Fic: Flesh Wound (The Authority)
I'm on a roll, guys! Almost done with another Authority fic as well, and I just completed a Young Avengers fic starring Teddy and Cassie. Coming soon to an LJ near you.
Title: Flesh Wound
Author: ravenclaw42
Fandom: The Authority/WildCATS
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Instead of brooding alone after his fight with Zealot, Midnighter finally takes his sorry ass over to Apollo for help and they decide to make a change.
Disclaimer: I make no profit with my writing. These characters all belong to Ellis/Hitch and the soon-to-be-defunct Wildstorm.
Notes: I started this simply as a coda to WildC.A.T.S. #25 of the current ongoing, because the last page gave me a case of the warm fuzzies and I wanted it to mean that they were going to communicate more, and maybe embark on Episode III: The Search for Jenny. (I actually kind of like what Beechen's attempting to do, but he's buried under way too many storylines for one title to reasonably support.) After the announcement about Wildstorm, though, the tone of the story shifted a little and it became less about missing!Jenny and more about saying my goodbyes, remembering the good times and giving the boys some kind of happy ending. I'm sad about Wildstorm, but TBH there was still a lot of room further down the drain for it to go, and I would rather it folded now, before we have to see any of those new lows. R.I.P.
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Flesh Wound
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The door to Midnighter's quarters closed with a hiss and thunk behind him, leaving Warblade and Nurse Biondi alone in the hall with a few sticky red bootprints and a blood-splattered teleport pad. They stood there for a minute in silence.
“Do you think he...?” Luisa asked hesitantly.
“Uh,” said Warblade. This put a brief kink in their plans to leave for planetside. He'd never been on a team with Midnighter - he didn't really know if they counted as being on the same team now - and he barely knew the guy, but it was hard to just walk away as if he'd seen nothing.
“He should be in the infirmary,” said Luisa.
“Probably,” said Warblade, but who was going to tell the Midnighter to do anything? “Didn't look fatal,” he added hopefully.
“I should...” Luisa looked at the door Midnighter had just walked through as if she were thinking of knocking, but thought better of it with a grimace. “Well, we should call Spartan, anyway.”
“Yeah,” said Warblade, relieved, and reached for his comm.
The door, barely closed for five minutes, opened again. Luisa jumped.
“Don't do that,” said Midnighter. He held his left hand to his right shoulder, but the gash underneath was still visible.
Warblade lowered the comm. “Uh,” he said again.
“Where's Apollo?” asked Midnighter.
“Still doing EVA on the sunward annex,” said Warblade. “It's too hot for the other guys.”
Midnighter grunted and off down the corridor. “Don't call Spartan,” he added without looking back, just as Warblade was lifting his comm again.
----
Apollo spotted the little black speck that was Midnighter almost as soon as it wandered across the bluish square of the fluorescent-lit viewport. Unfortunately Apollo's hands were full of several tons of delicate equipment at the moment - not that strength mattered particularly in a vacuum, but he was one of the few posthumans who could do an unsuited EVA at a moment's notice, so the superbrains in engineering had kept him occupied doing busywork like moving entire chunks of the space station around on their whims. He was beginning to think his abilities were spoiling them for actually doing any real engineering. They liked being able to move things around and see what worked without doing the math. Apollo was getting sick of it. At first he had been doing something really productive - now he just felt like a glorified pallet-loader in a space warehouse.
He couldn't deny the irritation that had surged up when Midnighter had just gone off on his own again. Apollo didn't actually think that Midnighter needed backup - to be honest, neither of them needed much help in a fight - but goddamn it, if Midnighter left him alone with the guys in engineering one more time, he was going to throw this damn deep-space antenna array into the sun.
He knew the past couple of years had gotten both he and Midnighter accustomed to working solo, meeting up for no more than half an hour at a time, but that particular hell was officially almost over. Midnighter took to lone-wolfing almost too well, and he needed occasional reminding that he had no real reason to brood. He hadn't used to be like that. Some truly shitty circumstances had taught him to doubt himself in a way he never had before. The anger was mostly directed inward, and Apollo sometimes tired of repeating reassurances Midnighter never seemed to believe, to the point where “I don't blame you” and “Not your fault” had devolved into “You're being stupid again” and “Please shut the fuck up.”
Apollo could see the clearing of the atmosphere from here. He was ready to go home. He didn't like being on Skywatch - knew Midnighter didn't, either - and with the Carrier fuck-knew-where, and the smog lifting, a simple, insane, wonderful idea was glinting just outside the corners of Apollo's sight. He was only waiting for Midnighter to see it, too.
