Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Party Poison was trapped.

The coldness of the sleek wall on his back seeped through his bloodstained jacket. His lungs were frozen in place, refusing to allow air into his chest. His palms hung empty and weaponless. He could feel every inconsistency in the unyielding floor through the thin soles of his boots. The sharp snapping of raygun blasts rattled in his ears.

And on the floor was a dead draculoid-- no, a dead man, and Poison had killed him, but not before the mask had come off, and Poison had seen his terrified face.

And a still-smoking muzzle of a gun was being held to Poison’s throat.

Korse pressed the gun further into his windpipe, and he choked and coughed at the sudden pressure. The Exterminator’s face was twisted into a revoltingly triumphant smile.

Was this how he died? As nothing but a powerless and paralyzed teenager, doomed to never feel the sun warm his face again?

In the distance Kobra shouted raggedly. “Poison!” Ghoul and Jet were running, but they’d never reach him. The Girl was curled up, eyes wide and filled with fear. Fear for him.

Poison met Korse’s gaze, and he saw no mercy in it, only fanatical satisfaction.

Some deep, tired part of him wanted to give up. It would be so easy to slip into the dark, to let Korse have this final victory. Nothing would have to hurt anymore. Nothing would stop him.

But he took another breath, and a fierce burning shame rose in chest. He was so much stronger than that. He was the leader of the Fabulous Killjoys, and Killjoys never gave up. Killjoys never died.

No. He wouldn’t let Korse win.

“Rrrgh!” He let out a hoarse roar, willing his muscles from numbness into action. With a ferocious heave, he wrestled Korse’s gun away from his throat just as the Exterminator pulled the trigger in surprise. Smoke stung his nose as the blast scorched the wall inches away from his face. Korse recoiled, victory turning to caution as Poison stood straight.

Gone was the hopelessness. He was alive and by God he was going to stay that way. Poison threw himself away from Korse, crawling across the slippery floor. His heart thrummed a raging beat as he scrambled upright to find Korse forced back by the might of three enraged Killjoys.

Kobra, Ghoul and Jet stood in front of Poison, each firing as fast as they could into the tide of Dracs. Korse had escaped, crept back behind his soldiers. With a deep breath, Poison snagged his raygun from where it had fallen and joined them.

“You idiot,” said Ghoul through gritted teeth. “Dude, we all thought you were about t’ be ghosted.”

“Sorry,” said Poison offhandedly, trying not to reveal how shaken he was. His fingers still trembled on the grip of his gun. He clenched the other hand over the traitorous digits tightly and started firing.

Jet let out a hmph, dissatisfied with the apology, and all four Killjoys ducked around a column as a new batch of Dracs jumped from the stairwells. With his flanks covered by Jet and Ghoul, Poison took the opportunity to rest for a moment.

To his left, Kobra’s face was a waxy mask. Poison knew that look. He nudged his brother and said, “I’m ok now, dude. You can relax.”

Kobra’s expression softened into something sad, resigned to his brother’s tendencies. “‘S ok. Just don’t spook me like that again.”

“I promise,” said Poison. They all stood there for a second, all breathing heavily. He wished that the moment of brotherhood, of cameradie and connection, could last for longer.

But something felt off.

“Wait,” said Ghoul, panic seeping into his voice. “Where’d the Girl go?”

“Huh?!” Jet said. “I thought she was behind you!”

Poison swore, realizing what was missing. “We came here for a reason!” he said. “And that reason was to keep her safe!” Anxiety began to replace the adrenaline flooding his veins.

The Four shot into the open, all thoughts of cover and safety forgotten. Poison rapidly scanned the atrium, ignoring the sweat pooling on his face. After what felt like hours of standing there exposed, Poison saw her, crouched against the wall.

She must have moved when the Killjoys did, trying to join them in safety, and found herself cut off. Her eyes were scrunched tight, small frame shaking like a tumbleweed borne along on a hurricane gust.

Poison made a helpless lunge toward her just as Ghoul cried a warning. “Watch out!”

Poison turned back to find dozens of Dracs and Scarecrows, rallied up from the corners of the battlefield. His breath caught. Tensing instinctively, he tried to dodge, making himself a smaller target. It wasn’t enough, and a scream tore out of his throat as a blast hit his leg, sending him onto the ground.

He couldn’t see through the pain for a few seconds, only hearing the buzzing of endless shots above his head. An odor of burning flesh reached his nose, and he gagged as he realized it was from his own wound.

Ghoul was sprawled on the floor next to him, face wrenched in pain as he clamped his hand over his shoulder. “They got me,” he forced out, “Go on, save yourself.”

“Nice try,” gritted Poison, clamping his jaw shut to stop another scream as he shuffled, head low, over to Ghoul. He took his groaning friend by the collar and dragged them both away from the incessant fire. “Shit, the others…”

He spotted Kobra and Jet across the floor, apparently uninjured, pinned by the fire and unable to move. Poison cursed again. “God. We gotta get out of here.”

“What do we do?” moaned Ghoul. “It hurts…”

Resisting the urge to yell at Ghoul, Poison wracked his brain, frantically trying to think of a way out. The doors were right there, but the BL/ind bugs would have a direct shot at them if they tried to run.

His eyes were blurry with exhaustion, but as his gaze swept the atrium, he could make out the figure of the Girl, draculoids cautiously approaching her, ready to imprison her again.

“Goddammit,” breathed Poison.

“Poison, wait--” said Ghoul, but tunnel vision had kicked in and Poison did not bother looking back.

Before he knew what he was doing, he lurched upright, suppressing a howl of pain. He jerkily forced his broken body across the floor. He had to protect the Girl. Shots seared dangerously close to him, heat brushing his cheek, his side, his limp hands. God, the Dracs were closing in on her.

Doggedly he stumbled on, watching the Girl flinch as cruel painted faces loomed over her. With every step, his heartbeat throbbed in his wounds. It was agony. He groped for his gun and whipped it out of his belt.

Killing didn’t take the pain away, but it didn’t hurt either. He pulled the trigger on the horde, and luck was on his side, his shots felling some of them while all of their shots flew wide.

Too wide. The shots were straying near the Girl. He pressed on, faster. She had always trusted the Fabulous Four to protect her, and he wouldn’t let her down.

Ghoul shouted a ragged battlecry somewhere behind him, and a familiar chorus of Killjoy rayguns buzzed, carving a path through white-clothed flesh. The others must’ve seen that this was their last chance.

