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Doom Manor, as Rita had called it when she directed Rama to the basement, was quite the sprawling property. However, he’d seen very little of it since he’d arrived… upon which time he’d appeared in the kitchen with Larry and then found himself floating and confused around the grounds as a cloud of nitrous. It had been all he could do to keep himself together, and he hoped that Keeg understood Rama might have difficulty reconstituting his particles if he were forced into another state that quickly. He’d have to bring it up to Larry.
“And then, Cliff starts quoting fucking Riverdale to me.” Jane grimaced as she reached over several dishes for the bread. “I was like, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
The group had clustered all around the table for dinner, and Rama had been invited with a simple “it’s dinnertime” and no mention of his leaving. It occurred to him how odd it was that they simply expected him to sit and break bread with them when only a few hours ago, all but two of them had considered him an enemy.
A villain, no less.
“For clarity’s sake, were you or were you not, still high as fuck at the time?” Vic asked.
“By that time, Vic was at my place crying on the carpet,” Derek teased.
Vic held up his hand. “We don’t speak of that.”
“This chicken is where it’s at, man,” Derek added to Larry.
“I got higher after you left,” Jane clarified. “Dude. I was walking on water and seeing shit. But then, I was like, twelve. Buzzkill.”
“Willoughby was a shrimp-ass fuckboy,” Cliff said.
“Which one is Willoughby?” Rama asked Larry as discreetly as he could.
“No one here. He’s this chaos magician who comes around occasionally to verbally abuse us about how little we know about magic and the bullshit he and Niles got up to,” Larry explained.
“I see. Chaos magic… I’m not sure what’s to know about it. I mean, it’s really just a hodgepodge anyway, isn’t it?”
Jane leaned forward and pointed her fork at him. “Oh my god. Dish.”
“About? I’m no expert in magic. And I got my doctorate in physical sciences and organic chemistry. Which was, in any case, in the 50s.”
“Oh, so you didn’t just basically say all his magic is bullshit? Sing for your supper, Mary Poppins. I wanna hear this.”
Rama looked to Larry for help, but as Larry looked too eager for his help to be forthcoming, Rama took a breath and admitted, “All I meant was that most magic systems have an organizing structure. A logic to them, with specific forms of belief and intent that drive their efficacy. Chaos magic simply means that the user would draw from… you know, whatever source he happened to find. I know some of them grew up in the culture, which has implications for how strong they get and when—”
“Mostly sex related,” Laura explained.
“—but they’re predominantly… magical magpies. They find whatever is shiny and collect it.”
“That explains why he had Janis Joplin’s dental floss,” Rita muttered.
“And put tabasco sauce on monk beads,” Larry added. “I told you I trusted Baphomet more than him.”
“See, I’m not magically inclined myself, but I especially don’t really understand that kind of usage. Tabasco sauce instead of a list of distinct, well-chosen spices. Objects that belonged to people of arguable import. I couldn’t do it. In science, everything must be precise. Minutely so.” Rama glanced away from them. “If you’re the slightest bit off in your measurements, the results can be catastrophic. “
“You should’ve seen him around here before. Willoughby, I mean.” Jane took a bite, although her cheek was already bulging with chicken. “Did he die, or what?”
“He wasn’t in the hallway where we left him with his bunny foot,” Cliff said.
Rita put her head in her hands. “Did you not think, in the briefing, that it might be prudent to bring up the fact that idiot may be wandering around our home?”
“Yeah, especially since he fucking betrayed us,” Jane grumbled. “That evil bunny yanked the longevity right out of baby-me.”
“Jane’s a super fussy baby,” Cliff said.
“You’re a fussy baby,” Jane shot back.
The little family chatted away, teasing one another with barbs perhaps too sharp for anyone else. Meanwhile, Rama found that he’d lost his appetite. It wasn’t that he’d not realized losing their longevity would mean this group would eventually die. Everyone died. It was that he had somehow assumed they would begin to age again naturally, giving them the lifespan they would have been owed before the intervening experiments. He hadn’t wanted them to open their eyes to find their youth lost. And it particularly ached to see Larry in pain, knowing full well that Rama had been the one assigned to do that to him. It hardly mattered that he’d been derailed. He’d been the one to draw them into Dr. Janus’s filmography trap. He’d been the one to lure them all together to present a dilemma for Rita that would cause her to emote and make her vulnerable to Dr. Janus.
Rama had wanted so desperately not to have caused the suffering that he had… only to find himself capable of nothing but causing more.
“Is everything okay?” Larry asked. “Is this not something you eat?”
