be sitting up there like that?” Booster asks, afraid the shelves will collapse under Ted’s weight. It’s not that Ted’s fat, far from it, he’s in the best shape Booster’s ever seen him in. But the shelves don’t look particularly strong, certainly not strong enough to hold a full-grown man’s weight.
“Probably not, but I’m pretty comfortable. Hey, Booster, check it out.” He reaches down and pulls out a package of cookies, throwing them at Booster. He catches them easily, cradling them like a football, the cellophane crinkling. “Just don’t ask me to carry them all to the warehouse.”
Booster laughs, holding tightly to the Chocos. “I don’t think we need to worry about that. What’re you doing here, Ted?”
“Keeping you company. And eating goldfish crackers,” he replies simply, digging his uninjured hand into a bag of pizza-flavored fish crackers. There’s still blood on Ted’s glove, but he doesn’t seem to notice at all. “You should eat something. You look like you’ve lost weight.”
“I’m fine,” Booster replies automatically. “You’re not real, are you? We’re not really having this conversation, are we?”
Ted hops down off the shelf, practically floating. He wraps one arm around Booster’s broad shoulders, pizza fish crumbs on Booster’s suit. His other hand, the one that caught Max’s bullet, takes Booster’s hand. The package of Chocos drops to the ground between their feet and disappears. “I’m about as real as I get, buddy. C’mon, didn’t I tell you to think of me and laugh? C’mere, it’s okay.”
“Don’t leave again,” Booster says, tightening his arms around Ted. His voice is quiet, and it echoes a little, even with all the cardboard boxes and cellophane wrappers muting the sound. “Everybody keeps leaving, Ted. I just…I feel so…”
“I know, Booster. I know.” Ted ruffles his hair a little, getting pizza fish flavor in it. “Listen, okay? Just listen. I’m not going anywhere. Unfortunately, pal, you’re the one that’s got to go. But I’ll be here whenever you need me. Good morning, Booster.”
Booster opens his eyes to the sound of Skeets playing some song quietly from his internal mp3 player, the slow crescendo of the music acting as a subtle alarm clock. “…Good morning, Ted.”
Skeets hovers over, shutting off the music. “Mr. Hunter requests your presence, Sir. Someone is attempting to alter history so that Jim Craddock never becomes the Gentleman Ghost. And before you can suggest it, Sir, no, it would not be a good thing if we left this error uncorrected. Sir, your rapid eye movement prior to waking suggests you were having a dream, and I couldn’t help but overhear you calling for the Blue Beetle in your sleep.”
“Just a dream, Skeets. That’s all,” Booster mutters, sitting up and pulling on his boots. He runs a hand through his hair to take the sleep-tousle out of it, and finds that his palm comes away smelling faintly of pizza-flavored goldfish crackers. He frowns and glances down at his hands. One has a smear of blood on it.
=
The bunker is equipped with a medical wing, even though neither Rip nor Booster is really qualified to provide medical services. Or at least, Booster doesn’t think Rip can; the man’s mysterious identity continues to be more question than answer. Booster lies on a gurney, gauze bandages wrapped around his throat, concealing the livid marks circling his flesh. He’s not sure how much time has passed; days, hours, weeks, minutes. He knows he went back in time and returned to the present, and he knows he’s utterly exhausted and in pain.
Skeets hovers over him, flitting in and out of Booster’s line of sight like a toaster-sized insect. “Mr. Hunter says not to speak, Sir. Your larynx has been bruised.”
Booster rolls his eyes. He doesn’t need Skeets to tell him that. He went back in time and made certain Jim Craddock became Gentleman Ghost, but was nearly hanged himself for his efforts. If not for Skeets’ timely intervention, a bruised larynx and a sore neck would be the least of his worries. He sighs and feels just how painfully that one breath rattles through his aching windpipe.
“Mr. Hunter wished to congratulate you on a successful mission as well, Sir. He would’ve done it himself, but he’s currently on assignment,” Skeets continues. “He’s suggested you get some rest, since you aren’t exactly one hundred percent right now.”
Booster nods slightly and winces again, pain shooting through his neck like the light off sparklers, sputtering and bright. He closes his eyes, listening to the sound of Skeets quietly hovering nearby, feels his consciousness sink, body all too heavy, even just lying there on the bed. There’s a calm that settles over him as he breathes in the smell of sterility, a slow and painful burn of air into his lungs.
He looks down, and finds his feet in scuff-toed black leather shoes, over a weathered wooden trapdoor. Booster’s throat feels tight, and finds that he can move his hands, reaches up and feels a rope around his neck, just as he had hours, days, weeks, minutes before. The clothes on his back aren’t his uniform, but the Victorian costume he’d found in the time sphere. It’s all too heavy, the fabric constricting, as constricting as the noose around his throat, and to him they feel like they’re drenched in sweat. He goes to pull the rope off his neck, but clawing at it and yanking at it only seems to tighten it.
“Hey, you’ve got the wrong guy! I’m innocent! I’m just…I’m just in the wrong place at the…heh…the wrong time. Really, please, don’t,” he says, throat raw, tight, like he’s swallowed hot coals.
There’s a creak, and Booster feels the trapdoor shudder under his feet. He can’t find Skeets anywhere, not in the crowd of people looking on, though he swears some of the people standing there are former colleagues, Leaguers he’s fought shoulder-to-shoulder with, now clad in bustles and cravats, eager to watch him twist in the wind. The trapdoor shudders again, the rope squeaking just a little.
“So I take it you didn’t have a good day at the office.”
The trapdoor opens suddenly and Booster drops through, but the rope never snaps taut. He stares in shock as Ted cradles his body, like a bridegroom carrying his new wife, the rope dangling harmlessly over his shoulders and trailing on the ground. Ted smiles and touches the noose cutting into Booster’s neck, making it dissolve into soft sand or dust and drop away.
“Ted…”
“Aw, did I miss seeing you in Victorian clothes? Man, I always miss out on the good adventures. Were there ridiculous hats involved? Sideburns that go all the way to your chin? A monocle?” Ted smiles, an obvious attempt to calm Booster. He touches the marks on Booster’s neck, hand cool and soothing and bare, gloves gone this time. “Try not to talk too much, okay? I know that’s hard for you, Chatty Cathy, but a bruised larynx hurts like a bitch.”
“How…” Booster asks, voice rasping like a saw blade.
Ted’s smile doesn’t waver. “Please, I’m smarter than Batman. Guy said so. I know when somebody’s larynx is bruised. Jim’s not much of a gentleman, I take it. Here’s a hint for next time, Boost: if somebody wants to take you to a necktie party, just say no.”
Booster glowers at him and cuffs the back of his head. “Ass.”
“Why yes, I do have a nice ass, thank you for noticing,” he retorts. “Please, you’ve always laughed at my horrible gallows humor. Gallows humor…bwa-ha-ha…sorry. Sorry, that one wasn’t actually…no, it pretty much was.”
Booster manages a smile and ruffles Ted’s hair. They’re no longer standing under the trapdoor, and he’s not quite sure when they moved. The space around them is like some old Victorian smoking room, dark wood and heavy damasks, velvet chairs and cut crystal decanters of aging liquors. Ted slowly dumps Booster onto a red velvet chaise, pulling over a spindly-legged ottoman to sit beside him.
“Try not to fall asleep, I don’t think I can handle doing anything meta like a dream within a dream,” he advises, ruffling Booster’s hair. Ted’s smile hasn’t left his face, and it puts Booster at ease to see him grinning back at him like nothing ever happened. “I’m glad you didn’t get hanged, Boost. It isn’t a fun way to die. Not that getting shot is any more fun, but at least I went quickly. Nothing quick about a hanging. Besides, if you died, what would I do with my spare time?”
“Haunt Guy?” Booster suggests, wondering if he could still get drunk on dream scotch. At least it would ease some of the ache in his throat.
Ted laughs. “I don’t think so, pal. And I’m not here to haunt you, so get that idea out of your head. If I wanted to haunt you, I’d be doing it the obnoxiously creepy way with the whole blowing papers and flickering light bulbs and shadowy figures in doorways business. Hanging out in somebody’s dreams isn’t all that high on the haunt-o-meter.”
“Why are you here, then?” Booster asks. Twice now, Ted’s shown up in his dreams. Dreams so vivid he swears he can taste, touch, smell everything that’s happening around him. The dust on the chaise, the smell of the wood varnish, the feel of Ted’s hand on his neck, fingering the ring of bruises, it’s all as real as the waking world he’s left behind. And yet, none of it’s real.
“You asked me that last time. I’m here to keep you company.” Ted gets up from the ottoman and walks around the room, checking out the bookshelves, the thick and musty-smelling leather-bound books all stamped with gold along the spines. “You said you were lonely.”
“Am I unfinished business?”
Ted glances over at him, a book in his hand. “I thought I said to keep the talking to a minimum.”
“It’s my dream, isn’t it? I can talk if I want,” Booster replies, just a little petulantly.
“Uh-huh. And when you wake up and your throat’s killing you because you were stupid enough to talk in your sleep, then we’ll see who was right and who was a dumbass.” He puts the book down and walks back over to his ottoman. “You’re not unfinished business, Booster. You’re my best friend.”
Booster looks up at Ted, watches his smile shift just a little. He’s known the subtle language of Ted’s smile for years, but this is one he’s never really encountered before. It’s a little softer, just a little rueful. “Ted…”
“What’s it going to take to get you to stop talking?”
He shrugs, rubs at his throat. “Want to talk to you while I can. Even if you’re just a dream.”
“Well, I hate to break it to you, pal, but you’re not going to be talking to me much longer. You’re waking up. Hey, Boost, listen, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you. If anything could be considered my unfinished business, this is it.”
“If you tell me, will you go away?” Booster asks, sitting up.
Ted rubs his arm, brow furrowed. “I don’t know.”
“Then don’t tell me.”
