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It's been years since he’s been in The City during the fall. The air is crisp and carries the scent of dying leaves and the cool hints of the winter to come.
Everything feels haunted. It’s a peculiar feeling, one he was used to since the day he lost The Five, lost his family. But tonight, the ghosts surround him, no longer just in his head, but everywhere he looks. Shrieking, laughing, living; a cruel optical illusion.
Shoving his hands in the pockets of his jacket, he climbs up the steps to the Everest household and knocks on the door. It swings open and the big blue annoyance known as The Tick fills the doorway, smiling cheerfully.
“It’s just Overkill!” His antenna droop slightly, “I thought it was more trick or treaters.”
Overkill pushes past him, a growl building. Everyone is chipper and it eats at him not so subtly. Even Steve, dressed as The Dread Pirate Roberts, is in a bright mood. It’s his first Halloween and he gets to dress up; he’s in heaven judging by the look on his face.
He passes Steve, Walter, and Joan with mumbled greetings, searching for Dot. Overkill finds her on the back porch with her brother, who is dressed as Luke Skywalker while she was dressed as Little Red Riding Hood. Well, if Little Red was trying to seduce a big bad wolf-man, in his opinion.
The blouse is a plain, gauzy looking material that hugs her tiny chest with a black bodice comes underneath her breasts, tied with a bow. The hem of her skirt brushes mid-thigh and have thick white material underneath that makes it look puffy. Fishnets encase her legs and disappear into the knee high black boots she’s wearing. A red caplet hangs around her shoulders, the hood pulled up to obscure her blonde hair.
The costume is effective. He’d eat her given the chance.
She grins at him and from a basket brandishes a headband with wolfish looking ears on top.
“Don’t you fucking dare.” He growls.
His warning goes unheeded because she’s Dorothy Everest. She has never been scared of him. She settles the headband on his head and he gives her his best scowl and menacing growl. It just makes her smile wider.
“My big bad wolf.” She drawls, wrapping her arms around his neck and he snaps his teeth at her.
“Gross.” Arthur groans, heading towards the house.
Overkill gives him a light shove as he passes and has to give the little guy credit when he doesn’t collapse like a folding chair immediately. Tick has been training him well.
“You’re tense.” Dot murmurs.
“I’m always tense.”
That earns him an eye roll. “Tenser than usual.”
“It’ll pass as soon as this fucking day is over.”
Her smile fades and becomes adorably perplexed. “Halloween? What’s wrong with Halloween?”
“It’s a shit holiday.” He can’t bring himself to tell her the whole reason. Not yet. It’s hard enough to hear it in his head, let alone say the words I hate seeing people dressed up as my dead family out loud.
She accepts his answer with a nod. “Kids having fun, getting free candy. It’s the worst.”
He lets out a soft scoff, not correcting her. Why shatter that view? Dot pulls away but keeps a hold on his hand, pulling him with her as she goes back inside.
Time passes by in a miserable blur. Overkill decides the best remedy is to drink copious amounts of whiskey until he’s feeling less miserable, watching from the staircase as Dot, Steve, Tick, and Arthur all take turns passing out candy.
He polishes off a bottle to himself before he realizes that he greatly misjudged how much alcohol he would need. This bottle barely numbed him; he needs more. Pushing himself up onto his feet, his equilibrium shifts for just a moment. Tipsy but not drunk.
Not yet.
Just as he crosses in front of the front door, he hears a knock. A quick glance around tells him he’s the only one in the room. Fuck. He doesn’t want to open it and dole out candy to some kid.
“Overkill! Can you get that?” Dot calls from the kitchen and he growls low in his throat.
The stupid heart in his chest contradicts his rebelling brain and he opens door because Dot asked and he wouldn’t say no to her.
When Overkill looks down and finds himself staring at a younger version of himself, at Straight Shooter, yet another ghost that he can never escape. And his heart plummets into the depths of his stomach.
Where the other ghosts that haunt him are borne of guilt for the unknowing hand he played in the deaths...this ghost was borne of hatred, the pure self-loathing he has for just how fucking stupid he had been.
“Trick or treat!” The kid says, smiling wide, completely obvious to the effect he’s had on Overkill, lifting their pumpkin bucket high.
Numbly, Overkill grabs the large bowl from the table besides the door and unceremoniously dumps the entire contents into the bucket, making it overflow and scatter onto the wooden stairs.
“Duuuude!” The kid squeals, “Thanks—“
Overkill nods briskly and slams the door with enough force the walls shake a little. That brings everyone into the room in alarm but he can’t bring himself to give a shit as he stumbles over to the stairs and drops down heavily into them, ripping the wolf’s ear headband from his head and tossing it over his shoulder.