“This” being oven-roasted chicken with mushroom gravy on the side, rosemary olive oil bread, fingerling potatoes, and crisp brussels sprouts. The latter, some had passed on, but Rama quite liked them.
“No, this is perfect. I’m just… thinking.” Rama glanced in front of Larry. He didn’t even have a plate. “Are you not going to eat?”
“Lare-bear doesn’t eat,” Cliff said. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “And I get my juice from my nutrient tank.”
Rama blinked. “You don’t eat? At all? Then, how…?”
“Don’t get me started.” Rita raised a glass of wine. She seemed to have a chicken to herself. “We were just talking about that today.”
“I absorbed some heat from the oven, Rita,” Larry argued. “I’m fine.”
“Heat?” Rama pressed, now extremely curious as to how Larry “worked.”
“I’m trying it. I don’t really get hungry. I’ll drink water when I have to. Eating’s just more hassle than it’s worth.”
“But anything that expends energy has to also intake energy.” Rama considered that. “Does thermal energy supplant the need for—”
“We literally don’t know,” Rita said. “Although he’s been crashing a lot with Keeg, so I presume the first spirit could handle Larry failing to provide basic needs for himself.”
Larry turned to her, and in spite of the bandages, seemed quite annoyed.
“Don’t look at me that way. If it had occurred to me there might be a problem, I would’ve been on your ass about it years ago. I just didn’t think about it. I assumed that the Chief would know well enough what you need. But of course, he died without imparting critical information, such as things that will keep us properly alive and functioning well.”
“Fuckin’ Chief,” Cliff said.
“I’m not getting over this, somehow.” Rama dabbed a bit of his chicken into the gravy. Not just cooked but seasoned. “You cook for them, but don’t eat?”
“It’s calming,” Larry said defensively. “I like to do it. Besides, everyone’s been running around for the past forty-eight hours in a panic. They seem hungry. Why is that such a big deal?”
“It’s not. You’re free to do whatever you like.” Rama put the bite in his mouth and smiled as he chewed. “But you’re a monk.”
“Wait until you see the prison cell where he sleeps,” Cliff teased.
Larry threw his hands up.
“I’d love a tour,” Rama said. “Unless it’s too much trouble. I can head back to my cabin after dinner.”
“Uh, is that a good idea?” Vic leaned forward. “The others know where you’re staying, right?”
“Of course.” Rama lifted his chin. “But I should be fine there.”
“On your own?” Laura said, her accent taking a sharp hike upward. “From the cult of old multi-dimensional god worshiping fanatics that you left to join us?”
“Er…” Rama pressed his lips together. “I don’t think they’d try to harm me. I don’t have anything to offer them.”
“Oh, you dear… man,” Rita said, folding her hands in front of her. It didn’t seem possible that that much condescension could roll off of someone’s tongue, but Rama had seen the gold stars on the refrigerator.
“Yes?”
“If you’re not a spy, which I suspect more and more that you are not unless you’re a better actor than I am—which you also are not—your former compatriots will not to be pleased with you.”
Larry touched his arm. “It can’t hurt to stay the night, anyway. It’s dark already. Do you really want to go wandering around the woods when we have carnivorous monsters running around?”
“I’m even making Derek stick around until daylight,” Vic offered.
“I suppose I could stick around as well,” Rama relented.
“Hmm, I wonder where he’s gonna sleep,” Jane said under her breath to Cliff.
“We’ll find him a spot,” Larry said firmly. “Ignore her. Or any other version of her that wants to tease you.”
Rama raised a brow.
“Sucks that we didn’t get to see teenage Hammerhead,” Cliff said.
“The rest of them are down there doing stupid puzzles,” Jane groaned.
“Why puzzles?” Larry asked.
“Because puzzles fucking suck.” Jane loaded some more chicken and potatoes on her place. “Why not.”
“Hey, so what was teenage Larry like?” Vic said with a grin. “You missed out on our big adventure again.”
“I had plenty of adventure on my own,” Larry replied.
“That’s not an answer! I bet you were a big fucking nerd,” Cliff said. “One of us had to be, and you read all the fucking time.”
Larry sighed, but then shrugged. “Yeah, I kind of was. Got good grades. Kept to myself.”
“Even teenage Larry was withholding,” Vic teased.
Disliking how uncomfortable Larry seemed with the line of questioning, Rama offered, “As for me, I was a brat.”
“I can see that. I bet your ‘mum’ couldn’t help but spoil you,” Larry said.
