Chapter Text
Tonight is a good night.
You’re filled to the brim — months of hoarding feeling and words. Purple stars fall across the sea of the dance floor, disco ball glitter and bouncing guitar, the tap of dress shoe.
It’s all so much.
Whirling, Doc throws you a pair of finger guns. Laughter goes up as he raises then an imaginary lasso. The people around you twitter like so many birds as you're roped in clear mischief.
But tonight is a good night.
“Go on, Mags!” cheers the elements around you, Hydrogen, Silicone, Berylium, Iodine — all of their green skull paint glowing vividly in the dark. “Mags, Mags!”
It’s your birthday. Or, rather your escape day. Yours and Doc’s — close enough, right?
Hands press at your shoulders, daring almost touch that you don’t care about. Doc reels back, and you robotically lever up to your feet, hop to the next yank and beat.
You only just get to him when everything goes dark, all sound cutting out. The sudden silence sees you trip, suddenly out of rhythm. Doc catches you over an arm as the henchmen brace around in the shocked gloom.
A shadow falls down from the moonlit skylight.
“Oh shit,” Doc says, “fucking Batman.”
There's no time to react. He shoves you back to the scatter of broken glass, yelling and screaming, and straight into the arms of Nickel and Cobalt.
“Get him outta here!”
Everything goes very bright and yellow, a dark silhouette framed beyond the flare. Howls knife the air as skin burns and burns. Hands hoist you up, and you go limp. Know better than to kick, than to flail; you'll hurt them and not mean to, but —
Doc’s cackles follow you out into the hallway, the crush of bodies and splattered blood.
Guess tonight was a good night.
“What do we do?” Nickel asks, panting harshly as they file past other goons heading back into the ballroom, guns raised. You turn a little, spy frightened guests crowding away down the opposite direction. “Batman definitely seemed serious this time —”
“Doesn’t matter!” Cobalt snaps, hefting you with a grunt. “Get the door!”
The slam of the stairwell door makes you flinch, but Nickel scouts you both through, his own gun out as he peers up and down the steps. They’re supposed to get you out. Get you back to somewhere safe, or at least street side so you can meander your way… home. But most places aren’t as safe as Doc’s side.
Case in point: barely one flight down, Nickel almost trips over a downed Bismuth, Xenon, and Tin.
“Goddammit,” Cobalt hisses, turning for the closest door, but she isn't fast enough.
Something hits her other shoulder and you both go down; you’re dropped, Cobalt falling halfway over you to slam face first into the wall. Nickel swears, whipping around to look up at you and —
Robin.
With a groan, Cobalt twists fast, but the gun’s kicked out of her hand. Which beans you right in the mask as you sit up and squirm out from under her; it bounces at a curve and flies off into the open center of the stairwell with a sharp clatter. Pop, pop, pop! Cape flares, and Nickel shrieks, blood hitting the back of your suit, another crack.
It makes your everything crawl.
“Kid —” Cobalt starts, face paint smeared, pinned back braids coming loose, but the space is tight and tonight was a good night.
You throw yourself at Robin, wrapping your arms over his and solidifying your weight. “Stop!” you yell as he goes stumbling. Brief vertigo takes hold, then a pained gasp escapes him at the fall up the steps, so you squeeze him even tighter, pool energy in the emptiness of your gloves. “Stop or I'll burn you!”
“Kid — ” Nickel echoes over the scuff of shoe.
“Run!” you say, cutting him off. The slightest turn of your head shows him clutching his bleeding hand, Cobalt staggering to her feet. “Run, okay! You’re fired!”
Robin stiffens. Knees the front of your suit hard. All you feel is a very distant pressure, dig in your fingers and raise the heat in return.
You don’t actually have the power to do that, to… fire anyone. Doc just flambés whoever he doesn’t like, but anyone who can’t take the heat just don’t have to show up again — no one cares except in employment. No rats, no turncoats, no ninjas. That’ll get someone's face seared right off, maybe even their entire family’s too.
That’s what Doc did to Rupert Thorne, anyway.
But for what it’s worth, Doc’s really the only one who actually cares. Everyone else is paid, and paid well, except. Getting curb-stomped by Robin is no one’s idea of a fun night out.
