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The gym was a meditative space.
It was not the most high quality of all the facilities that Shane had ever used, and - in fact - was probably the worst maintained and definitely the least funded, but it did not change the fact that, within it, Shane felt more peace than he did anywhere in the entirety of Blüdhaven.
Some of this, of course, was because, at the gym, there was Ilya. Shane had not expected Ilya Rozanov - in fact, he had actively stayed away from the possibility of an Ilya Rozanov for as long as he could manage it. Ilya was the sort of person that Shane thought he could spend a lifetime looking for and never find. He was certain that there was no one else in the world like Ilya, or in any other world that existed out there. Similarly, he was certain, that in no other world, whatever Shane Hollander existed would ever feel truly complete without a version of Ilya.
From where he was stretching on the gym mats piled in the corner of the room, loosening his limbs and muscles in preparation, Shane watched as Ilya flew through the air, chalked-up hands gripping and moving and flinging himself across and between the set of high bars that they had erected on the other side of the gym. The dense muscles of his arms flexed with the effort it took to propel himself into the graceful arcs and flips that he made his art; in his form, the sheer strength and power of his physique looked simply graceful. It looked like Ilya had been born for this moment alone. It looked dangerous.
“If you keep this up,” Shane called over, “you’ll be napping whilst I run the kids through their exercises.”
“I am full of energy, Hollander!” Ilya replied, though he certainly sounded short of breath. “You are jealous of my skill!”
Shane scoffed, rolled his eyes. “I have nothing to be jealous of.”
“Sure,” said Ilya, and then added on, “Mister Second Best Gymnast.”
He flipped neatly to the ground, sticking the landing and pausing for a few seconds, before scarpering over for his water bottle. He squirted it into his mouth, not breaking eye contact with Shane as he swallowed, throat bobbing around a mouthful.
“Best gymnast,” Shane corrected.
The words were devoid of any bite, just as Ilya’s had not stung. They might have, once, but Shane and Ilya had fallen into an easy bickering these days. It was easy in a way that Shane rarely felt with anyone when it came to socialising, and there was no way to verbalise this except that he trusted Ilya wholly and completely - trusted him to spot him, to work with him, or just to exist with him, no ulterior motives or expectations of betrayal.
The gym had been a lifeline for Shane. Just a part time gig, but he thought about it probably more than he should. He’d seen the advertisement by chance (Youth Gymnastics Coach Wanted!), and - also by chance - the tiny studio had only been a few blocks away from Shane’s apartment in Blüdhaven, and the hours advertised had not interfered with any of his other commitments. It had been a very long time since Shane had done gymnastics for the pure joy of it. He’d missed it, and the simplicity that it entailed. And whilst this job had not fixed everything in his life, it had helped, a lot.
Ilya had helped too.
To say that they hadn’t gotten along at first was an understatement. They’d both walked into the gym with their own egos: Shane, as the head coach, clinically assured of his position as the best, still the only person able to land successfully a quadruple flip (even if his attempts felt more and more precarious with every new ache and pain that his body was inventing as he got older), and Ilya, as his teaching assistant, who had possibly the greatest passion for gymnastics that Shane had ever encountered. He did because he loved it, and the fact that he loved it made him brilliant.
They worked well together. Then they worked perfectly together. Then they were friends, who shared numbers and went out for drinks and ate takeout in Ilya’s shitty Blüdhaven apartment (Shane also had a shitty Blüdhaven apartment) and watched movies together. Then they were - whatever it was now, falling into bed just as often as they competed in the gym, still hanging out but with that undercurrent that lingered just on the very edge of more. It was dangerous. It was everything that Shane had told himself that he would avoid when he had moved over from Gotham for a fresh start. It was inevitable. It was Ilya.
Really, he hadn’t ever stood a chance.
“Come over tomorrow?” Ilya asked. He scuffed his feet along the cracked pavement outside the gymnasium, one hand resting on the door of his car. “Sveta has a date. She won’t be home.”
Svetlana was Ilya’s roommate. She and Shane got on well enough, though she somewhat terrified him, but she had made it clear from the very beginning of Shane and Ilya’s hangouts, even though they were not anything defined beyond friends and colleagues, that she did not want to get involved in any of their “bullshit.” Though she was fine with existing on the outskirts of their hangouts, watching her own things in her rooms or mocking up her evil plans or whatever it was Svetlana did in her free time, Shane always felt less like he was excluding her from her own apartment when she had plans of her own that left Shane and Ilya with free reign of the apartment.
“Can’t,” Shane replied. “I’m using my time off to make a trip over to New York. Visiting friends.”
“Friends,” Ilya repeated, in such a tone that - though he said it without any inflection - was clearly disbelieving.
Shane scowled. “I have friends.”
“Of course,” Ilya said agreeably. His eyes twinkled - asshole, getting all his enjoyment from watching Shane’s irritation build.
“I helped run a youth initiative over there. I like to help out still, when I have time.”
Ilya softened. “I believe this.”