“Of course, she did. I was a boy. And I was the smart boy. My brother joined my father’s business, and they shipped me off to get smarter at the British schools.”
Larry leaned his head back. “I wasn’t that smart. I just did well at schoolwork. Was on the track team… and in the church choir.”
Jane feigned gagging.
“Is that shocking?”
“No, just… ugh. Catholic, right?”
“How did you guess?”
“Just…” Jane spread her palm out and circled it around to indicate all of him.
“Eat your chicken.”
Rama patted Larry’s knee.
“You didn’t miss much.” Larry sighed again. “My childhood wasn’t eventful. It was the Great Depression. We were just trying to make ends meet. They called us the Silent Generation.”
“Were you born in ’28 or ’29?” Rama asked.
Larry cocked his head to the side. “’28.”
“Same!”
Vic turned to his friend and said something that made them both laugh.
“And you were in the…” Rama motioned with his hand rather than say it. “ From ’61 until…?”
“’67. You?”
“’65 ‘til ’68… and then in and out a bit until the last stint. That one was longer.”
Larry tsked. “They could’ve put you in 720 or 723. And then you, me, and Mentallo could’ve started a book club. Though, he was more of a fan of soap operas.”
“Mentallo… Like the cereal?”
Larry nodded energetically. “We can take you to Danny sometime to go meet him.”
“Meet who? Danny?”
“Meet Flex Mentallo. Danny’s more of a… um. Sentient genderqueer mobile safe space.”
Rama stared at him dumbly. “I do know those words individually.”
“And you thought your life was weird. Facing down world-ending cults that have their own pocket dimensions…? That’s a Doom Patrol Tuesday.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Rama caught Cliff making a heart with his fingers, and Jane snickering. Luckily, Larry was looking straight at him and not at them. Rama wished he could see Larry’s expression under those bandages. His voice had grown so warm and lively in the last few moments. How did that read in those blue eyes of his?
“It’s true,” Laura said after a moment, breaking a silence that had grown between them while Larry and Rama stared at each other. She smirked when they both looked her way. “I’d only gotten here, and they all just became zombies. Then, the magical munchkin came by to tell us we had to go save Niles Caulder’s head from a former Bureau agent, who turned out to be a were-butt.”
Rama closed his eyes and opened his mouth. Words absolutely failed.
“Interesting.”
“Fucking A,” Jane groaned. “I wanna play. What’s the weirdest fucking thing that’s happened to us?”
“Having to face down our imaginary friends?” Rita suggested.
“I fought Jesus,” Cliff said.
“Mine was my dad as a doctor cowboy,” Vic added.
“Man, I don’t even know,” Derek pushed himself away from the table. “I always thought being a superhero had to do with saving people or fighting bad guys.”
“We do that, too. But sometimes it’s more… Dry Bachelors, sky eyeballs, giant candle monsters…”
Jane’s eyes lit up. “One time we were trapped in a magical painting on Danny the street, and in order to get out, we had to bunker down inside a giant fucking cockroach so Larry wouldn’t nuke us with radiation when he blasted us out.”
“And the kaiju cockroach started making out with a giant fucking kaiju rat so I could jump into the cockroach’s mouth,” Cliff said gleefully. “That was fucking disgusting!”
Rama turned to Larry. “They’re making this up. Right?”
“Nope.” Larry crossed his legs, clearly grinning. “When they got out, they were all one inch high.”
“And we had to live on that dreadful racing set,” Rita grumbled.
“But Larry made teeny tiny meals for us every day,” Vic said with a laugh.
“And rolled me the world’s tiniest fucking joint!” Jane laughed.
Again, speechless, Rama picked up his glass of water trying to think of how to respond to that.
“You know. It’s interesting, coming into the er… middle of things here.” Laura held her tea in her hand as she sat back. “They’ve got such a specific little dynamic, and I walked into the house, making orders, and they all roundly ignored me. But the more obvious it became what a fuck up I was, the more I could understand it here. Because, growing up, I always thought I must be the strangest creature in the entire world. Then, I got older, made a few friends who also were a bit out of the ordinary. Bendy here being one of them. And no matter what nonsense we came up with together… It is still arse-fucking bonkers here.”
“Well, in the Sisterhood, we never really had anyone coming for us,” Rita said. “Besides the Bureau, when they decided to shift from Oddities to Normalcy. One of the reasons things go so far off the rails is that the no one can seem to leave us alone. If there is something odd, something beyond the pale revolting or bizarre, it will come and it will come for us specifically. Becoming a team was something I wanted. I wanted to finally choose who I was and how I did things. But really, it was the only rational response to being assaulted on a regular basis by the most insane, stupid, and impossible nonsense.”