He sighs, starting to fade around the edges along with the rest of the room. “Good morning, Booster.”
Booster wakes to find Rip and Skeets peering down at him, the smell of disinfectant and ham sandwich pulling him back into the waking world. “…Good morning, Ted.”
“He said that yesterday too, Mr. Hunter.”
Rip frowns and takes another bite of his sandwich. “Hm. Well, you’re not supposed to be saying much of anything, Booster. You’re still pretty bruised.”
Booster swallows. “How long was I out?”
“Better part of a day. Well, relatively speaking. If you feel up to it…and if you can keep your mouth shut so you can heal…I’ve got an assignment for you.”
Booster sighs softly, swings his legs over the side of the gurney, and adjusts his costume, brushes sand off his shoulders and chest. The work of a Time Master is never finished. He knows that if he doesn’t take the job, Rip will passively-aggressively harass him about it.
He hasn’t paid much notice to the sand, or the blood, or the cracker crumbs.
=
Time passes in its haphazard manner, and Booster’s sleep patterns are just as haphazard. Sometimes he only gets five minutes, sometimes he sleeps for days, but it never feels long enough. Ted wanders just on the edges of his subconscious, waiting for Booster to drift into the darkness. Ted’s presence pushes away Booster’s nightmares, lets them talk without the interruption of wharf rats, disappointed mothers, deceased friends, or feelings of self-doubt and failure. In the quiet of his own mind, Booster talks. He tells Ted everything, everything he’s not allowed to say to other heroes, everything he worries about, or fears, or hesitates to tell Rip. And Ted, in spite of his occasional bad pun or stupid joke, always listens.
Every dream ends the same way. Ted bids Booster a good morning, and he wakes with the reply on his lips and the lingering traces of Ted’s touch on his skin. Booster wonders if there’s some sort of deeper meaning to the words, but says nothing; for fear that the truth to Ted’s wistful “good morning” is kin to the thing they don’t talk about. Ted hasn’t brought it up since, the thing he was meaning to say, and Booster certainly hasn’t pressed the issue.
Booster dreams they float through space unaided, heedless of their need for oxygen, like Hal or Guy or countless other points of green light sailing through the night sky. In the swirling glow of a nebula, Ted turns to Booster, soft purple gleaming on the surface of his goggles, even though there shouldn’t be such light in the blackness of space.
“We need to talk, buddy.”
“If it’s about that thing, no,” he replies, folding his arms across his chest. “Not if it means you could leave me.”
Ted looks frustrated, hands fluttering in some sort of angry little gesture Booster doesn’t really understand. “I’m not going to…it’s not about that. But we’re going to need to talk about that eventually. No, Booster, this is important.”
“What?”
“Something’s coming. Something you’re going to have to deal with. Something that’s going to hurt,” Ted says, his eyes grave and so blue behind the amber glass of his goggles, pinned in place like butterflies. “It’s bad, Booster. Worse than anything you or I ever faced.”
Booster lets go of a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. “How do you know?”
“I just know.”
“What the hell kind of answer is that?” Booster asks. “No, you know what? It’s the kind of answer Rip would give me. All this time, Ted, and you’ve never really told me anything. I don’t…I don’t even know if you’re really real. I could be making all of this up; this could all just be one long really realistic recurring dream I keep having. I just…I mean, what the hell are you?”
The scenery around them shifts like a kaleidoscope, moving them from the depths of outer space to some field where they’re standing in darkness, watching the sky wheel over their heads. Ted pulls off his cowl and lets it hang between his shoulders. He rubs his forehead, then looks back up at the sky, Booster watching his every move.
“People all have a different perception of what happens after you die. You go to Heaven. You go to Hell. You don’t go anywhere. Walt Whitman said you became a part of everything in nature, some kind of circle of life hakuna matata business.” He rubs his forehead again. “I went…where I needed to be…which is apparently subletting your headspace, but hey.” He’s quiet for a moment, turning something over in his hands, before he softly adds, “I had nowhere else to go.”
Booster pulls Ted down to sit, the grass over their heads completely, a soft swaying gold curtain keeping the rest of the world, the rest of Booster’s thoughts and fears, out of their secret circle. He takes Ted’s hands, a round river rock flesh-warm in his bare palms, the wound of dreams ago a faint memory.
“Did you pick up palm-reading while I’ve been on vacation?” Ted asks, grinning. He drops the stone into Booster’s hands.
“How do I stop the thing that’s coming?”
“You don’t.” He curls Booster’s fingers around the rock. “This isn’t like what you do, Booster. It’s not a well maybe it’ll happen, maybe if you poke time just right everyone gets a puppy.”
Booster frowns. “I’ve never done anything that scores me or anybody else a puppy. I should ask Rip about that, though.”
“Booster Gold, the fate of the time stream depends on you cuddling this box of puppies!” Ted intones, trying to make his voice sound bigger, more grave and magical, but laughing too hard to really sound severe. He sobers, though, squeezes Booster’s hands tight around the rock. “Be careful, okay? If you die, I don’t know what happens to me, and then we’ll both be floating around screwed.”
“I don’t know if I can make any guarantees.” Booster tries to push the river rock back into Ted’s hands, but he forces it back into Booster’s hands and holds them closed around the stone. “What’s with the rock, Ted?”
He shrugs. “I don’t have anything else. Besides, it’s kind of a nice rock. Remember what I said, Boost. Unspeakable horror. Heartbreak like you wouldn’t believe. My immortal soul, your big dumb head. Good morning, Booster.”
Booster wakes up to the smell of coffee brewed from the coffeemaker from the very first Starbucks. “Good morning, Ted.”
The rock falls out of his hands and spins on the floor.
=
Booster doesn’t sleep after that, not for what feels like years. Ted hadn’t lied about the unspeakable horror; it had come, and it had worn Ted’s face, spoken with his voice. It had taken Booster by the hand and smiled, the same sort of smile a crocodile grins just before it devours its prey. The damned thing had laughed Ted’s laugh as it told Booster they were never friends, mocked his broken heart, and then tried to take it from Booster’s chest with nothing but grasping, skeletal hands. It had taken everything Booster had to fight the thing off, and even then it was a narrow escape. He lies in the bunker recovering, hidden away where Rip can keep him safe, where he can use his power over time to heal the horrible wound left by those cold and clutching hands.
Booster kept his heart, but only just, and in the moment before he blacked out from the excruciating pain, he could have sworn he heard Ted’s voice, arguing with himself.
He hasn’t dreamed, not while Rip keeps him drugged with things he’s plucked from the time stream, medicines that don’t yet exist. Skeets watches over him constantly, checking and fussing and acting as Booster’s personal mechanical Florence Nightingale. He’s slow to heal, regrowing tissue and knitting together bone, but Rip’s manipulation of time makes the process move more quickly. As Booster heals, he swims up from the depths of unconsciousness, surging over delta waves and up into a dream-state, where everything is swirling fog and graves yawning open in damp-earth screams.
He immediately hugs his arms to his chest, protecting the gaping wound he can’t feel in dreaming, but knows is still there. A creeping sense of dread makes Booster wonder if Ted-shaped zombies can inflict damage from inside his mind. He hopes Ted doesn’t come visit him; he doesn’t think he can handle seeing his face.
“Probably a good thing that I don’t have enough strength to materialize, then,” Ted’s voice murmurs in Booster’s ear, soft and wry.
Booster lurches back, still holding his arms over his chest. “No, you keep away from me. I’m not falling for that again.”
“Booster, relax. It’s me.”
“That’s not exactly comforting, considering the zombie-you said the same thing. How do I know you’re not working for…or part of…that thing?” Booster asks, looking for a way out of this dream. He’d rather go back to obliviously deep sleep.
Ted sighs, close enough that Booster can feel it on his neck. “I’m not a zombie. That thing was made of reconstituted Ted flakes, I’ll give you that, but it’s lacking a few key ingredients, plus some major vitamins and minerals to promote healthy bones.” Booster rolls his eyes at him, even though he can’t see Ted. “Booster, that thing walked like me and talked like me, but it wasn’t me. Isn’t. Wasn’t. Whatever. It lacks my immortal soul, which I just so happen to be. That good enough, or you want me to keep going?”
“…Why can’t you materialize?” Booster asks, still wary of Ted, especially since he can’t see him.
Ted sighs again, and Booster can feel Ted’s hand pressed against his arms. “Because I used all my cool immortal soul ghostly powers to fight that damn zombie thing off. I was saving those up to do something fun with them. But, y’know, you kind of need a heart, so…and plus, I heard some stuff and I thought…well, one less zombie out there is a fair trade, right?”
Booster lowers his arms and takes Ted’s hand, curling his fingers around nothing, but still feeling it there, flesh cool against his. “Are you going to be okay?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to say yes, because I know that’s what you want to hear, but I honestly don’t know.” Ted shuffles a little closer, close enough that Booster can just about feel the ends of his hair brushing against his skin. “I promised I’d stay with you, though, didn’t I? So, y’know, I’m never gonna give you up, or let you down, or run around and--”
“Okay, quoting that song totally just ruined the moment, Ted. You suck,” Booster interrupts.
He laughs and for the briefest moment is just barely visible. “Do not.”
“Do too.” Booster pauses for a moment, watches the cemetery around them with a wary eye, in case Ted isn’t strong enough to push back his nightmares. “Ted…zombie-you said some stuff…”
Ted squeezes his hands, though Booster doesn’t feel the pressure very well. “And all of it was lies and blasphemy, Boost. I wouldn’t be spending what amounts to my afterlife visiting you in your dreams if you weren’t my best friend. Can’t get rid of me that easy.”
“And the other part?”
Ted’s eyes become visible for a moment, and they’re narrowed with curiosity. “What other part?”