He finished getting the antenna array positioned in its new spot, then laser-welded it in place. It was a slapdash job, but it would hold until the suited team came out to do the final lock-in after this side of the satellite passed out of direct sunlight.
Apollo flew down to the viewport - it was off the observation deck, tall and broad, and from a distance Midnighter looked tiny behind it. Apollo spun to orient himself with the closest entry hatch, which put him perpendicular to the observation deck's internal gravity, but Midnighter just tilted his head to the side and rapped on the inside of the window with his spiked knuckles. Apollo flew close enough to knock back and grin, then pushed off again towards the hatch.
His ears popped once inside the airlock, and sound returned. The internal door hissed open.
Midnighter was bleeding all over the place, which was not anything particularly new, but it made Apollo heave an internal sigh. But Midnighter coming to see Apollo immediately after a fight was new, or at least it was more like his old self. Since they'd come to Skywatch, Apollo had gotten used to not seeing Midnighter all day until he came to the room already bandaged and clean after whatever new bloodletting he'd gotten into. The lack of connection was almost no different from being planetside, divided by smog, and Apollo was starting to lose patience.
“Hey,” said Apollo, striding over and pulling Midnighter into a one-armed hug, avoiding the shoulder wound that was doing most of the bleeding. He still got some smudges of red on his uniform. “Why aren't you in medical?”
“I was thinking,” said Midnighter.
The look in his eyes made Apollo's stomach do a hesitant, hopeful flip.
“What did you find?” Apollo asked calmly.
“Zealot,” Midnighter grunted. “Pulling a Bendix. Lots of pregnant women, Maul being a fucking idiot, kids...” He sighed. “I'm glad you didn't have to see it.”
Apollo resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Or glare. Or both.
But after a pause, Midnighter snorted and said, “No, that's bull. I wish you had been there. I couldn't take 'em all. Settled for a solo bitch-fight with Zealot, but if you'd been there, we could've... that outfit'd be out of commission forever. All those women and kids free.” Midnighter shook his head. “Fuck. What are we doing?”
“I don't know,” said Apollo, resisting the urge to add “What are you doing?” Because, to be honest, it was long past time he should have told the guys in engineering where they could shove their antenna array, and Spartan where he could shove his work assignments, and Midnighter where he could shove his sulking attitude.
“Zealot said some stuff,” said Midnighter.
After a few too many beats, Apollo said, “Uh-huh. Because she's such a chatterbox.”
“About Jenny,” Midnighter said through gritted teeth.
Apollo's brow furrowed. Neither of them said anything for a moment.
“Did that sword go all the way through?” Apollo asked at last.
“Is that metaphorical?”
Apollo poked Midnighter in the injured shoulder.
“Ow,” hissed Midnighter. “Fucker.”
Apollo jerked his head in the direction of their room. “We have first aid stuff.”
“You're not gonna send me to that one nurse on board who always lectures me about not getting run through with swords?”
“I thought I qualified for that job.”
“Hah,” said Midnighter, setting off down the corridor. Apollo's long stride caught them up to even in one step.
They made it to their quarters in silence. There was no sign of Warblade or the nurse who had been with him in the hall outside. Apollo made a face at the blood already drying on the bed and pushed Midnighter towards the shower while he pulled the sheets off. After a couple of minutes of listening to sodden leather thumping to the floor and hissing water, Apollo fished a kit with sterilized needles and suture thread out of a drawer and went to sew his husband back into one piece.
Half an hour later, Apollo was sitting on the edge of the bare mattress and trying to convince Midnighter to stop pacing.
“Okay,” said Apollo. “So she ribbed you about Jenny. And that got you so off kilter it gave her an in to skewer you? Where has your game gone?”
Midnighter snorted. “Getting old,” he said. “You too.”
“Hah,” said Apollo. “Is the computer turning senile?”
Midnighter finally came to a stop in the middle of the floor, facing Apollo. He was wearing grayed-out navy boxers and an entire sheath of bandages on one arm and side. “We've got to get out of here, Apollo,” he said, tone aggravated.
“Thought you'd never get there,” Apollo said softly.
Midnighter stopped fidgeting and grimacing and really looked at Apollo at last. He studied Apollo's face for a long minute. His arms slid down from where they were crossed over his chest to a looser cross over his stomach. “I've been a complete ass,” he said. It wasn't quite as if he were just realizing it as a fact in itself - but he was just now realizing that he was capable, finally, of admitting it. And maybe, eventually, letting go of the reasons that had made him become something he hated.
“I've been letting it happen,” said Apollo. “I should have said something earlier.”