“For a long time, we thought we were the insane, impossible nonsense. We thought we were the ones that the world needed protecting from,” Larry said. “Or… I did.”
“I did, too,” Rita said quietly. “Though, I know it’s… different for you.”
Larry shrugged. “Rama gets that.”
“I do,” Rama admitted. “What happened to me was an accident, but I’ve hurt so many... I wanted more than anything to take it back.”
“You can’t change the past,” Laura said. “God knows Bendy and I have tried.”
“I just hope…” Rama hesitated. From the playful ribbing to the airing of nonsense to this. HE wasn’t sure if he wanted to admit it openly… “I hope I don’t become one of the impossible things you have to deal with. It could happen. I’ve caused worse than getting stuck in one form.”
“We’ll handle that when it happens,” Larry assured him. “I told you, we deal with this stuff all the time.”
Slowly, Rama found himself nodding. No more wicked smirks from Jane. All eyes were on him. Had they just collected him? No questions asked? Even Dr. Janus and Wally had wanted his aid for their mission in return. Rita had asked him to go read Niles Caulder’s files, but it had seemed at the time she wanted some time with Larry more than anything. Apart from that, it wasn’t clear what they wanted from him. If they wanted anything at all.
They’d not even asked in much detail about what he knew about Immortus. Was that an oversight? Or did they not trust him? Rama couldn’t blame them, if so. Possibly, they thought his information would be specious, given how he’d let Dr. Janus utterly snow him.
Not having eaten a bite, Larry was the first to begin collecting dishes. Vic headed in to do the washing up, and Derek followed him. That seemed reasonable, since Larry had cooked, and dishwashing would get his bandages wet. Rama had been about to follow Larry for a tour when Rita pulled him aside and promised to return him in a moment. Larry went on to wait for him by the main stairs.
“It’s good to see you comfortable here, Rama.” Rita gave him a gracious nod. “I’m glad you decided to stay the night, regardless of what you decide next.”
“How could I say no?”
“You shouldn’t, in any case. We could use your help, and Larry clearly likes you quite a bit.”
A cool rush of relief went through Rama as he nodded. “I’ve never gotten close with someone so fast, but Keeg truly did me a favor there. Larry’s a good man.”
“He really is.” Rita took a step towards the boarded up dining room window. “And that’s the trouble, you see.”
“Trouble?” Instinctively, Rama followed her.
“He’s a good man. With a very big heart. He can be pessimistic, moody, dense, sarcastic, even weirdly internal, but if he’s closed off, it’s because he has a lot to lose in letting himself be vulnerable. It’s easy for him to be hurt because he does care so very much.” Rita looked up at him with keen eyes. “Do you know what happened to the Brain? The former leader of the Brotherhood of Evil?”
“I…” Rama was thrown by the shift in topic. “No. I don’t.”
“I killed him.”
She said it so matter-of-factly that her words didn’t sink in for a moment. Her expression was easy, almost pleasant. But she’d just said…
“He’d asked me to join him. To restart the Brotherhood. That was never going to happen.” Rita inspected her nails. “But he had just kidnapped Cliff and admitted to having him killed. Lucky for us, nothing was going to plan for the Brain that day. I mean, Cliff is obviously very much alive. However, as for the Brain? I poured scalding water over his evil fucking cerebrum. He boiled alive.”
Heart pounding and throat tightening, Rama had the urge to retreat. Rita Farr was an actress. Was this an act? It didn’t seem to be.
“If you hurt Larry, I will kill you,” she said directly. Then, she smiled sweetly and patted his arm. “Enjoy your tour. I trust Keeg will keep an eye on his daddy.”
“I would never—”
“But if you did. You’re perfectly welcome here. You may stay with us as long as you need, and we’ll help you with your little… problem. As much as we can. But… if you did…”
Rama nodded slowly. “It’s good that Larry has such devoted friends.”
“If this works out, I’ll be deeply grateful as well.” Her voice grew softer, and she blinked quickly, looking away.
This crowd could be very intense.
Rama returned to the stairway still processing that conversation. He didn’t want to bring it up to Larry. However, if Rita were being level with him, well… a vague disclaimer was no one’s friend. At least she was honest.
Rama spotted Larry standing there, his fingers touching the middle of his chest gently as he spoke to Keeg. There was no going back. Not even if Rama had wanted to.
“Hey there,” Larry said pleasantly.
“Right then. You were going to give me a tour?”