Booster backpedals for a moment, suddenly getting nervous. He doesn’t talk about his failures to save Ted, and he certainly doesn’t talk about this. Everybody knows it, everybody used to tease them about it, but it was a subject neither of them were ever willing to discuss with one another or anyone else. He wishes Ted were visible, so he could very blatantly not look Ted in the eye. As it is, he’s standing in the middle of his dream with Ted’s hands curled around his and Ted’s hair tickling his chin and he almost wishes he could just wake up and avoid the rest of this conversation.
“What other part, Booster?”
“You…he…whatever. Said…” Booster winces. He doesn’t want to do this. “What’s that over there?”
“There’s nothing over there, just a rock. Maybe a Muppet. Maybe a Muppet that looks like a rock. You have some damn weird dreams sometimes, y’know. Now quit avoiding. What did zombie-me say? Other than the obvious rarrrr, arrrgh, braaaaains, of course,” Ted replies.
“Not brains, hearts. He was going to eat my…he said I was an idiot for ever…that you would never…aw jeez, why is this so hard?” He takes a deep breath, letting out slowly. “…I loved you. I loved you, Ted. I still…I still do.”
“…Oh. That’s it?”
Booster glares at the empty space where Ted is still standing, shocked and hurt. “That’s it? I just told you that I love you, and all you can say is ‘that’s it?’ Fuck you, Ted. Go find somebody else to haunt.”
“Booster, come on. I don’t mean it like that. I live in your head! It’s not like this is a huge surprise or anything. I…” He pauses, and flickers for just a moment, in and out of focus, more a ghost than a dream figure. “Sorry, Booster.”
“Sorry you’re an asshole?” Booster asks snidely.
Ted makes a soft annoyed sound. “Sorry I can’t return the feeling.”
Booster feels like he’s been kicked in the gut. He hadn’t expected Ted to refuse him. He takes a few steps back, wondering why he hasn’t woken up yet. Maybe this is a dream within a dream and any minute now, the real Ted will appear and make this fake Ted go away. Or maybe what his zombie doppelganger had said was true all along, and that he’d wasted his time being in love with somebody who never loved him in the first place. “I…you mean you don’t…God, I feel like such an idiot.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you should’ve thought of this before you told me not to tell you that thing I wanted to tell you,” Ted replies.
“…Wait, what?”
Ted flickers for a moment, visible and visibly confused. “What?”
“What does that have to do with the fact that you totally just rejected me?” Booster asks.
“I’m not rejecting you!” Ted retorts, breath hot against Booster’s ear. “You were all worried that I’d disappear. So I’m not telling you that I loved you…that I love you…because otherwise there’s the potential that I could move on or something. So there.”
Booster blinks. “…But you just told me.”
“Oh fuck.”
Booster tries to reach for Ted and misses, worried that he’s already disappeared. There’s no feel of skin or fabric under his hands, and he feels his heartbeat flutter like moth wings. “Ted? You said you weren’t leaving me. Don’t go now. What if the zombie comes back?”
“I’m still here.”
“Why can’t I feel you?” he asks.
Ted’s voice is a little fainter when he replies, and not right in Booster’s ear. “Trying to pool together whatever I’ve got left. If I’m going to disappear or move on, I’m going to go out with a bang. And not the kind of bang I went out on last time.”
Booster watches the graveyard get mistier, the headstones more indistinct, the mausoleums and wrought-iron fences fading to a murky gray. He can feel himself sliding again, slowly shifting up towards consciousness. “Ted…”
Ted materializes fully, cowl off, dressed in his suit, as warm and tangible as if they were still sitting in the Embassy bathrooms, contemplating whether or not scrubbing the floors and toilets with toothbrushes could be considered cruel and unusual punishment. He wraps his arms around Booster, leaning up onto his toes to bridge the six inches of height difference between the two of them, and kisses Booster slowly.
Booster groans and holds onto Ted as tightly as he can, returning the kiss more enthusiastically, feeling him start to fade around the edges. He pulls back slightly, throat burning and heart aching like it really had been squeezed between a corpse’s ashy fingers. “You promised you’d stay.”
“I know. I’ll try. Hey, and just because I love you doesn’t make me gay. If I ever get to come back, don’t expect me to know anything about interior design, fashion, wine pairings, Broadway musicals, hairstyling, or…oh, I think that’s all of the Queer Eyes.” Ted smiles and kisses Booster again. “Good morning, Booster.”
He wakes with his lips still burning from Ted’s mouth. “…I love you too, Ted.”
=
“How are you feeling, Sir?”
Booster sits up slowly, rubbing his bandaged chest. Rip hasn’t let him out of the bunker yet, keeping him in quarantine and doing “desk work” while he goes time-diving himself. His wound has been slow to heal, in spite of the power of time, and he hasn’t wanted to go anywhere. He just wants to sleep, sleep and see if Ted’s still there. Booster’s been too tired to dream lately, still working the drugs out of his system. He’d thought that maybe Ted would work around that, make him dream anyway, but he hasn’t. Booster hopes that it’s because Ted’s still weak, and not because his spirit has moved on to wherever immortal souls go, whether to some higher plane or to Nanda Parbat, where Boston Brand and Ralph Dibny gazed into the eyes of a goddess. Booster’s not much of a praying type, but he offers a small prayer that Ted’s still with him, a loving whisper in his mind.
“How long has it been, Skeets?”
Skeets hovers out of the room and returns with a greasy paper bag, depositing it in Booster’s lap and reeling his arm back into his little body cavity. “Somewhere between ten minutes and two months, Sir, give or take a few years. Mr. Hunter picked up some dinner for you. Or breakfast. It’s one of the very first Big Belly Burger meals. There might actually be real meat in that burger, Sir.”
Booster eats like he hasn’t tasted food in weeks, and might not have. He knows he’ll probably be sick later, the greasy food a lead weight in his belly, but right now it’s hot and better than anything he and Ted ever ate after a late night stakeout or a repo job gone badly. He licks mayonnaise from his lips, thinking about his last dream, and the kiss that had burned his mouth even in waking.
“He told me he loved me, Skeets,” he mumbles around a fistful of fries, the salt stinging his tongue.
“Who, Sir?”
Booster snaps a fry in half. “Ted.”
“Does this have to do with your repeated dreams, Sir? You often speak of Mr. Kord in your sleep, or at least, you have as of late. If I had actual emotions, Michael, I would be concerned,” Skeets replies.
He finishes his burger, dusting the sesame seeds from the bun off his fingertips. “It’s a long story, Skeets. One you probably wouldn’t believe anyway.”
“Sir, our occupation is time-traveling superheroes, I was eaten from the inside out by a talking caterpillar who has been known to wear caterpillar-sized glasses, we have traveled to no less than fifty-two alternate universes, and what could only be described as an undead horde of zombies has been attacking the known universe. Nothing you could tell me would be unbelievable.”
Booster opens his mouth to start to explain, when a siren shrieks. He looks to Skeets for answers, hoping that it’s nothing grave and he can go back to slowly slurping his milkshake and chewing his fries.
“It seems Mr. Hunter is having difficulty, Sir,” Skeets says, hovering around in circles.
“…Where did he go?” Booster sighs, putting down his dinner and reaching painfully for his shirt. His chest starbursts with pain and he really wants to lie back down.
Skeets swoops closer. “Gorilla City, Sir.”
Booster groans loudly, adjusting his cowl. “No! Not Gorilla Grodd. I hate Gorilla Grodd. I’d rather go another couple of rounds with Zombie Ted.”
“No you wouldn’t, Sir.”
“At least Zombie Ted didn’t make me feel like I was incompetent,” he grumbles.
Skeets makes a soft humming noise. “No, he simply destroyed you emotionally and tried to rip your heart out of your chest. I’d take my chances with the gorilla.”
Booster sighs and rubs at his chest again. He really just wants to go back to sleep, to swim back to Ted and drink dream-beer and trade lazy phantom kisses and laugh like nothing hurts anymore. He can’t just abandon Rip, though. So he adjusts his visor, takes a deep, aching breath, and heads for the main hangar. He has a date with a gorilla.
=
Booster crawls into bed hours, maybe years later. His knuckles itch, where they’d been hairy earlier. Grodd had turned them into gorillas, having built a ray to do the same to the Flash, or a young Justice League, Booster wasn’t sure whom Grodd was supposed to be facing. He’s home now, though, back in his little room, in his little bed. Skeets and Rip are comparing notes down in the lab, having let Booster take a nap like a little boy, his body still recovering.
It takes a while for him to fall asleep, in spite of his exhaustion. He drifts down through some bizarre dreams that involve people and places he’s never seen before, hotel lobbies and park bench tea parties. Booster doesn’t see Ted anywhere, doesn’t hear his voice, doesn’t feel his touch. He’s not sure if this is one of those vivid dreams where he can interact with the inhabitants, or if he’s just floating along, participating but not really a part of it.
“Ted? Ted, c’mon, this isn’t funny. Hey, Ted?”
Booster walks, or floats, or swims along, without response from Ted. He worries that he’s too weak to respond, that the kiss of nights ago has disintegrated him, or caused him to move on. He tries to find some trace of him, some lingering print in his mind to show that his best friend still exists.
“Please, Ted. I’m sorry,” Booster whispers, taking a teacup from some strange woman wearing a purple shawl. “Please come back. Or say something. You promised you wouldn’t leave me alone. You promised me. You can’t just tell me you love me and disappear forever, it’s not fair. C’mon, Ted. You can’t. I need you still.”
His dreams are restless, shifting, kaleidoscope-like, moving slow and sick. Booster hasn’t had dreams like this since before Ted’s arrival in his head. He wakes up several times during his nap, rolls over and goes back to sleep. Now he knows Ted has to be gone, because there’s no one to protect him from the nightmares, from the creeping feelings of failure or pain.
Booster tries harder to focus, to find any little piece of Ted left in his mind, anything he could possibly pull into the waking world, but finds nothing. He wakes to an alarm blaring through the building, but he was almost awake anyway.