The Draculoids fell back under the deluge, and the Girl looked up at Poison past the bodies.

He fell in front of her. “I got you now,” he rasped.

She grabbed the front of his jacket, her tears mixing in with his blood. “Poison, i-it’s so scary here. Y-you’re bleeding, there’s so, there’s so much blood.”

“We’re gonna get you out now,” said Poison, wincing at her tight grasp and firing his raygun over her shoulder. “Don’t you worry.”

Her sniffles subsided. “Okay.”

Letting her curls brush past his cheek, Poison smiled, a slight thing. “You’re very brave, you know that?”

“Mhm,” she said.

He held her there for a moment, letting bullets part around them. “The others are coming now,” he said gently, watching his friends regrouping. “Are you ready to go?”

She nodded against his shoulder.

All of the pieces had fallen into place. They could escape. They could make it out.

But then the hair on the back of his neck prickled dangerously. Never a good sign. His instincts were rarely wrong.

Poison blinked the weariness out of his eyes just in time to be blinded by a brand-new wave of bright hot blaster fire, aimed at him. By proxy, aimed at the Girl.

He tried to twist, to shield her with his own body. He really did.

He could’ve saved her.

But “tried”s and “could’ve”s never helped anyone. It didn’t change the fact that he wasn’t fast enough.

The Girl gasped in pain.

For a moment, all was deathly still. Not even white BL/ind rayguns were firing.

“Kiddo?” whispered Poison.

She slid out of his grip, onto the pale cold floor, eyes still moving feverishly. Words tried to form in her mouth, but all Poison could hear was the wet sound of blood.

A single shot had taken her right in the stomach. Redness bloomed across her shirt, the same sickeningly vibrant crimson as his hair. “No,” said Poison. “No.”

Instinct kicked in, and he placed his hands over the wound, applying pressure, trying to slow the seeping blood. The Girl’s hands fluttered weakly by her side, trying to grab him.

“Hey, hey, hey, you’re gonna be all right,” said Poison. “You’re gonna be ok. Hang on. Just hang on…”

The other Killjoys were suddenly kneeling there, next to him. “Put more pressure on!” said Kobra wildly. “I have, I have bandages somewhere…”

Ghoul took one of her hands, stopping its feeble grasping. She clamped onto his hand and squeezed it tight enough to turn her knuckles white. “Calm down there, kid,” he said, eyes going damp.

“It’s going to be all right,” murmured Jet, sounding as if he was trying to convince himself. He took her other hand. “We’re-- we’re here.”

The Girl shivered on the floor, trying to say something. “D-don’t wanna go.” Her chest rose and fell rapidly, body trying to resuscitate itself. Poison felt something warm on his hands, and looked down to see them soaked in crimson. His stomach heaved.

“Stay with us!” he pleaded to the Girl. “Hey, you’re going to be okay, just, stay awake! You, you don’t have to go, I got you, I…”

Her eyes were emptying rapidly, life spilling out with her blood. A single, trembling finger rose up and brushed against his forearm, and then went limp.

“No!” said Ghoul. “NO!”

Her breathing slowed, and Poison could feel the desperate pumping of her heart fade in time with the sluggish pulses of blood staining his arms.

All she got was one last, heaving rise of her lungs. One last stand against the inevitable. And then the Girl’s head fell back and her body relaxed.

And she was just another corpse laying on the ground.

Poison stared at her, still trying to staunch her wound, unable to admit to himself. A horrible, painful coldness spread through his ribs.

He couldn’t understand how this could happen. Kids weren't supposed to get hurt. She wasn’t supposed to die, just like that.

How could she be so still?

“Here,” said Kobra, thrusting a mess of bandages under Poison’s frozen hands. “Stop the bleeding, gotta stop the bleeding, press harder, Poison.” He put his knobbly hands over his brother’s, voice rising higher. “Did you hear me? We have to stop the blood!”

“Kobra,” said Jet, voice hollow. “That’s not going to help anymore.”

“We can save her!” insisted Kobra. “We can do…” He fell back on his heels and put his head in his hands. “There has to be something… Anything…”

Poison turned away as his brother let out a low sound of despair.

Slowly, the draculoids began to regroup and rally.

He dully realized that they too must’ve been surprised by her death. What, ordered to keep her alive so they could capture her again? Look where that had gotten them.

At that moment, Poison didn’t want to be the leader. He wanted someone else to tell him what to do to make everything right, to reassure him that everything would be okay. He didn’t want the Girl’s blood on his hands.

But he could not avoid it, and he refused to shy from his duty. To keep his friends safe.

Painfully, he ripped his gaze from the body on the floor and tackled his paralyzed friends down as blaster fire seared over their heads.

“We have to go!” he yelled harshly. “We’re going, now!” He pushed Ghoul to his feet and shoved him at the exit. “GET UP!”

Kobra and Jet staggered upright and broke into halting runs. Poison swung to face the Dracs with a grenade he had slipped from Ghoul’s belt and hurled it with the last of his strength.

It arced over the Girl in slow motion, refracting glints of afternoon light across the backpedaling Scarecrows and Dracs. With one last, aching look, he turned away from her body, so lonely, like a bright broken songbird against the expanse of white tile.

Poison ran.

The explosion almost knocked him over, and his ears rang with the blast. Half of the windows shattered, spraying glass across the pavement. He leapt through a broken window, knees almost buckling as he impacted the sidewalk.

Poison pushed on, shouting at his friends to get in the car before reinforcements arrived. They complied.

He wrenched the car door open and gunned the gas pedal, the ringing in his ears not entirely blocking out the sobs of his friends in the backseat. Not his problem. He hunched over the wheel, only seeing the streets in his way.

It was a miracle they made it out of the city at all, but Poison’s hands knew the road home and he deftly spun the wheel through the maze of skyscrapers and filth. Before long the desert spread before them, and he slammed the acceleration so hard he felt the car jolt beneath his boots.

A buzz and a crackle. The radio on the dashboard rang with sudden voices. It turned out that Dr. Death Defying and his crew of DJs had followed them after all.

“Killjoys,” said the Doc urgently, distorted and muffled over the queries of the disc jockeys he had packed into his van. “We just saw you fly outta the City. Were you successful?”

Poison felt disgust rising in his stomach at the notion that they ever could’ve been successful. He flicked the “talk” switch.

“Fuck off.” His voice came out hoarse and flat. “Leave me alone.” He was sure that they could hear Ghoul weeping in the background and Jet’s quiet tears and Kobra’s strangled breathing. He was sure they could tell something had gone wrong. He didn’t give a damn.