He could feel his face flushing, a prickling heat building underneath his skin. Sometimes, he felt as though Ilya was seeing a version of Shane so brilliant and perfect that it was impossible for him to actually exist. He felt it in moments like this, when Ilya leapt upon the crumbs of information about his life before Blüdhaven that Shane occasionally sprinkled throughout conversation with the sort of hunger of a man who wanted everything and anything.
He crossed his arms tighter over his chest, tugging his jacket further closed against the bitter cold of the gathering evening. “I’ll be back in a few days though. Maybe we could do something then?”
“Da,” said Ilya. “Brawlers are playing, if you are interested?”
Shane did not have much interest in these sorts of things (he liked gymnastics, and hockey, and any other forms of ice based sport) but Ilya did, and Shane liked spending time with Ilya. Besides, it was nice to celebrate Blüdhaven sometimes. No one else was going to.
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll text you.”
“Call me,” Ilya corrected, swiftly. “I want to hear from you in Big Apple. Is very long time not to hear your beautiful voice, solnyshko.”
If Shane was smart, he would use New York as an opportunity to build the distance between him and Ilya that he should have kept in the first place. Slowly pull back contact, replace a wall or two between them, and let whatever this was fizzle out and die a very natural death. Maybe Ilya would resent him. Maybe it would be impossible to recapture the ease that they shared working together. Maybe Shane would lose everything that made Blüdhaven somewhat palatable to him, instead of a self-imposed exile that he wasn’t sure that he was strong enough to live through. It would be difficult, letting go of Ilya, but it was better than the alternative. Experience - so much fucking experience - had showed him that.
But Shane was weak. And Shane was selfish. And Ilya was right there, separate from everything Shane had been and was trying to outrun.
“I’d like that,” Shane said. “I’ll call you.”
Shane had believed, once, that he was going to call New York home for the rest of his life. It wasn’t Ottawa, where he had been born and had the fondest memories of, nor was it the countries and places he had travelled to as a child, but the important thing was that it hadn’t been Gotham. At that point, it had been more important than anything to Shane to be able to call somewhere other than Gotham home.
He was certain that Gotham was going to kill him one day. And Shane had decided that he didn’t want Gotham to kill him - not anymore, not like when he had believed it would be the righteous and rightful thing to do.
And for a while, New York had been perfect. Shane had been perfect. The people he’d had in his corner had been perfect.
And then had come the realisation that New York would not protect Shane from all the things that he was running from. That, instead, it was actively tightening the ropes that bound him back to the shadowed, murky territory of Gotham City and everything that Shane was avoiding. As long as Shane existed in New York, he would exist in the form that he had existed in living in Gotham. Same person, out of place.
He’d had a different name then.
They’d still called him Robin, in New York. They still talked about Robin in New York - but not Shane. Shane was not Robin anymore, and the Robin that the city (both New York and Gotham) knew was not him. He’d lost the right to that name - his name - a very long time ago. And it was not that he missed the name, because he didn’t, and losing it had been the first time he had understood what it was like to be able to shirk the ties that had held him down - but he missed the way that people had thought of the name when it had been his, and he missed the possibility of the name, all the things that he had planned to do with it and thought that he would have the time to accomplish.
It was a bittersweet thing, returning to the nullified chance of that legacy. Shane tried to keep in mind the fact that he was happy now, without it, and doing good shit and making a difference and living the sort of life that meant he got to control it all.
It was difficult to remember in New York.
It was easier to remember with Ilya waiting back in Blüdhaven for him.
Rose met him outside of the Tower, and it was clear that she had been waiting a while for him. She looked elated to see him, and Shane thought, not for the first time, that he owed it to her to try and be a much better friend for her, as she had been for him.
She had not changed at all since the last time that he had seen her, except maybe that she looked a little more comfortable in her skin. He was glad to see it. He had never known a Rose fully comfortable with her new life on Earth, set apart from others by the fact that her beauty was clearly otherworldly and that she still had most of the mannerisms of a society that existed thousands of light years away. New York had been just as important for her as it had been for Shane, except Rose had never moved on from New York and New York had kept its arms wide open to accept her. The city suited her, eased some of the burden that she had carried with her all the yeats that she and Shane had been friends; she looked almost young, wearing an oversized Admirals sweatshirt and a pair of comfortable, clearly worn leggings, which was a strange thing to think about Rose considering that she was extraterrestrial being whose life that stretched longer already than Shane could ever imagine.
She bounded to her feet when she saw him, darting over to fling her arms around his neck. If he looked closely, he noticed that her feet did not touch the floor at any point, and it was such a familiar quirk of hers that he felt his fondness like a physical ache in him, swelling and growing. Her skin was warm against him, far too warm to be human, and he sunk gratefully into her touch.
“It has been far too long,” she scolded him. “I almost didn’t believe you when you said that you were coming to visit.”
“I know,” he said, and pressed an affectionate kiss to her cheek. “I’m sorry. I promise I’ll be better in the future.”
“Is there no way I can convince you to stay?” she asked. “The Titans aren’t the same without you.”