“What’s going on?” he asks, pulling on one shoe as he hops down to the main lab.
“Proximity alarm,” Rip replies, gathering up a gun as long as his arm, some weapon Booster’s never encountered before. He’s not sure what it does, but he’s pretty sure it’ll make somebody go splat. “Somebody’s outside trying to get in.”
“Maybe it’s the Girl Scouts. Or Jehovah’s Witnesses? Errant gila monster?” Booster asks, following Rip down the hall to the front door.
“Girl Scouts don’t try to break into the building,” Rip replies. “You better hope it’s not the Black Lanterns again.”
“As long as it’s not Gorilla Grodd.” Booster checks his wrist blasters and looks to Rip for a plan. “So…what? Are we just going to open the door and charge out there, waving our guns and yelling? I mean, what if it really is just a lost person? I don’t want to blast some lost hiker.”
“Then go out there,” Rip says, pointing to a hatch over the door.
Booster sighs and flies up and out, through the hatch, hovering over their would-be intruder. “Hey you!”
The lone figure at the door stops trying to hack the chronal lock on the door and looks up. Sunlight bounces off the round curve of his goggles, and a huge grin spreads across his face. “Avon calling!”
Booster nearly falls out of the sky, forgetting to concentrate on his ring. “Holy shit no.”
“Are you just going to keep staring at me or are you going to come down here and say hi? It’s pretty damn hot out here, y’know. Why couldn’t you guys have picked a more temperate place to hide your secret bunker? And did you realize that you’re dyslexic in your sleep? I’ve been trying to open this door for ten minutes now based on the combinations I found in your head, and none of them have been right. What’ve I been using, your old locker combo?”
Booster raises a shaky hand, training his lasers at the figure. “You’re not really here. You’re…you’re that Black Lantern zombie thing again. Or that shapeshifting guy. It can’t be you. You’re dead and haunting my dreams. You’re not really alive. You can’t be.”
Ted touches his chin and pulls back his cowl. “Not a zombie, not a shapeshifter, and I wasn’t haunting you. I was keeping you company. Hey, where’s my rock? Is it inside? I want it back. I like that rock. Come down here, Booster. I’m real. I’m alive. It’s okay.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“You’ve never trusted me. That’s how we always end up in trouble and hanging upside-down by our toenails while J’onn gives us disapproving looks,” he replies, laughing. “Come here, Booster.”
Booster slowly floats down, lowering his arm. He can’t help it. This is how he nearly got his heart ripped out the last time. He can’t stop himself around Ted. His chest aches, pain radiating like a star, moving outward from where his heart thumps loudly against his ribs. Ted pulls off his glove and reaches out his hand. There’s a scar in his palm, shaped like a bullet wound. Booster takes his hand and pulls Ted into his arms. If he’s actually a zombie and he goes in for a kill, Booster’s just going to let him take his heart this time.
“Hey, hi. Sorry I haven’t been around lately, stuff came up,” Ted says, hugging Booster back tightly. “Gonna have to figure out a better way to get rid of your nightmares, I guess. Sleeping pills? Warm milk? Dorky guy in blue pajamas?”
“I’ll take door number three. I can’t believe this. How are you alive? You were…well, one part zombie to one part obnoxious voice in my head. How…” Booster asks.
Ted laughs. “Boy, you’ve missed a lot. I’ll fill you in over donuts. I haven’t had my breakfast yet, and I’m sure you’re hungry. I found this outrageously good donut place, it’s kind of absurd. Booster, they put bacon on the donuts. Oh hey, do you think the kid wants to come? I feel like I should apologize to him, I mean, meeting your predecessor and superheroic idol shouldn’t be fighting his animated corpse, right?”
“Jaime can wait, I call dibs,” Booster says, throat getting tight.
“Sir, Mr. Hunter wants to know if you’re dead,” Skeets’ voice crackles through his headset.
“Tell Rip I’m still kicking, and that he’s going to have to wait a little longer to get my baseball card collection,” Booster replies, arms still wrapped around Ted, not letting go for anything.
Ted grins at him, six inches shorter and eyes blue like deep water. “Hey, I’ve got something to tell you.”
“You’ve got a lot of somethings to tell me, you jerk. And we’re going to discuss it all before Rip makes me wipe your mind with the little flashy stick thing,” Booster replies. “But what’s this pressing matter, Mr. Beetle?”
Ted pulls Booster close, their foreheads touching. He’s still grinning when he presses a kiss to Booster’s lips, slow and just a little giggly, sparkling like a Roman candle in Booster’s aching chest, burning brighter and better than the one from his dream. “Love you, buddy.”
Booster sighs melodramatically. “I guess I love you too. But only because you’re buying me donuts.”
“What? I just came back to life! I don’t have money. You’re buying, I’m owing. I’ll make it up to you. In ways I’m not going to mention right now because I don’t know if your taskmaster is listening in on us and I really don’t want to scar him for life and make him speed up my mind-wipe,” Ted replies, kissing Booster again.
Booster laughs and runs his gloved hands through Ted’s hair, trying to make sure this is all real, that he’s not dreaming. The desert air burns hot in his lungs and Ted smells like slightly stale cologne and dirt and sweat. He slides his hands down his shoulders, rubbing his collarbones with his thumbs. “Are you sure I’m not dreaming this? And that you’re not actually a zombie?”
“I’m pretty damn sure, pal.” Ted hasn’t stopped grinning. “Good morning, Booster.”
“Good morning, Ted.”
It’s going to be a beautiful day.
=
Fin.
Author: fleur_de_liz
For: axolotl_lan
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Booster/Beetle. Spoilers for Booster Gold v2, minor spoilers for Blackest Night, some violence, language
Summary:Time Masters aren’t supposed to need sleep, but Booster does. Especially when his best friend inhabits his dreams.
Notes:Thank you to doctorv and felonazcorp for your incomparable beta skills. Title and cut text are taken from a song by the band Stars.
Although Rip pilfered Marie Antoinette’s bed from Fontainebleau (and somewhere in the time stream), he never uses it. Sleep, to a Time Master, is secondary, practically irrelevant. How can one sleep, after all, when the laws of time no longer apply? When yesterday is five years into the future, and right now is three weeks into the past? A Time Master blinks, and all the possibilities of here and then and somewhen scatter like starlings, and who has time to listen to circadian rhythms when the symphony of moments is playing? The bed sits unused, sheets crisp and smelling of past and decadence.
Booster sleeps. He’s not yet a Time Master, still green and still frustrated with the constant shift of “past” and “future,” their fluidity. Like wet sand at the edge of the sea, one minute it’s solid and easily clutched in one soggy fist, the next it’s something almost liquid and dripping through the cracks between fingers. He understands that sleep is no longer a necessity, something Rip can easily shut off completely, like he did with the Supernova suit. But he doesn’t want to lose his need for sleep, to walk the world a waking zombie. Even if it does mean facing the nightmares that crawl out of the darkness behind his eyes.
The bedrooms in the Arizona bunker are small, especially compared to Rip’s. They’re not really meant to be bedrooms, really more like glorified storage closets with camp beds in them. Not even a dresser, not even a clock (though who needs a clock when Skeets can tell time, geographical position, temporal position, air temperature, and who won every baseball game from here to Metropolis?). Rip has made a few small concessions to interior design and hung some pictures on the wall, though, in some attempt to make the rooms look less like prison cells. In Michelle’s now-empty room, holo-photos from the 25th Century, family portraits thought long lost to repossession. In Booster’s room, pictures of the League, his League, and a few of the less embarrassing photos of himself and Ted. Sometimes Booster can’t bear to look at them and turns them around on the wall, then feels guilty and turns them back.
“Good night, Skeets.”
“Sir, it’s three-thirty in the afternoon,” Skeets points out, hovering over the bed, watching Booster peel off his cowl, gloves, boots.
Booster scrapes a hand across his eyes. “Not like there’s a window in here, Skeets. Besides, how long have I been awake now?”
“In real time? Thirty-seven hours and four minutes, Sir. But you have been traveling in time through most of that.”
Booster peels back the thin covers, stretches and pops his shoulders, sits at the edge of the bed, and stares at the wall. “It’s not fair.”
“What isn’t fair, Sir?” Skeets asks, already anticipating Booster’s reply. The fact that he has to pretend to be stupid. The fact that his sister left and now he’s all alone with Rip, piecing history back together by himself. The fact that Rip ate all of the Lucky Charms (vintage, from back when the marshmallows were slightly more real than they are at present). Skeets has already calculated answers for these scenarios.
Booster nods at a picture. “That I can’t save him. I’ve tried…I’ve looked for every possible opening…any waver. But I…there’s nothing. I can’t do it.” He hasn’t wanted to admit this aloud; admitting it is an admission of defeat, and when the grief continues to hang heavy on his head like a leaden shroud, it makes saying those words ache all the more.
“Perhaps, Sir…” Skeets replies slowly, his processors whirring, computing the most appropriate response. “There simply isn’t meant to be one. Mr. Kord’s original death was not in vain, and the sacrifice he made to repair the time stream allowed for your continued existence. He will always remain your friend, Sir. Nothing can ever change that.”
“…Good night, Skeets,” Booster says again, shutting off the lights and the conversation. It isn’t what he wanted to hear. He knew it wouldn’t be, but he’d hoped that Skeets would tell him some tiny, impossible odd existed, that if he wiggled just the right fragments of time, the Blue Beetle wouldn’t have to die, and he wouldn’t have to hurt. He rolls over, away from the wall and the lopsided grin he knows Ted’s smiling at him in the dark.