He watches as Dot opens the door and a soft “oh” falls from her lips. Walter moves to help the kid who’s still gathering up the bounty of candy, chattering away. Dot closes the space between them, concern written all over her features.
His first instinct is to reject it, to head it off before she says anything. But the second, newer instinct he’s began to have lately, made him want to pull her to him and bury his face into her golden hair. Let Dot eclipse the rest of the world. Let her fill all his senses, let her be the thing that holds him still when he feels like he wants to throw himself off the nearest high point.
The front door shuts with a soft click and Joan’s voice reaches his ears as Dot cups his face.
“I don’t understand what just happened.”
“I hate this fucking holiday.” He whispers against the warm skin of Dot’s palm.
“I didn’t put it together. I’m sorry.” She murmurs.
“Put what together?” Joan says, “Will someone please tell me what’s going on?”
Overkill looks up at Dot before he presses his lips against the center of her palm. He can’t put it into words and isn’t about to. He rises to his feet, feeling almost painfully sober.
“What do you need?” She asks softly.
“I don’t know.” He replies honestly because it was the only thing left to say.
“Do you want to go?”
He wasn’t sure if he could handle seeing anymore little ghosts, hear the story said out loud. Nodding, he gives her a brief kiss and makes for a quick exit, avoiding as many people as he possible is easy, stealth is his forte.
Figuring out where to go now is even easier.
The cemetery is quiet and empty. An unusual respite but one nonetheless. He stands in front of five headstones, reading them for the first time. He has never visited their graves before. He went from surgery to training with no time in between.
It’s strange. Seeing all their real names. Nothing adorning the simple markers, nothing that named them as the fallen members of the Flag Five. Just their names, the years of the births and deaths. Small epitaphs with fitting proclamations.
Even the one that bears his name has something simple, something befitting. It’s the one that’s the both the easiest and the hardest for him to read.
So long he has wished for death, seeing his actual gravestone was like a spit in the face. That part of him that longs to be buried in the earth beside them isn’t gone, it never will be. Even though he has people that love him, part of him will remain there.
Turning his attention back to the others, he expects to feel sadness. Instead chaos storms within his chest. From a deep, heavy grief to a stomach churning loathing. To a rage that burns hotter than flames. Unbidden, memories leak through his mind glacier of the last moments he had with them. They came with remnants of fear. A fear unlike anything he had ever known followed by the knowledge of the deepest betrayal.
His knees give out and he pushes those memories back into the ice, burying them once more before they overtake them.
Overkill senses Dot a moment before he feels her arms around him, the press of her chest against his back.
“I’m here.” She murmurs, “You’re not alone.”
“What if I fail you like I did them?” He can’t stop the words as they spill from his lips, “Like I did my squad.”
The one saving grace about his squad was they were so deep under the radar that their faces would never become masks to wear for novelty.
“Won’t happen.” Her voice is quiet, confident.
“Something you’ve foreseen?” Overkill asks, easing her around his body until she was on his lap.
“No.” Dot replies, “It’s faith.”
“Completely misplaced.”
“Stop.” Her tone leaves him no room to argue and he doesn’t bother.
“Okay.”
Quiet lapses and he watches her eyes as they flick over each name, pausing for a moment on his. He pretends not to notice the tears in her eyes.
“They would have liked you.” He tells her instead.
Dot loops her arms around his neck and squeezes him. This time there is no instinct to reject her comfort, only the need to hold her tight. So he does, letting the love she offers chase away the ghosts for now.
Coda
Overkill sits at the dining room table, eyes staring blankly at the dark wood of the table top after he and Dot return from the cemetery. His chest was knotted yet hollow, aching in ways he didn’t even have a name for. For the most part, the others had left him alone until now.
Something slides across the surface and into his central vision. It’s an old Straight Shooter action figure. He hasn’t seen one of these in fifteen years. It’s aged somewhat, not carefully preserved like a collector would keep it but as if it had been well loved. He closes his eyes, shutting away the sight for just a moment before he lifts his gaze.
Arthur stands beside him, his face drawn with sorrow, hands shoved into the pockets of his Jedi robe. “The others are buried with my dad.” He tells him softly, “All my heroes vanished in the blink of an eye that day. All but you.”
His words hit like a sucker punch to Overkill’s chest. “I’m no hero. I never was. I was a selfish punk who let his dick get his family killed and destroyed yours in the process.”
“You didn’t though, you know that, right?” Arthur’s voice is quiet after a few moments, “The Terror did that. Lint helped but you can’t keep on blaming yourself for that. You didn’t know what she would do.”