“Absolutely not,” he said firmly. “I’m a Blüdhaven native now. Go Blüdhaven!”
She shot him a very unimpressed look. “No one has ever said that and meant it.”
“I mean it,” he said. “It isn’t a bad city. It just needs a bit of TLC.”
Sometimes, Shane forgot that Rose knew him better than anyone else. They’d grown up together, in a way - him, an actual teenager, and Rose also considered a teenager by her people’s standards, even if her actual age in human years was difficult to pin down exactly but far longer than anyone could reasonably expect to live. They’d done brilliant things together. Fought villains, saved the world, built something good with the Titans of kids who’d had the pressure of the world put on their shoulders and no power to do anything about it. There was nothing casual or superficial about that sort of bond, and it lingered, even when their lives had moved on to very different things.
“You have someone in Blüdhaven?” she teased, waggling her eyebrows.
He flushed a dark red. “No.”
“Shaneeeeee, don’t lie to me.” She prodded him in the cheek with a perfectly manicured finger. He scowled. “I know there’s someone.”
He didn’t want to talk about Ilya. He wanted nothing more than to talk about Ilya. He settled for granting Rose a coy, secretive smile, eliciting a theatrical gasp and a hand pressed against her chest.
She picked up her hand, twining their fingers together. “Come in,” she urged. “See what we’ve done with the place. Then you have to dish, Shane. The Law demands it.”
What they’d done with place, as Rose put it, was completely and utterly obliterate it. Not a single part of the original structure that Shane had known as the Titans Tower and called home still existed, even if the holographic projection that existed for everyone on the outside claimed contrary.
But for all that it was completely gone, Rose’s room looked the same as it always had, transplanted from the aboveground tower to the safer, underground bunker that had replaced it. Stepping into it felt like stepping back in time. Shane felt like a kid again, and half expected to look down and find himself wearing a familiar traffic light costume as easily as he might have worn a second skin.
Rose flopped back onto her bed, disappearing momentarily into a mountainous pile of pillows. She dragged Shane down with her, and he sprawled out beside her, staring up at the canopied ceiling and the gauzy curtains that Rose, with a flick of her hand, pulled closed around them.
“Why are you really in New York?” Rose asked, turning her head over to watch him.
Shane frowned. “What makes you think I’m here for something else than checking in?”
“You never come just to check in anymore. Also, I know you. You’re here for something. And you didn’t exactly leave New York in the best of states last time. I didn’t think you’d ever come back, honestly, and I don’t think anyone would blame you.”
“I love New York,” he said. It sounded defensive and bitchy even to his own ears.
Rose made a vague noise of sympathy at the back of her throat. “I know. But, well, what happened last time… and then you were avoiding Gotham… Some people thought you were going to hang up the whole vigilante gig and no one would have blamed you. Certainly, people didn’t think you’d come back here.”
Shane could not look at her. If he looked at her, it would all fall apart. “What would be the point in hanging up the mask? He knows who I am - my civilian identity. The mask is the only thing I have that offers me a measure of protection. He respects the mask.”
“Respected the mask,” Rose corrected. She was right, and he knew it, but Shane still flinched away from the words like they were new to him. “Deathstroke respected the mask right up until he decided to blame you for the death of his son.”
It was hard to draw breath. Shane swallowed, and it felt unnatural. He blinked back the burn in his eyes.
“I wish I could have saved him,” he said, and the words shook as they feel from his lips.
“We all wish we could have saved him,” Rose replied, “but that doesn’t matter to Deathstroke, Shane.”
“Have - have you heard anything from him? Has he been anywhere?”
Rose shook her head. “Radio silence,” she said.
There had been a time when Shane had supposed that radio silence from Deathstroke the Terminator was a good thing. Less targets successfully dispatched, less victims and a narrowed trail of destruction and devastation left behind the mercenary. Shane had been naive then. Now, he knew it was important to know always where Deathstroke was. Radio silence made that impossible. Radio silence meant that Deathstroke was planning something, some terrible, grand agenda, and no one would know anything about it until it was far too late to stop it.
“You shouldn’t dwell on it,” Rose advised. “It’ll tear you apart, if you let it. Don’t let it. Enjoy New York. Reminisce! Have fun! I know this batch of Titans idolises you. I think they’d die if you taught them anything, even tying their shoelaces or some shit. Then, we’ll get you back to Blüdhaven and whatever lover boy you’re keeping hidden from us. You are going to introduce me some day though. You don’t have a choice in that.”
It was hard to put Deathstroke entirely from his mind - the kind of history that they had, the ever constant threat that his simple existence posed to Shane and everything Shane cared about, made him impossible to ignore - but New York had once been a city of escape for Shane. It was easy enough to use as that again, led around by Rose, who seemed determined keep him distracted and very concerned that he was going to do something drastic, like seek out Deathstroke himself before Deathstroke could seek out him. Shane did not bother to explain to her that he’d been there and done that - mostly, because he wasn’t entirely sure that she was wrong.
The temptation, even if he knew it would be a futile effort, to pursue Deathstroke and try to meet him on equal terms was a strong one.