Another voice came on. “Poison,” said Cherri Cola, with more than radio distortion wobbling in his voice, “Poison, is everyone safe? Did you find the Girl?”

“I said, fuck off!”

A clamor of words, incomprehensible through the commotion, tumbled through the radio. DJs frantically asking where the hope of the revolution was. DJs who would soon find out that the revolution was hopeless without the strange little girl who had died, who was dead, who was probably being zipped into a body bag at this fucking moment--

His hands were digging into the steering wheel uncomfortably. He didn’t care, and reached a finger to turn the radio off.

The static faded into the burning afternoon heat and the only sounds left were of grief. He tuned it out, tuned everything out but the bitter roar of the engine.

And Poison was alone as he drove towards the sunset.

Chapter Text

//Several Days Later//

The moon hung, luminous and silver, in the satellite-studded sky. It was a cold night.

Sometimes the desert was like that. They didn’t have seasons, not really, but there were periods of shorter and longer days. The blood-red sun kept everything baking hot during the day, but the second it was gone, that numbing cold settled in quickly. The short-days, those were the worst, because that’s when the sun spent the least time in the sky. The resulting freezes had been known to ice up undergrads fresh out of the city, turn them into statues preserved in expressions of agony. Killjoys wore those stuffy jackets for a good reason.

Poison had heard some wavehead rambling, once. About how there was no such thing as cold. Just the absence of heat.

He drew his ragged leather jacket closer across his chest and tucked his hands under his armpits as he stood on the wind-blasted hilltop. He was missing a lot more than just some heat right now.

Next to him, Jet’s face was dark. Crumpled a little at the edges, like the slightest push would knock him over. And Ghoul was standing in the tense fragility of one on the verge of bursting into tears.

Poison wished he could cry. Ever since the Fab Four had stumbled back into their hideout, missing the kid they had set out to save, a crushing weight had settled onto his ribcage. Sometimes it felt like he could barely breathe, let alone cry. But he had sworn that he would be strong for the others. So he kept his chin up and his arms crossed. What else was there to do?

On the crest of the hill, Kobra, clutching a shovel-shaped piece of wood, was unsuccessfully attempting to create a dent in the hard-packed soil. He let out a sharp noise of frustration as the splintery wooden plank jumped out of his hands for the fourth time.

Jet made a vague motion as if to help, but Kobra flung out a hand to stop him. “I said I could do it by myself,” he snapped. It was the first words any one of them had said to each other since they arrived. With a grunt, he snatched his makeshift shovel up again and stabbed it into the earth, his skinny frame trembling with exertion.

The other two Killjoys flinched at Kobra’s aggression. It wasn’t hard for Poison to see that his brother was hurting. Just like the rest of them.

Eventually Kobra’s efforts were successful. The plank sunk past the hard coat of weathered dust into the softer earth beneath. He didn’t even pause to rest, just turned doggedly to what lay beside him. The others, Poison included, gathered closer.

With solemn reverence, Kobra Kid picked up the scrap-metal cross and stood it upright in the dirt. He carefully heaped the excess soil around the base and packed it in, pulling off his gloves to use his bare palms. He knelt there for a second, head lowered, with his fingers tracing the grave.

Poison felt like he was supposed to say something. Offer some modicum of relief to his brother.

But his thoughts came too late. Ghoul stumbled forward in front of the grave, startling Kobra upright. Ghoul didn’t seem to notice. He reached into his threadbare messenger bag and withdrew a plastic robot toy with trembling hands.

The Girl’s favorite toy. Before what happened (Poison steered his mind away from the memories of that day) she always had it tucked underneath her arm. She had named it Destroya, after that robot-god of legend, and made up stories with Ghoul about it rampaging through Bat City kaiju-style, turning every evil BL/ind skyscraper to rubble.

Poison watched as Ghoul ever-so-tenderly rested it against the grave, his eyes glinting wetly in the moonlight.

Eventually he stood up and Jet Star hesitantly took his place. Jet’s long calloused fingers fumbled around the pocket of his jeans until he found a long string of worn wooden prayer beads. He bent his head and mumbled a prayer to the Witch.

It was funny, in a morbid way. None of them were that religious. He’d heard that the crosses Zonerunners erected as memorials used to be a part of some forgotten religion erased by BL/ind. Some of the Phoenix Witch’s followers in the desert still believed in that God-will-save-you stuff, but Poison himself thought it was a load of bull.

But… yesterday they had all agreed to leave the Girl’s old motorcycle helmet, the one she had plastered with stickers and worn in every clap, at the Mailbox. Every Killjoy, even the hardcore atheists, wanted their masks at the Mailbox when they died. It was tradition.

Poison had a hard time believing in the Phoenix Witch. He had always focused on the things he could see and touch, not stories told by twilight. But some part of him hoped that she was real, even just so he could imagine that the Girl’s spirit was at rest.

The four of them stood there for a while, listening to the clacking of the bad luck beads in the wind. Poison let the creeping cold numb his skin and steady his feelings. He had to stay strong. For the others, he HAD to.

His thoughts were disrupted as a powerful gust swept across the hilltop, sending each of the Killjoys stumbling and shivering, the pale clouds of their breath dancing away into the darkness. To Kobra’s credit, the scrap-metal cross, dug firmly into the earth, stayed upright. But Ghoul’s tribute, the lonely plastic Destroya, was dislodged from the soil and tumbled off with the wind into the dark.

Ghoul let out a cry and stumbled after it, but he was too late. The howling wind swallowed the sound of the toy splintering against the rocky hillside. There would be no retrieving it.

That must have been the final emotional blow for him, and the others as well.

Kobra rapidly wiped at his face with his sleeve. Turning away from the others, Jet tried to blink away his tears without success. Ghoul just fell back on his heels and sobbed pathetically.

Poison’s raygun wounds throbbed. That was the only pain he would let himself feel. The blackness in his head was crushing, threatening to drag him right into the earth. He could almost let it. It would be easier, wouldn’t it? Easier than having to watch his friends like this?

“If only I’d been faster,” said Jet quietly, almost inaudible. “If only I’d seen the dracs coming--”

“Shut up,” snarled Ghoul, his face distorted with grief. “Shut the hell up. There’s nothing any of us coulda done. We lost the kid. Fuckin’ useless.”

Jet crumbled like those words had been an arrow straight to his heart, sitting down with a thump and covering his wretched face with his hands. Whirling around in anger, Kobra shot back, “Don’t try to make this harder than it already is, Ghoul!”