“No, I didn’t.” He gives himself that, even if he won’t allow himself forgiveness, picking up the action figure, turning it in his gloved fingers, “Why did you keep this?”
“Because I knew that you weren’t dead. Even after the news claimed that you died that day, I knew. I knew you weren’t. No one believed me, of course. Eventually, I gave up trying to get people to believe me. So instead of burying you with the rest, I hid you in the back of my closet as a symbol that the truth was out there, somewhere. For a while I hated you, because I kept waiting for you come back. To do something. But you never did. And then I let myself embrace the lie for the sake of what was left of my sanity.” A wry smile twisted up the corners of his lips just a bit.
“And now?”
“Now?”
“Do you hate me still?” Overkill placed the doll on the table and looked up at Arthur’s face, not that knowing what Arthur thought wouldn’t change anything but he had to ask, had to find out while they were down this road, “Knowing everything. Knowing the role that I played that day. Knowing that I let Shooter die and become Overkill. Knowing that Dot is now my partner, for better or worse…”
“No.” Arthur cut him off, “When The Terror took Dot, I had to come to terms with the fact that no matter what I think, she’s choosing her path. You’re both doing your best to keep each other safe even if something bad happens. And, it helps that someone pointed out to me just how good you are for each other. That’s more important.”
“I wonder who would say a thing like that.” Overkill let faint sarcasm lace his tone, knowing full well who knew him and Dot both well enough to make that observation, “Sounds like a nosy boat.”
“Not a boat.” Steve’s voice came in from the doorway, “Well, not justa boat.”
Steve, Dot, Joan, Walter, and Tick stand in the doorframe obviously eavesdropping on their conversation. Nosy bastards. Overkill sighs, his eyes moving back to the action figure.
“What do you want me to do with this?” Overkill asks Arthur, inclining his head towards the toy.
“Whatever you want. I wanted you to have it. Hoped it would bring you some sort of closure or hope or, or something.” Arthur’s small shoulders lift in a shrug, “Or at least remind you that while Halloween is hard on you, that you’re still a symbol of good in the world. Sure, now you’re not out in the open and you’re kinda a blood thirsty sociopath, but…you’re still not a villain. You’re still doing good, just using a different set of rules.”
Overkill’s teeth clench as he processes Arthur’s words, fighting against the ache that wants to close his throat. “Thank you.” He says gruffly.
“Don’t mention it.” Arthur drops a hand onto his shoulder in a slightly awkward pat.
Dot hoists herself up onto the table and picks up the doll, running her fingers over the wild dark hair that’s sticking up from its head. “What do you want to do with it?”
He shrugs. She reaches out and runs her hand through his hair, her nails lightly scraping along his scalp. The knots in his chest ease a bit and he reaches for her, sliding her closer. He rests his head onto the top of her thigh, closing his eyes as she continues to stroke his hair.
“You know.” Dot says eventually, “We could give him a haircut, paint his eyes. Give him some scars. Dress him in black, give him a little gun…I can see it now.”
Overkill lifts his head and stares at her for a moment. A laugh surprises him by bubbling up in a small chuckle. “What are you going to do next? Get him a Barbie girlfriend?”
Her eyes light up—oh Christ, he’s given her ideas. Then her expression sobers and she strokes the backs of her fingers across the scars across his cheek.
“You know I don’t blame you either.” She murmurs.
He nods. He never needed to hear her say it but it’s nice to actually hear the words. “I know.”
She draws him back into the circle of her arms. Then there’s a presence at his back and before he can do anything, Tick wraps them both into a hug, offering silent yet smothering support.
“Get off.” Overkill growls.
“Okay.” Tick’s tone is chipper and unaffected by Overkill’s bark.
“Tick, come on, I told you he wouldn’t like that.” He can hear Arthur tutting from the other room.
“One day, he’ll come to accept my loving affecting!” Tick boasts confidently.
“I’d place money on that.” Steve chuckles.
“Did they just start a betting pool on me?” Overkill matters against Dot’s neck.
“Yeah.” She sighs, “Just like the annoying little brothers they are.”
Brothers. He smiles faintly against her skin at the word, the implication. Like it or not, he has a family again. And they aren’t going anywhere.
Whether he likes it or not.
Later, he returns to the pier where Dangerboat is docked and steps aboard. It’s weird not to be greeted impatiently by Steve’s nagging tone but the backup system that Steve has in place is only to monitor and defend. Despite its weirdness, he’s grateful for the quiet.
Taking a breath, he opens up the hidden compartment that hides the blue blazers, the sight of them still twisting his heart after all these years. Then he takes one last look at the action figure in his hand before he places it inside.
Closing it up, he sinks down onto Dangertable and buries his face in his hands.