There were a lot of things to do in New York. He went to delis and walked around Central Park, visited the little hide away places that had been his favourite to frequent, and caught up with the various civilian friends who knew him only as Shane Hollander that he had left behind. He trained with the new Titans and thought that they were fast and clever and brilliant, in all the ways that he had hoped that the next generation would live up to the tentative promise of change that they had made. He suited up as Nightwing and all of New York started talking about him in the way that they had talked about Robin, as Shane settled for tackling low level street thugs and criminals. The small stuff, the neighbourhood stuff, the stuff that he had felt passionately about until global (or even interdimensional) problems had started taking away all of his attention. He called Ilya, almost every night, and listened to him talk about Blüdhaven and the people he was meeting and the dogs that he stroked on his walks and the jokes that Svetlana told and all the thoughts that ran through his head. He spent an equal amount of time missing Ilya. He counted down the days until he could return to Blüdhaven. He thought about calling it home and thought that the name did not fit as wrongly as it would have once.
He waited to go home.
The night before he left, Rose insisted on having a send off party for him. She ordered ridiculous amount of pizza, all delivered in grease covered boxes that Shane would ordinarily have turned his nose up at, and seemed to have raided the party aisle at Walmart for all their streamers and confetti, which was draped liberally over every surface. A banner hung around the corridor that led to the Zeta beams read Bon Voyage! with a smiley face added by hand to the end. They played music far too loudly from the speakers, and used the screen usually set aside for mission briefings to watch a movie, gathered on couches and beanbags that had been dragged down from various locations throughout the bunker.
And Shane was having fun. It was fun - fun enough that he remembered why he had lived for this once, the ease of camaraderie with people you fought and lived and died beside, the friends that were granted to him through blood and fire when he had never made them so easily on his own.
In his pocket, his phone buzzed.
It was Ilya, he assumed, testing him some picture of a raccoon digging through his trash again, or Svetlana hanging upside down from the fire escape, or the neighbour’s dog, Chiron, who Ilya was obsessed with and sometimes looked after on request. His request, mostly.
It was not Ilya.
Turn on the news, pretty boy
– Deathstroke
Shane’s heart dropped into his stomach, contentment curdling instantaneously.
He snatched the remote from the sofa in front of him, flicking through channels. There were squawks of protest from behind him, complaints and boos, all light-hearted, about how he was spoiling the flow of the movie and “couldn’t you see we’re watching that?” Shane didn’t care; he was deaf to their complaints, laser focused on the screen in front of him. The text was ringing on repeat in his ears; he could hear the familiar cadence of Deathstroke’s voice as if he had spoken it aloud.
“Nightwing?” Rose asked.
“Deathstroke,” was all he managed to choke out.
The room fell silent.
And then, the news.
It opened on an aerial shot - a news helicopter, above a sprawling urban city, shrouded in shadow and the constant presence of smog for which it was infamous. He recognised Blüdhaven in an instant, with the gleaming lights of all the people who lived there and the familiar streets that he had been making his home.
At first, the scene looked normal. Shane could not see anything wrong, and the roaring in these ears meant that he couldn’t make out any of the words of the news report.
But then he saw it: a green glow on the horizon, noxious and unnaturally bright. It grew brighter with every second, got closer and closer.
“The Society,” Rose breathed. She had seen the same thing that he had. She had come to the same realisation that he had. She brought a shaky hand to her mouth. Her feet were planted very firmly on the floor.
Deathstroke was working with The Society, who had the connections to wreak untold damage. Deathstroke had a vendetta against Shane because he blamed Shane for the death of his son. Deathstroke - like everybody else - knew that Nightwing had staked his protection on the city of Blüdhaven, fighting against the pall of crime that had rendered it so cutthroat. Deathstroke - like everybody else - knew that Shane Hollander had started investing in the infrastructure and community of Blüdhaven, completing the work that Nightwing had taken upon him in a more legal manner. Unlike everybody else, Deathstroke knew that Nightwing and Shane Hollander were the same person, which meant that Deathstroke knew to hit where it would hurt the most and knew where to hit where it would hurt instead of simply destroying Shane entirely. Deathstroke had known that Shane was in New York. Deathstroke had been waiting for this.
“Chemo,” someone breathed.
Shane had never had dealings with Chemo before, but he knew people who had. Superman, mostly, because his Kryptonian DNA gave him a resistance radiative toxicity of Chemo’s make up.
But now Chemo struck in the middle of his city, and the camera captured him as he seemed to grow and swell in size, the brightness of his dripping, noxious visage increasing in intensity until the news pictures were rendered practically incomprehensible. He was not an intelligent villain, and if there was any malice beyond instinct, Shane wasn’t sure. That didn’t matter, really, because the end result would be the same and Chemo would not care.
The explosive was silent. A plume of green and debris rushed out like a tidal wave. The camera angle jolted, once, as it registered the approaching blast wave, and then moved more frantically when whoever was operating it realised there was no escape. Then the pictures cut. There was nothing more to show.