Booster blinks slowly, and the world dissolves into white mist, like a low rolling fog. Walls snap up around him, thick and familiar, the Embassy he’d spent so much time in. At the same time, it’s not the Embassy he remembers, twisted by sleep. Booster looks around, finds himself standing in one of the hallways, faintly recognizes it as the one they ran down, pursued by the mouse Ted had accidentally grown to enormous proportions. He can’t remember the way back to his room, and isn’t sure if he should bother asking J’onn. He starts walking, passing closed doors and pictures that seem to move inside their frames. Booster gets the impression he’s being followed, but he never sees anyone when he looks over his shoulder.
“…I think I’m lost,” he mutters, trying a door and finding it locked tightly.
The corridor turns sharply, and Booster wonders if it’s going to become an Escher painting of upside-down stairwells and doorways that lead to nowhere. Instead, it is an unchanging continuation of the same hall. Booster gets the distinct impression that he’s wandered into the Twilight Zone. He checks his wrists for blasters, in case he finds himself in the middle of an alien melee, and discovers only fine blond hairs.
“Don’t go that way.”
Booster turns around, but there’s no one there to whisper in his ear. When he turns again, the corridor is changed, the tiled floor black and white, patterned like a checkerboard. The walls are no longer the Embassy’s, but cold stone and expanding outward every minute that seems to pass. Booster can’t tell if he’s even still walking or just being floated along by an invisible force, like a helium balloon being gently pulled along by its string.
The corridor has widened out into a big, empty room, roiling with mist, the checkerboard floor spreading out under Booster’s feet. He can’t hear his own footsteps, even though he’s wearing his boots. The room seems more familiar now, familiar and unpleasant. Booster can’t take another step, the force pulling him along now tethering him to the floor, dragging him down to his knees. He can’t hear any footsteps, but somehow he knows someone is coming. When Maxwell Lord walks in, all leather gloves and black shirt and handgun, it’s not as much of a surprise as it should be, but Booster whines softly in his throat nonetheless.
“Well, this is completely unexpected,” he says, regarding Booster in the same way one regards a cockroach skittering across the table at one’s favorite restaurant. “I had my money on Batman or the Beetle…actually, I was pulling for Ted…but you? Well, I’m surprised, quite honestly. After all, if you can’t even die properly, how the hell can you be the one to figure out all this?”
Booster swallows and tries to speak, but all that comes out is a strangled whine. He feels like there’s a lead weight hanging around his neck, keeping him from moving, and there’s still the nagging sensation that someone is standing right behind him. He can’t even look to see if it’s true.
“I should’ve known. You were such a failure in the League; I should’ve known you’d suck at dying too. I thought blowing up you and the house around you was perfectly sufficient, but clearly I was mistaken,” Max continues, playing with the gun in his hands. “I can only hope a more…low-tech method will do the job.” He jams the cartridge into the chamber and cocks the gun, leveling it at Booster’s head. “This time, die and stay dead. I don’t want you Boostering up anything else.”
Booster winces before the gun even goes off, and when it does, the sound is far more muted than he expected. He looks up, surprised to find himself still very much alive, and more surprised to find a blue-gloved hand clenched around the bullet, blood blooming across the material and staining it purple, dripping onto the checkerboard floor. The smoke from the gun hangs in the air, suspended like cumulus clouds, not moving, and neither is Max.
“Always wanted to do that,” Ted says, dropping the bullet. He glances over his shoulder and grins at Booster, wholly unconcerned about his bloody hand. “Told you not to come this way.”
Standing slowly, the weight lifted from his neck, Booster tries to speak again. “…Ted…”
“Really, Boost, dying my death is just…you don’t deserve it. Besides, I don’t think Max ever talked like that. Too scholarly. Come on, we need a change of venue.” He holds out his bloodied hand, the palm of his glove ripped, exposing the wound like a stigmata.
“Ted, your hand…” Booster replies slowly, his voice sounding foreign in his own ears.
He shakes his head, light sparkling off the curved surface of his amber goggles. “Aw, don’t worry about it. It’s just a flesh wound. Here, hang on.” He knocks the gun out of Max’s hands and makes a motion like he’s stabbing Max with a pin. Ted laughs as Max pops like a soap bubble, vanishing into the mist. “Always wanted to do that too. C’mon, Booster.”
Booster takes his hand, the two of them walking through a door Booster hadn’t noticed, or maybe it was the one he’d come through in the first place. It opens onto an aisle in a grocery store Booster isn’t sure he’s ever seen before. Ted just smiles at him and perches on one of the shelves like a blue-clad Cheshire Cat, shoving aside the water crackers and the cheese nips. He looks so at ease, cowl off, swinging his legs slightly like a fidgety young boy.
“Should you be sitting up there like that?” Booster asks, afraid the shelves will collapse under Ted’s weight. It’s not that Ted’s fat, far from it, he’s in the best shape Booster’s ever seen him in. But the shelves don’t look particularly strong, certainly not strong enough to hold a full-grown man’s weight.
“Probably not, but I’m pretty comfortable. Hey, Booster, check it out.” He reaches down and pulls out a package of cookies, throwing them at Booster. He catches them easily, cradling them like a football, the cellophane crinkling. “Just don’t ask me to carry them all to the warehouse.”
Booster laughs, holding tightly to the Chocos. “I don’t think we need to worry about that. What’re you doing here, Ted?”
“Keeping you company. And eating goldfish crackers,” he replies simply, digging his uninjured hand into a bag of pizza-flavored fish crackers. There’s still blood on Ted’s glove, but he doesn’t seem to notice at all. “You should eat something. You look like you’ve lost weight.”
“I’m fine,” Booster replies automatically. “You’re not real, are you? We’re not really having this conversation, are we?”
Ted hops down off the shelf, practically floating. He wraps one arm around Booster’s broad shoulders, pizza fish crumbs on Booster’s suit. His other hand, the one that caught Max’s bullet, takes Booster’s hand. The package of Chocos drops to the ground between their feet and disappears. “I’m about as real as I get, buddy. C’mon, didn’t I tell you to think of me and laugh? C’mere, it’s okay.”
“Don’t leave again,” Booster says, tightening his arms around Ted. His voice is quiet, and it echoes a little, even with all the cardboard boxes and cellophane wrappers muting the sound. “Everybody keeps leaving, Ted. I just…I feel so…”
“I know, Booster. I know.” Ted ruffles his hair a little, getting pizza fish flavor in it. “Listen, okay? Just listen. I’m not going anywhere. Unfortunately, pal, you’re the one that’s got to go. But I’ll be here whenever you need me. Good morning, Booster.”
Booster opens his eyes to the sound of Skeets playing some song quietly from his internal mp3 player, the slow crescendo of the music acting as a subtle alarm clock. “…Good morning, Ted.”
Skeets hovers over, shutting off the music. “Mr. Hunter requests your presence, Sir. Someone is attempting to alter history so that Jim Craddock never becomes the Gentleman Ghost. And before you can suggest it, Sir, no, it would not be a good thing if we left this error uncorrected. Sir, your rapid eye movement prior to waking suggests you were having a dream, and I couldn’t help but overhear you calling for the Blue Beetle in your sleep.”
“Just a dream, Skeets. That’s all,” Booster mutters, sitting up and pulling on his boots. He runs a hand through his hair to take the sleep-tousle out of it, and finds that his palm comes away smelling faintly of pizza-flavored goldfish crackers. He frowns and glances down at his hands. One has a smear of blood on it.
=
The bunker is equipped with a medical wing, even though neither Rip nor Booster is really qualified to provide medical services. Or at least, Booster doesn’t think Rip can; the man’s mysterious identity continues to be more question than answer. Booster lies on a gurney, gauze bandages wrapped around his throat, concealing the livid marks circling his flesh. He’s not sure how much time has passed; days, hours, weeks, minutes. He knows he went back in time and returned to the present, and he knows he’s utterly exhausted and in pain.
Skeets hovers over him, flitting in and out of Booster’s line of sight like a toaster-sized insect. “Mr. Hunter says not to speak, Sir. Your larynx has been bruised.”
Booster rolls his eyes. He doesn’t need Skeets to tell him that. He went back in time and made certain Jim Craddock became Gentleman Ghost, but was nearly hanged himself for his efforts. If not for Skeets’ timely intervention, a bruised larynx and a sore neck would be the least of his worries. He sighs and feels just how painfully that one breath rattles through his aching windpipe.
“Mr. Hunter wished to congratulate you on a successful mission as well, Sir. He would’ve done it himself, but he’s currently on assignment,” Skeets continues. “He’s suggested you get some rest, since you aren’t exactly one hundred percent right now.”
Booster nods slightly and winces again, pain shooting through his neck like the light off sparklers, sputtering and bright. He closes his eyes, listening to the sound of Skeets quietly hovering nearby, feels his consciousness sink, body all too heavy, even just lying there on the bed. There’s a calm that settles over him as he breathes in the smell of sterility, a slow and painful burn of air into his lungs.
He looks down, and finds his feet in scuff-toed black leather shoes, over a weathered wooden trapdoor. Booster’s throat feels tight, and finds that he can move his hands, reaches up and feels a rope around his neck, just as he had hours, days, weeks, minutes before. The clothes on his back aren’t his uniform, but the Victorian costume he’d found in the time sphere. It’s all too heavy, the fabric constricting, as constricting as the noose around his throat, and to him they feel like they’re drenched in sweat. He goes to pull the rope off his neck, but clawing at it and yanking at it only seems to tighten it.
“Hey, you’ve got the wrong guy! I’m innocent! I’m just…I’m just in the wrong place at the…heh…the wrong time. Really, please, don’t,” he says, throat raw, tight, like he’s swallowed hot coals.
There’s a creak, and Booster feels the trapdoor shudder under his feet. He can’t find Skeets anywhere, not in the crowd of people looking on, though he swears some of the people standing there are former colleagues, Leaguers he’s fought shoulder-to-shoulder with, now clad in bustles and cravats, eager to watch him twist in the wind. The trapdoor shudders again, the rope squeaking just a little.
“So I take it you didn’t have a good day at the office.”