So they run without more convincing, and you don’t mind.
Someone else does mind though.
“What the hell,” Robin hisses, struggling. “Are you just going to not let go? I’m not real big on hugs, if it’s all the same to you.”
Shaking your head, you just hold on.
Eventually, he accepts his fate. But first: getting his feet under him doesn’t work — you're too heavy. Pinching you doesn’t work — you don’t feel it. Headbutting you really doesn’t work — the PVC of the suit is hard, and Robin drops back with a bitten off grunt.
Which is how you’re both found when it’s all said and done, still propped up on the stairs in the worst hug ever.
A hand comes down on the loose material of your suit just at your neck, digs in to tug. You… let go, only to be hauled up and clear off of Robin and your feet. Just hanging, you observe the black boots below you, the clear chemical burns yet smear of white powder.
“Hi,” you say to Batman.
“... Hello,” he returns at a rumble.
Robin sits up gingerly, and pulls around the back of his cape to see the warped runs in the material. “Was that radiation?” he asks, voice high.
“No,” you mumble, and get sat back to your feet off the steps. The grip stays even as you look at the smooth palms of your gloves. “Doc said I'm not that kinda radioactive.”
A silence falls for a very long heartbeat, the cry of sirens getting closer. Batman shifts, and you're turned a bit with the movement.
“What's your name?”
You squint up at him. “Maggot.” Batman doesn't seem to like that by the thinning of his lips. “... Or Mags.”
“Magnesium,” Robin clocks immediately.
“Yeah…” you agree, twisting to glance back up the way you were brought. An uncomfortable knot twists up in the center of you. The music didn’t come back on — the party is officially dead. “Can I go now?”
“No,” Batman says, “no you cannot.”
“But Doc said —”
“Doctor Phosphorus is going away for a very long time,” the man interrupts, but not... meanly. So you look back at him, blinking. “Do you want to go with him?”
“Yes?” you say, and he doesn't like that either.
Because you don't get to go with Doc in the end. And you don't actually get to see him again either. Or Nickel, or Cobalt, or any of the other elements. You even miss the black light party at the Lounge for the following Thursday.
Instead, you're taken somewhere else.
“Could you state your name for the record, please?” the green man asks.
A green martian they said — Martian Manhunter.
Really, really cool! you think, drumming your collective fingers lightly on the table before saying Magnesium. The brightness of your eyes are reflected back on his own.
“Is that your only name?”
Shrugging, you glance away to the camera in the high corner, blinking to match the red light. “Only one I got. You can call me Mags, or Maggot.”
“Mags, then,” he continues. “Is there anything you need before we begin?”
You shake your head. “Just wanna get this done,” you reply, losing interest, because if he’s not going to do anything really alien then what does it matter —
“Do you understand why you’re here?”
With a huff, you focus back on him, find the flat space that is almost not a nose of his face to anchor to. “Because of Batman,” you sass. Add at his silence, "I’m being sarcastic if you can’t tell by my face. I know a lot of people don't like Doc.”
That does get the faintest curl of a smile. Because no one can actually see your face like this — just pin point yellow-green eyes and the outline of a gas mask. That last thing doesn’t actually exist, an impression or, or something etched into the backside of the PVC. You don’t really know.
“Could you explain the circumstances that led you to stay with Alexander Sartorius?” he asks, long knobby fingers steppling together.
Huh. “Who?” you ask, leaning away from the table. Maybe it’s them who don’t understand — “I, uh, don't know anyone named Alexander.”
“Doctor Phosphorus, I mean.”
Oh. “... We're the same,” you say, bewildered, “kinda, sorta. Escaped from the same place. Stuck together after. Cohesive aesthetic.”
Me and you, kid, we're birds of a feather, so we ought to stick together, eh?
Alexander Sartorius. You tuck that away, a learned secret.
“How so?”
Mmrgh. “Just are,” you mumble, and stick your hands in your lap.
“What purpose does your suit serve?”
“Protection.”
“For who?”
“Me. Others. Everyone. I'm very… bright.”
“Do you have to stay in it?”
You shake your head again, suddenly aware of a faint, faint press of intent somewhere you can't place. “No, but I like it.”