Shane was already moving. He did not need to suit up, because - to the Titans - he existed only as Nightwing, and so dressed as such (albeit he had a hoodie slung over the top of it all to be more comfortable that he now shucked off and abandoned) to preserve the idea of a secret identity. He’d left his escrima sticks by the door and they were easy to pick up and sling over his shoulder, rushing to the Zeta tubes that would take him back to Blüdhaven. If he was quick enough -
Rose tackled him from behind.
They struck the floor together, and Shane rolled, throwing all of his weight into attempting to get on top of her and away. But Rose was strong - stronger than him - and she was fast - not as fast him, but fast enough to have a knee planted in the centre of his back before he could even think of avoiding it. Her hands seized his arms, pinning them to the floor. He bucked against her, but he knew already that the effort was futile.
“Stop it! Stop!” she yelled, and sounded almost as though she was on the verge of tears. “Nightwing, stop!”
He was yelling too - yelling at her as he fought to get away, yelling because it felt as though, if he didn’t, the noise dam up in him forever and he’d choke on it, yell because “damn it, that’s my city! My city!”
“You’ll die! You can’t. Nightwing, Nightwing, you aren’t - you won’t make it anywhere if you rush off to Blüd, because you will die the second you step foot anywhere near that city.”
“I have to try! Fuck, that’s my city and Deathstroke only targeted it because of me. People are dying - people are dying and it’s my fault, and I promised to protect them and I can’t fail them now.”
“You won’t help anyone. You’ll only get yourself killed!”
Shane, for all his faults, had not been born metahuman. He did not have alien physiology or magic or some superhuman attributes on his side. He was human, down to the very dirt of his bones, and that mattered more than he liked to believe it did. He didn’t have the same luxuries as Rose, or Superman over in Metropolis. He was just a guy, mortal and fallible. It was why he had been so certain that the vigilante gig would kill him one day, because there was no way that someone could take the hits that Shane had taken and live.
He was a normal guy who’d gone through some shit and chosen to do something about it. He trained hard and practiced more, and he let that - his dedication, his want to do the right thing, to help people - make him good at what he did. It wasn’t a science. He fucked up sometimes. He was mortal and fallible, and he was human, and that was on him. That was something that he couldn’t fix.
The people of his city were human too. Ilya was human.
“I love him,” Shane said, to Rose but also to himself. The realisation of the truth of it struck him like a blade, sunk deep into his heart. “Rose, please, I love him.”
“You can’t save him. Not like this,” Rose whispered, and she sounded gutted to have to be the one to tell him, and gutted that she was the one who had to be so cruel, and he knew that she was right, but -
The sound that he let out could not be described as human. His despair was the only part of him that wasn’t - it lived as something else, total and complete on its own.
“The League will be on this,” Rose said. “We’re not leaving your city on its own. I swear to you.”
His forehead thunked against the floor. He knew that Rose would feel the way that his breath hitched underneath her, the way that he was shaking against the urge to curl up into a ball and sob and sob until he was wrung out of every feeling threatening to tear him into shreds. Doing so wouldn’t help anyone - but Shane was helpless anyway. What changed if he simply… gave up?
“JLA en route,” someone murmured, and Rose hummed an affirmative. She stood up, and reached down with a hand to help Shane to his feet. No one would look him in the eye; most of them kept their gazes trained on the phones in their hands.
“Superman is responding,” said someone else, and then, “they’re setting up refuge shelters on the outskirts of Blüdhaven. They think that they’re far enough from the area of impact that chemical exposure should be negligible.”
“There,” said Rose. “That’s the ticket. We help there, marshal survivors, reunite families, help triage. We aren’t abandoning the people of Blüdhaven today.”
Shane had tried to ring Ilya but the phone would not connect. Ilya did not answer. And Shane knew what that could mean, but it wasn’t something that he ever wanted to think about, because if Ilya was - No. No. It wasn’t something that he was going to think about ever.
Rose had directed the Zeta beams to the outskirts of Blüdhaven, where the refuge camps had been erected, and they were greeted with relief. Attitudes to vigilantes varied, especially when - like so many of the Titans were - the vigilantes had meta abilities, but here, now, Blüdhaven was grateful for any help that they were offered. Their pride had nothing against the Titans, in the way that it might have resisted help from the federal government (Blüdhaven was a haven for criminals that had long been left to fester in its own problems, largely ignored by wider society), and so they were set to work triaging, transporting supplies or other general jobs that were easy and menial but required hands that they simply didn’t have.
Shane was glad to be kept busy, to have something to set his mind on, and the people seemed grateful to see him, having gotten used to having their own masked protect that they were now seemingly fond of - but it was a new sort of torture to be so close to the city and unable to set foot in it. He hadn’t known how hard it would be, even though he knew that setting foot any further into the heart of it would be stupid and reckless and dangerous.