Midnighter continued to scrutinize Apollo. It wasn't uncomfortable. Apollo had missed the way Midnighter could spend minutes parsing him into statistics and still figure out nothing. Midnighter used to complain about it constantly. Apollo liked to win.
After a couple of minutes, Midnighter walked over and sat down next to Apollo, side pressed to side. The silence filled up with their mistakes.
“I'm sorry,” Midnighter murmured at last.
A beat, and then Apollo snorted and turned his head. “Yeah, you are pretty sorry.”
Midnighter jabbed him with an elbow. “Ow,” Apollo laughed.
Midnighter turned his eyes towards the ceiling. “I miss her,” he said, and Apollo sobered.
“I know,” said Apollo. “You think I don't?”
“No,” said Midnighter. He hesitated. “I just don't know where to start looking. If we had a Doctor...”
Apollo sighed. “You know, Mid, I think that if - when - she comes back, she'll be the one to find us. We didn't raise a girl who needs to be rescued.”
Midnighter's mouth twitched into the ghost of a smile. “No,” he admitted. “She did swallow a supernova that one time.”
“Exactly,” said Apollo.
They sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes. Apollo traced the edges and corners of the deathly-drab gray box they lived in. There were no windows. He was well-charged, of course, but...
“The smog's clearing,” he said into the silence. A suggestion that had been weeks in coming. He looked at Midnighter with a lingering sliver of apprehension. He could see the mind working at top speed behind Midnighter's still face.
“Zealot will have moved camp,” said Midnighter.
“We can find her,” said Apollo.
“Exiles again,” said Midnighter, looking over to meet Apollo's eyes.
“No,” said Apollo. “Going home.”
Midnighter's gaze lowered. “Yeah.” Then he said, “I've missed you.”
“I'm here now,” said Apollo.
Midnighter laughed, a little watery, and covered his eyes with one hand. “We are getting old, aren't we,” he said.
“I love you,” said Apollo. “Let's get out of here.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
And Midnighter grinned the feral grin that Apollo hadn't seen in what felt like eons. Apollo pulled him close and kissed him hard. Midnighter tugged lightly at Apollo's hair - still short, but growing, just like the first time they'd run from Skywatch, from Stormwatch, from teams and assignments. Their lives had come full circle - and Apollo felt certain that their new retirement was well more than earned, and that this time they ran was likely to be the last.
----
Title: Flesh Wound
Author: ravenclaw42
Fandom: The Authority/WildCATS
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Instead of brooding alone after his fight with Zealot, Midnighter finally takes his sorry ass over to Apollo for help and they decide to make a change.
Disclaimer: I make no profit with my writing. These characters all belong to Ellis/Hitch and the soon-to-be-defunct Wildstorm.
Notes: I started this simply as a coda to WildC.A.T.S. #25 of the current ongoing, because the last page gave me a case of the warm fuzzies and I wanted it to mean that they were going to communicate more, and maybe embark on Episode III: The Search for Jenny. (I actually kind of like what Beechen's attempting to do, but he's buried under way too many storylines for one title to reasonably support.) After the announcement about Wildstorm, though, the tone of the story shifted a little and it became less about missing!Jenny and more about saying my goodbyes, remembering the good times and giving the boys some kind of happy ending. I'm sad about Wildstorm, but TBH there was still a lot of room further down the drain for it to go, and I would rather it folded now, before we have to see any of those new lows. R.I.P.
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Flesh Wound
------
The door to Midnighter's quarters closed with a hiss and thunk behind him, leaving Warblade and Nurse Biondi alone in the hall with a few sticky red bootprints and a blood-splattered teleport pad. They stood there for a minute in silence.
“Do you think he...?” Luisa asked hesitantly.
“Uh,” said Warblade. This put a brief kink in their plans to leave for planetside. He'd never been on a team with Midnighter - he didn't really know if they counted as being on the same team now - and he barely knew the guy, but it was hard to just walk away as if he'd seen nothing.
“He should be in the infirmary,” said Luisa.
“Probably,” said Warblade, but who was going to tell the Midnighter to do anything? “Didn't look fatal,” he added hopefully.
“I should...” Luisa looked at the door Midnighter had just walked through as if she were thinking of knocking, but thought better of it with a grimace. “Well, we should call Spartan, anyway.”
“Yeah,” said Warblade, relieved, and reached for his comm.
The door, barely closed for five minutes, opened again. Luisa jumped.
“Don't do that,” said Midnighter. He held his left hand to his right shoulder, but the gash underneath was still visible.
