Chapter Text
"Why do you lead us, Rachel?" Nikkola asked, sitting down beside her with a grunt. The noise of the feast washed over them as she took that in, watching her Remnants laugh and talk amongst themselves. It was Passover holiday and with a few of her ones being Jewish everyone was happy to partake in a feast.
"What do you mean?" She asked, staunchly avoiding the lamb on her plate. The man who'd served it, Mudan, a large man in his own right, had been generous in his portions, meaning there was a lot of it to avoid. Rachel sipped at her wine to ignore her imaginary-Alfred's disappointing gaze.
"Surely you are not here of your own benefit, we have been underground for nearly two years, and in that time we have been quiet as mice." The man said. Rachel couldn't detect any intent to steal her crown (yet) so she let him speak. "You had Eudarv by your side, yet when he came close to being King, you killed him. Is that not an encumbrance and setback?"
"I froze him," she corrected. "There is a difference there, Nikkola."
"Are you so sure?" he challenged and her walls began rising.
"Death does not come as easily to us as it does humans," she said.
"You did not answer my question," he noted.
"Did I not?" She asked rhetorically. "I froze him, what tactic other than threats could I have dissuaded him with?"
"You could've turned him down, spared his feelings and kept the moral of the Remnants up. You should've but you didn't."
"Are you insinuating a failure in application?"
"I'm implying that you may not be fit for this position." Nikkola said calmly.
Rachel felt a cold, piercing feeling shroud in her gut. It arced up from her core and shot down her legs and through her arms. Her heart felt like it was being squeezed.
She'd kill him. Kill him for even stating such a thing.
"Of course I'm only repeating what the others are saying," the man said in her silence. "This does not mean I too have become upon this conclusion, merely that I worry."
"Eudarv has been supplanted," she answered. "I do not see how I am to fault for his own shortcomings."
"Their postulation is wild, Rachel," Nikkola snarled. "They worry they will be next and when they come to me for guidance I cannot even give my assistance for neither I know."
"If they fear death they are not worthy of the Talon power." Because she tried so hard for it, took shots every two months to keep her lifeline, it was so unfair that these peasants could keep what they did not even want.
"This is not a power we've been bestowed, Rachel," Nikkola's voice rose over the clatter, people's heads turned in curiosity. "It is a curse, a damnation that has spread from our veins to our hearts. Why should we kill simply because we have the power to?"
A low murmur swept through the congregation of Remnants. Rachel flushed red though she did not know if it was thanks to anger or embarrasment.
"I agree," someone said. A small lady by the name of Delores. "We should have the right of man and be able to make our own decisions."
"Aye," an Irish man shouted, hooting his words in mockery. "The Court's gone, why should we listen to the call of the serum for any longer?"
Rachel had been under the impression all the ones left were loyal fighters, dedicated to the cause. Apparently, she'd been wrong.
So terribly wrong.
Nikkola stood shouting, "All say aye for a new code, a new law of no killing. We can save Gotham, we do not need death nor this woman! Revolt with me and see the light!"
He was creating a rebellion. An usurping. Rachel would not acknowledge this. Disobedience was unacceptable.
Slanderous treachery.
Treason.
"Sit down," she bellowed as they all stood. They flushed forward like a wave, crashing against the podium of which Nikkola and her sat, banging against it, howling obscenities. "Stop this at once!"
Nikkola smirked at her as the pitch rose. "Seems they really didn't like it."
Nikkola was a nice man. She'd always liked him, being able to laugh and joke around with him occasionally. Who would've thought he would be the one to go against her, to repudiate her.
"You'll be assured to see the light," she growled, eyes stinging with hate. A dagger was thrust through his chest with one forceful shove.
Nikkola's lecherous grin dropped, flopping into a frown as he looked down at the dagger. His hands gripped it for a moment before pulling it out. It dripped green. "What have you done?"
She may not have been happy about his rioting but she'd been prepared for it. Bruce had taught her the paranoia of the Bat well.
"That green substance is poison, the only thing in the world known to kill an Old Serum user." It was antidelectrum. Now it was her turn to grin. The crowd below raged at what was happening, vectoring frantic in their screams. "Too little and it leisurely, if gradually, eats away at the serum; too much and it's instantaneous death."
The former was happening to her. The latter, currently to Nikkola.
"How- How much did—?" Nikkola's eyes had went wide and suddenly Rachel felt misplaced.
The world seemed to dim as Nikkola dropped forward, down onto his knees. Rachel gaped, a horrid shame filling her. She tried to apologise, "I- I'm—"
"Save it," the man gurgled, blood boiling. It surged upwards from his nostrils and ears, pouring out in slobs like hot buttermilk that had curdled. "I'm past this world, lord riddance."
He sighed happily and his eyes grew dimmer each passing second.
Rachel didn't understand why she'd done it. Her stomach doing sommersaults as she thought about it, cradling the dying man in her arms. His blood painted her skin and she wept, forgoing the screams as she shook.
She'd killed him. Killed him over something that all should have; free will.