People can’t actually touch you through it. Can't, can't —
“Are you actually in my head?” you demand before he can pose another question, hunching down. “Stop touching me!”
Telepathy, they said. Just enough to know your surface thoughts and whether you'd lie. You agreed to that. Not. Not —
Immediately, the weight fades. “I’m sorry,” Martian Manhunter says. “Most don't have such… reactions to my powers.”
He seems honest. Doc called Batman a major good-two shoes, so. These guys must be too. He probably didn't mean it. To touch.
Phantom fingers run up your chest, feather over bone and sagging flesh. Except. You don’t have skin or muscle or fat. It all fell off, probably.
The suit caves in slightly at the thought, not — not touching, but close, like a hug. You tremble slightly on a pretend breath.
You're not radioactive, not in any way Doc knew to worry about, like for himself. But you're… all together something. Something adjacent.
Problem is, you really just don't remember what exactly. Hardly remember anything at all before chipped hard tissue and green, green, green. You really do look almost just like Doc.
Whats so hard to understand?
“S'all good,” you say, tripping into a very faint slur.
You've. Said a lot, for so long. And it’s been a very long day and a night more since the good night, because you don’t sleep, not really. They have so many questions and you've hoarded these words for months just for that. You'd wanted to use them to finally ask Lark to open your juice box for you at the party.
She would have been so surprised.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Mhm.”
“Could you step out of your suit for us? Just so we know what you look like and to be sure?”
You thump your chin to the table, the PVC clicking loudly, suddenly really, really tired. “We're the same. I… look a lot like him. More green. Don’t wanna.”
Manhunter hums. “Do you… have powers like him?”
Turning your face away, you observe the large two-way mirror this time, to eye the pensive faces watching from behind it. “Not really.”
More is asked of you, but the words kind of. Muddle. Muffle. Go far away. You shake your head again and again.
A hand on the shoulder of the suit draws you back just enough from that gray inching void.
You must be tired, his lips most likely say.
Probably. You learned the gist back at. Back before. Through the jelly like world and glass. The… lab techs, they talked about you a lot, but the way their lips curved.
All they said were mean things.
C'mon kid, let your hair down, promise I won't let you fall out the car.
Doc's never been mean. Not to you. And you knew you couldn't feel the wind, but the press of your shared hands gripping the back of the convertible, crawling up to sit with him along the back headrests, shored you up. Let you let the suit peel open to fly in the wind, excited.
The pressure of it on what makes up your body had felt. Amazing.
A cackle from Doc, and the car roared, the Finger River bridge a blur as it weaved past and between the four am traffic. Red and blue the rearview mirror, but —
The point is. These guys don't seem… mean. Yet. Doc never, even when you didn't make sense, he never. He never got mad.
Not when you couldn't talk, not when you blinded anyone, and not when you and the suit fought.
It remembers more than you. Sometimes that makes it mad. Not mean, but. Upset.
And you sorta feel that hot wrath stirring.
Which won't be good — these guys aren't Doc.
“I,” you start with great effort, levering agonizingly back upright, “am tired. No more talking, thanks.”
“It's been a very long few days, we can continue at another time,” Manhunter agrees.
So. They put you back in your… cell. It's nicer than the lab, than the tube; there's a bed and even a tv. Not nearly as nice as your room back at Doc’s. They promise to have something else for you after your next talk though.
You just nod along and don't say you can sorta leave whenever you want.
But without Doc… you're not sure what's waiting for you back in Gotham. Batman, again? Maybe Lark would put you up, but. She works for Penguin before anything else, so maybe not. Everything’s probably fallen apart without Doc there —
Tingling, the suit picks you up from where you sat on the bed. Stiffly, it stuffs you both in the empty corner just outside the touch of the rug on the hard floor.
Really? you complain, but accept the folding of your almost nonexistent limbs. Perfectly good bed right there.
Of course, the suit just. Keeps you there, uneasy, unhappy. So you stay and don’t fight it.
It’s not like it’s uncomfortable.
With a sigh, you press your face closer to the back side of the mask. The suit reaches back, just lightly touching.
Tomorrow’s another day.
Maybe you’ll mime for another hose down, who knows. Felt good to get the grime and blood off anyway.
You sag further, and just. Whistle, quiet and low.
No one's there to repeat it back.