Warblade lowered the comm. “Uh,” he said again.
“Where's Apollo?” asked Midnighter.
“Still doing EVA on the sunward annex,” said Warblade. “It's too hot for the other guys.”
Midnighter grunted and off down the corridor. “Don't call Spartan,” he added without looking back, just as Warblade was lifting his comm again.
----
Apollo spotted the little black speck that was Midnighter almost as soon as it wandered across the bluish square of the fluorescent-lit viewport. Unfortunately Apollo's hands were full of several tons of delicate equipment at the moment - not that strength mattered particularly in a vacuum, but he was one of the few posthumans who could do an unsuited EVA at a moment's notice, so the superbrains in engineering had kept him occupied doing busywork like moving entire chunks of the space station around on their whims. He was beginning to think his abilities were spoiling them for actually doing any real engineering. They liked being able to move things around and see what worked without doing the math. Apollo was getting sick of it. At first he had been doing something really productive - now he just felt like a glorified pallet-loader in a space warehouse.
He couldn't deny the irritation that had surged up when Midnighter had just gone off on his own again. Apollo didn't actually think that Midnighter needed backup - to be honest, neither of them needed much help in a fight - but goddamn it, if Midnighter left him alone with the guys in engineering one more time, he was going to throw this damn deep-space antenna array into the sun.
He knew the past couple of years had gotten both he and Midnighter accustomed to working solo, meeting up for no more than half an hour at a time, but that particular hell was officially almost over. Midnighter took to lone-wolfing almost too well, and he needed occasional reminding that he had no real reason to brood. He hadn't used to be like that. Some truly shitty circumstances had taught him to doubt himself in a way he never had before. The anger was mostly directed inward, and Apollo sometimes tired of repeating reassurances Midnighter never seemed to believe, to the point where “I don't blame you” and “Not your fault” had devolved into “You're being stupid again” and “Please shut the fuck up.”
Apollo could see the clearing of the atmosphere from here. He was ready to go home. He didn't like being on Skywatch - knew Midnighter didn't, either - and with the Carrier fuck-knew-where, and the smog lifting, a simple, insane, wonderful idea was glinting just outside the corners of Apollo's sight. He was only waiting for Midnighter to see it, too.
He finished getting the antenna array positioned in its new spot, then laser-welded it in place. It was a slapdash job, but it would hold until the suited team came out to do the final lock-in after this side of the satellite passed out of direct sunlight.
Apollo flew down to the viewport - it was off the observation deck, tall and broad, and from a distance Midnighter looked tiny behind it. Apollo spun to orient himself with the closest entry hatch, which put him perpendicular to the observation deck's internal gravity, but Midnighter just tilted his head to the side and rapped on the inside of the window with his spiked knuckles. Apollo flew close enough to knock back and grin, then pushed off again towards the hatch.
His ears popped once inside the airlock, and sound returned. The internal door hissed open.
Midnighter was bleeding all over the place, which was not anything particularly new, but it made Apollo heave an internal sigh. But Midnighter coming to see Apollo immediately after a fight was new, or at least it was more like his old self. Since they'd come to Skywatch, Apollo had gotten used to not seeing Midnighter all day until he came to the room already bandaged and clean after whatever new bloodletting he'd gotten into. The lack of connection was almost no different from being planetside, divided by smog, and Apollo was starting to lose patience.
“Hey,” said Apollo, striding over and pulling Midnighter into a one-armed hug, avoiding the shoulder wound that was doing most of the bleeding. He still got some smudges of red on his uniform. “Why aren't you in medical?”
“I was thinking,” said Midnighter.
The look in his eyes made Apollo's stomach do a hesitant, hopeful flip.
“What did you find?” Apollo asked calmly.
“Zealot,” Midnighter grunted. “Pulling a Bendix. Lots of pregnant women, Maul being a fucking idiot, kids...” He sighed. “I'm glad you didn't have to see it.”
Apollo resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Or glare. Or both.
But after a pause, Midnighter snorted and said, “No, that's bull. I wish you had been there. I couldn't take 'em all. Settled for a solo bitch-fight with Zealot, but if you'd been there, we could've... that outfit'd be out of commission forever. All those women and kids free.” Midnighter shook his head. “Fuck. What are we doing?”
“I don't know,” said Apollo, resisting the urge to add “What are you doing?” Because, to be honest, it was long past time he should have told the guys in engineering where they could shove their antenna array, and Spartan where he could shove his work assignments, and Midnighter where he could shove his sulking attitude.
“Zealot said some stuff,” said Midnighter.