“I’m not!” he shouted, still hunched over the grave. “I’m just fuckin’ saying! What else were we supposed to do? Fuckin’ die for her?” He glared malevolently at the rest of them. “I would’ve. I would’ve.”

“Is that supposed to be a shot at me?” said Poison hotly, numbness forgotten. “You were there! You saw! I tried to shield her, didn’t I? I tried to save her! I fucking tried, okay?”

Ghoul’s tearstained face went dark. “Maybe you didn’t try hard enough.”

Poison felt as if he had been slapped hard in the face. The wind tore past him, intent on stripping him down to the bone, choking him, dragging him into the dust to die.

Kobra took a deliberate step between the two and hauled Ghoul upright by his collar. “Fuck you, Ghoul. Fucking fuck you.”

Struggling in vain against the taller teenager, Ghoul spat, “Fuck you too, Kobra.” A renewed wave of antipathy rippled through his small frame. “Goddammit, this is never going to end, is it? BL/ind’s gonna keep killin’ us. We’re nothin to them. Just more bodies for the body bags.” Next to the wrestling Killjoys, Jet curled further into himself, hands clenched into fists at his side.

Poison’s blood was so boiling hot he didn’t know how he hadn’t combusted yet. “We’re something, we’re fucking something, okay? We resist, we fight them! That’s got to be something!” He realized he was pleading. “That’s gotta mean something…”

“How can you mean something if you can’t fucking feel anything?” said Ghoul derisively. “Look at you. You can’t even cry for her.”

That was the combustion. “Has it ever occurred to you,” said Poison, breathless words pouring out of him, “that I want to cry? That I want to fucking cry? That… that there’s blood underneath my fingernails still, and it’s not mine, and it won’t, it won’t come off?”

He hated the way his words were coming out, shrill with adolescence and guilt. “It won’t come off. I can’t wash it off. I can’t wash it… I can’t…”

His voice broke, and he paused, breathing heavily, something hot knocked loose inside his chest. He still wasn’t crying. God, he still couldn’t cry.

Kobra and Ghoul looked at each other once more, but the anger had faded away. They slowly released each other and shuffled apart, avoiding Poison’s eyes.

“How could this happen?” muttered Poison, reaching forward to trace the edges of the sad little cross. “She’d hate to see us arguing. God, I miss her already.”

“We all do,” said Jet softly. He laid his hand on Poison’s shoulder as if to provide comfort, but Poison swatted him away.

“Maybe you’re right,” he said to Ghoul, ignoring the hurt look on Jet’s face. “Maybe it was… my fault after all.” He hated the words. Hated himself for the fact that they might be true.

With remorse evident in his posture, Ghoul edged closer. “I didn’t mean that,” he said in a small voice. “When I said you could’ve tried harder. I know you tried your hardest. I watched you try to die for her.”

What was Poison supposed to say to that? Yeah, I tried to die for her, tried to be a hero for once, and it might have been better if I did?

Jet reached again to comfort Poison, and this time Poison let him. The other Killjoy leaned against his shoulder, still shaking slightly from his tears.

Behind him, Kobra murmured, “Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to grab you like that.”

The sound of Ghoul’s shuffling feet answered him. “It’s all right. I sorta deserved it.”

Before Poison was able to comprehend that he had moved, Ghoul was beside him. “...Sorry. I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean it, I promise.”

Past the tightness in his throat, Poison rasped, “It’s ok. I understand. I… I mean, I wish I could cry, but I just… can’t right now.” He stood up and dusted off his pants to avoid having to look his crew in the eyes.

Jet slowly stood as well. Without a hint of hesitation despite the tears still tracking down his cheeks, he swept Poison into a hug, his arms reaching all the way around Poison’s skinny chest. Voice muffled against Poison’s jacket, he murmured, “It’s ok. We’re gonna be here, for you, for each other. We’re gonna survive, no matter what.”

A hint of warmth needled its way through his ribs to his heart. Poison shivered at the contact-- he always did-- but leaned into the embrace. He was tired of trying to be strong all by himself.

His brother nudged his way into the now-group hug, slinging his arms around Jet and Poison. No words were needed in that silent solidarity. With a slight squawk from Ghoul, the other Killjoy was dragged in too.

And they were all together again, standing in front of a quiet grave. The mess of emotions tangled up inside Poison loosened. Maybe someday they would get untwisted, released to the world at last.

But for now, it was okay. He would be okay.

Chapter Text

//Several Weeks Later//

It didn’t take long for everything to become… normal again. Sure, the Fab Four’s hideout was no longer overflowing with toys and stuffed animals, or filled with raucous shrieks of laughter. Poison knew that those days were over.

But after the emotional release at the Girl’s grave, the four Killjoys could truly be there for each other. Bit by bit, they were helping each other through the grief.

It was still tough for Poison to sort through his own impossibly tangled emotions. He hadn’t cried a single salty tear since that day in Bat City. But together the Fab Four would make it through. Just like they always had.

Right now, “making it through” was defined as lying around with absolutely nothing to do. Poison leaned back on the food-stained couch, staring at the ceiling. A CD was playing; another shitty Mad Gear wannabe. He didn’t bother changing it. Too much effort on a hot afternoon.

Next to him, Jet was upside down with his legs over the back of the couch, twirling a strand of his hair around one finger. Kobra was blankly re-reading the same page of an old comic over and over again. “This song sucks,” he said. “Either that, or the CD’s just really fucked up.”

“Go put on something else, then.”

“...Nah.” He went back to his floppy comic.

Poison huffed a sigh. A moment of closer listening to the music revealed that it was indeed the CD skipping wildly. Those idiodic punk bands never made them properly. He hauled himself off the couch and shuffled over to their music setup to change it.

He took the nearest CD case without thinking and a little slip of paper fell out. A hollowness settled over his chest as he recognized the Girl’s choppy ten-year-old handwriting. It was a list of her favorite songs, the margins filled with scribbles of birds and motorcycles and landscapes. He must have missed it when he cleaned up the hideout three weeks ago.

Once the Four had returned from what was supposed to be their suicide mission, Poison had left the others in the car. Wasn’t much they were capable of doing at that moment. He went inside instead and systematically removed every trace of the Girl he could find, throwing away everything she had owned. He only left what would go on her grave.

And that was it. She was erased.

But he kept finding memories of her in unexpected places. A pencil drawing of the desert sunset tucked in a zine. The imprint of her arm on the side of the couch. Little things he never expected a person to leave behind.