The trapdoor opens suddenly and Booster drops through, but the rope never snaps taut. He stares in shock as Ted cradles his body, like a bridegroom carrying his new wife, the rope dangling harmlessly over his shoulders and trailing on the ground. Ted smiles and touches the noose cutting into Booster’s neck, making it dissolve into soft sand or dust and drop away.
“Ted…”
“Aw, did I miss seeing you in Victorian clothes? Man, I always miss out on the good adventures. Were there ridiculous hats involved? Sideburns that go all the way to your chin? A monocle?” Ted smiles, an obvious attempt to calm Booster. He touches the marks on Booster’s neck, hand cool and soothing and bare, gloves gone this time. “Try not to talk too much, okay? I know that’s hard for you, Chatty Cathy, but a bruised larynx hurts like a bitch.”
“How…” Booster asks, voice rasping like a saw blade.
Ted’s smile doesn’t waver. “Please, I’m smarter than Batman. Guy said so. I know when somebody’s larynx is bruised. Jim’s not much of a gentleman, I take it. Here’s a hint for next time, Boost: if somebody wants to take you to a necktie party, just say no.”
Booster glowers at him and cuffs the back of his head. “Ass.”
“Why yes, I do have a nice ass, thank you for noticing,” he retorts. “Please, you’ve always laughed at my horrible gallows humor. Gallows humor…bwa-ha-ha…sorry. Sorry, that one wasn’t actually…no, it pretty much was.”
Booster manages a smile and ruffles Ted’s hair. They’re no longer standing under the trapdoor, and he’s not quite sure when they moved. The space around them is like some old Victorian smoking room, dark wood and heavy damasks, velvet chairs and cut crystal decanters of aging liquors. Ted slowly dumps Booster onto a red velvet chaise, pulling over a spindly-legged ottoman to sit beside him.
“Try not to fall asleep, I don’t think I can handle doing anything meta like a dream within a dream,” he advises, ruffling Booster’s hair. Ted’s smile hasn’t left his face, and it puts Booster at ease to see him grinning back at him like nothing ever happened. “I’m glad you didn’t get hanged, Boost. It isn’t a fun way to die. Not that getting shot is any more fun, but at least I went quickly. Nothing quick about a hanging. Besides, if you died, what would I do with my spare time?”
“Haunt Guy?” Booster suggests, wondering if he could still get drunk on dream scotch. At least it would ease some of the ache in his throat.
Ted laughs. “I don’t think so, pal. And I’m not here to haunt you, so get that idea out of your head. If I wanted to haunt you, I’d be doing it the obnoxiously creepy way with the whole blowing papers and flickering light bulbs and shadowy figures in doorways business. Hanging out in somebody’s dreams isn’t all that high on the haunt-o-meter.”
“Why are you here, then?” Booster asks. Twice now, Ted’s shown up in his dreams. Dreams so vivid he swears he can taste, touch, smell everything that’s happening around him. The dust on the chaise, the smell of the wood varnish, the feel of Ted’s hand on his neck, fingering the ring of bruises, it’s all as real as the waking world he’s left behind. And yet, none of it’s real.
“You asked me that last time. I’m here to keep you company.” Ted gets up from the ottoman and walks around the room, checking out the bookshelves, the thick and musty-smelling leather-bound books all stamped with gold along the spines. “You said you were lonely.”
“Am I unfinished business?”
Ted glances over at him, a book in his hand. “I thought I said to keep the talking to a minimum.”
“It’s my dream, isn’t it? I can talk if I want,” Booster replies, just a little petulantly.
“Uh-huh. And when you wake up and your throat’s killing you because you were stupid enough to talk in your sleep, then we’ll see who was right and who was a dumbass.” He puts the book down and walks back over to his ottoman. “You’re not unfinished business, Booster. You’re my best friend.”
Booster looks up at Ted, watches his smile shift just a little. He’s known the subtle language of Ted’s smile for years, but this is one he’s never really encountered before. It’s a little softer, just a little rueful. “Ted…”
“What’s it going to take to get you to stop talking?”
He shrugs, rubs at his throat. “Want to talk to you while I can. Even if you’re just a dream.”
“Well, I hate to break it to you, pal, but you’re not going to be talking to me much longer. You’re waking up. Hey, Boost, listen, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you. If anything could be considered my unfinished business, this is it.”
“If you tell me, will you go away?” Booster asks, sitting up.
Ted rubs his arm, brow furrowed. “I don’t know.”
“Then don’t tell me.”
He sighs, starting to fade around the edges along with the rest of the room. “Good morning, Booster.”
Booster wakes to find Rip and Skeets peering down at him, the smell of disinfectant and ham sandwich pulling him back into the waking world. “…Good morning, Ted.”
“He said that yesterday too, Mr. Hunter.”
Rip frowns and takes another bite of his sandwich. “Hm. Well, you’re not supposed to be saying much of anything, Booster. You’re still pretty bruised.”
Booster swallows. “How long was I out?”
“Better part of a day. Well, relatively speaking. If you feel up to it…and if you can keep your mouth shut so you can heal…I’ve got an assignment for you.”
Booster sighs softly, swings his legs over the side of the gurney, and adjusts his costume, brushes sand off his shoulders and chest. The work of a Time Master is never finished. He knows that if he doesn’t take the job, Rip will passively-aggressively harass him about it.
He hasn’t paid much notice to the sand, or the blood, or the cracker crumbs.
=
Time passes in its haphazard manner, and Booster’s sleep patterns are just as haphazard. Sometimes he only gets five minutes, sometimes he sleeps for days, but it never feels long enough. Ted wanders just on the edges of his subconscious, waiting for Booster to drift into the darkness. Ted’s presence pushes away Booster’s nightmares, lets them talk without the interruption of wharf rats, disappointed mothers, deceased friends, or feelings of self-doubt and failure. In the quiet of his own mind, Booster talks. He tells Ted everything, everything he’s not allowed to say to other heroes, everything he worries about, or fears, or hesitates to tell Rip. And Ted, in spite of his occasional bad pun or stupid joke, always listens.
Every dream ends the same way. Ted bids Booster a good morning, and he wakes with the reply on his lips and the lingering traces of Ted’s touch on his skin. Booster wonders if there’s some sort of deeper meaning to the words, but says nothing; for fear that the truth to Ted’s wistful “good morning” is kin to the thing they don’t talk about. Ted hasn’t brought it up since, the thing he was meaning to say, and Booster certainly hasn’t pressed the issue.
Booster dreams they float through space unaided, heedless of their need for oxygen, like Hal or Guy or countless other points of green light sailing through the night sky. In the swirling glow of a nebula, Ted turns to Booster, soft purple gleaming on the surface of his goggles, even though there shouldn’t be such light in the blackness of space.
“We need to talk, buddy.”
“If it’s about that thing, no,” he replies, folding his arms across his chest. “Not if it means you could leave me.”
Ted looks frustrated, hands fluttering in some sort of angry little gesture Booster doesn’t really understand. “I’m not going to…it’s not about that. But we’re going to need to talk about that eventually. No, Booster, this is important.”
“What?”
“Something’s coming. Something you’re going to have to deal with. Something that’s going to hurt,” Ted says, his eyes grave and so blue behind the amber glass of his goggles, pinned in place like butterflies. “It’s bad, Booster. Worse than anything you or I ever faced.”
Booster lets go of a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. “How do you know?”
“I just know.”
“What the hell kind of answer is that?” Booster asks. “No, you know what? It’s the kind of answer Rip would give me. All this time, Ted, and you’ve never really told me anything. I don’t…I don’t even know if you’re really real. I could be making all of this up; this could all just be one long really realistic recurring dream I keep having. I just…I mean, what the hell are you?”
The scenery around them shifts like a kaleidoscope, moving them from the depths of outer space to some field where they’re standing in darkness, watching the sky wheel over their heads. Ted pulls off his cowl and lets it hang between his shoulders. He rubs his forehead, then looks back up at the sky, Booster watching his every move.
“People all have a different perception of what happens after you die. You go to Heaven. You go to Hell. You don’t go anywhere. Walt Whitman said you became a part of everything in nature, some kind of circle of life hakuna matata business.” He rubs his forehead again. “I went…where I needed to be…which is apparently subletting your headspace, but hey.” He’s quiet for a moment, turning something over in his hands, before he softly adds, “I had nowhere else to go.”
Booster pulls Ted down to sit, the grass over their heads completely, a soft swaying gold curtain keeping the rest of the world, the rest of Booster’s thoughts and fears, out of their secret circle. He takes Ted’s hands, a round river rock flesh-warm in his bare palms, the wound of dreams ago a faint memory.
“Did you pick up palm-reading while I’ve been on vacation?” Ted asks, grinning. He drops the stone into Booster’s hands.
“How do I stop the thing that’s coming?”
“You don’t.” He curls Booster’s fingers around the rock. “This isn’t like what you do, Booster. It’s not a well maybe it’ll happen, maybe if you poke time just right everyone gets a puppy.”
Booster frowns. “I’ve never done anything that scores me or anybody else a puppy. I should ask Rip about that, though.”
“Booster Gold, the fate of the time stream depends on you cuddling this box of puppies!” Ted intones, trying to make his voice sound bigger, more grave and magical, but laughing too hard to really sound severe. He sobers, though, squeezes Booster’s hands tight around the rock. “Be careful, okay? If you die, I don’t know what happens to me, and then we’ll both be floating around screwed.”
“I don’t know if I can make any guarantees.” Booster tries to push the river rock back into Ted’s hands, but he forces it back into Booster’s hands and holds them closed around the stone. “What’s with the rock, Ted?”
He shrugs. “I don’t have anything else. Besides, it’s kind of a nice rock. Remember what I said, Boost. Unspeakable horror. Heartbreak like you wouldn’t believe. My immortal soul, your big dumb head. Good morning, Booster.”