He told himself, as well, that when Ilya made his way out from the wreckage, this would be the first place that he came. Shane would be there to make sure that he was okay - even if he had to do it from the vantage of a stranger, a masked vigilante who was invested only insofar as Ilya was one of the civilians he had sworn to protect. It would be enough just to know that he was alive, even if he couldn’t touch him or stay with him or tell him any number of the things that he thought he would tell Ilya, if only he was given another chance to be honest with him.
But if Ilya was in the city still? If he was crushed beneath fallen rubble or trapped somewhere or hurt? If he had been one of the people vapourised in the very centre of where Chemo had detonated?
Shane handed over the first aid kits that he had been tasked with delivering to another medic’s tent, and began - checking surreptitiously over his shoulders to make sure that he was not being observed by anyone who might stop him - to make his way towards the city. If he snuck over the bridge that spanned the river separating the camps from the city itself, he’d been free and clear, and no one would have anyway to stop him. He’d be more helpful inside, and if he managed to save even one life, then it would be worth it.
“I hope you aren’t going where I think you are,” said Scott Hunter.
“Fuck!” Shane swore.
Scott raised his hand in a jaunty little wave when Shane turned around to face him. He pushed his glasses further up his nose, as if they had been sitting unevenly, and shot Shane the most generic, mild-mannered smile that Shane had assumed only existed on postcards and the advertisements for Hallmark movies. In the scene of devastation, Scott Hunter (reporter for the Daily Planet, a mutual friend of pretty much everyone in Shane’s extracurricular life, all-American poster boy) looked very much out of place.
“What are you doing here?” Shane asked, pressing his hand against his chest to try and still his racing heart. It was useless; he knew, even as he tried to mask his panic, that Scott was very, very aware of it all. “Shouldn’t you be…?”
He wafted a hand around to try and encompass all the things that Scott should have been doing, but Scott mostly looked amused.
“Providing aerial support?” he suggested. “Yeah, I had a feeling that I needed to do a bit of ground reconnaissance first, see how everyone was holding up. Glad I did - you’re far too close to this mess for it to be good for your health.”
“I need to be in there,” Shane insisted. “Look, there’s people in there who I swore to protect, and… and I got someone in there. I can’t leave him behind.”
Scott softened. “I get it. I would do the same for someone I love, and I admire your ethics, kid, but you aren’t helpful here. You’re just going to get in the way. I -”
Someone started to scream.
Shane’s head whipped around - and there, still in the ruins of Blüdhaven, a green glow was building again.
“Fuck,” Shane breathed. “He’s regenerating.”
He turned to look at Scott. But Scott wasn’t there anymore. The clothes that he had been wearing had been abandoned, but the man himself - between one moment and the next - was gone. Shane looked up, and around, and watched as Superman scythed a bright path in the sky above, arms held out in front of his head as he speared towards Chemo, who had lumbered cumbersomely to his feet once more, already so grown inside to be visible from outside the city.
If he went off again -
Fuck.
Shane started running.
But he felt the moment of collision, as Superman struck straight into the heart of Chemo. The impact was like a blast in itself, sending a shockwave racing across the surface of the river. The force of it lifted Shane from his feet and flung him backwards, straight through the air. His back hit the ground first, all the air knocked from his lungs, and his head the moment after that.
There was darkness after that, and a numbness that fell like rain.
When Shane jerked back into his body, Rose was there, her hands pressed down on his shoulders - not restraining this time, but clearly meant to be soothing.
“Easy, tiger,” she chided, as he jerked again against her hold.
“Chemo,” he gasped.
“Supes dealt with him. Sent him star-side. No further blast. He’s dealing with civilians now.”
“The Society?”
Rose’s face, swimming into view as his vision sharpened, was grim. “Scattered to the wind, the cowards. It’s safe to say that this vendetta was Deathstroke’s, and he’s satisfied with the pound of flesh that he’s taken.”
“For now - until he decides that he’d rather kill me.”
“I don’t know,” Rose replied, considering. “I don’t think he wants to kill you - he likes you too much, in his own fucked up way. I think he’ll consider you even now.”
“A city for a son,” remarked Shane, with no small amount of bitterness.
Rose shrugged. “He always had weird ideas about fatherhood. His kids all deserved better. Shame they couldn’t get it from him.”
God knew she was right; so much pain and suffering could have been avoided if everything had functioned as it was supposed to. Maybe Deathstroke would still have his son to take for granted; maybe Shane would still have his city.
“Where am I needed now?” Shane asked, pushing himself to an upright seated position.
Rose settled a few feet away from him, crouched and resting on her haunches. “You aren’t,” she said, and it was only then that Shane realised his face was bare - no mask, and he wore civilian dress.
“Rose -”
“You should go and find your loverboy, Shane,” she interrupted, and the expression on her face was gentle enough to hurt. “You can’t do anything more as Nightwing than we can. Nightwing isn’t needed - but Shane Hollander? Fuck, I think that Shane Hollander might be needed out there somewhere, and I think Shane Hollander - for himself - might need to be out there as well.”
“I can’t just abandon people,” Shane protested. His hands clenched into fists - opening and closing, opening and closing.