It was so easy in the comics; someone went out as a hero, died and saved the world. They never showed how hard it was for that person’s friends to find their old birthday cards a week later.

It would’ve been best for the Four to forget and move on-- that was why Poison had tried to eliminate any trace of her from their hideout. But how could they ever forget someone like that? She had been special. Changed by the desert in a way he’d never heard of, in all his time in the world.

Dr. Death Defying and Cherri Cola thought she was some secret weapon. A creature able to finish off Better Living Industries, once and for all. Years ago, the Doc had warned him about it, told him to raise her right, and Poison had laughed him off. To him, she had just been a little kid, who simply needed some rough-and-tumble Killjoy brothers.

But what if Dr. D had been right, and she was the weapon? What if his inability to save her had doomed the desert?

Maybe they were fated to spark and flame and die like all good Killjoys did. A pang of some deep, dark emotion swallowed him.

“Pois? You good?”

Poison jolted at the sound of his brother’s voice and realized he had been frozen in the middle of the room. “...Yeah, uh, just thinking.”

“You’ve been doing a lot of that lately,” muttered Kobra. “Maybe--”

He was interrupted as Ghoul burst through the doorway. “Just got a transmission! Drac patrol headin’ south on the Finish Line!” Static emanated from the handheld radio he was waving around.

“One more time for all ya ladybirds, we have a big patrol shootin’ down the Finish Line, confirmed with a couple ‘crows. My bud Katydid was shot at, they’re rippin for blood today! Stay safe, crash queens!”

Jet and Kobra scrambled upright, hands instinctively going to their guns. Poison thought he saw bloodlust in his crew’s eyes as they watched him. Waiting for their leader.

They hadn’t been in a fight for weeks. Maybe it was time for the Fabulous Four to rejoin the fray.

“Well, whatcha waiting for?” said Poison, setting down the CDs. “To the Trans Am! We’ll intercept them before they do any more damage.”

The Killjoys sprang into action, grabbing whatever weapons and supplies were nearby. Ghoul stuffed a variety of explosives into his belt, and Kobra added rolls of bandages to his jacket pockets.

Together, they strode out of the front door, tightening boots and pulling on gloves, a unit of destruction ready to do what they did best. Poison found himself in the driver’s seat with nothing but his raygun by his side. He didn’t need anything else to kill.

Twisting the key in the ignition, the car revved underneath his fingertips. The others swiftly found their way into their seats, and Poison only had to glance back once to make sure everyone was accounted for before he hit the gas and the car shot into the desert proper.

The highway that the Dracs had been spotted on, the Finish Line, wasn’t too far from the hideout. Ghoul whispered into his radio and relayed updates on the patrol’s position to Kobra, who consulted his floppy paper map and gave directions to Poison.

The dusky road spooled endlessly out before him, his nerves humming like live wires. Poison restrained himself from speaking until Kobra tapped his shoulder. “Right ahead’s gonna be a good spot to ambush them, if you want.”

“Let’s do it then,” Poison grunted, already relishing the thought of surprised, dead Dracs. He spun the wheel and let the car roll to a stop in a clump of bushes off the road.

A shack of some sort had been erected and abandoned next to the highway long ago, providing perfect cover. The Killjoys easily leapt out of the car and prepared for a gunfight. They’d been doing it for so long, it was practically second nature.

Ghoul loaded his rocket launcher and checked the grenades at his belt. Jet absentmindedly spun his blaster around his fingers, eyeing the road for the inevitable cloud of dust that signaled approaching cars.

They were all so serious. Normally they’d be bantering before a brawl, making jokes to lighten the omnipresent possibility of death. But today, it was personal.

“I can see them,” said Jet finally, shading his eyes against the sun. “Maybe a mile away and closing fast.”

Poison tightened his hand on the grip of his blaster. With a click, he turned the safety off, and heard the others do the same. The air was dry, but he found sweat beading on his forehead. “Be ready,” he warned.

Right on cue, a thunderstorm of wheels approached in the distance. Not an insignificant patrol, that was for sure. The Killjoys crouched behind the shack.

They wouldn’t back out of the fight now. Poison’s muscles tensed and he steadied his breathing, remembering why they were doing this. There were a lot of reasons in his life to hate BL/ind. He fixed his anger in his mind and let his body harden into rock.

The hated buzzing of the BL/ind engines drew closer and closer, until the vibrations could be felt through the corrugated metal siding of the shack.

“Fire at will,” whispered Poison.

With a sharp, practiced movement, Ghoul stood up and positioned his bazooka over one shoulder as Jet, Kobra, and Poison leveled their guns at the road. “He we go,” he said, and without further ado, squeezed the trigger.

The projectile hit the leading white car straight on, a testament to Ghoul’s skill with his explosives. The car skidded wildly to the side, smoke billowing from its undercarriage, and plowed into a saguaro cactus. Its fellows rapidly braked before they could meet the same fate, and Dracs cautiously piled out of the vehicles to face the threat.

Poison almost felt sorry for them as they met an unexpected barrage of blaster fire to the face. The white-suited figures shouted in their guttural voices and scattered, but as the dust settled, several lay dead on the road.

“Let’s go!” he roared, and four Killjoys charged straight into the fray.

This was where Poison felt most alive, teetering on the knife’s edge between life and death. He shuddered with adrenaline as the first draculoid leapt out at him. Two shots in the chest, and it was down. Another swung a gloved fist at him, and he ducked and kneed it in the stomach, shooting in the head as it crumpled to the ground.

They were so easy to kill. So mindless. When you’d fought enough of them, you could see the patterns BL/ind had branded into their heads. Without even needing to look he killed two more crawling out of a burning car.

Bang. A Scarecrow was stumbling from Kobra’s shot to its shoulder, still confused by the ambush. Poison whipped around to aim for its heart. Bang. It was dead, like a fly crushed under his boot.

He distantly realized that the remaining Dracs were scrambling away from him, almost seeming afraid, if that was even possible. Brief indignation flared in his mind, then faded as he traded fire with a couple more taking shelter behind a car.

As he dashed forward to confront them, he noticed a twisted face staring at him from the car window. While Ghoul and Jet finished off the draculoids with flashes of light, he stopped, confused by what confronted him.

It was his own unrecognizable reflection. His face was contorted into a savage snarl, teeth bared like he intended to rip out someone’s throat. Blood, the same crimson as his hair, splattered his domino mask and the side of his cheek-- how had he not noticed that before? That was why the Dracs were running away. He looked so frighteningly empty.