Booster wakes up to the smell of coffee brewed from the coffeemaker from the very first Starbucks. “Good morning, Ted.”
The rock falls out of his hands and spins on the floor.
=
Booster doesn’t sleep after that, not for what feels like years. Ted hadn’t lied about the unspeakable horror; it had come, and it had worn Ted’s face, spoken with his voice. It had taken Booster by the hand and smiled, the same sort of smile a crocodile grins just before it devours its prey. The damned thing had laughed Ted’s laugh as it told Booster they were never friends, mocked his broken heart, and then tried to take it from Booster’s chest with nothing but grasping, skeletal hands. It had taken everything Booster had to fight the thing off, and even then it was a narrow escape. He lies in the bunker recovering, hidden away where Rip can keep him safe, where he can use his power over time to heal the horrible wound left by those cold and clutching hands.
Booster kept his heart, but only just, and in the moment before he blacked out from the excruciating pain, he could have sworn he heard Ted’s voice, arguing with himself.
He hasn’t dreamed, not while Rip keeps him drugged with things he’s plucked from the time stream, medicines that don’t yet exist. Skeets watches over him constantly, checking and fussing and acting as Booster’s personal mechanical Florence Nightingale. He’s slow to heal, regrowing tissue and knitting together bone, but Rip’s manipulation of time makes the process move more quickly. As Booster heals, he swims up from the depths of unconsciousness, surging over delta waves and up into a dream-state, where everything is swirling fog and graves yawning open in damp-earth screams.
He immediately hugs his arms to his chest, protecting the gaping wound he can’t feel in dreaming, but knows is still there. A creeping sense of dread makes Booster wonder if Ted-shaped zombies can inflict damage from inside his mind. He hopes Ted doesn’t come visit him; he doesn’t think he can handle seeing his face.
“Probably a good thing that I don’t have enough strength to materialize, then,” Ted’s voice murmurs in Booster’s ear, soft and wry.
Booster lurches back, still holding his arms over his chest. “No, you keep away from me. I’m not falling for that again.”
“Booster, relax. It’s me.”
“That’s not exactly comforting, considering the zombie-you said the same thing. How do I know you’re not working for…or part of…that thing?” Booster asks, looking for a way out of this dream. He’d rather go back to obliviously deep sleep.
Ted sighs, close enough that Booster can feel it on his neck. “I’m not a zombie. That thing was made of reconstituted Ted flakes, I’ll give you that, but it’s lacking a few key ingredients, plus some major vitamins and minerals to promote healthy bones.” Booster rolls his eyes at him, even though he can’t see Ted. “Booster, that thing walked like me and talked like me, but it wasn’t me. Isn’t. Wasn’t. Whatever. It lacks my immortal soul, which I just so happen to be. That good enough, or you want me to keep going?”
“…Why can’t you materialize?” Booster asks, still wary of Ted, especially since he can’t see him.
Ted sighs again, and Booster can feel Ted’s hand pressed against his arms. “Because I used all my cool immortal soul ghostly powers to fight that damn zombie thing off. I was saving those up to do something fun with them. But, y’know, you kind of need a heart, so…and plus, I heard some stuff and I thought…well, one less zombie out there is a fair trade, right?”
Booster lowers his arms and takes Ted’s hand, curling his fingers around nothing, but still feeling it there, flesh cool against his. “Are you going to be okay?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to say yes, because I know that’s what you want to hear, but I honestly don’t know.” Ted shuffles a little closer, close enough that Booster can just about feel the ends of his hair brushing against his skin. “I promised I’d stay with you, though, didn’t I? So, y’know, I’m never gonna give you up, or let you down, or run around and--”
“Okay, quoting that song totally just ruined the moment, Ted. You suck,” Booster interrupts.
He laughs and for the briefest moment is just barely visible. “Do not.”
“Do too.” Booster pauses for a moment, watches the cemetery around them with a wary eye, in case Ted isn’t strong enough to push back his nightmares. “Ted…zombie-you said some stuff…”
Ted squeezes his hands, though Booster doesn’t feel the pressure very well. “And all of it was lies and blasphemy, Boost. I wouldn’t be spending what amounts to my afterlife visiting you in your dreams if you weren’t my best friend. Can’t get rid of me that easy.”
“And the other part?”
Ted’s eyes become visible for a moment, and they’re narrowed with curiosity. “What other part?”
Booster backpedals for a moment, suddenly getting nervous. He doesn’t talk about his failures to save Ted, and he certainly doesn’t talk about this. Everybody knows it, everybody used to tease them about it, but it was a subject neither of them were ever willing to discuss with one another or anyone else. He wishes Ted were visible, so he could very blatantly not look Ted in the eye. As it is, he’s standing in the middle of his dream with Ted’s hands curled around his and Ted’s hair tickling his chin and he almost wishes he could just wake up and avoid the rest of this conversation.
“What other part, Booster?”
“You…he…whatever. Said…” Booster winces. He doesn’t want to do this. “What’s that over there?”
“There’s nothing over there, just a rock. Maybe a Muppet. Maybe a Muppet that looks like a rock. You have some damn weird dreams sometimes, y’know. Now quit avoiding. What did zombie-me say? Other than the obvious rarrrr, arrrgh, braaaaains, of course,” Ted replies.
“Not brains, hearts. He was going to eat my…he said I was an idiot for ever…that you would never…aw jeez, why is this so hard?” He takes a deep breath, letting out slowly. “…I loved you. I loved you, Ted. I still…I still do.”
“…Oh. That’s it?”
Booster glares at the empty space where Ted is still standing, shocked and hurt. “That’s it? I just told you that I love you, and all you can say is ‘that’s it?’ Fuck you, Ted. Go find somebody else to haunt.”
“Booster, come on. I don’t mean it like that. I live in your head! It’s not like this is a huge surprise or anything. I…” He pauses, and flickers for just a moment, in and out of focus, more a ghost than a dream figure. “Sorry, Booster.”
“Sorry you’re an asshole?” Booster asks snidely.
Ted makes a soft annoyed sound. “Sorry I can’t return the feeling.”
Booster feels like he’s been kicked in the gut. He hadn’t expected Ted to refuse him. He takes a few steps back, wondering why he hasn’t woken up yet. Maybe this is a dream within a dream and any minute now, the real Ted will appear and make this fake Ted go away. Or maybe what his zombie doppelganger had said was true all along, and that he’d wasted his time being in love with somebody who never loved him in the first place. “I…you mean you don’t…God, I feel like such an idiot.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you should’ve thought of this before you told me not to tell you that thing I wanted to tell you,” Ted replies.
“…Wait, what?”
Ted flickers for a moment, visible and visibly confused. “What?”
“What does that have to do with the fact that you totally just rejected me?” Booster asks.
“I’m not rejecting you!” Ted retorts, breath hot against Booster’s ear. “You were all worried that I’d disappear. So I’m not telling you that I loved you…that I love you…because otherwise there’s the potential that I could move on or something. So there.”
Booster blinks. “…But you just told me.”
“Oh fuck.”
Booster tries to reach for Ted and misses, worried that he’s already disappeared. There’s no feel of skin or fabric under his hands, and he feels his heartbeat flutter like moth wings. “Ted? You said you weren’t leaving me. Don’t go now. What if the zombie comes back?”
“I’m still here.”
“Why can’t I feel you?” he asks.
Ted’s voice is a little fainter when he replies, and not right in Booster’s ear. “Trying to pool together whatever I’ve got left. If I’m going to disappear or move on, I’m going to go out with a bang. And not the kind of bang I went out on last time.”
Booster watches the graveyard get mistier, the headstones more indistinct, the mausoleums and wrought-iron fences fading to a murky gray. He can feel himself sliding again, slowly shifting up towards consciousness. “Ted…”
Ted materializes fully, cowl off, dressed in his suit, as warm and tangible as if they were still sitting in the Embassy bathrooms, contemplating whether or not scrubbing the floors and toilets with toothbrushes could be considered cruel and unusual punishment. He wraps his arms around Booster, leaning up onto his toes to bridge the six inches of height difference between the two of them, and kisses Booster slowly.
Booster groans and holds onto Ted as tightly as he can, returning the kiss more enthusiastically, feeling him start to fade around the edges. He pulls back slightly, throat burning and heart aching like it really had been squeezed between a corpse’s ashy fingers. “You promised you’d stay.”
“I know. I’ll try. Hey, and just because I love you doesn’t make me gay. If I ever get to come back, don’t expect me to know anything about interior design, fashion, wine pairings, Broadway musicals, hairstyling, or…oh, I think that’s all of the Queer Eyes.” Ted smiles and kisses Booster again. “Good morning, Booster.”
He wakes with his lips still burning from Ted’s mouth. “…I love you too, Ted.”
=
“How are you feeling, Sir?”
Booster sits up slowly, rubbing his bandaged chest. Rip hasn’t let him out of the bunker yet, keeping him in quarantine and doing “desk work” while he goes time-diving himself. His wound has been slow to heal, in spite of the power of time, and he hasn’t wanted to go anywhere. He just wants to sleep, sleep and see if Ted’s still there. Booster’s been too tired to dream lately, still working the drugs out of his system. He’d thought that maybe Ted would work around that, make him dream anyway, but he hasn’t. Booster hopes that it’s because Ted’s still weak, and not because his spirit has moved on to wherever immortal souls go, whether to some higher plane or to Nanda Parbat, where Boston Brand and Ralph Dibny gazed into the eyes of a goddess. Booster’s not much of a praying type, but he offers a small prayer that Ted’s still with him, a loving whisper in his mind.
“How long has it been, Skeets?”
Skeets hovers out of the room and returns with a greasy paper bag, depositing it in Booster’s lap and reeling his arm back into his little body cavity. “Somewhere between ten minutes and two months, Sir, give or take a few years. Mr. Hunter picked up some dinner for you. Or breakfast. It’s one of the very first Big Belly Burger meals. There might actually be real meat in that burger, Sir.”