“You aren’t abandoning anyone,” Rose assured him, “and I know that’s not what you really think. You’re scared, aren’t you?”
Shane faltered. Tried to avoid her gaze, but she was right there and she knew him and the wound that she had prodded at was one that was already gaping open. “I - What if he’s already gone? What if I’ve lost him?”
“What if you haven’t?” she asked. “My love, what if you haven’t lost him? He’ll need you - you, not some stranger vigilante who won’t get close to him.”
What if he hadn’t lost him?
Ilya could be out there, somewhere, in the refuge camp or making his way there, and maybe he was thinking about Shane, in New York, or Shane, making his way back from New York, and maybe he was wishing that Shane would be there. Or maybe he wasn’t thinking about Shane at all. Maybe he was gone. Or maybe he was hurt, and he was scared, and he was alone. Maybe what mattered was the fact that Shane was thinking about him - that Shane wanted to find him, to know that he okay, to be there for him.
“You’ll let me know if you need me?” he asked.
“In a heartbeat,” Rose assured him - but he was already scrambling to his feet.
“Thank you!” he called, and was running.
Somewhere in the world was Ilya, and Shane was going to find him.
The first place he called was by the medical tent. If Ilya had been hurt, he would have been brought here (by Superman, who was no doubt ferrying the most critical from the city and to where they could receive treatment) or made his own way, dragging himself out of the destruction with whatever will to live motivated him. There were multiple medical tents, but all of them were operated from the main hub, and so that was where Shane went - but the workers were busy, and though the man helping organise the chaos into something workable was apologetic, there had been no time to organise a list of who was there and who wasn’t.
“Most people were obliterated,” he said. “We aren’t getting half of the city identified. Sorry, son.”
Shane checked the morgue next.
It wasn’t something that he wanted to do but… but if Ilya was dead, he wanted to know sooner rather than later. He would want to make sure that Ilya was not alone, packed away in some body bag by people who didn’t know him.
He wasn’t - which didn’t mean anything, with most of the dead still in the city, but it soothed Shane regardless. It meant that there was still a chance.
If Shane was Nightwing, he would have been organised about it. If Shane was Nightwing, he would have had some plan. If Shane was Nightwing, he could have hid behind the mask until his emotions were something that could be easily tempered and brought into line by logic.
Shane was not Nightwing. Options exhausted, he placed his hands around his mouth and began to call Ilya’s name as he paced the makeshift streets of a makeshift camp from the dead and all their friends. No one looked twice at him, except for in recognition. There was no pity. He did not think that any one of the people who saw him pass by would be untouched by loss. It was such a total and devastating thing that never should have happened, but it had. It had, and all they could do was try and cope with the aftermath of it.
“Ilya!” he called, and hated the way that the name sounded on his tongue when he called it like that. “Ilya! Ilya Rozanov! Il-”
“Shane?”
He turned. He turned, and there was Svetlana. Beautiful, funny, one of a kind Svetlana, who looked like she had been dragged through Hell backwards. She seemed paler than he had ever seen her before, skin leeched of colour and stained by ash and soot. A cut wept red sluggishly from her forehead. It stained the ends of her bedraggled curls, and the rined clothes that she was wearing. He recognised, distantly, that the sweatshirt was Ilya’s.
“Shane,” she said again, and launched herself into his arms. He caught her a little awkwardly - he did not think that he had ever touched Svetlana before, never mind embraced her - and pulled her close against his chest. He could feel her trembling, like she was about to fly apart. She sobbed, “Shane, Shane, Shane, Shane.”
Dread wormed a pit in his stomach. He pulled back just enough to see her face, where silvery tear tracks now cut through the crime, and asked, “where is Ilya?”
Her face crumpled further in on itself. “I was hoping that you would know.”
“He wasn’t with you?”
Please, he wanted to beg. Please say he was with you.
But Svetlana shook her head. She hiccoughed, and said, through uncharacteristic tears, “he took Chiron - the neighbour’s dog - for a walk. I tried - I tried to call him but he won’t pick up.”
“Troy and Harris, are they?”
She pointed to a tent behind them, and led him inside. Troy, a pretty man who slightly unsettling blue eyes, and Harris, a perpetually happy man who was not looking very happy at that moment, were sat pressed up against each other on the ground, hands twined together. They looked up at Svetlana’s return, but there faces fell when they saw Shane. They were quick to try and hide their disappointment - but Shane knew who they had been worried about and who they were looking for.
“No luck?” Troy asked.
Svetlana dropped to the ground in front of them. She gestured up at Shane. “I found Shane Hollander. He is looking for Ilya as well.”
“No luck either,” Shane confirmed, and paused. “Ilya had Chiron with him? You don’t have, like, an air tag on his collar or…?”
“Fuck,” said Harris. “Of course. It’s Blüdhaven.” He scrambled in his pocket, pulling out his phone, and was silent for a very long minute that seemed to stretch into eternity. Then he started to laugh. “They made it,” he said, and there were tears glittering in his eyes. “They’re so close.”