He spun around, heart thumping wildly at a wet crack of bone behind him. His brother slammed into a draculoid that had been about to pounce on him.

“Damn, you scared me,” he sighed, but Kobra looked unimpressed, even standing over a dead body.

“You can’t zone out like that, man,” his brother said, watching over the battlefield with eyes as cold as the ones in Poison’s reflection. Impersonal and cruel, ready to kill anything in his way. “One of these days they’re gonna get you while you sit around and think.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Poison took a breath to steady himself and shot a Drac through the forehead as it charged at Kobra. The stray thoughts sank to the back of his mind. “I got it.”

“You better. You’re the leader.”

They fought in silence for a moment, listening to the musical zing of blaster fire and huffs of their own breathing. Combat was harsh and left no room for mistakes, but beautiful in its own primal way.

Kobra twisted and blocked a sudden blow from a masked Scarecrow. Unexpectedly aggressive, it got its hands around Kobra’s arm. He let out a grunt of pain as it forced him to drop his blaster.

“Oh no you don’t,” growled Poison, lunging at the Scarecrow. They wrestled for a second, each trying to aim their blaster at the other’s face, until it kicked Poison in the ribs. He coughed as the wind was knocked out of him, and the ‘crow took the opportunity to turn tail and run.

“Shit!” A wild glance around him revealed that the fight was almost over. Ghoul had one last Drac pinned and Jet was watching a few lone cars speed off in a hasty escape. The fleeing Scarecrow must’ve noticed that it was doomed.

“Just let it go, Poison,” sighed Kobra, stuffing his blaster back into its holster and massaging his wrist. “There’ll be others to kill.” He looked tired. And so very young.

Poison hesitated, contemplating his options.

“Pois,” Kobra warned.

But Poison was already sprinting after the last Scarecrow. Past the corrugated shack, past the smoking patrol cars, through desert brush and flora. He ignored Kobra’s halfhearted shouts, which quickly faded away under the rapid patter of his feet. The Scarecrow was surprisingly swift, testing Poison’s endurance as he fought to keep up.

God, he hated those things. Those creatures had killed the Girl.

He hissed a long breath through his teeth and ran faster, ignoring the stitch in his side. Raising his gun, he tried to shoot the ‘crow, but the shots went wide.

Blindly, he pursued it behind an overgrown stone outcropping, the thrill of the chase outweighing any of the morality he had felt earlier. It tripped over a protruding crust of rock, and Poison used his momentum to his advantage, tackling the Scarecrow into the earth.

It writhed under his grasp but Poison didn’t waver. “This is what all of you bastards deserve!” he hissed, shoving his raygun into its smiling mask.

“No! No, wait!” cried the Scarecrow in its gravelly voice.

Poison knew that Scarecrows, higher up the BL/ind ladder than Dracs, were allowed to keep more of their identity. But he’d never heard one sound so… frightened before. He had never imagined that they could feel fear.

And that moment of surprise was all the opening it needed. The Scarecrow whipped its gun up to Poison’s chest and pulled the trigger.

It didn’t hurt. Not at first. But the force of the shot-- point-blank and maximum voltage-- sent him stumbling back.

On pure, animalistic instinct, he brought his own blaster up and shot the Scarecrow. He didn’t miss. It fell over in the middle of a victory cry, a hole between where its eyes should be.

He teetered on his feet for a moment before noticing the smoking wound in his stomach. Poison decided he should probably sit down. The cold rock face slammed into his back rather painfully, but he welcomed the support. The world was going fuzzy around the edges.

A sticky warmth spread through the front of his shirt and he brought his hand to his chest. As if from very far away, he held it up to the light to find it dripping with his own vibrant blood.

That was when the pain finally hit him, like a hot spear shoved through his stomach. He gasped and thrashed, not knowing what to do, how to alleviate the wild agony. The wetness spread, pooling under his numb legs and dripping onto his jeans. His heart was pounding tortuously against his bruised ribs and every wheezing breath he managed to take seemed like his last.

He was dying. He was going to bleed out in the bushes, killed by one lousy Scarecrow, having done nothing particularly interesting with his life.

God, he deserved this for failing the Girl. Was this how she had felt as she faded away on the cold clinical floor of the BL/ind headquarters? At least she had had someone to hold her hand as she died. He had nothing to hold but the blaster slowly slipping out of his clammy grasp. How ironic.

He still didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to die alone and afraid.

But maybe it was better this way. No crew should ever have to watch their leader die as pathetically as this.

They’d just have to find his body here, still warm, just barely beginning to rot, and sob and cry and move on. Go home without him and discover little memories of him everywhere, haunting the rest of their surely-short lives.

Poison wanted to live more than he had wanted anything in his life. He wanted to live for his crew.

But his lifeblood was staining his jacket and his heart was going to float right out of his body. And his eyelids were drooping and the gloomy sky was coming down with them.

He felt as if he was falling, or maybe rising, or maybe both. The darkness had finally caught up to him.

And that was it. Party Poison was dead.

Chapter Text

Party Poison opened his eyes and immediately shut them again as blinding sunlight flooded his face. It was definitely not dark and he was definitely not dead.

He looked down at his hands, suntanned and blood-free. He flexed his legs experimentally and found them responsive. With a tentative finger, he probed the wound on his stomach and found it… gone?

Well. Maybe he just hadn’t had enough water recently. He much preferred a dehydration-induced hallucination to being ghosted for real. Shaking his head, he made to go back to the Trans Am.

A voice stopped him.

Killjoy… it croaked, in a deep raven’s caw. I wish it had not come to this.

Poison’s head snapped around, searching for the source of those words. He was sure no one else had been in the hollow a minute ago. “Who-- What the-”

A figure resolved out of the afternoon shadows, clothed in black feathers and pushing a decrepit shopping cart. Liquid-dark eyes fixated on him with a stabbing intensity. I have many names, but your kind calls me the Phoenix Witch.

“But you’re not real!” said Poison wildly. “You’re a-- a bedtime story, a costume people wear at parties!”

I assure you that I am very much real.

“I must be hallucinating,” he muttered. “Heat got to me. What the fuck?”

The Witch’s voice was gentle as she said, Look behind you.

Against his better judgment, Poison turned around.

His body was slumped against the rock face. The body’s head lolled to the side, its eyes half-open and filmed over with death, and blood still oozed sluggishly across the dust. Its face was frozen in a grotesque mask of suffering.