After a few too many beats, Apollo said, “Uh-huh. Because she's such a chatterbox.”
“About Jenny,” Midnighter said through gritted teeth.
Apollo's brow furrowed. Neither of them said anything for a moment.
“Did that sword go all the way through?” Apollo asked at last.
“Is that metaphorical?”
Apollo poked Midnighter in the injured shoulder.
“Ow,” hissed Midnighter. “Fucker.”
Apollo jerked his head in the direction of their room. “We have first aid stuff.”
“You're not gonna send me to that one nurse on board who always lectures me about not getting run through with swords?”
“I thought I qualified for that job.”
“Hah,” said Midnighter, setting off down the corridor. Apollo's long stride caught them up to even in one step.
They made it to their quarters in silence. There was no sign of Warblade or the nurse who had been with him in the hall outside. Apollo made a face at the blood already drying on the bed and pushed Midnighter towards the shower while he pulled the sheets off. After a couple of minutes of listening to sodden leather thumping to the floor and hissing water, Apollo fished a kit with sterilized needles and suture thread out of a drawer and went to sew his husband back into one piece.
Half an hour later, Apollo was sitting on the edge of the bare mattress and trying to convince Midnighter to stop pacing.
“Okay,” said Apollo. “So she ribbed you about Jenny. And that got you so off kilter it gave her an in to skewer you? Where has your game gone?”
Midnighter snorted. “Getting old,” he said. “You too.”
“Hah,” said Apollo. “Is the computer turning senile?”
Midnighter finally came to a stop in the middle of the floor, facing Apollo. He was wearing grayed-out navy boxers and an entire sheath of bandages on one arm and side. “We've got to get out of here, Apollo,” he said, tone aggravated.
“Thought you'd never get there,” Apollo said softly.
Midnighter stopped fidgeting and grimacing and really looked at Apollo at last. He studied Apollo's face for a long minute. His arms slid down from where they were crossed over his chest to a looser cross over his stomach. “I've been a complete ass,” he said. It wasn't quite as if he were just realizing it as a fact in itself - but he was just now realizing that he was capable, finally, of admitting it. And maybe, eventually, letting go of the reasons that had made him become something he hated.
“I've been letting it happen,” said Apollo. “I should have said something earlier.”
Midnighter continued to scrutinize Apollo. It wasn't uncomfortable. Apollo had missed the way Midnighter could spend minutes parsing him into statistics and still figure out nothing. Midnighter used to complain about it constantly. Apollo liked to win.
After a couple of minutes, Midnighter walked over and sat down next to Apollo, side pressed to side. The silence filled up with their mistakes.
“I'm sorry,” Midnighter murmured at last.
A beat, and then Apollo snorted and turned his head. “Yeah, you are pretty sorry.”
Midnighter jabbed him with an elbow. “Ow,” Apollo laughed.
Midnighter turned his eyes towards the ceiling. “I miss her,” he said, and Apollo sobered.
“I know,” said Apollo. “You think I don't?”
“No,” said Midnighter. He hesitated. “I just don't know where to start looking. If we had a Doctor...”
Apollo sighed. “You know, Mid, I think that if - when - she comes back, she'll be the one to find us. We didn't raise a girl who needs to be rescued.”
Midnighter's mouth twitched into the ghost of a smile. “No,” he admitted. “She did swallow a supernova that one time.”
“Exactly,” said Apollo.
They sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes. Apollo traced the edges and corners of the deathly-drab gray box they lived in. There were no windows. He was well-charged, of course, but...
“The smog's clearing,” he said into the silence. A suggestion that had been weeks in coming. He looked at Midnighter with a lingering sliver of apprehension. He could see the mind working at top speed behind Midnighter's still face.
“Zealot will have moved camp,” said Midnighter.
“We can find her,” said Apollo.
“Exiles again,” said Midnighter, looking over to meet Apollo's eyes.
“No,” said Apollo. “Going home.”
Midnighter's gaze lowered. “Yeah.” Then he said, “I've missed you.”
“I'm here now,” said Apollo.
Midnighter laughed, a little watery, and covered his eyes with one hand. “We are getting old, aren't we,” he said.
“I love you,” said Apollo. “Let's get out of here.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
And Midnighter grinned the feral grin that Apollo hadn't seen in what felt like eons. Apollo pulled him close and kissed him hard. Midnighter tugged lightly at Apollo's hair - still short, but growing, just like the first time they'd run from Skywatch, from Stormwatch, from teams and assignments. Their lives had come full circle - and Apollo felt certain that their new retirement was well more than earned, and that this time they ran was likely to be the last.
----