“How can you be sure Ilya’s there?” Svetlana asked, though Shane saw the hope building on her face. It was like a shadow had been lifted from her expression.
“Would Ilya ever let Chiron out of his sight?” said Harris.
“Would Chiron?” Troy added. “The dog worships him.”
“Where?” Shane managed to choke out.
Harris pointed out the tent to the left, back down where Shane had already been. “Bring our boy back?” he asked, but Shane was already on his feet and running, weaving through the throngs of people with a renewal of desperate purpose.
“Ilya!” he called. “Ilya!”
He saw Chiron first, the familiar dog that took up half of Shane’s camera roll because Ilya loved and was obsessed with him, spamming Shane with pictures that were instantly saved for all the little things they told him about Ilya. And beside Chiron - a familiar crop of blond curls, slightly duller with ash and dirt and God knew what else. Broad shoulders. A ratty Boston Bears NHL hoodie.
“Ilya!” Shane cried again.
And Ilya turned, and saw him, eyes widening in shock. The distance was still too far to hear what Ilya said, swallowed by the crowd, but Shane was sure that he read his name on Ilya’s lips. He closed the distance between them rapidly, and then Ilya was there, right there and close enough to touch, and Shane was bowling into him with such force and speed that Ilya rocked underneath the sudden weight of it, and for a moment, all Shane could think about was whether Ilya was hurt, if Shane had made it worse, if he should have checked for injuries.
Ilya wrapped his arms around Shane’s waist, hauling him up like he weighed nothing. Shane set his arms around Ilya’s neck, burrowing his face there to try and inhale the smell of him and absorb the closeness of Ilya, and hooked his legs over his hips, clinging to him like a koala.
“Shane?” Ilya asked, voice numb and detached with shock. “Is - What - How are you here?”
“I was on my way back from New York when I heard the news,” he said, heart stuttering a little at all the omission that simple turn of phrase entailed. “I came to find you. I needed to know you were okay. I found Svetlana, and Harris and Troy, and they’re okay. They were looking for you too, and -”
“Real?” Ilya asked, and his voice was so uncharacteristically vulnerable that it took Shane’s breath away.
“I’m real, baby,” he said. “I’m here. I promise I’m real.”
Ilya turned his face away, and Shane recognised the motion as a last ditch attempt to hide the fact that he was crying, as if he thought that this tears - even at this time, in these circumstances - would be a weakness. Shane had never seen Ilya cry before. He cradled Ilya’s face between his hands, gentler than he had ever held anything before and certainly gentler than his hands had ever been taught to hold anything before, and tilted his head back to face Shane, thumbs sweeping away the slow fall of tears that dripped down his face.
“I’m sorry,” said Ilya wretchedly. “I’m so sorry. Prosti menya, pozhaluysta.”
“Sorry for what?”
“I was so scared. I wished that you were with me. I can’t - Was so selfish. I would not want you there, to be hurt.”
Shane swallowed harshly, and struggled to gather himself. “There isn’t anything to be sorry for. Baby, please, I wanted to be with you too. I didn’t - thinking of you alone, hurt or… I have never been more scared and I have never been so happy to see you safe.”
“Is time still for all my hair to fall out,” Ilya said, a shaky joke. He tried to smile, but his eyes, still resting on Shane, were intense and dark with some turbulent emotion that Shane couldn’t quite name. “Maybe grow third eye.”
Shane rested his forehead against Ilya’s. The adrenaline that had been fuelling him, the panic and all the fear, was slowly draining away.
“I’m going to say something,” he told Ilya, “and you don’t need to say it back, but you do need to know it. I love you. I love you. And I don’t think I can spend the rest of my life not saying it if there’s a chance that I might never get to tell you.”
Ilya exhaled. His eyes were bright - alive, mercifully alive. “Ya tebya lyublyu,” he whispered, and sounded mostly like he was saying it to himself. Louder, he said, “I love you. Shane Hollander, I thought I was going to die and my last thought was your name.”
“Fuck,” Shane managed to choke out. “Fuck, Ilya.”
Shane and Ilya had kissed a hundred times before, and every time had left Shane wanting. They’d kissed desperately, turned on and lustful and scrabbling to undress, and they’d kissed languidly in the few mornings that they had shared, dozed with sleep and the sunlight that Ilya’s shitty blinds could never fully block out, and they’d kissed casually as a goodbye. And Shane had been wanting - always wanting more, always waning Ilya, always wanting the kisses to mean as much for both of them as they did for him, wanting, wanting, wanting.
Shane still wanted, but he was not wanting, as he kissed Ilya in the middle of what might have been the end of the world and the end of all the things that mattered the most to Shane. He kissed him, and he was full, and he was in love, and he was loved.
It did not change anything, really (the city, destroyed, and Deathstroke still out there, and Shane still always beholden to a half life that Ilya would never be able to safely glimpse) but it changed everything, as well, for Shane.
Ilya was alive. Ilya was alive, and warm, and pliant and soft under Shane’s touch. He was going to stay alive for a long time, if Shane had anything to say about it, and Shane was going to make sure that he did.