He scrabbled away from it, fighting the urge to vomit. Instead he let out a miserable curse. “So I’m dead? So you’re real and I’m dead, and now you’re going to whisk me away to the afterlife.”

The Witch tilted her head in a strange, twitchy motion. You’re not dead, she said. Not quite yet. Otherwise I would not have bothered to show up here, when I normally would wait to collect your soul at the Mailbox.

“So what do you want from me?” he said despairingly.

You should have died three weeks ago in the heart of Battery City. Your life, along with the lives of the rest of your crew, should have been sacrificed for hers. That is how the story should have gone.

A leaden weight curled around Poison’s chest. So even the Goddess of the Zones thought that he had failed to protect the Girl.

All of those desert myths were true. She was to be the savior of you all. The Angel of the Desert. The Phoenix Witch’s claws clicked rhythmically against the handle of her shopping cart. She was a hibernating bomb, and now she will never get the chance to explode.

She abruptly let go of her cart and swooped close to Poison, dangling several inches above the ground. Her mother, back in the Analog Wars, was full of anger, determination, hope… and when she was captured by BL/ind, that energy went into her pregnancy, the Girl. All that power… it needs somewhere to go. It must not be wasted.

The Witch caressed his cheek with one of her claws. A fiery young Killjoy, are you? Where has that fire gone? Has it become unseeing contempt and hatred for Better Living Industries and the citizens it controls? If you do not know what you are fighting for, you should not be fighting at all.

“But I do know what we’re fighting for!” insisted Poison. “They’ve hurt so many people-- they killed her! They were the ones who killed the Girl! We deserve revenge, don’t we?” His voice was plantitative. “Right?”

Humming, the Witch took her time to respond. Revenge… not a good motivation. BL/ind twists the kind and merciful to fight for them. They take revenge on the desert for existing.

“Then we should fight back! Are you trying to say we should welcome the Dracs with open arms?”

No. It is right for you to defend yourself. What I mean… is to remember that the citizens are not against you. The robots and droids do not want to hurt you. The draculoids, the Scarecrows, and even the Exterminators are not your true enemy. Better Living Industries, and their soul-sucking City; they are the enemy. They must be destroyed.

“Well-- well, how are we supposed to fight them?” asked Poison. “Without the Girl? Without… the bomb?”

The Phoenix Witch hovered even closer, until Poison could see his face reflected in her beady eyes. He shivered as she stared directly through his body, seeming to examine the very life inside of him.

Satisfied, she fell back. It is not ideal. But you will do as a vessel.

Poison blinked. “Vessel? Vessel for what?”

She ignored him, reaching into her cart. Poison leaned closer with morbid curiosity, and past all the rubber Drac heads and stained domino masks her taloned grasp closed around a child-size helmet covered in stickers.

“No,” he breathed, watching her withdraw the Girl’s old helmet, worn through every firefight and car chase. The one that the Fabulous Four, weeks ago, had left at the Mailbox.

Yes, agreed the Witch. Then her head twitched, near imperceptibly, as if she heard something. Ahh. We should hurry.

As if on cue, three panting Killjoys burst around the corner. “There he is!” cried Ghoul. “Poison, you really gave us a scare--”

“Guys!” said Poison. “Hey! Over here!”

They paused in their tracks, staring at his body. With an awful jolt, Poison realized that that was all they could see.

His three friends rushed past his spectral standing form to his body, crumpled and still.

“No, no, no!” said Kobra, shaking his body’s shoulder. “Poison, come on!” He let out a cry and ripped into his jacket, frantically pulling out bandages and plastering them on Poison’s wounds. “What are you waiting for? Help me!” he said to Jet and Ghoul, who were standing motionless in horror.

Jet snapped into action, snatching up Poison’s limp wrist and feeling the veins. He lowered the hand in slow disbelief and put his ear to the body’s mouth.

Standing over them, Poison recognized what he was doing. Checking for signs of life.

His stomach dropped as Jet said, distraught, “He-- he’s not breathing, and, and I can’t feel a heartbeat…”

Ghoul let out a long, agitated stream of profanity, then snapped, “Chest compressions! Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? EPR or something?”

“CPR,” mumbled Kobra over his brother’s lifeless body. “It’s CPR…”

“I’m here!” shouted Poison. “I’m right here! I’m all right!” They didn’t hear him.

He rounded on the Witch, who was staring at the helmet and muttering to herself. “Put me back in my body! I-- I need to get back to them!”

Patience, she said, not unkindly. All will be restored in time.

With a deep, avian breath, she touched her fingers to the helmet, speaking so swiftly and quietly her words became unintelligible. The helmet began to glow with a faint white light where she held it. When her hand came away, it brought a strange, translucent material that pooled onto the ground and swirled into the standing shape of…

The Girl.

It was the Girl, standing there, rubbing her ghostly eyes. She turned to him, not afraid or injured or dying. Just sad. “Hey, Pois,” she said, trying to smile. “Funny seeing you here.”

Poison reached for her. He had so many things to say, but they all got stuck in his throat.

“I wish I could’ve stayed with you guys longer,” she continued, the edges of her form blurring as if the wind was trying to steal her away. She cast a longing glance at the Fabulous Four in the real world. “But… the Witch, when she took my soul, she told me that either I had to die or you guys had to. And I’m happy that you can live.”

Life for life, said the Witch. Death for death.

The Girl looked terribly alone. Poison wanted to comfort her but he wasn’t sure if he could speak.

She took a breath and soldiered on. “Miss Phoenix’s told me everything. She says that I had a power inside of me. But it’s not all the way ready and now it can’t be.” The Girl rested a hand over her heart. “Because it still lives inside here, and I’m not… not in the living world anymore. But she says that it can carry on another way. That I can pass it on to someone else. That I can pass it on to you.”

Poison wasn’t sure he understood. A power that he could carry? Her face carried a weight beyond its years as she turned to him.

“This is what has to happen for the desert to be saved,” she said. “I’m sorry it’s so sudden.” For the first time noticing his hesitancy, she let out a very characteristic huff, and ran to hug him. Poison opened his numb arms and hugged her back.

She whispered, “Please don’t blame yourself for what happened to me. It wasn’t your fault. And… I love you all. Really. Truly. Tell the others that for me, okay?”

Poison swallowed back tears. “I love you too,” he managed to choke out, standing over his dead body. She smiled for real.

It’s time, said the Witch, and the Girl took a long look at the Fab Four in the physical world. She nodded sadly, and the Witch dropped her old helmet back into the shopping cart with a clang.