Maybe it had been a bad idea, all this killing and whatnot.
Now that she looked back, she didn't know why she'd left. Horace had dragged her away but she easily could've gotten up and went back— back home.
Why hadn't she?
(She ducked under a bolted down lab table just as Horace charged, slamming right into the wall. To her horror, the man merely shook himself off like a bull and laughed down at her, peeling the needle from the wall it had embedded itself in.)
The serum, a voice like Bruce's -strong and sturdy, stout- whispered in her ears. It dragged you down and you lost even yourself. She had. She'd lost herself and here she was. Here she was dictating life itself.
("He is dead," she said and they all bathed in silence.)
She didn't want to do that.
She wanted a family, she had a brother back home. She wanted friends, knce upon a time she'd attempted a team but her selfishness had driven her away and one of them was dead.
(His lifeless eyes stared at her. No, right through her.)
Kaldur'ahm had died. Such a kind, loving boy; dead at her fingertips. He was dead because of her arrogance, because of her.
There was so much blood on her hands. Too much.
"I'm so sorry," she sobbed, sliding shut his eyelids with shaking fingers.
She cried.
And cried.
And cried.
The Remnants, whom now she peered at, the Remnants who were nothing more than lost souls, clamoured round. Calling for Nikkola. Calling for saviour. Calling for words that would not come from a burnt throat and closed eyelids.
"The Remnants are done," she said, not knowing when she'd stood. She didn't remember doing so. "Nikkola is gone. Go."
Silence held the air in its thick, devastating hold, choking all the oxygen out to replace it with carbon dioxide.
"We- we can leave?" Someone at the back whispered, heard by all in the room.
She nodded. "Yes. Go, live normal lives. Enjoy the life you were never given. Never come back."
They were all New Serums anyway. They'd all die like humans.
"Let us leave," one man nodded in decision, grabbing a candle from the table and dropping it on the cloth. The linen went up almost in slow motion, the flame roaring its way through delicately embroidered patterns, proclaiming freedom.
"Freedom is ours," a woman hooted.
Rachel stood there as they all ran out, stumbling and cheering in their glory.
The Court had burned and it seemed the Remnants would too.
For some reason, she was alright with that. Content with letting a movement she'd spent three years building crumble to dust at the click of a dead man's fingers.
Or, more accurately, letting it fall at a dead man's call.
It was time to go home. It was time to meet her brother properly.
It was time to be a better person, for herself and everyone. Red was gone, the Queen was gone, now Rachel was here.
And she was here to stay this time. No matter what.
She walked out of the hall to the fizzling of the marble reacting to the heat as the wood frames in the room went up.
Cobb had been put back in his coffin, alongside Eudarv. His horrid grin was stark in contrast against the rugged red of the casket.
She'd been calling them coffins all this time whilst they were caskets.
"Whoops," she said, quite unapologetic as she stuck her tongue out at Cobb. She felt younger than normal, probably thanks to the adrenaline rush that had spurred her emotional responses.
Her eyes were still red and puffy from earlier. She could tell, the ice reflected her reflection back at her almost perfectly.
The Court's abode was burning from the inside out, thanks to that candle and she was making her rounds, shunning the memories of death and spitting in the face of them.
That was why she was here; to say goodbye.
"Years have passed," she still had no clue how Horace had pulled the block of ice from the casket. "And although you are still stuck in the past, I've forgiven. Maybe you should too."
Yeah, that was enough. She needed to save some emotion for an apology to her father, brother and butler. An apology to her family.
"And you, Eudarv." She sighed, tilting her head at his slack expression. At least Cobb had died with a bit of excitement. "Your abs were nice, your personality not."
And last, but not least, she went to the labs. They were just beginning to see the begins of smoke, rotten and coarse. Everything sat in still silence, eerily dead looking without anyone roaming.
Her scientist had left, long gone.
Rachel sighed in the gloom, skulking forward. She stopped as she reached the furthermost wall from the door, opening up a cupboard that only opened up to her DNA signature.
Bottles, small medicinal ones the size of small drinking cans, lined the shelves. There had to be twenty of them.
Each and every one had three doses of the Old Serum in them.
Lugging her briefcase forward, Rachel set it on the counter and twisted in the code. It opened with a click.
Carefully, one by one, uncaring to the spreading sizzling fire outside, she placed the small, delicate bottles into the case, lining its special paded shelves. Thankful they all fit, so she turned around and pulled up a large floortile.
Rachel peered down, into the darkened space and reached into it. It took her a moment but her tingertips eventually grazed a smal military style lockbox. Grunting, she bent down and pulled it up.
She knew the code to this one too, so she opened it. It whirred open with a cough of dust.
It hadn't been touched in years, after all.
Rachel grinned at its contents.
A small, aging slip of paper that had scrawling cursive scribbled neatly in a corner; the Old Serum formula.
She tucked it safely into a hidden pocket in the briefcase and snapped it shut.
"Goodbye, my Maze."
She left and never returned.