Booster eats like he hasn’t tasted food in weeks, and might not have. He knows he’ll probably be sick later, the greasy food a lead weight in his belly, but right now it’s hot and better than anything he and Ted ever ate after a late night stakeout or a repo job gone badly. He licks mayonnaise from his lips, thinking about his last dream, and the kiss that had burned his mouth even in waking.
“He told me he loved me, Skeets,” he mumbles around a fistful of fries, the salt stinging his tongue.
“Who, Sir?”
Booster snaps a fry in half. “Ted.”
“Does this have to do with your repeated dreams, Sir? You often speak of Mr. Kord in your sleep, or at least, you have as of late. If I had actual emotions, Michael, I would be concerned,” Skeets replies.
He finishes his burger, dusting the sesame seeds from the bun off his fingertips. “It’s a long story, Skeets. One you probably wouldn’t believe anyway.”
“Sir, our occupation is time-traveling superheroes, I was eaten from the inside out by a talking caterpillar who has been known to wear caterpillar-sized glasses, we have traveled to no less than fifty-two alternate universes, and what could only be described as an undead horde of zombies has been attacking the known universe. Nothing you could tell me would be unbelievable.”
Booster opens his mouth to start to explain, when a siren shrieks. He looks to Skeets for answers, hoping that it’s nothing grave and he can go back to slowly slurping his milkshake and chewing his fries.
“It seems Mr. Hunter is having difficulty, Sir,” Skeets says, hovering around in circles.
“…Where did he go?” Booster sighs, putting down his dinner and reaching painfully for his shirt. His chest starbursts with pain and he really wants to lie back down.
Skeets swoops closer. “Gorilla City, Sir.”
Booster groans loudly, adjusting his cowl. “No! Not Gorilla Grodd. I hate Gorilla Grodd. I’d rather go another couple of rounds with Zombie Ted.”
“No you wouldn’t, Sir.”
“At least Zombie Ted didn’t make me feel like I was incompetent,” he grumbles.
Skeets makes a soft humming noise. “No, he simply destroyed you emotionally and tried to rip your heart out of your chest. I’d take my chances with the gorilla.”
Booster sighs and rubs at his chest again. He really just wants to go back to sleep, to swim back to Ted and drink dream-beer and trade lazy phantom kisses and laugh like nothing hurts anymore. He can’t just abandon Rip, though. So he adjusts his visor, takes a deep, aching breath, and heads for the main hangar. He has a date with a gorilla.
=
Booster crawls into bed hours, maybe years later. His knuckles itch, where they’d been hairy earlier. Grodd had turned them into gorillas, having built a ray to do the same to the Flash, or a young Justice League, Booster wasn’t sure whom Grodd was supposed to be facing. He’s home now, though, back in his little room, in his little bed. Skeets and Rip are comparing notes down in the lab, having let Booster take a nap like a little boy, his body still recovering.
It takes a while for him to fall asleep, in spite of his exhaustion. He drifts down through some bizarre dreams that involve people and places he’s never seen before, hotel lobbies and park bench tea parties. Booster doesn’t see Ted anywhere, doesn’t hear his voice, doesn’t feel his touch. He’s not sure if this is one of those vivid dreams where he can interact with the inhabitants, or if he’s just floating along, participating but not really a part of it.
“Ted? Ted, c’mon, this isn’t funny. Hey, Ted?”
Booster walks, or floats, or swims along, without response from Ted. He worries that he’s too weak to respond, that the kiss of nights ago has disintegrated him, or caused him to move on. He tries to find some trace of him, some lingering print in his mind to show that his best friend still exists.
“Please, Ted. I’m sorry,” Booster whispers, taking a teacup from some strange woman wearing a purple shawl. “Please come back. Or say something. You promised you wouldn’t leave me alone. You promised me. You can’t just tell me you love me and disappear forever, it’s not fair. C’mon, Ted. You can’t. I need you still.”
His dreams are restless, shifting, kaleidoscope-like, moving slow and sick. Booster hasn’t had dreams like this since before Ted’s arrival in his head. He wakes up several times during his nap, rolls over and goes back to sleep. Now he knows Ted has to be gone, because there’s no one to protect him from the nightmares, from the creeping feelings of failure or pain.
Booster tries harder to focus, to find any little piece of Ted left in his mind, anything he could possibly pull into the waking world, but finds nothing. He wakes to an alarm blaring through the building, but he was almost awake anyway.
“What’s going on?” he asks, pulling on one shoe as he hops down to the main lab.
“Proximity alarm,” Rip replies, gathering up a gun as long as his arm, some weapon Booster’s never encountered before. He’s not sure what it does, but he’s pretty sure it’ll make somebody go splat. “Somebody’s outside trying to get in.”
“Maybe it’s the Girl Scouts. Or Jehovah’s Witnesses? Errant gila monster?” Booster asks, following Rip down the hall to the front door.
“Girl Scouts don’t try to break into the building,” Rip replies. “You better hope it’s not the Black Lanterns again.”
“As long as it’s not Gorilla Grodd.” Booster checks his wrist blasters and looks to Rip for a plan. “So…what? Are we just going to open the door and charge out there, waving our guns and yelling? I mean, what if it really is just a lost person? I don’t want to blast some lost hiker.”
“Then go out there,” Rip says, pointing to a hatch over the door.
Booster sighs and flies up and out, through the hatch, hovering over their would-be intruder. “Hey you!”
The lone figure at the door stops trying to hack the chronal lock on the door and looks up. Sunlight bounces off the round curve of his goggles, and a huge grin spreads across his face. “Avon calling!”
Booster nearly falls out of the sky, forgetting to concentrate on his ring. “Holy shit no.”
“Are you just going to keep staring at me or are you going to come down here and say hi? It’s pretty damn hot out here, y’know. Why couldn’t you guys have picked a more temperate place to hide your secret bunker? And did you realize that you’re dyslexic in your sleep? I’ve been trying to open this door for ten minutes now based on the combinations I found in your head, and none of them have been right. What’ve I been using, your old locker combo?”
Booster raises a shaky hand, training his lasers at the figure. “You’re not really here. You’re…you’re that Black Lantern zombie thing again. Or that shapeshifting guy. It can’t be you. You’re dead and haunting my dreams. You’re not really alive. You can’t be.”
Ted touches his chin and pulls back his cowl. “Not a zombie, not a shapeshifter, and I wasn’t haunting you. I was keeping you company. Hey, where’s my rock? Is it inside? I want it back. I like that rock. Come down here, Booster. I’m real. I’m alive. It’s okay.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“You’ve never trusted me. That’s how we always end up in trouble and hanging upside-down by our toenails while J’onn gives us disapproving looks,” he replies, laughing. “Come here, Booster.”
Booster slowly floats down, lowering his arm. He can’t help it. This is how he nearly got his heart ripped out the last time. He can’t stop himself around Ted. His chest aches, pain radiating like a star, moving outward from where his heart thumps loudly against his ribs. Ted pulls off his glove and reaches out his hand. There’s a scar in his palm, shaped like a bullet wound. Booster takes his hand and pulls Ted into his arms. If he’s actually a zombie and he goes in for a kill, Booster’s just going to let him take his heart this time.
“Hey, hi. Sorry I haven’t been around lately, stuff came up,” Ted says, hugging Booster back tightly. “Gonna have to figure out a better way to get rid of your nightmares, I guess. Sleeping pills? Warm milk? Dorky guy in blue pajamas?”
“I’ll take door number three. I can’t believe this. How are you alive? You were…well, one part zombie to one part obnoxious voice in my head. How…” Booster asks.
Ted laughs. “Boy, you’ve missed a lot. I’ll fill you in over donuts. I haven’t had my breakfast yet, and I’m sure you’re hungry. I found this outrageously good donut place, it’s kind of absurd. Booster, they put bacon on the donuts. Oh hey, do you think the kid wants to come? I feel like I should apologize to him, I mean, meeting your predecessor and superheroic idol shouldn’t be fighting his animated corpse, right?”
“Jaime can wait, I call dibs,” Booster says, throat getting tight.
“Sir, Mr. Hunter wants to know if you’re dead,” Skeets’ voice crackles through his headset.
“Tell Rip I’m still kicking, and that he’s going to have to wait a little longer to get my baseball card collection,” Booster replies, arms still wrapped around Ted, not letting go for anything.
Ted grins at him, six inches shorter and eyes blue like deep water. “Hey, I’ve got something to tell you.”
“You’ve got a lot of somethings to tell me, you jerk. And we’re going to discuss it all before Rip makes me wipe your mind with the little flashy stick thing,” Booster replies. “But what’s this pressing matter, Mr. Beetle?”
Ted pulls Booster close, their foreheads touching. He’s still grinning when he presses a kiss to Booster’s lips, slow and just a little giggly, sparkling like a Roman candle in Booster’s aching chest, burning brighter and better than the one from his dream. “Love you, buddy.”
Booster sighs melodramatically. “I guess I love you too. But only because you’re buying me donuts.”
“What? I just came back to life! I don’t have money. You’re buying, I’m owing. I’ll make it up to you. In ways I’m not going to mention right now because I don’t know if your taskmaster is listening in on us and I really don’t want to scar him for life and make him speed up my mind-wipe,” Ted replies, kissing Booster again.
Booster laughs and runs his gloved hands through Ted’s hair, trying to make sure this is all real, that he’s not dreaming. The desert air burns hot in his lungs and Ted smells like slightly stale cologne and dirt and sweat. He slides his hands down his shoulders, rubbing his collarbones with his thumbs. “Are you sure I’m not dreaming this? And that you’re not actually a zombie?”
“I’m pretty damn sure, pal.” Ted hasn’t stopped grinning. “Good morning, Booster.”
“Good morning, Ted.”
It’s going to be a beautiful day.
=
Fin.