Poison tried to hold onto her. He really did. But her incorporeal form began to melt away, slipping back into the earth. “No!” he cried.

“It’s ok,” said the Girl as she dissolved. “It doesn’t hurt much.” She looked up at him for a second, and grinned. “Party Poison, if anyone can save the desert, it’s you. Keep running.”

And then the last bits of her soul slipped out of his grasp and she was gone. Poison’s arms still held the shape of an embrace. He didn’t want to let go yet.

Such courage from one so young, mused the Witch. Do not fear, Killjoy. When you expire, your soul will find the same resting place as hers. She swept around his shaking form, piercing him with that inhuman gaze.

At last she hummed in pleasure. It worked. Party Poison, the Girl has passed her powers on to you. You are a bomb. May you live to explode.

He could distantly hear his friends still arguing frantically over what to do.

Ahh. I should send you back to your body before your friends break your ribs trying to restart your heart. They are good people. You are lucky to have found each other.

“Just put me back,” he said listlessly. “Just fucking leave me alone.”

As you wish, Killjoy. I will say one more thing: be strong and hold your friends close. The desert depends on you four now. She soared back to her cart and began to push it away with a slow rattle. Farewell…

Poison closed his eyes and let darkness engulf him. Adrift in a vast, black sea, he could have floated away then and there. But his body was yanked down, back to the ground. He was here and there and then he was back.

He coughed on empty lungs for a second until he sucked in a huge breath and his heart thumped back to life.

His friends jerked away, staring at him in shock. “Poison…?” said Kobra, blinking back tears. “You were-- you were dead.”

Poison ripped off the bandages on his stomach to reveal smooth, unmarked skin. “That stupid-- God dammit!” he shouted. “What the fuck? What the fuck?” Behind the steadying drum of his heart he could feel a second power pulsing, and he knew it was the Girl’s last gift to him.

“Dammit,” he said again, and for the first time in a long while, realized that tears were sliding down his face. Salty warmth pricked his tongue as one reached the corner of his mouth.

“Poison?” Jet scrubbed at the corner of his eyes with his shirtsleeve rapidly, as if in disbelief that Poison was really there. “You… weren’t breathing. Your heart stopped. What exactly happened?”

“I… the Scarecrow I was chasing, it shot me. I killed it, but… I was bleeding out, and I think I died. But then I was out of my body, and the Phoenix Witch was there…”

Goosebumps prickled his skin as he remembered the Witch’s dark voice. “I saw you guys run in, but you couldn’t see me. Only my body. And the Witch, she… she showed me the Girl’s soul.”

Jet took a sharp breath. “The Phoenix Witch? The Girl?!”

In confirmation, a deep black feather drifted through the air and landed on Poison’s stomach, exactly where he had been shot. His friends shrunk back as if it was poisonous.

Poison rolled the feather between his fingers. “The Witch said that the Girl, well, that what Dr. D told us was true. She was special. She was… a bomb, and she should have lived. And the Witch said that, since she was dead, I had to carry her power instead. The Girl… she was there. She hugged me and disappeared, and there’s some new-- feeling-- right here. And the Witch said that I was the bomb. That the desert needed us to save it now.”

Ghoul sat back on his heels. “Witch… bomb… I wouldn’t believe you if you hadn’t been deader than a doornail a minute ago. Man, Poison, we really thought you were ghosted.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers, shading his eyes.

“Did she tell you anything?” Kobra asked softly. “The Girl, I mean?” His eyes were red, but every movement of his body spoke of relief.

“She said that it’s not my fault.” Poison swallowed. “And that if anyone could save the desert then it’s me.” His face wrenched up against his will, and fresh tears trickled down his chin. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye. I was right there and all I could say was--”

“It’s okay,” said Jet anxiously. “Hey, it’s okay. You can relax now.”

All of the emotions he’d bottled up in his chest were spilling out. “She said that she loved us all,” Poison sobbed. “She asked me to tell you guys that. And all-- all I could say was-- that I loved her too.” He hunched over, hiding his uncontrollable grief and shame from his crew. “I loved her too.”

He didn’t know how long he sat there in the puddle of his own leftover blood, only that his crew never left his side. He wished that they would leave. Then he realized that they were all he had left, or maybe all he ever had in the first place, and he wished that they would stay forever.

In time his tears subsided. With a last hiccuping breath, he raised his head and leaned it against the rock, still avoiding his friends’ eyes.

“Are you good now?” asked Kobra. Gentle. They were being so careful with him.

Poison nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He wondered if maybe that wound in his chest was still there for the world to see, gaping and raw with emotion, not blood. It was a new feeling, to be so vulnerable.

That didn’t matter to Jet. He pulled Poison’s arm over his shoulder and helped him up. “Let’s go back to the car. I can drive us back to the hideout. You’ll… you’ll be okay.”

The sun hung low in the sky, sending golden shadows racing across the scrublands. The wind was beginning to chill as night descended, but there was still a hint of warmth left from the afternoon. Poison tilted his head to let the fading rays of sunlight dry his tears as he made his way across the sand.

“This is why we’re here,” he said out loud. “To stand in the sun. To face the world as it is.” His crew paused, their faces reflecting the dusk light like proud statues. He continued. “To fight. We have to fight.”

“Who?” ventured Ghoul. “Fight who?”

“Not fight people. Fight…” Poison waved his hand. “Fight for something. Fight for freedom.”

“Must’ve knocked your head,” said Kobra. “You’ve never been this sappy before.”

“I’m not joking.”

Kobra smiled. “Yeah, I know. And I agree with you. We got to make a stand against BL/ind for what they do. Gotta be heroes for once.” He coughed, slightly embarrassed. “I mean, uh, well… come on, we’re almost there.” Ghoul grinned and gave him a hearty slap on the back.

“Sure has been a long day,” said Jet with a sigh. “If you want us to start fighting-- really fight for something-- then there’ll be a lot more long days in our future. But as long as you’re leading us, Poison, I think we’ll be alright.”

Kobra and Ghoul sounded their enthusiastic agreement, and Poison realized that a flame had been rekindled in all of them.

He was stiff, and sore, and tired, from wounds both new and old, physical and emotional. It had, in fact, been a very long day. It’d been a long three weeks since they had driven to Battery City.

Yet he knew that the Girl’s soul was at rest. His friends were by his side. The future seemed a little brighter than it had yesterday.

Maybe things would turn out okay. Maybe he’d be okay after all.